Before I took a new post at Hawken School, I wrote the first draft of what has evolved into what I have included below. Initially, I did this simply as a means to articulate what is most important in my work in a school. I had been at Asheville School for a decade before making […]
An Essay Grading Criteria for High School
[Around 1998, as part of an effort to make the evaluation of Senior Demonstration essays more consistent at Asheville School, I wrote a grading criteria that over the years evolved into the document that follows. When we took the step of creating a Humanities Department out of the faculties of both the History and English […]
If We Want Them “To Serve and Lead,” What Then Must We Do?
[This piece appears with a different headline and in a slightly edited form on the last page of the latest copy of The Westminster Magazine.] Last week I hosted eighteen freshmen in my office for lunch. I have been hosting these lunches as a means of getting to know students and as a means of developing a […]
The Global Online Academy and “The Promise of Online Learning”
Today I have spent some time thinking about a course I will teach next fall for the Global Online Academy. I have mentioned GOA before in a post entitled, “A Shout-Out to Partnerships: Their Relevance in A Progress Culture.” As opposed to the other courses at GOA that serve students drawn from the member schools, […]
Pilots: Showing the Way Forward in Schools
In a recent post, “Creating a Progress Culture One Pilot at a Time,” I identified four reasons to support piloting ideas and programs in schools. In this post I will expand on the fourth of those ideas: “Supporting pilots creates opportunities for the school community to see the efficacy of the school’s direction. We need […]
Short Videos: Student Teaching of Critical Academic Concepts
Yesterday as part of a group of administrators and trustees from Westminster meeting in Cupertino, CA with representatives from Apple, Inc., I thought of an idea I would like to pursue. – The idea in short is to get a list, garnered from students and faculty, of the critical concepts in the high school academic […]