…and we’ll make winners out of them” There’s a good article in the latest edition of Independent School magazine that challenges some cherished notions of excellence and the hypocrisy of so many claims about diversity, equity and justice. It is starts with a question and a well-aimed slice at the euphemisms of so many school mission statements. What does it…
Embracing Innovation Conference Presentation Another learning Odyssey about the design development of OPuS (Online Progressive unSchool) posted by Fred Bartels These are the slides to the talk he gave at Embracing Innovation 11 at PDS last Friday. You can follow the learning journey and see some of the influences, sharing, collaboration and thinking along the way. Are we frightened of the…
What’s your answer? Take a look at this one delivered by a five year old. Freebrook Academy founded by a PDS alum Monique Scott and open for students in September.
The NYSAIS heads conference is always valuable and 2010 was no exception. I usually hear NAIS president Pat Bassett in a mega ballroom with all the flashing lights and hoopla of the annual conference. It was good to hear him in the more intimate setting of the dining room at Mohonk. His talk – top trends to look out for…
When I’m in the car I listen to WAMC, and yesterday I heard Roland Fryer’s Dowmel lecture. His specialty is race-based economic issues, and his research projects seek to answer the question of why African-Americans are harder hit by poverty than other demographic groups in America The focus was education and the data dismal. Fryer is a brilliant economist, an…
Read Peter Gow’s Education Week article The New Progressivism is Here. Commenting on the 2008 NAIS annual conference held in New York City last winter Gow identifies independent schools as being at the forefront of contemporary thinking about education. The elements he identifies in particular include: Assessment against high standards Professional development Real-world connections Multiculturalism as a process, not a…
The world is moving at a tremendous rate. Going no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past. Not for our world. But for their world. The world of the future. – John Dewey (seen saying just that in the film below) Progressive education in the 1940s: I don’t know who made this…