The classroom heard ’round the world

   What happens when what is going on in your classroom can be shared around the world? Today, by sharing his students at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, Karl Fisch gave us just that opportunity–to peer into a classroom and see networked, scaffolded, engaged students at their best.   For weeks, students in several English classes at Arapahoe have been reading Daniel Pink’s book, Whole New Mind, and have been discussing it via live-blogging sessions, using an inner/outer circle discussion method.   (The inner circle discusses, the outer circle […]

The peanut butter cup effect

How do you empower students to engage with a text in such a way that they can come to their own understanding of it?  I just participated in a fascinating live blogging experiencewith Maura Moritz’s and Karl Fisch’s students at Arapahoe High School.   The students were using the inner/outer circle discussion method in their classroom to discuss the book.  While the inner circle held a discussion in the room, the outer circle was live blogging their discussion and holding their own with a few of us from […]

Innovative leadership — paying it forward

Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant designated July 4 as School Leadership Day, and has invited bloggers to write about how to support innovative school leadership. I’d like to share some ideas but also compliment the leadership in our district and at our high school, because there have been some great strides towards innovative leadership both at our campus and at the district level. One of the most transformative elements of that has been our campus Vision committee. Our principal established it upon arriving a year […]

Books that changed your life

    This week is National Library Week and to celebrate, we’ve invited all staff on our campus to pose for a photo with their favorite book, which we’re displaying in the library. And as our “library 2.0” feature, we’re setting up an empty table for students and asking them to “create” a display by placing their favorite book on the table and then we’ll take their photos as well as making space for them to post on our student blog. The National Book Foundation asked some of the National Book award […]

Designing the future?

Maybe because I’m working on the new plans for the library, as well as rereading Daniel Pink’s book Whole New Mind, plus having recently visited High Tech High, I’ve been obsessing a little bit lately over the idea of the role of design and creativity in schools, and pondering about what we could do better.  design as ‘shrimp sushi’ Not just design in the sense of a building, but in the sense of how we could teach elements of better design for student projects, and create more cross […]