Book Review: Student Voice Revolution (Fletcher)

“This is the hope represented by Meaningful Student Involvement, that schools can move from being done to students towards being done by and with students. That’s the future of learning.” (Fletcher, 99) You would be interested in reading this book if you: * are looking to refine your understanding of, and implementation of student voice…
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Where There Be Dragons

Where There Be Dragons can be considered the Gold Standard of experiential education. I travelled with three other colleagues to their “Rocky Mountain Seminar” to learn more about how we might begin to lean into risk and how we might deepen our ability to learn service before giving service. Nestled into the foothills of Boulder Colorado, it…
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Book Review: “Moving the Rock” by Grant Lichtman

Reading this book is simultaneously inspiring, knowledge-building, frustrating and enlighting. Grant Lichtman’s latest book builds off of his previous #EdJourney, which I have reviewed here before; however, where #EdJourney is focused on examples and the “what” of lighthouse schools, Moving the Rock focuses on action. In fact. Young Zhao (read more HERE) reviewed this book…
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An Ode to Cohort 21 Homework…

I started my homework, but couldn’t find the right words, I started my thinking, but my thinking got blurred. I thought back to Saturday, and all that I had seen and heard, And my creative soul was stirred… So instead of words, and only words on the page I’ve decided to get myself out of…
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Our Cohort 21 work: “Monday vs. Someday”

The Monday versus Someday dilemma: If we plan for a great, ambitious goal to happen in two, maybe three, or even five years, we can forget about getting started. If we implement new initiatives every Monday without a vision for what it will look like in two, maybe three, or even five years, we lose…
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Book Review: 5 Levers to Improve Learning

I took up this book in an effort to contribute understanding to a shared language around school transformation. This book, written by James Rickabaugh and Tony Frontier, was published in 2014, but much of what they say still has important implications to educational transformation, and the forces acting on education’s systems and structures. This book…
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It’s a Beautiful Day… Day 9!

U2 is one of my all time favourite bands. Beautiful Day is one of their biggest hits. We are hoping that our version of “Beautiful Day” in education is just as successful in our community! This year, my school is attempting some new – we are calling them “Day 9”s. These are 4 calendared days…
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Project Based Learning: Levelling Up

Project Based Learning is far more than simply setting students on a path to complete a project on a given date. Rather, Project Based Learning is a complex pedagogy that requires attention, a shift in one’s role as a teacher and one’s mindset. I believe that Project Based Learning is a combination between student skills and…
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Book Review: Teaching that Changes Lives

If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions. ~ Susanne K. Langer The world’s citizens need to think and act differently. In many ways, this begins with our education system. In a recent blog by Grant Lichtman, entitled “The Problem is Not Climate Change; the Problem is Irrational…
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Book Review: Competing Against Luck

Clayton Christensen, in his latest book “Competing Against Luck”, puts innovation under the microscope. Like all things under a microscope, minutiae is revealed, studied and made clearer. He frames his book as an answer to below: Is innovation truly a crapshoot? Or is innovation difficult because we don’t know what causes it to succeed? You…
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