Skip to main content

The Unique Nature and Educational Needs of Generation Alpha

Let’s think differently about how schools can serve students. . . . Learning and Schools Children love to learn! They learn all the time!  Schools, however, are frustrated by declining test scores that indicate students are not learning from teachers’ lessons.  Sadly, the result is a leaning into more whole-class instruction, more explicit (but not necessarily […]

Is It Time for Problem-Based Curricula?

When information lives online, application must live in the mind. That single reality changes everything about school. For centuries, teachers have been seen as repositories of information, passing along the information that students need to know. Teachers deliver lessons, students absorb content, and success often means recall. In the past, without school, you had little […]

Extended Day, Extended Impact: Rethinking After-School Learning

If you owned an auto factory and the conveyor belt kept delivering cars that had no doors, or had faulty headlights, would you run the factory for a few more hours a day? Of course not! You’d redesign the system to address the root cause. When students attend school all day long and are not […]

Teachers and AI and ELLs, Oh My!

Having experienced the pathways and trends in education since the 1950s, I can confidently proclaim . . . this is a time like no other. We are at a crossroads that is both daunting and exhilarating. COVID, AI, and globalization, to name a few, are changing the landscape of students, parents, and teachers. Schools must […]

5 Strategies for Leveraging Neurodiversity in the Classroom

In the blockbuster The Imitation Game, Alan Turing is stigmatized as arrogant and apathetic. In a classroom, children labeled with these characteristics are less likely to be authentically engaged. Their education and career opportunities become limited as a result. However, when we shift our mindsets and frame those characteristics as self-aware and passionate (for Turing, […]