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Integration with Integrity: Reflections on a Decades-long Design Journey
Seeing is Believing While many societal institutions would benefit from systemic reform, my life’s work focuses on engineering learning systems that support secondary, undergraduate and adult learners. Twenty-three years ago, I moved out of school districts to build tangible models and lead professional development more effectively than I could from within. In my own teaching […]
Student Empowered School via Town Hall
It’s a Friday afternoon. Normally, students are abuzz, packing up at the end of the day, chatting about weekend plans, waiting impatiently for the clock to hit 3:00. Not this Friday, though. About 40 middle and high school students are sitting in a circle, quietly and calmly discussing what’s happening in their school, a process […]
Teacher Evaluation Reimagined
This is the second of a two-part set of articles on Teacher Evaluation. See the first entry here. Contact Greg Fisher at schoolempowerment@gmail.com. Is there more than one way to design and run a Teacher Evaluation program? Of course there is. But why does the vast majority of schools’ deploy anachronistic and obsolete systems that are […]
Teacher evaluation can (and should) be way more meaningful
Peer observation and collaboration succeed where top-down reforms fail. This is the first of a two-part set of articles on Teacher Evaluation. Contact Greg Fisher at schoolempowerment@gmail.com. Teacher Evaluation is at an inflection point. There is a growing realization that the mandated process is perfunctory, flawed, and meaningless. If the purpose is that teacher evaluation is […]
A Letter to Madam Tracy Lake
Cultivating creative, curious learners outdoors at a teacher-powered school Sometimes, people give up on kids. I have twenty of them in my little school, Class ACT. We call it a forest school because the school forest is our home base. “These are the tough kids,” some say. They are, but they deserve a free, high-quality […]
In teacher-powered schools, many hands move ideas forward
How a school run on shared decision-making demands an all-in approach
A student meets with their teacher-advisor at Avalon. “How’s that working out for you?” Any time I explain to anyone in traditional public schools how Avalon School — where I’ve worked since 2002 — has no principal, no director, that is the response. “How’s that working out for you?” It means in the middle of […]
At West Hawaii Explorations Academy, students drive inquiry into the natural world
Illustrations by Khou Vue for Education Evolving Abruptly shifting to distance learning is a shock to the system for any student, but especially if you’re used to going to school among sharks and tide pools. Such was the case for students at West Hawaii Explorations Academy, or WHEA (pronounced “WAY-uh”) when Covid hit last year. […]
Is a change in schooling just too obvious?
Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages The lessons of the pandemic start with the inadequate attempt by too many schools at remote learning for kids. Parents saw, many for the first time, those lesson plans. The kids found what was often boring at school horrible at home. Many did not participate. Others disappeared entirely. The […]
At UCLA Community School, student-centered learning means honoring identity and core needs
Illustrations by Khou Vue for Education Evolving When we hear about “student-centered” and “personalized” learning, we often hear about individualizing learning: one-to-one access to technology, curriculum designed to meet unique student needs, content driven by students’ individual interests. At UCLA Community School, being “student-centered” is just as much about acknowledging and celebrating our shared humanity […]
Creating a virtual learning community proves to be isolation antidote
Photo by Allison Shelley for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action. Fighting isolation in 2020 has become a dilemma in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, educators are absolutely overwhelmed with the overnight shift in expectations of their job descriptions. In case you didn’t already know, 2020 is an especially hard […]