Tag: Human-Centered
Landscape Scale Crisis
We’ve lived and worked in a landscape scale crisis – COVID 19. No matter where you are in Earth, you’ve been affected. Shutdowns, disinformation, threat of contracting, and unfortunately, human loss. A landscape scale crisis has the effect of changing how we work, create, and lead. It also has a keen way of giving us…
What Makes Us Happy And Why That Matters To Curriculum
Let’s contemplate what makes us happy. In this peer-reviewed article, happiness is distinct from sustainable happiness. Happiness Happiness can be bought, for the moment. It can be achieved and repeated with effort and accolades. But these materialistic and task-oriented experiences of happiness are short-lived and require continual repeating and “upping the ante.” In a materialistic…
Injustice and Oppression
Maybe it’s time that schools stop teaching fairness. Maybe instead, it’s time to begin teaching this…
Maintenance vs Subversion in Education
This might be the time for subversive curriculum and pedagogy. This is the time when our mission is larger than basic learning.
Readiness to Learn
In my home state, we have readiness standards and supporting standards. You probably have similar categories in your local province or region. If you’re in the U.S. and have Common Core standards, you’re familiar with the anchor standards. The idea is simple. There is a core set of learning benchmarks that must be minimally reached…
Empathy Speaks
Actions do the talking. What words speak when you’re walking? Leading with empathy is not merely a feeling – it may not even be a feeling at all. Instead, empathy speaks. It speaks in actions. It speaks in conversations. It speaks in the climate that you craft.
Building Walls For What?
Groups tend to grow into organizations. Organizations tend to grow into bureaucracies. Bureaucracies tend to lose their innovative edge. But why? Because of walls. For some reason, maybe it’s in the DNA of our species when we find a bit of success, we tend to wall it off. It’s likely a protection instinct, but it…
Blurred Vision
When was the last time you stayed up too late working, reading, or browsing the web? What happened to your eyes? Likely, your vision blurred. Blurred vision can happen when we get tired. The same is true for your school. This is the time of year where teachers and staff start getting tired.
Freedom, Reality, Possibility
We’re just short of 20 years since that day in world history where freedom came under attack. What role does freedom have in schools? What are the realities and possibilities for freedom in schools? Freedom implies the responsibility to direct, the power to act without constraint, the will to act within a self-selected intent. Independent…
End of My Rope
A second grade teacher shared the story about her first year teaching. She was exploring tone and mood in a text, and she mentioned how authors come up with ideas. She made her second-grade class cry. In her words, “I didn’t mean to make them cry. I was sharing one of Tomie DePaola’s simple books…” >> Listen…
Academics vs. Life
First, let me say education is a force for good in every sense of the word. However, academics are a different story. What are your impressions of the following statement? One drawback of being in education is the belief that academics are everything. They’re not. Outside of the sphere of education, everyone knows academics are…
Each Versus All
At first glance, they appear so similar: All students will learn at high levels. Each student will learn at a high level. However, this slight difference in starting points makes a vast difference in the multifinality that ensues. Here’s a graphic to sum a thousand words: Let’s not talk theory. Let’s look at the practical…
True Costs of Dismissal
What are the true costs of dismissal? You know, the people costs. Take school dismissal. The bell rings. Everyone goes to their assigned duty and students flow to the correct halls, classes, and exits as if on auto-pilot. Dismissal is a complex process, but it flows rather smoothly once the procedures are established. The dismissal…
Passion Talks
This is a great strategy when you have new hires or when your teams are new to each other. It also works great in a back-to-school setting. Passion talks invite team members, or requires team members, to give a 60-second talk about anything in the world are passionate about. Why? Creates connections among educators within…
Teacher Appreciation, 6 Ways of Being
A few years back, I wrote an article Teacher Appreciation is Not One Week of the Year. The premise was simple: Teachers can take control of being undervalued and unappreciated. I offered six ways to do this: Appreciate Another Teacher Call Parents with Good News Gather Your Own Student Growth Data Help Out Another Teacher…