I’m off this morning to spend two days with Sir Ken Robinson and the Kirkpatrick Foundation, which is planning to host a World Creativity Forum this November in Oklahoma City. If you’re unaware of Sir Ken, here’s a video preview, courtesy of a recent TED talk — and his take on why we need to […]
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The Book of Learning Stories — Title Search
I need your help in coming up with the title for the book of learning stories. Whoever submits the winning entry will get a $50 gift card to the bookstore of their choice. Here are the three I have so far: The Learning Book: 50 Powerful Stories of Learning & Teaching — In School & […]
Read More »Draft Intro for Book of Learning Stories
For anyone interested in learning a bit more about what the book will look like . . . ——– This is a book of different people’s stories. Some are about teachers who changed their students’ lives. Some describe the moment when a person first discovered how to ask the right questions, or found what they […]
Read More »Final 50 Selected for Book of Learning Stories
Nine months ago, the Rethink Learning Now campaign launched a national storytelling initiative by asking people to reflect on their most powerful learning experiences, and/or their most effective teachers. Since then, the campaign has received hundreds of insightful and illustrative submissions from people across the country –from students to social workers to the Secretary of […]
Read More »Education and… National Security
I see that President Obama listed education as a core aspect of his overall National Security Strategy. It reminds me of a great piece my former boss and mentor Charles Haynes wrote less than three weeks after the September 11 attacks. As Charles wrote: “Over the course of this long struggle, the most effective answer […]
Read More »Send Those Postcards!
Today, the coalition of education and civil rights organizations that launched the Rethink Learning Now campaign, in conjunction with Time Out From Testing, is launching a postcard campaign to First Lady Michelle Obama asking that she encourage the President to put an end to the use of high stakes testing. You may recall that when […]
Read More »Teacher Money Will Have To Wait, Senate Democrats Say
Yesterday, Congressional Quarterly reported that Senate Democrats have abandoned efforts to add $23 billion for saving teachers’ jobs to their chamber’s supplemental war spending bill, acknowledging they don’t have the 60 votes to block an expected Republican filibuster. Republicans have criticized the White-House backed proposal as a “bailout” that shouldn’t be attached to an emergency […]
Read More »The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand?
In case you missed it, Steven Brill wrote a relatively balanced piece in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine about the national education reform landscape — and how teachers unions are truly facing a sink-or-swim moment of reinvention. As someone who feels neither allegiance nor antipathy toward either of the increasingly polarized camps (I actually […]
Read More »Many Faiths, One Truth
In today’s New York Times, the Dalai Lama writes about his own spiritual journey and how he has come to believe in the primacy of helping people of different faiths find common ground. Although he doesn’t speak about education, I read it through that lens (surprise surprise), wondering how our current policy recipes might differ […]
Read More »Book of Learning Stories — Deadline Nears
I’m spending every minute this week finalizing the manuscript that will stitch together 50 people’s stories about powerful teaching and learning (Jossey-Bass, Spring 2011 release). Already, there are powerful voices and insights in the mix — from everyday citizens to U.S. Senators to the Secretary of Education himself. And although we already have several hundred […]
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