Student ownership sounds like a great idea but what about the standards? How do we teach all of the standards while also empowering students with voice and choice? How do we accomplish this when we have a curriculum map? Rethinking the Curriculum Map It…
Six years ago, I led my first PBL workshop for a group of high school teachers. It was the summer after my tenth year in the classroom and I felt fairly confident that I could facilitate a whole day of professional development. I knew, for…
This article is part of a longer series on design thinking, a flexible framework for empathy-driven creative work. The Power of Prototyping A few days ago, I got the opportunity to do a keynote in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. One of my highlights was the student display area,…
It’s easy to pit creativity and consumption against each other. However, critical consuming is vital for creative work. When you engage in critical consuming, you become more inspired and ultimately, you will create better content. Listen to the Podcast If you enjoy this blog but…
In a previous post, I explored this idea that every student deserves a makerspace. In this post, I look at some of the most common myths I see regarding makerspaces. Listen to the Podcast If you enjoy this blog but you’d like to listen to…
The Astrodome was a modern miracle, a Space Age wonder, with a glass dome, high-tech air-conditioning, and the world’s biggest scoreboard. When it opened in 1965, reporters dubbed it the “8th Wonder of the World.” (Wilson, 1965) This was the future. No more bad weather…
In the 1980s, somebody decided that haircuts were way too messy. So, they combined a hair trimmer with a vacuum cleaner and we ended up with the Flowbee. I remember begging my parents for a Flowbee and they said “no,” because they thought I would…
If we want to see innovation happening in our schools, we need to trust, encourage, and empower teachers to transform their practice. Too often, teachers are forced to teach inside the box and it can feel frustrating. In this post, I explore why teachers are…
This is the first post in a week-long series on makerspaces. I once taught an eighth-grade student who had written four novels online, despite the fact that she had only been learning English for three years. She spent her free time in class looking up…
A few years ago, I co-wrote the book Empower with the driving question, “What happens when students own their learning?” As a middle school teacher, I had seen how the biggest challenges I faced with student engagement were actually challenges with student self-direction and self-management….
