It is disheartening to hear that leaders are preventing teachers from helping students make sense of what is happening in their country, their democracy, their news, their competing truths and the fuzzy lines between fact and speculation and interpretation. We remember when news was on once a day and it was for 30 minutes. Now news is 24/7 and that amount of time simply can't be filled with repeating the same facts and command an audience. So, we have commentators, not journalists or…

 The news reported students chanting, "Build the wall" in Michigan, and in California.  It has now reported that students on a university campus have done the same adding graffiti including swastikas.  And, the protests against Trump have spread from urban streets to high school walkouts across the country. The election may be over but the forces that were released during the campaign are certainly not.  …

Even when the stakes are low, you still need to know how to handle defeat. It was this driving principle that motivated Laura Pasek, a third and fourth grade general studies teacher, to conclude her simulation of a presidential election at the Hebrew Day School of Ann Arbor with drafting acceptance speeches--and concession speeches.  Since the early days of September, her students had enthusiastically thrown themselves into a simulated election of 1800, incumbent John Adams vs. Vice…

The term "safe school" has become another of those terms that means many things and can be narrowly or widely interpreted. Physically safe school has always meant protecting students from physical danger.  If you were in schools in the 1950's and early 1960's in addition to fire drills, you may remember duck and cover drills.  Getting under a desk or going into the hall and covering your head to protect you from nuclear attack was as regular as leaving the building for a fire drill.…

Some of you may have watched the Country Music Awards last week. It offered a break from the incessant speculation that now serves as news. A new poll every day followed by a myriad of partisan interpretations. If there is one thing that might unite the nation right now, it is the desire for Tuesday to come. It was on the CMA's that we heard a story and a song. The story was of a mom and the prayer she had for her children every day when they left for school. Tim McGraw heard it and it…

Let's reclaim the honor and purpose of our profession.  We need teachers and leaders who are dedicated to the reality that children are our business and that we have the ability and the obligation to create an environment that can teach them far more than subjects. We have knowledge, training, responsibility and we have experience.  Many of these teachers and leaders are in schools right now. The daily urgent administrivia eats into their dedication and focus but cannot be allowed to…

One reason schools are so cautious about change is that we aren't sure of our answer to the fundamental question about school and social values. Of course, educators are a reflection of society ourselves and so we don't agree among ourselves, making it even more complex to lead a system into and through one of these debates. No matter whether educated in the 40's and 50's or the 80's and 90's, the large percentage of us who went to public school were taught from a bank of knowledge…

Most of you have been part of a hiring process. You know the conversation about qualifications and attributes. Regardless of position, we search for the person with knowledge, with skills and with a set of personal attributes. Then interviews happen, and often conversations drift from those expressed qualifications to softer ones. We don't mean the reference check input, we mean the conversations about who will "fit" here. We mean the moments when the best answered are dismissed as too…

 As societal values shift, schools absorb or resist those changes. School leaders receive the challenges released on the election stages and find it seeping into classrooms, hallways and high school locker rooms.  Over the years, we have seen an erosion of respect for teachers and school leaders.  And sadly, the capacity to monitor previously private actions has revealed some pretty bad actions. So as educators, we find ourselves attempting to create a value system that runs counter to…

When something is used for more than one purpose, it loses it power. Three examples can be found in lesson plans, observations/evaluations, and PowerPoint presentations. When serving more than one master, value is diminished. Read more...

Schools may not be reflecting the needs of the economy and society in regard to some things like how teaching and learning take place, how technology is used, how subjects are organized, standards are applied, or assessments are developed,  but they do reflect society's hunger for heroes.  Just like the world outside of schools, where athletes, movie stars, authors, and rock stars have fans and followers, educators choose their own rock stars to revere. …

Schools are local entities, basically funded by mostly local taxes and are subsidized by state and national government funds. Lobbies exist, even if shrouded in sheep's clothing.  There has been no time in recent memory when discussion of school improvement was not in the news, or on the minds of leaders, boards, parents, communities, and politicians. Each has a vested interest in the quality of education.  There are the plethora of businesses that offer advice through professional…

For some, a leader stands above us and apart from us, in a position of authority, and guides us toward a vision. For others, leaders are one of us, inclusive in process, and highly transparent as we move toward the vision. Both can be inspiring and also can be successful. The heavy lift rests in the blending of these; the yearning for the patriarch who vowed to take care of us all and so we followed and the yearning to own a part of the leadership process with efficacy seeking a leader…

Leaders are extraordinary people. To be clear, we are talking about persons who choose to take the responsibility of leading and do so with integrity and with courage and with purpose, not those who have simply attained positions of power and authority. The difference is often revealed in moments.  In schools, sometimes leaders can be found within those who step into that role when a crisis arises or who speak up when a wrong is being done or who become a champion for those who are…

Lack of funding, crumbling infrastructures, reduced faculties and administration, low salaries, corruption and poverty are all contributing factors to school failures. Now, the rise in the number of competing charter schools is either another causal factor for failures or the long sought solution. Just as it is not unusual for teachers to think of their sphere of influence as their classroom or school, we, as leaders, may limit our thinking to our local buildings or districts. But,…

Schools are faced with moral dilemmas every day.  The implementation of a new set of standards may come accompanied with moral dilemmas.  Even more obvious are the dilemmas about team names and mascots. Schools who have taken on the fight between those who hold strongly to the tradition of a name and those who feel deeply the offensive meaning of a name know the difficult nature of the fray as they engae the two groups and come to a decision. Other moral dilemmas are presented in…

Student engagement, project-based learning, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, inclusion, STEM, blended learning, online learning, writing across the curriculum, authentic learning and assessment, team teaching...all these goals and movements within education can become catchwords or overused phrases. Before the fall momentum takes over, there are opportunities to enter a deeper conversations about what we have chosen as priorities and why. Those conversations span the…

We have an achievement gap in schools that in many cases supports a national income gap. Our economy demands workers who are innovators, collaborators, communicators, creative thinkers, and critical thinkers.  It is important that educators understand and incorporate STEM as more than four subjects (or five if art is being discussed).  It is less about adding courses in four subject areas and more about how teaching and learning takes place, less about an elective or a club or event…

What will it take to allow children to learn from this summer's intense series of events: shootings, questions about race and its role in our society, the Olympics, this election cycle, floods, earthquakes, and now a refusal to stand during the national anthem by an NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick? It is highly unlikely that students of any age have escaped being exposed to these issues. It is likely that students will return having seen adults argue, labeling each other by…

Each child arrives at our doors with abilities and gaps. We are responsible for helping each child reach the graduation stage having met the same standards; some struggle and never reach them, some reach them, and others surpass them. Among each group are students suffering with mental illness. Some have a diagnosis and doctors, educators and families working together on their behalf.  But, many remain undiagnosed.

It takes time, observations, collection of evidence, alert…