In 1892, the Committee of Ten recommended, among other things, twelve years of education — 8 years of elementary and 4 years of high school. What was the life expectancy in 1892? According to this site, about 45 years. According to the same site, life expectancy today is around 79 years. The world and the […]

In October 2020, several organizations partnered to present an online film festival, This is Our Chance film festival.  Spread over a period of three weeks, with each week having a unique focus, full length and short films (mostly documentaries) were curated and followed up with rich online conversations and gatherings. While the festival is “over,” […]

This past week I listened to two podcasts that got me quite energized: Taken for Granted: Brené Brown on what vulnerability isn’t – conversation with Adam Grant and Brene Brown Brene with Adam Grant on the Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know Yes…they interviewed each other on their podcasts. And it is well worth […]

Let’s move the spotlight to teachers, certainly one of our greatest assets! When we talk about human flourishing, we’re talking about everyone in the system. We can’t have student flourishing if our teachers aren’t also flourishing. But what might that look like? 🤔 Teacher flourishing. Using Martin Seligman’s PERMA framework, Zachary Herrmann shares some thoughts […]

Peter Gray, psychology researcher and scholar, has published a thought-provoking piece in Psychology Today: A Pandemic Lesson: Family Togetherness Makes Children Happy. He reviews some recent research from Let Grow and the Institute for Family Studies. And here is his suggestion: “So here is a lesson from the pandemic that I hope will stick: Prior […]

That’s the question at the foundation of a new research-based framework released by Next Generation Learning Challenges earlier this month. I love the way they have approached this inquiry, and the framework outcome (with its accompanying literature review) has the potential to move us more rapidly toward a tipping point in school transformation. The text […]

The power of the newsletter.  Yes…it can be another email, but a good newsletter can scale your learning. What are some of the best newsletters with content to support the work of school transformation? Here are just five that I find very helpful. Sign up for the ones you find interesting! (if you aren’t already […]

So far in this challenge we have shared several posts on taking the longview — thinking about the future and taking action to create that future, not simply have it happen to  You’re a teacher. You’re a leader. Do you have to become a futurist as wel Fortunate for us, there are people and organizations […]

In my pursuit of the idea of flourishing in education, I ran across a recent book (2020) written by educational philosopher Kristján Kristjánsson (Flourishing as the Aim of Education). It seems quite relevant for our work here, so I will be sure to share more in the near future.  At the very outset…in the Preface….Kristjánsson […]