Today I was lucky enough to catch a fascinating conversation with the CEOs of both KIPP and Mastery Charter Schools here in Philadelphia. As someone who was directly impacted by the Philadelphia School District’s Renaissance School Initiative, I have some deep seated mistrust of Mastery Charter. They campaigned to take over my former school in…
Why??? I moved to Philadelphia in August 2002 with a lot of energy and no idea what I was doing here. Nearly 9 years later I have built a career, bought a house and am proud to call Philadelphia home. I think that there are amazing things happening in this city and it is an…
photo courtesy of FreeFoto.com I recently read an article entitled, “Education’s Status Quo to Parents: How Dare You Use the Parent Trigger and Make Decisions!” on the blog Dropout Nation. I won’t get into the details of the article, which was about the uproar over a private company helping parents in California use the “Parent…
I recently wrote a post on the excellent group blog, The Co-operative Catalyst, called “Who’s the Boss?” in which I explored the idea of teachers being in charge of a school. More and more I’m feeling that not only is this a trend, but it is an important movement. This past Thursday I attended TEDx…
My friend, Tom Whitby, an educator and blogger has put out a call for blog posts centered around positivity in education to counter all of the negativity going on. I recently wrote a post on the Cooperative Catalyst blog called “What (Really) Works,” trying to focus on what works in education rather than what doesn’t. …
This past Friday was a half day at my school for Professional Development. As a nice surprise, our CEO took the entire staff to see Waiting for Superman at a movie theater downtown. It was a very thoughtful (and exciting) outing. As I sat in the theater before the movie started, I realized that I…
Tonight my feathers have been rustling over the soon to be released documentary, Waiting for Superman. Before I go on, take a look at the trailer. Okay, here we go. So when I first watched the trailer I immediately felt doom and gloom come swarming down from above. I knew exactly where the movie was…
Maybe it’s because it’s summertime or maybe it’s the general atmosphere of education these days, but the online education community has been a flutter with talk of what needs to change in education. What I’m wondering is how much of this is new or different than years past. I am fairly young, so my memory…
Tonight’s #edchat conversation both invigorated me and irritated me at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, it had nothing to do with #edchat itself, but rather the topic. We have talked ad nauseam about reforming education. We have hashed out what needs to be done, what education should look like and why it’s important…
photo courtesy of fmgbain on Flickr During this week’s edchat I saw a name scroll by that made me look twice. Mixed among the many tweets was a tweet from Diane Ravitch. I had just recently read an adaptation from her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and…