Author Archives: boadams1

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About boadams1

Learner. Husband. Dad. Mountaineer. Head of School at Mackintosh Academy - Boulder, in Boulder, Colorado. Have worked in transformation design, educational innovation, and school leadership for 30+ years.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Dear @MissKFitzgerald’s 1st Grade Class… #VisibleThinking #MVPSchool

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Dear @MissKFitzgerald’s 1st Grade Class,

THANK YOU for my “See-Think-Wonder” Visible Thinking Routine that you created on my truck. I love it! To see the evidence of your thinking and learning is so fun and exciting.

Sincerely,

Mr. Adams

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What if form followed function in school? Inspired by David Epstein #TED talk

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On May 11, 2014, I will (quietly) celebrate a third anniversary. That day will mark the moment that I have spent exactly three years watching a TED talk every day.

Being an educator, as I watch TED talks, I think about how they might “fit” into school. I sometimes imagine the speaker as a student in a typical high school, and I wonder what courses and subjects his or her talk would align with.

And often that exercise bothers me. It bothers me because I imagine a speaker like David Epstein prepping and preparing his “Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?” talk embedded below. I wonder…. Would David be doing this “project” in math class? In science class? In history class? In English class as a persuasive speech assignment? Maybe in some technology course? Would he be so lucky as to have teachers who would allow a single project to “count” for all of his courses? After all, the project integrates a number of disciplines that we subdivide and separate in school.

And that entire imagining bothers me because of the ridiculousness of having to think this way. Why do we continue to remain so wed to the unnatural subdivision of the “school subjects?”

What if at least part of David’s school day allowed for him to pursue the project of his dreams and interests and the subject-area lenses were more like threads in a tapestry that David is weaving?

And what if that deep project identification and discernment had developed partly because of more innovative “homework” that encouraged and made room for David to explore his developing passions and curiosities?

And what if the subject areas in his school behaved a bit more like “subjects on demand” and recitations in which David could schedule time with a relative expert to spend some concentrated time digging into the statistics or biology specificity that he needed for his emerging understanding?

And what if his assessments were more akin to badges and endorsements showcasing the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and understandings that David was building?

And what if David were at the center of his own progress reporting and learning conferences?

Then school would look different. Because form follows function.

Enjoy the talk. It’s amazing.

Shark Tank at MVPSchool – 5th Graders Break Into Business

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Last week, Mount Vernon Presbyterian School hosted a Shark Tank for entrepreneurs who were striving to establish startups in a particular target market in Atlanta.

The lean-startup entrepreneurs are 5th Graders!

Thanks to the work that Stephanie Immel (@teachingsteph) coordinated and collaborated with Monica Lage from Break Into Business! And kudos to our young entrepreneurs! What amazing experience in real-world context and application of knowledge and skills.

Read two great stories from the News Page at MVPS and on John Saddington’s blog. And see the Shark Tank judging criteria below…

PROCESS POST: Prompted Reflection on Vocation, Mindset, Success and Failure – Inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert

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I love school. And I love learning and education even better than I love school… even better than I love myself.

That love is what drives my learning and education about school.

Many of you readers know that I wanted to be a pediatric oncologist for much of my life – from about age seven until about age 20. For years and years, more recently, I’ve told a story about how my career pursuit shifted from children’s cancer research and science to educational research and science.

Now, I realize, if I zoom out far enough, I haven’t really pivoted at all. If cancer is basically the mutation of great and healthy cells into devastating and unhealthy cells, then school may very well be like a human organism filled with virtually countless cells – many and most of them being the healthy cells of learning and education, and only a few being the unhealthy cells of certain school attributes gone bad.

I’m committed to helping ensure that the healthy cells in the body win out. And so I am willing to aggressively pursue educational and learning research. To wake up at ridiculous hours to read, write, and study. To tire myself and to experience considerable dead ends, frustrations, and temporary failures. And to learn from the successes and discoveries.

And to not let any of the successes or failures define me. But rather to steer me onward. Because I love learning and education far more than I love school or myself.

Thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert for this prompted reflection.