RattleBag and Rhubarb

My PDS Challenge: Those 10 Ten Most Important Skills and How They Are Learned

Disruptive changes to business models will have a profound impact on the employment landscape over the coming years. Many of the major drivers of transformation currently affecting global industries are expected to have a significant impact on jobs, ranging from significant job creation to job displacement, and from heightened labour productivity to widening skills gaps. In many industries and countries,…

Continue Reading

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

What Skills Will We Need in the Future Economy?

Five years from now, over one-third of skills (35%) that are considered important in today’s workforce will have changed. That’s according to a new Forum report, The Future of Jobs,that  looks at the employment, skills and workforce strategy for the future. How will these skills be developed? What are the implications for what happens in schools now? Not just what…

Continue Reading

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

On the Brink: The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What it Means and What to Do

We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be…

Continue Reading

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Be a Good Person: Get Admitted to College

Be a good person: Get into college. Well – it’s not quite a simple as that but it is true that the rules of the game of college admissions are changing. This week admissions deans and other leaders from the nation’s top colleges and universities joined together to announce the launch of Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and…

Continue Reading

Education, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Racial Justice: Are we making any progress?

We celebrate  Martin Luther King’s birthday on Monday and that means a day off. It’s a recent habit to use a part of the weekend to read or re-read something he wrote and give it some thought. Seems the least thing to do. Last year it was Have Courage: The Letter from Birmingham Jail. This year it’s the speech he…

Continue Reading

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

In medicine and education: “The secret of quality is love”

“The secret of quality is love,” Avedis Donabedian, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, expert in the field of quality measurement. That’s a rather remarkable statement from a scientist whose expertise was accountability measures and quality control. It’s from a NYTimes article How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers by Robert M. Wachter *. The article is a…

Continue Reading

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Remembering Joe Bower

I never met Joe Bower but it seemed easy to imagine knowing him.  He was one of those people you meet online who exude warmth and seem larger than life. When Joe burst into the Twitterspere in 2009 it was like a blast of fresh air. He was ready to take on the world and he generated an energy and…

Continue Reading

Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

1915 and The Midnight of the Nations

On Christmas Day 1915 David Lloyd George the former radical liberal,then Minister of Munitions and soon to be Prime Minister addressed a crowd of restless shop stewards and trade unionists in St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow. He was there to try and forestall strikes in an area where labor relations were contentious and complicated. He also needed to make the case…

Continue Reading

Art, Film, Photography, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Winter Solstice

The winter solstice – the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. The earth – tilted away from the sun –  receives the least amount of sunlight today.  Here’s Winter Solstice by Barbara Hepworth  – originally created in 1970 as part of Hepworth’s suite of screenprints and lithographs known as ‘Opposing Forms’. This work expresses Hepworth’s interest in exploring a…

Continue Reading

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Finding the Heart of Progressive Education

Finding the Heart of a Progressive Education What follows is the text of the article recently published by Hudson Valley Magazine Q&A with Josie Holford​, Head of School, Poughkeepsie Day School How does the no testing/no grading philosophy work? The traditional assessment system is designed to rank and sort out winners and losers. At Poughkeepsie Day School, we think of…

Continue Reading

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The 100 Ways Children Learn and Why You Should Ignore Them

Learning styles – they used to be everywhere. You know – learning styles –  that notion that the way children learn is this way or that – visual, auditory or kinesthetic – or some other more complicated variation on a theme. There are three, there are four and sometimes many more styles or types of learners. There used to be…

Continue Reading

Education, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Keep Your School All-American

Here’s some good advice from Superman worth sharing in these political times of divisive politics and inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric. “…and remember, boys and girls, your school – like our country – is made up of Americans of many different races, religions and national origins, so … If YOU hear anybody talk against a schoolmate or anyone else because of his religion,…

Continue Reading