To honor a fallen comrade, the US Air Force observes a ritual known as the Missing Man formation. A team of pilots flies close over a public venue, in what's normally a 5-plane chevron pattern. In the Missing Man ritual, there's a plane missing from one wing of the V, its characteristic place in the … Continue reading Missing Man Day: model for a 4-Day Work Week (#4DWW)
the DOG: some background
I have been developing the Dimensions of Observable Growth in collaboration with other educators for more than fifteen years, starting when my own two children were in school in Colorado in the early 2000's. The push for "data driven" decision making in classrooms prompted me to find a way to help teachers in developmental, experiential, … Continue reading the DOG: some background
The eggshells in our reform cake
The image above is a screen capture from the Assessment Work Group page of the CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) website. It's the list of criteria for participation in the 2nd round of an Assessment Design Challenge that could, one imagines, yield a rich, primal stew of innovative perspectives, ingredients, tools, and … Continue reading The eggshells in our reform cake
Justice – by whose standard?
I'm reflecting on a sign I photographed in Tacoma. It's a perfect accompaniment to several recent conversations I've had and heard, about why BIPOC folk are disinclined to follow accepted rules of civility in claiming their due. White People: If you would just show up acting more like educated white people, you'd have an equal … Continue reading Justice – by whose standard?
US education: the productivity problem
Lay an egg … Lay an egg … Lay an egg … @davidshrigley had a whole lot more than schools in mind when he created this image, but I've never seen a more apt depiction of what it must feel like to be a student in this country. For that matter, of what it feels … Continue reading US education: the productivity problem
Power Over or Power With: Children’s personalities reflect the way adults engage with them
Children’s behavior can be a good guide to where their significant adults stand on the Influence Continuum. Sometimes the freedom we give children isn’t free. When we implicitly pressure children to make the choices we want while we are telling them the choice is theirs, the effects on their behavior are the same as if … Continue reading Power Over or Power With: Children’s personalities reflect the way adults engage with them
Encomium for an engineer
Wolf Alexander Erich Albert Ferdinand Freiherr von Lersner Who would name their baby all of that!? … a given name … FOUR middle names … a rank (Freiherr – Free Lord, or Baron: a nobleman free to own land, in an age when not everybody was) … a nobiliary particle (“von,” that denotes belonging to … Continue reading Encomium for an engineer
Hitting the bottle (a bug poem)
Intrepid Explorer …
Space for that
One of the ways we cripple our children is to assume that there's nothing going on inside their heads …
Ten Horsemen of the Educational Apocalypse
It's impossible to embark on a radical redesign of education without first identifying and momentarily suspending our most basic (and usually unexamined) assumptions about what's happening in schools. The illustration embedded here identifies some of our current, commonly held, largely unexamined assumptions about education. Each of them has, over time, served to carry us toward … Continue reading Ten Horsemen of the Educational Apocalypse
wax 