Many educators and parents will ask how they can best prepare our children for the future. Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith’s book “Most Likely to Succeed” is a great place to begin to answer this question. Having just read Creating Innovators, and The End of Average, this book was the perfect end to a…
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This book came highly recommended to me because of the way it applies the concepts of Individualism to the self, the workplace, corporations and education. It is not another book about education and personalized learning. Rather it is a book about the fundamental question: “Do we want a system of higher education that compels each…
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Revisiting Creating Innovators 4 years after it was published was both inspiring and reassuring. Indeed, this book continues to be a call to action for all involved in the education realm: parents, students, teachers and administration. I highly recommend this book as a read (or reread if you haven’t read it in a while) because: –…
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Next year I am taking on a new role at a new school, and I couldn’t be more excited. I am the inaugural Vice Principal of Student Engagement and Experiential Development at Havergal College – an all girls Independent School in Toronto. Their mascot is “The Havagator” – a green and gold alligator, so I’m…
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I am always asking my students to engage with their learning. I am often asking of my students to focus, and expecting them to pay attention during the learning activity. However, how often do we, as educators, allow our students to develop and practice the skills of paying attenion? I’ve been inspired over the last…
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As I’ve written about before, I took part in the first installment of The Teachers’ Guild, run by IDEO. Its mission is to build collaboration amongst teachers to solve challenges in education. This particular iteration had this challenge prompt: “How might we create rituals and routines that establish a culture of innovation in our classrooms…
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Sir Ken Robinson’s latest book “Creative Schools” is not a simple rehash of what we know so well about his ideas and theories; rather, this builds on his previous work to present insights in to how to bring creativity into our schools. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. (Robinson) We face…
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When I asked my 5 year old son what he wanted to do over the summer, he said that he wanted to learn to play hockey. I’m not a hockey player, never played, and (what with the state of the Leafs these days!) don’t really watch it at all. So this past week, my son…
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I’m already thinking about coming back in January, and continuing to cultivate growth mindsets throughout my school. I’ve talked about my school being a Learning Organization, and how many of us have adopted Twitter to help grow our thinking and PLN (#BVGLearns). In fact, it was a colleague, Matt Clark, who posted on Twitter (@mattclark…
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How can I help? What do you need? Where do your students need support? These are the questions I ask my teachers, and myself, everyday. A technology coach is part leader, part follower, part IT, part EdT, but certainly all “learner”. In a recent White Paper, entitled “Technology, Coaching & Community”, the issue of awareness…
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