Our students come to school for a variety of reasons: to see their friends; to participate in electives, extracurricular activities, and athletics; to interact with and get support from caring teachers; to get a credential for college, career, or the military; because their parents need child care; because state law requires them to attend; etc....
As coronavirus cases continue to increase across the country, numerous school districts are reluctantly announcing that they will be doing ‘remote learning’ again this fall. Although we had the summer to prepare for this eventuality, unfortunately we have instead seen a lot of magical thinking from educational leaders and policy makers. As much as we...
In a couple of recent posts, I said: One of the biggest challenges of ‘remote learning’ over the past few months has been that most of the motivators been pared away. For many students, all that has been left is the uninspiring learning. Little to no interaction with classmates. Little to no interaction with caring...
You’ve opened up school again and at least some students and teachers are attending in person. Unsurprisingly, some students, families, or educators begin to identify as positive for COVID-19. Now what? How many kids have to get sick before you shut down again? What are your decision-making criteria? [practice saying these out loud and see...
As always, Katie Martin has been doing a lot of wonderful work this summer around deeper learning and student engagement. I thought it might be fun for the two of us to just get together and chat. I tweeted an invitation to her and she kindly took me up on the offer. Two days later we made that conversation...
Every leadership program discusses “What hill are you willing to die on? What decisions are worth losing your job for?” We haven’t done the necessary work to contain the coronavirus. Other areas that have opened too early have seen large waves of new cases. And we now have growing evidence that young children are powerful virus spreaders. What...
Dear students, educators, and families, Welcome back for the 2020 school year! We are incredibly delighted to have our children and educators back in school again, particularly after such a challenging spring and summer. We couldn’t be more excited to see your kids’ smiling faces back in our classrooms! As you know, some things will...
Dear school leaders and policymakers, It didn’t have to be this way. You had all summer to watch the rising number of coronavirus cases all across the country. You had all summer to educate yourself about the science. You had all summer to read credible news sources and see the viral outbreaks that occurred everywhere...