I’ve done a lot of reading over the last month and few days, and I’ve compiled a healthy catalogue of book reviews. I felt it was time to synthesize them into something more ‘whole’: what is the thread that runs through these books? I’m going to connect this with my new role at Havergal as…
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V.U.C.A. originated as a military term to describe the context in which soldiers operate in a theatre of war. It stands for: Volitility Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity It is the new normal for our students, and (as the authors of this book do a great job of emphasizing) it is the new normal for our teachers…
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How Might We…make innovation a routine in our school, for our student and for our faculty? This is a question that I’ve tried to tackle in my work with The Teacher’s Guild. And it is a burning question that this book picks up on in a very concrete way. You would read this book to:…
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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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