Building the Village

“I'm not talking about a dating site, I'm talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online.” The Mark Zuckerberg character in The Social Network uses this line to describe his burgeoning idea that would ultimately become Facebook. It’s an apt and fascinating metaphor for the ubiquitous site.

Passport

In twelve years of high school teaching, I have never taken any of my classes on a field trip.

I’ve studied Of Mice and Men with scores of freshmen yet never shepherded them to the Steinbeck Center. Eleven different Public Speaking classes; zero public speeches attended. My World Literature pupils, who break down the Renaissance at length and culminate their work in a historical research paper, never set foot in a museum. Is there a sordid tale of grand plans squashed by a savage administrator with a callous disdain for anything that put her legal arse at risk? Sadly, no. I’ve never even considered a field trip as a component of any curricular unit. While exploring how to build a school’s instructional program and the culture to support it, I’m compelled to reflect on my own instructional patterns.

Why haven’t I taken any of my students anywhere in a dozen years?

Need to Know (Part 2 of 2)

How do educational leaders accomplish this difficult task of bringing students -- and even citizens -- out of their self-made caves of ignorance? How can they be brought to interact with different, even contrary ideas?

You tell me.

Need to Know (Part 1 of 2)

On May 7, 2010, PBS debuted a weekly news magazine with the title Need to Know. Within one minute, the mission and vision of the program was pronounced in crystal clarity.

Co-anchor Jon Meachem provided the context: “We live in an odd moment. Never before has there been so much access to so much information, but if you’re anything like us, inundation does not necessarily translate into insight.”

Yet the sentence that preceded his, spoken by co-anchor Alison Stewart, illuminated how the show would attempt just such a translation: “Our goal is to turn up the light, not the heat, on the topics that inflame passions on all sides.”

Game

**Seems only fitting that, for my first post in several weeks, I publish an entry that I actually started the night of December 1, 2010. I'm discussing a game we played in grad school on that night.

It gets harder for me, as I age, to find opportunities where I can genuinely learn – especially in a formal setting. Most of the workshops I’m required to attend leave me uninspired and often insulted. I’ve walked away from several classes and seminars believing that I not only knew everything presented, but I could have taught it to the same group in half the time with twice the buy-in.