50 days! Over the course of the past month and a half, we’ve bumped up and explored a wide range of ideas connected to learning and leading schools for the future.  Let’s collect some “crazy” ideas. —– ❓ Provocations: Which ideas resonated with you over the past 50 days? Why is that? What new “crazy” […]

I have to admit I’ve not been all that drawn to the work of Michael Fullen over the past few decades, but his recent whitepaper, The Right Drivers for Whole System Success, is worth the read and has me intrigued. I connected to his call for a new paradigm — a human-centered paradigm — in […]

Today we have a resource recommendation…for educators and parents. The Character Lab is an organization whose mission it is to connect researchers and educators, creating “greater knowledge about the conditions that lead to social, emotional, academic, and physical well-being for young people throughout the country.” After reading that, I could tell the organization was aligned […]

I’ve always been kind of fascinated with the individual stories….life’s journey…that bring people to the current moment. I suppose that’s what is most appealing about podcasting, despite being quite the introvert. So I found this post from Jessica Livingston, co-founder of the startup investment firm Y-Combinator, so interesting. Grow the puzzle around you. The backdrop […]

In Kevin Roose’s recent book Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, he makes what has become a familiar argument as we get deeper into a world where AI is increasingly impacting all aspects of life: Human skills still matter. We have two choices: Compete with the machines (and lose). Focus on […]

“The current education system is designed to produce inequitable life outcomes for young people. Decades of tweaking and patchwork solutions have proven we are dealing with a design feature rather than a design flaw. When such outcomes are embedded in the foundation of a system’s design, we must work to invent something entirely new.” Lindsy […]

Two days ago the idea of using autonomy, mastery and purpose as lenses to design learning environments.  Let’s dig a little deeper into the why and what if… In his book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman reminds us that dopamine plays a critical role in learning motivation. “Dopamine has activating effects on cognition […]

How do you know your learning organization is ready to make a transformation…..to alter the DNA of how it thinks about and acts on first principles of learning, schooling and education. In Spiral Dynamics Don Beck and Christopher Cowan offer us leaders six valuable questions to gauge our organization’s readiness. Does the potential exist for […]

Think about your most memorable, powerful learning experience. Did it take place in a formal school setting—K12 or college? Did it take place in an informal setting–tinkering with ideas or stuff? What was the role of adults? Peers? Why is the experience so memorable? What might be if all of the learning experiences were candidates […]

Labels help us make meaning more easily across all parts of our lives, but what do we give up when we label kids in school? As we move toward a more human-centered model of learning, we need to be sensitive to education labels that lead to negative stereotypes, or what is termed in the research […]