The sweet spot in schooling is a time when all the stars align, and every day feels like sunshine. Children, teachers, principals, and parents are on the same page and are happy being there. All the tangibles and intangibles of schooling seem to harmonize. The usual obstructions and distractions of school operations – transportation, campus maintenance, food service – are of no consequence. The usual human tensions ease and do not impede successes. There is agreement on goals and people collaborate on how to achieve them. Continue reading
The Sweet Spot – Enjoy It While You Can
A Baccalaureate Keeps Giving
To offset the half-life reality of our non-durable learning, an educated person who has invested in learning and knows how to succeed in collegiate and technical education continually hits the “reset” button of their knowledge and skills Continue reading
Non-Academic Attributes of a K-12 Education Last Longer. We Prioritize the Wrong Data.
The correlates of non-academic traits with later adult life quality are far more important than we acknowledge. It is time to re-center our priorities of what constitutes a quality K-12 education and begin looking at core life values. Forget academic assessments, grade point averages, and class rankings. Continue reading
Our PISA Scores Are Low Because PISA Is Meaningless to Our Students
The causation for the low status of the United States on PISA assessments is this – our children are transactional and they perceive no benefit for giving their best efforts on the PISA. What matters to our children gets their attention and PISA test results do not matter. Continue reading
Ethical or Transactional. Which Will Our Children Be?
Not to be too simplistic, we can teach children to be Crockett-like in considering the implications of and responsibilities for the decisions they make. This curriculum will not display on their transcript but will be noted in the proverbial book of life. We can teach them that a “True North” is either an ethical process for decision making or it is the endgame goal to be achieved regardless of process. It is their decision to make. Continue reading
Build Self-Reliance Not Conformity
Parents are correctly alarmed at the power of social media to influence, distort, and misdirect the thinking and behaviors of their children. While most influencers are driven by the monetary rewards and status of their follower count, we could substitute Emersonian ideals that would build the inner selves of children and prevent their blind conformity with others’ external subservience. Continue reading
The August Itch of Preparing to Teach
The predictions for the 2026-27 school year are that almost 400,000 classrooms in September will NOT have licensed teachers. Students in those classrooms will be taught by people on emergency licenses, long-term substitute status, or who are prepared to teach but not the subjects or the children in their new classroom. Continue reading
Ambivalence Instead of Ambition Defines Us Today
A harder truth is that American productivity and culture cannot stand another decade of our national ambivalence. Our ambivalence is greasing our slide down the backside of what America once was. Continue reading
Teachers Teach Doers
Every great invention and break-through event in our history stands on the shoulders of someone who taught an inventor or exploring person foundational knowledge and skills, who posed a “so, what” challenge, and stood aside to help the doing Continue reading
Polyglots, We Need You
Knowing what is meant inside the words that are spoken creates an understanding of what people think and feel and how they consider their world. Multilingualism breeds multicultural understanding and understanding allows people to know not just what someone is saying but also what they want you to know. How can we communicate if we do not invest in understanding the nuances of language? Continue reading