The Alpine View, No. 12

Posted on by
Reply

October 18, 2026

When Two Things Are True

WHAT

On Wednesday, some of the most remarkable teachers at Mack were our students.

At the Museum of Dyslexia, organized by Cailen Maloney, our Orchard Center team, and students, visitors moved through a series of interactive learning experiences. At one station, a seventh grader explained how different parts of the brain contribute to reading. At another, we attempted to trace shapes while looking in a mirror, experiencing how a “brain-flip” task can require extraordinary concentration and persistence.

At each station, we collected beads that contributed to a representation of Scarborough’s Reading Rope, a model illustrating the many interconnected skills involved in skilled reading.

I was blown away.

Not simply by what the students knew, but by how confidently and purposefully they shared their knowledge. And how much they see their learning differences as their superpowers.

These students were not merely learning about dyslexia. They were teaching the rest of us.

And I left thinking about a question that has stayed with me:

How often do we underestimate what a child knows because of the ways that child struggles to show what they know?

SO WHAT

The day before the museum, our Mackulty spent time learning with Emily Kircher-Morris, an educator, counselor, author, and leading voice in the fields of gifted education and neurodiversity.

Emily has written extensively about a population of learners that is still widely misunderstood: twice-exceptional, often abbreviated as 2e.

What does that mean?

A twice-exceptional learner possesses exceptional abilities or giftedness alongside a disability or learning difference, such as dyslexia, ADHD, or autism.

A child may demonstrate remarkable mathematical reasoning while struggling to read fluently.

Another might have an extraordinary imagination and sophisticated vocabulary yet find written expression painstakingly difficult.

A student might think several steps ahead of classmates while needing considerable support with organization, attention, or emotional regulation.

These are not contradictions.

They are different dimensions of the same developing human being.

And that distinction matters enormously.

Research has shown that exceptional strengths can sometimes conceal significant learning challenges. In a 2024 review published in Dyslexia, researchers found that gifted students’ advanced language abilities can help compensate for reading difficulties, potentially making dyslexia harder to identify.

The reverse can also happen. A learning disability may prevent educators from recognizing a child’s exceptional abilities.

In both cases, we risk missing something essential.

Emily Kircher-Morris put it powerfully in a recent interview:

“Gifted education is not a privilege that a student earns.”

It is about understanding and responding to a child’s learning needs.

Consider the implications.

A student earning satisfactory grades may be working extraordinarily hard to compensate for an unidentified difficulty.

A student struggling academically may possess remarkable intellectual potential that conventional measures fail to reveal.

And a child who needs significant support may also need significantly greater challenge.

What if our most important educational question is not simply how a child is performing, but what we have yet to understand about how that child learns?

NOW WHAT

At Mack, we talk about ensuring that children are deeply known.

For twice-exceptional learners, that commitment carries particular meaning.

It means we cannot allow strengths to become reasons to withhold support.

Nor can we allow challenges to become reasons to withhold opportunities.

We must do both.

Challenge the mind. Support the learner.

Recognize the gift. Understand the difficulty.

Provide explicit instruction where skills need development, while creating rich opportunities for intellectual exploration, creativity, inquiry, and meaningful contribution.

And perhaps most importantly, help children develop an understanding of themselves that includes both their strengths and their needs, without shame or diminished expectations.

Not every child with dyslexia is twice-exceptional, and not every twice-exceptional child has dyslexia. But Wednesday’s museum offered a compelling reminder that a learning difference never tells the whole story of a learner.

I keep coming back to the experience of watching our Orchard Center students become our teachers.

One day, our adults were learning from Emily Kircher-Morris.

The next day, our students were teaching us.

There is something beautiful about that sequence.

And something important.

Perhaps the deepest expression of being known is not simply having someone understand our struggles.

It is having someone recognize our capabilities, take our challenges seriously, and create opportunities for us to contribute.

The view from here:

A child is never just a strength. Never just a struggle. And never fully described by a label. Our brains are as unique as our fingerprints. Neurodiversity is beautiful.

Our responsibility is to see the whole child, and to keep looking for what we have not yet seen.

Rooted & Rising,

Bo

What is The Alpine View?

The Alpine View is a weekly reflection from the Head of School at Mackintosh Academy Boulder. It is a place to pause, notice, wonder, and make meaning together about learning, childhood, community, and the work of becoming.

The view may change from week to week, but the hope is the same: to look closely at what matters and to invite conversation about the people we are and the people we are becoming.

The Alpine View Archives

References & Further Reading

1. Emily Kircher-Morris: On the State of Gifted Education (August 2026)
David Adade, Multi-Health Systems (MHS)
A thoughtful interview exploring twice-exceptionality, neurodiversity, and the importance of recognizing both the remarkable strengths and the learning challenges of gifted students.
Read the interview

2. Identifying and Serving Gifted Children Who Are Twice-Exceptional (September 2026)
National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)
A newly published position statement advocating strength-based, talent-focused, and inclusive approaches to identifying and supporting twice-exceptional learners.
Read the position statement

3. Twice-Exceptionality Unmasked: A Systematic Narrative Review of the Literature on Identifying Dyslexia in the Gifted Child (2024)
Amanda E. Kranz, Tanya A. Serry, and Pamela C. Snow, Dyslexia, 30(1), e1763.
A peer-reviewed research review examining how gifted students’ intellectual and language strengths can mask dyslexia, complicating identification and delaying appropriate support.
Read the research

The Alpine View, No. 11: What We Call a Place

Posted on by
Reply

October 11, 2026

What We Call a Place

WHAT

I’ve discovered that my favorite meeting room at Mack doesn’t have walls.

Over these first few months, I’ve walked our campus with faculty, parents, board members, and visitors. Whenever possible, I invite people to step outside with me. Our 23 acres have become one of my favorite places to have a conversation.

As we walk, I find myself sharing stories. About my connection to Colorado. About our permaculture program and the extraordinary possibilities of learning from the land. About the ways this beautiful place creates opportunities for Mack Kids to explore, discover, wonder, and grow.

And increasingly, I’ve been thinking about another question.

How well do we know the stories of the places we call home?

Tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples Day, and that question feels especially important.

In west Boulder, beneath the red rock formations, there is a place called The Peoples’ Crossing.

For years, it was called Settler’s Park.

In 2021, the City of Boulder renamed it with a name developed by representatives of American Indian Tribal Nations. The name honors the area as a crossroads for Indigenous Peoples who have traveled through and lived in this region since time immemorial.

Same place.

Different name.

A fuller story.

I find that remarkable.

Because changing a name doesn’t change history. But it can change which parts of history we notice, whose stories we seek to understand, and what we recognize about a place we thought we knew.

SO WHAT

For many years, I’ve carried a question about education:

If school is supposed to prepare students for real life, then why doesn’t school look more like real life?

I’ve often asked that question in connection with authentic learning, interdisciplinary inquiry, and opportunities for young people to do work that matters beyond the classroom.

But perhaps there’s another dimension worth considering.

What does it mean to be educated in a place if we don’t understand the stories of that place?

The Boulder Valley is part of the ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute, and other Indigenous Nations. These lands hold histories of deep relationships with nature, cultural knowledge, community, resilience, broken treaties, and forced displacement.

And those stories are not only historical.

Indigenous Peoples, their cultures, knowledge, languages, leadership, and contributions are very much part of our present.

To understand this place more fully, we need to learn from those living stories and voices, not simply study what happened long ago.

This matters to me as an educator.

One of the most powerful things learning can do is expand our understanding beyond the stories we already know.

We discover that our perspective is incomplete.

We encounter histories that complicate familiar narratives.

We learn that the same landscape may hold profoundly different meanings for different people.

And perhaps most importantly, we develop the humility to recognize that understanding requires listening.

This past Tuesday, at Mack Forward, we gathered to reflect on where our school stands and imagine where we might go.

Our theme this year is Rooted & Rising.

I’ve been thinking about those words differently this week.

How can we grow toward the future while becoming more deeply informed about the place where our roots are growing?

How might understanding the stories of this land deepen our sense of responsibility for it?

And what might our children learn when we approach a place not simply as somewhere we live or learn, but as somewhere with histories, relationships, and responsibilities that extend far beyond us?

NOW WHAT

Indigenous Peoples Day invites us to honor Indigenous Peoples, acknowledge histories that have too often been overlooked or incompletely told, celebrate living cultures, and keep learning from Indigenous voices and communities.

I hope we approach that invitation with curiosity, respect, and humility.

At Mack, our mission calls us to develop Keen Minds, Compassionate Hearts, and Global Action.

Think deeply. Care deeply. Act meaningfully.

Those words become especially powerful when learning connects us more thoughtfully to the people and places around us.

And there is something fitting about this particular long weekend.

Our families have Monday and Tuesday away from school. I hope those days bring rest, connection, and some wonderful unscheduled time.

On Tuesday, our Mackulty will gather for a day of professional learning with Emily Kircher-Morris, deepening our understanding of the remarkable young people we serve and how we can better support their learning and growth.

I love that parallel.

We are a community of learners. Adults and children alike. And there is always more for us to understand.

As for those walks around Mack, I imagine I’ll continue inviting people to join me.

I’ll keep sharing what I love about this place.

But I also want to keep learning more about it.

Because loving a place and understanding a place are not quite the same thing.

Perhaps our responsibility is to keep bringing those two things closer together.

To notice more.

To listen more deeply.

To understand that our own story is never the whole story.

And to remember that learning, at its best, changes not only what we know about the world, but how we choose to live within it.

Rooted & Rising,

Bo

What is The Alpine View?

The Alpine View is a weekly reflection from the Head of School at Mackintosh Academy Boulder. It is a place to pause, notice, wonder, and make meaning together about learning, childhood, community, and the work of becoming. The view may change from week to week, but the hope is the same: to look closely at what matters and to invite conversation about the people we are and the people we are becoming.

The Boulder Bite & The Alpine View Archives

The Alpine View, No. 10

Posted on by
Reply

October 4, 2026

The Work of Staying Oriented

WHAT

Last week, I wrote about trees, about roots responding to gravity and shoots growing toward light, and about the possibility that education is less about predicting the future and more about helping young people become oriented toward what matters.

That idea has stayed with me.

It has also made me think about another tool for orientation: a compass.

A compass is wonderfully simple. It does not tell you what the terrain will look like, whether the trail ahead will be steep or smooth, or how long the journey will take. It does not eliminate uncertainty. It simply gives you a reference point.

Direction.

There is also an interesting wrinkle hidden inside the phrase true north. A magnetic compass does not actually point to geographic true north. It points toward magnetic north, which is not in exactly the same place and shifts over time. Navigators account for that difference through something called declination.

In other words, even a compass has to be calibrated.

I love that, because it suggests that orientation is not something we establish once and then never revisit. Staying oriented requires attention. It requires checking our bearings, noticing drift, and sometimes adjusting our reading without abandoning the direction that matters.

SO WHAT

That feels increasingly true in education, leadership, and life.

We often want certainty to do the work that direction is actually supposed to do. We want the five-year plan, the exact destination, the answer key, the guarantee that if we follow a particular sequence everything will turn out as expected.

But many of the most important parts of life do not work that way. Parenting does not. Learning does not. Leading does not. Growing up certainly does not.

The terrain changes. New information appears. Conditions shift. Sometimes we discover that the route we expected to take is no longer available. That is when orientation matters most.

A strong sense of direction allows us to adapt without becoming untethered.

For a young person, true north may have something to do with identity, purpose, curiosity, discernment, responsibility, and how one chooses to treat other people. For a leader, it may mean returning again and again to questions such as: What are we actually here to do? What matters enough that we will protect it? What are we willing to change? How will we know when we have drifted?

And for a community, perhaps one of the most important questions is not whether we all see the same route.

Are we oriented toward the same true north?

That distinction creates room for something powerful. We can disagree about routes. We can experiment. We can learn. We can change our minds. We can discover a better trail without losing our sense of direction.

NOW WHAT

I think this is part of the work we are doing at Mack right now.

Not drawing a finished map.

Clarifying our compass.

Our mission has long offered three powerful points of orientation: Keen Minds. Compassionate Hearts. Global Action. Think deeply. Care deeply. Act meaningfully.

As we listen, learn, and look toward Mack’s next chapter, other language is beginning to sharpen that orientation too: children being deeply known; learners being affirmed, challenged, supported, and empowered; inquiry connected to real-world action; a school designed for who children are and preparing them for where they are going.

Those ideas are not destinations. They are bearings.

That is one reason the compass is beginning to appear more visibly in Mack’s emerging identity work. It will show up in the experience of Mack Forward, connect to the story of Mack Unbound, and become part of the way we articulate what makes Mack distinctly Mack.

But I hope the compass becomes more than a visual.

I hope it becomes a habit of mind.

When something new presents itself, we can ask whether it moves us toward true north. When an opportunity appears, we can ask whether it aligns with who we are and who we are becoming. When the terrain changes, we can ask what needs to change and what needs to remain steady.

And when we discover that our reading is slightly off, we can recalibrate.

Perhaps leadership is not primarily the work of knowing exactly where everyone should go. Perhaps education is not primarily the work of handing children the right map. And perhaps growing up is not about following a perfectly marked trail.

Maybe the deeper work is learning how to stay oriented: to know what grounds us, to notice the light, to check the compass, and then to keep moving.

Rooted & Rising,

Bo

What is The Alpine View?

The Alpine View is a weekly reflection from the Head of School at Mackintosh Academy Boulder. It is a place to pause, notice, wonder, and make meaning together about learning, childhood, community, and the work of becoming. The view may change from week to week, but the hope is the same: to look closely at what matters and to invite conversation about the people we are and the people we are becoming.

The Boulder Bite & The Alpine View Archives

The Alpine View, No. 9

Posted on by
Reply

September 27, 2026

What Grounds Us? What Draws Us Forward?

WHAT

Trees know something about direction.

I learned recently that plant growth is both gravitropic and phototropic.

Gravitropism is a plant’s growth response to gravity. Roots generally exhibit positive gravitropism: they grow downward, deeper into the soil. Shoots do the opposite. They grow against gravity.

Phototropism is growth in response to light. Stems and leaves orient themselves toward it.

So a tree does not simply grow.

It grows in relationship to forces around it.

Down toward gravity.

Up toward light.

Roots deepen while branches reach.

I love that.

Especially because our theme at Mack this year is Rooted & Rising.

When we chose those words, I mostly understood them metaphorically. Be grounded in what matters. Keep growing toward what might be possible.

But biology makes the metaphor richer.

A tree does not have to choose between being rooted and rising.

Its rootedness makes the rising possible.

And its growth is not random. It is oriented.

SO WHAT

I wonder if that is an increasingly useful way to think about education.

We spend considerable energy trying to prepare children for a future we cannot accurately map.

What careers will exist?

What will artificial intelligence make easier, harder, obsolete, or newly possible?

What will citizenship require?

Which knowledge will remain essential?

What kinds of problems will our children inherit that we have not yet imagined?

There is a temptation, when the future feels uncertain, to become obsessed with prediction.

If we can just anticipate what is coming, perhaps we can prepare children for it.

But trees offer another possibility.

Maybe preparation is not primarily about predicting the landscape.

Maybe it is about orientation.

What are the forces that help a young person know which way to grow?

What provides the gravitational pull beneath them?

A sense of identity.

Belonging.

Values.

Relationships.

Knowing that they are known.

Knowing what they stand for.

Those are roots.

And what is the light they learn to grow toward?

Curiosity.

Purpose.

Possibility.

Beauty.

Questions worth pursuing.

Problems worth solving.

Other people worth understanding.

A world they believe they can help shape.

Those are not destinations. They are directions.

That distinction matters.

Because we cannot possibly give children a turn-by-turn map for the decades ahead.

We can help them develop a sense of true north.

At Mack, our mission has named some of that orientation for years:

Keen Minds.
Compassionate Hearts.
Global Action.

Think deeply.

Care deeply.

Do something with both.

Those feel less like three outcomes to complete and more like three ways of orienting oneself to the world.

NOW WHAT

This raises a question I have been carrying lately:

What should remain gravitational at Mack, and what light are we growing toward?

There are things about this school that should exert a powerful pull.

Children being deeply known.

Gifted and creative learners being understood for who they actually are.

Inquiry.

Relationships.

Belonging.

Compassion.

The courage to see children as possibilities rather than problems to be solved.

Those are roots worth deepening.

And then there is the light.

How might Mack become an even more extraordinary place for the children we serve?

What does learning look like in a world changing this quickly?

How might our campus, program, community, and ambitions increasingly reflect what we know about gifted, twice-exceptional, neurodiverse, and creative learners?

What might Mack contribute not only to the students here today, but to the larger conversation about what school can be?

These are questions we are beginning to explore together. They will surface in different ways this year, including at Mack Forward next week, but they are much bigger than any one evening.

They are questions of orientation.

Perhaps that is one of the responsibilities of a school community.

Not to pretend that we know exactly where the trail leads.

But to keep asking:

What grounds us?

What are we growing toward?

And which way is the light?

Rooted & Rising,

Bo

What is The Alpine View?

The Alpine View is a weekly reflection from the Head of School at Mackintosh Academy Boulder. It is a place to pause, notice, wonder, and make meaning together about learning, childhood, community, and the work of becoming. The view may change from week to week, but the hope is the same: to look closely at what matters and to invite conversation about the people we are and the people we are becoming.

The Boulder Bite & The Alpine View Archives

The Alpine View, No. 8: What Are We Practicing Becoming?

Posted on by
Reply

September 20, 2026

What Are We Practicing Becoming?

Dear Mack Community,

This week, I have been thinking about rivers.

Maybe that is because I recently came across these words from poet and Mack parent Emory Hall, whose collection is appropriately titled Made of Rivers:

my life is made
of rivers.
no matter how far
i trace them
across pages,
across time,
across oceans,
somehow i land
at the banks
of myself
over
and over
again.

– maps.

I keep returning to those last words:

over and over again.

A river shapes a landscape not through one dramatic encounter with stone, but through returning. Flowing. Repeating.

Over and over again.

And I wonder if the same is true of us.

What

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a post on my blog called A future of synergists and dot connectors. I described myself as someone who loved finding connections among ideas, disciplines, and people.

But even then, I caught myself before calling that simply a talent.

“Like anything,” I wrote, “I have to practice this skill.”

So I practiced looking for connections. Purposefully. I experimented. I took chances. I failed. I kept looking. Over time, something I practiced increasingly became part of how I moved through the world. (it’s about learning.org)

A year later, I undertook a strange little experiment I called 60-60-60: sixty posts in sixty days, in sixty words or less, each an effort to question, experiment, practice, and learn out loud. I was fascinated by what repeated action might do, not simply to my writing, but to my ways of thinking and noticing. (it’s about learning.org)

Apparently, I have been thinking about this for a while.

And I am still wondering:

What does practice make of us?

So What

We often talk about talent as something someone has.

She has a gift for mathematics.

He is a natural musician.

They are remarkably creative.

And at Mack, a school intentionally designed for gifted and creative learners, we know that differences in ability, cognition, intensity, curiosity, and imagination are real. Part of knowing children deeply is recognizing what is already there.

But a gift is not a finished product.

Talent may tell us something about where we begin. Practice helps shape where we can go.

Because we practice far more than piano scales, multiplication facts, free throws, or spelling words.

We practice what we do when something is difficult.

We practice whether we ask another question.

We practice how we respond when someone disagrees with us.

We practice listening.

We practice noticing.

We practice courage.

We practice impatience, too.

We practice giving up, or beginning again.

And gradually, almost imperceptibly, those repetitions begin cutting channels.

Perhaps this is one reason schools matter so much. Children are not simply acquiring knowledge here. They are practicing ways of being.

And adults are, too.

Maybe culture itself is what happens when a group of people practices certain ways of being together long enough that those practices begin to feel natural.

Now What

This brings me back to Emory’s river.

Her collection Made of Rivers follows the anatomy of a river as a metaphor for self-discovery and transformation, the winding movement of becoming. (penguinrandomhouse.com)

A river is shaped by its banks.

But given enough time, the river shapes the banks, too.

I love that tension.

We arrive in this world with particular gifts, temperaments, histories, strengths, challenges, and ways of seeing.

And then we flow.

We encounter people and places. We make choices. We repeat things. We develop habits of attention and response.

We practice.

Over and over again.

So perhaps the question for this week is not simply:

What are you good at?

Or even:

What are you practicing?

Maybe the more consequential question is:

What are you practicing becoming?

A more curious person?

A more generous listener?

Someone who notices beauty?

Someone willing to stay with a difficult problem a little longer?

Someone who tries again?

Our gifts matter.

Our practices matter, too.

And like water returning to the landscape, over and over again, our repetitions leave their mark.

The view from here: We do not only get better at what we practice. In some small way, we become shaped by it.

I am especially grateful to Emory for allowing me to weave her poetry into this years-long thread of thinking and into my recent revisiting of these ideas. Her words gave me a new way to see something I have been trying to understand for a long time.

With appreciation,

Bo

About The Alpine View

The Alpine View is a weekly reflection from the Head of School at Mackintosh Academy Boulder. It is a place to pause, notice, wonder, and make meaning together about learning, childhood, community, and the work of becoming. The view may change from week to week, but the hope is the same: to look closely at what matters and to invite conversation about the people we are and the people we are becoming.

===

The Boulder Bite & The Alpine View Archives