TWO HOURS TO COURAGE

Fear talks you out of exceptional and into mediocre.

Losing the conversation with fear means: problems persist, teams reach low, and you’re less of…

There is a commonly held belief in the world of teachers. That belief is that schools have a responsibility to teach students how to follow rules.  Compliance is a good thing. Red lights are not a suggestion and if they were, the number of car crashes would be on the rise.  But teaching through grades as punishment, that is another story. The stakes are higher certainly, the older the learner is. But using grades as punishment runs counter to all the work that needs to be done as…

 We have always highlighted our contention, and the convincing research and perspective of others, that leadership matters. Followership matters equally. Students benefit from strong, inspired leadership. Leadership brings the community together in times of crisis, articulates the direction and the purpose of movement forward, is vigilant to keep all safe as they travel on the learning journey, and keeps everyone coming back each day, not out of fear or consequence or retribution but…

At a recent conference, Bena Kallick demonstrated this truth to be evident in the room of 80 or so educators.  A thundering silence followed the question, "How do individualization and differentiation differ from personalized learning?" Can you answer this question?  If you answer it to yourself, how do you know you are right? If you ask one other person, how do you know you are both correct? If you research it on the web, how do you know your source is correct? These are the questions…

Here is one of the most important fault lines in American K-12....

Many children in elementary school don't learn to read in a timely way. The school naturally doesn't want anyone to think it's their fault. So they blame the pupils. The  children have something wrong with their brains, some genetic mistake, some disability. It's not the school's fault if they can't teach a damaged child to read.

Quite commonly in the US, this genetic mistake is…

Often, the signs are right in front of us and are ignored. Other times, we simply refuse to recognize them at all. The will to pull our heads out of the sand and face the reality of what is happening is a survival choice. It comes with risk and courage. Facing the reality does not require that once we see view the landscape with unveiled eyes we must take a particular action. Not taking in the information, seeing it, feeling it, and deciding what to do or not do is a far more…

 Ever since 1931, when our Education Establishment terminated phonics in the public schools, literacy has been in free fall.

This whole thing is grotesque. The Emperor has no clothes; he's covered with red sores that suggest a horrible infection, probably syphilis. But 1000 professors of education ooooh and…