Blog – Page 41 – Sam Chaltain

All Systems Go!

Posted on July 18, 2010 | by Sam

Increasingly, I hear people talking about the need for “systems change” and “systems thinking,” and when I do I always wonder what people mean when they say it.

My own interest in systems thinking began a few years ago when I read Peter Senge’s classic The 5th Discipline. It influenced me so much that I dedicated a full chapter to the subject in my new book American Schools. Overall, though, I haven’t seen a lot of work in education based on systems thinking. But that seems to be changing.

How to Start a Movement, Part II

Posted on July 16, 2010 | by Sam | 1 Comment

Last week, I shared a video from TED about how to start a movement. This Tuesday, my wife and I went to see the new movie Cyrus, and I watched the exact same principle unfold again. See for yourself (the clip is less than two minutes long, and it’s funny): As with the TED video, […]

What No One Else Will Say About Teach for America

Posted on July 15, 2010 | by Sam | 1 Comment

There’s an interesting debate unfolding on the New York Times web site today around this question: Does Teach for America Improve the Teaching Profession?

Unfortunately, too many of the featured contributors — who have sparked hundreds of readers to offer their own feedback — chose to cast TFA in one of two terms: as either the White Knight of education reform (e.g., Donna Foote’s “A Corps of True Reformers”) or as the down-n-dirty Devil himself (e.g., Margaret Crocco’s “A Threat to Public Schools”).

As I wrote last week, in a piece titled “What Gandhi would think of The Lottery”, this sort of polarized rhetoric is the latest iteration of the “I/It” way of seeing public education, and it will get us nowhere. So as someone who neither loves nor hates TFA, let me offer a succinct summary of how I see them, since no one seems to want to acknowledge the fuller picture of what they represent:

The Inspired Mindset — Starting a School, Part III

Posted on July 15, 2010 | by Sam

This morning, over orange juice, coffee and red grapes in the theater room of the Capital City Public Charter School, a small group of interested educators, scholars and citizens listened as Center for Inspired Teaching’s Director of Teaching and Learning, Julie Sweetland, explained what makes the Center’s work so powerful. Inspired Teaching is the entity […]

And now for something completely different . . .

Posted on July 14, 2010 | by Sam

My 11-month old son, Leo, just got a new toy that says it “helps teach motor skills and an early understanding of cause and effect.”Cause and effect? Is that sort of specificity in a toy description cool, or just weird?

The Testing Carousel Goes Round and Round . . .

Posted on July 14, 2010 | by Sam | 2 Comments

Today’s Washington Post reports that the test scores of elementary school kids slipped this year after two successive years of growth, “a setback to Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee as she seeks to overhaul the city’s schools.” No doubt, this news is being used by Rhee’s critics to point out that her particular brand of reform […]

How to Build a School System That Nurtures Creativity

Posted on July 13, 2010 | by Sam | 7 Comments

In case you missed it, there’s an important new piece in Newsweek about the declining capacity of Americans to think creatively — and what we can do about it. This is, of course, the primary issue that has driven Sir Ken Robinson’s work (if you’re among the few who haven’t yet seen his hilarious and […]

Data-Driven Decision Making . . . and Soccer?

Posted on July 9, 2010 | by Sam | 2 Comments

Great timing. A week after I wrote about what the World Cup can teach us about school reform, the New York Times published an article about the growing push for more detailed data in the relatively data-free world of professional soccer. I am not, for what it’s worth, against the use of more sophisticated data […]

How to Start a Movement

Posted on July 8, 2010 | by Sam | 1 Comment

Find out all you need to know (well, maybe not all, but . . .) from this 3 minute video, courtesy of a TED talk by Derek Sivers.

What Gandhi Would Think of “The Lottery”

Posted on July 6, 2010 | by Sam

I just saw “The Lottery” – a documentary film about public education in general, and the charter school movement in particular – and I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. The film is beautiful, and deeply moving, It is impossible not to fall in love with the four children (and their families) whose […]