Science teacher Jonathan Heiles sent a link to all of us about the international public campaign to name the surface features of Pluto and Charon. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly past Pluto in July and that far off world and its moons for the first time. Together with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the New Horizons team will assign names…
Here is child psychologist Dr. Megan Koschnick on why Early Childhood Standards of Common Core are Developmentally Inappropriate. This is her presentation from a 2013 conference at the University of Notre Dame entitled “The Changing Role of Education in America: Consequences of the Common Core.” Why do we care if Common Core standards are age inappropriate? Well, you can answer that…
I always enjoy Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post. She frequently provides a platform for teacher voices and education issues so often drowned out by the drumbeat of test and standardization mania. She had a great piece last week What a Classroom Engaged in Real Learning Looks Like It’s about the work of Aleta Margolis of the…
It’s a miserable life. Nasty, brutish and short. And childhood means school and that means drudgery. And the sooner kids experience that the better off they will be. It’s the real world folks. Better get used to it now. And sorry, no recess – you have to prepare for the test. And hurry up – no time to be wasted…
Panel on the Future of Education from the NAIS Annual Conference, Boston 2015. With college presidents Rebecca Chopp, Nan Keohane, Paul LeBlanc and Pamela Gunter-Smith Moderated by NAIS President, John E. Chubb Featured photocredit: Dana Critchlow
Have you ever seen a ton of starlings or red-wing blackbirds swooping about in unison as if they were in some kind of mechanically choreographed mass ballet? Of course the correct and archaic collective nouns to use there would be murmuration for the starlings and cloud, flock, grind, or merl for the blackbirds. But whatever – you know what I mean –…
Tom Little’s lifelong passion for progressive education emerged directly from his experience with its antithesis. I was six years old, and the youngest of six children, when I lost my father to cancer. On the day after his funeral, I raised my hand in class. I held my hand in the air for what seemed like a very long time…
By chance I discovered this wonderful document Growing Up in Ireland with its photographs of a lush green landscape and quick words. It led me to the website for the national longitudinal study of children. Started in 2007 it is following the progress of almost 20,000 children across Ireland.They appear to asking all the right questions. The idea is to collect a host…
The Hungry Mind The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood That’s the title of Susan Engel’s new book and it’s about the recent standardized testing mania and how it misses the point about what really matters. The key thing is the desire to learn. We are born curious – born with a hunger to learn. The book is an exploration of…
Not content with sweeping the international testing stakes Finland is setting about radical school design and reform – again. And given some rather gloomy economic outlooks maybe not a moment too soon. Maybe they know that topping the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test pile is not the holy grail and that these scores don’t tell us anything very useful …
I’m not sure when PDS became a member of NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) but it was a long time ago. A few years back they published their short and quite excellent wonderful online A Guide to Becoming a School of the Future. The first section makes the case for schools of the future and if there’s anyone out…
There’s solid evidence that American students do well when they are encouraged to think for themselves and expected to collaborate with one another. There’s a great Opinion piece by David L. Kirp* in the NY Times today: Make School a Democracy The story begins in a one-room schoolhouse in Armenia, Columbia with a mixed-age (5-13) group of students grouped at…
John Maeda is the keynote speaker at #naisac this week and I’m looking forward to hearing him. He just shared this leadership chart and Linked-In article via Twitter and he “hopes it’s useful.” I think it is. And interesting. Interesting because thinking how this applies to business-as-usual (or not) in independent schools will take some intriguing untangling and working through.…
The NAIS Annual Conference – #naisac15 – is coming right up. This year schools were invited to contribute to an interactive Makerspace where attendees can explore aspects of this new movement in education. Chris Bigenho has been organizing the online NAIS community for the past several years – thank-you Chris @bigenhoc – and this year he is assembling what he…
“Once upon a time there was a mindless little girl named Little Red Riding Hood “ So begins Ellen Langer’s introduction to her delightful The Power of Mindful Learning. Long before the word was the trend du jour in education there was Ellen Langer’s Mindfulness (1990) and then The Power of Mindful Learning (1997). Her initial example – the tale of Little…