Tag: Human-Centered
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AI, This is the line in the sand.
The headlines say AI is coming for your career, but they’re missing the entire plot. If you define expertise purely by what can be automated, you’ve already lost. There is a sharp line where the machine completely fails—and it’s exactly where your competitive advantage begins.
The Inner Architect: Building a Happy Mind
How often do we look outside ourselves for happiness? For that next promotion, that perfect vacation, that new gadget? We chase it like a distant mirage, convinced it lies just beyond our grasp, tethered to external circumstances. See Also: Never Truly Satisfied But what if the blueprint for a truly happy life already exists, not…
The Blank Canvas: A Symphony of Questions
Life is Art, What Questions are You Asking Your Canvas?
The Algorithmic Echo Chamber: AI’s Quiet Influence on Critical Thinking
The rise of AI has significantly enhanced efficiency and access to information but also raises concerns about diminishing critical thinking. Studies show increased reliance on AI correlates with decreased cognitive engagement, especially among younger users. As AI shapes our intellectual processes, it’s vital to maintain independent thought and discernment in using these tools wisely.
Do you need a break?
Half times in sports signify crucial resets for rest and strategy. Similar to a deload week in weight training, which includes lighter workouts followed by intense training phases, this concept applies to all areas of life. Planned breaks help prevent burnout, promoting appreciation of life’s simple joys and rejuvenating our spirits.
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…
Immediacy, 5 Ways to Use It
Immediacy is an important concept to school leadership because it is an actionable way to lead with empathy. It has impact. But what is it? Read More here.
One Tip to Gain Influence
Trust, transparency, predictability, support – these are surefire ways to gain influence. But there are also more tactical ways such as this tip to gain influence. Manage the size of the group. Often we want a larger group to speak a message once – to keep communication clear. However, meeting with smaller groups can increase…
Conformity Bias
There are many pressures that resist change. Chief among them is the conformity bias. In our evolutionary history, this bias served a powerful role – conforming to the norms of a group (who have clearly survived) will help me survive along with the group. Wheras diverging from social norms might cause me to lose out…
Schools and Mental Health, Just the Facts
In the past 12 months, there have been a number of studies focused on the alarming nature of mental health and schools. Here are the facts: The number of teachers seeking support for concerns related to mental health has risen 35% in the past 12 months. 61% of educators report their work is “always” or “often”…
Burnout and Demoralization
Both are the product of organizational health. Or should I say, a lack of organizational health? How we view the two is important. Burnout is not the same as demoralization and vice versa. According to Merriam Webster, demoralize is: 1: to cause to turn aside or away from what is good or true or morally…
Hot Coffee, Warm Hearts
People are strange. We really are. A 2008 Yale study found that participants in a study were more fond of the researcher when they had warm coffee versus participants who had iced coffee. But it’s more than just strange. It’s human reality. The idea is called cognitive embodiment. It’s the idea that what we experience…
Attribution Error, Devilish Little Error with Big Impact
Attribution error was a major concept discussed in the podcast (Season 3, Ep 1) and is a common factor that limits performance on teams. What is attribution error? What can we do about? What is Attribution Error? Attribution error is the idea that we fundamentally give a larger benefit of the doubt to ourselves than we do…
Leading with Vulnerability
Vulnerability starts with the leader. And when you lead with vulnerability, it becomes an emotional resource from which conflicts and challenges can be solved. But it starts with the leader. And its benefits are many: Others will follow suit. It opens the door to trust. It increases organizational health. It minimizes risk. It strengthens teams.…
Empathy is Not
Empathy is not… An excuse to forget that a team exists to accomplish goals. An exemption from shared accountability. A soft feeling similar to roasting marshmallows around a campfire (which, by the way, is a lot of fun). Empathy is not these things, but it is among the most powerful undercurrents to establishing high-performing teams…