{"id":519,"date":"2017-11-05T22:40:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T22:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/?p=519"},"modified":"2017-11-05T22:43:25","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T22:43:25","slug":"book-review-moving-the-rock-by-grant-lichtman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/21st-century-skills\/book-review-moving-the-rock-by-grant-lichtman\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: “Moving the Rock” by Grant Lichtman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/a> 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<\/a>) reviewed this book stating that it is<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “…an inspiring call to action for all educators”.<\/p>\n You would be interested in this book if you are looking in ways that YOU can engage in shifting education; if you are interested in how tomobilizeothers to engage in change (parents, students, faculty, community partners, etc..); and, you would be interested in this book if you are looking for reasons, examples, and inspiration for the WHY behind educational change.<\/p>\n This books outlines 7 levers<\/strong><\/em> that we can press for school school change. Below, I list the title of each of the levers, and I provide a quotation from each chapter that acts as a provocation and inspiration for me to heed that call to action:<\/p>\n 1) Create demand for better schools<\/strong>– “Today, the supply side of the [education] equation is exploding in terms of differentiated types of “school” driven by changing consumer demands.” 4) Fix how we measure student success and admit students to college<\/strong> 6) Connect, Flow and Rethinking “School”<\/strong>
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\n2) Build School-Community learning laboratories<\/strong>
\n– “Our students and\u00a0teachers live behind a wall that\u00a0separates them from the richest fields and veins of learning they will ever encounter: the world around them.”
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\n3) Encourage open access to knowledge<\/strong>
\n– “…the audacious assumption that the value of teaching lies not in the knowledge itself but in the open and free provision of that knowledge and how to use it.”<\/p>\n
\n– “…In other words, students should be assessed at least as much on how well they can drive as on how well they can take a test about driving.”
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\n5) Teach the teachers what they really need to know<\/strong>
\n– “Teachers need to learn to retreat\u00a0from the idea that they\u00a0have to instruct every facet [every facet of the\u00a0curriculum]. This requires some flexibility in the curriculum, but that is well within the power of many graduate school educators.”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n– “But the technology that will most fundamentally change education…that will make the cognitosphere not just a system of knowledge access but rich learning is virtual reality.”
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\n7) Lead Change from where you are<\/strong>
\n– “Although there is no single cookbook recipe for changing sch<\/em>ools, we do know this: Schools do not change without effective leaders who understand the why, what and how of change.”<\/em><\/p>\n