Understanding Boy World

Between raking a couple of million leaves, spatchcocking and roasting a turkey, and running until my plantar fasciitis has left me hobbling, I have been plowing through Rosalind Wiseman’s newest book, Masterminds and Wingmen, which focuses on helping adults to understand teenage boys.  Through her research and interviews with hundreds of boys, Wiseman gives us (you should read this book) a portrait of boys and a glimpse into their psyche, motivation, and daily struggles.  Although I’m only half way done with the book, I’m beginning to question how any of us guys have managed to reach adulthood.

I’ll give Wiseman credit; she wrote this book from a place of love for boys not because she wants to change or slam them.  As a man, it is pretty tough reading the book and thinking about all the stupid and dangerous things that I did as a boy, and, from reading the anecdotes of boys growing up now, that most boys do today.  Wiseman uncovers the reasons why boys sneak out at night, why they turn silent or lie when questioned, and why their anger can dominate them.  However, she doesn’t stop there.  She gives parenting advice on all these topics and more -- even the really tough ones involving social media, video games, sex, and porn.

Masterminds and Wingmen should really be used as a resource, not just for information.  When you question what you are doing in reaction to something your son has done, it would be great to go back and read a specific chapter in the book to get some perspective.  You may not follow Wiseman’s advice to the letter, but at least you will have considered an alternative, which is bound to help you make a better decision.  

Learn to Use Math

I frequently use math.  You probably do too, so I’d like to give you a math awareness challenge.  At the end of the day today, spend ten minutes or so making a list that describes when, where, and how you used math during your day along with the math skills that you used.  If you are kind of geeky like me, you may want to put it into a table:

when	where	how	why	math skill used
5:45 AM	bedroom	looked at clock when alarm went off	oriented me into the day	telling time
5:50 AM	bedroom	counted pushups	helped me to set and reach goals of physical fitness	counting
6:10 AM	kitchen	measured ingredients for pancakes	prepared food that tasted decent	measuring
6:30 AM	kitchen	read info from yearly physical from prior day,  (specifically my body mass index and how it related to averages)	helped me to understand my physical condition and enforced beliefs about eating and exercise	reading tables and comparing data

Perhaps you will be surprised by how often you actually use math.  We frequently use math for day-to-day tasks, and we never think about it.  We use math to help us make sense of the world around us and our place in that world.  One of the other things that becomes obvious from my table is that I was not born with any of the math skills that I used in the first forty-five minutes of my day.  I learned all of them.  

I’m not sure where I learned the skills listed above, but I’m pretty sure that I learned all of them before I was six or seven-years-old.  I carry all of those math skills (and a few more) around with me every day in what I like to call my math toolbox, a toolbox that was first opened soon after I was born. I am almost always unaware when I use my math tools.  However, every time that I use something in my toolbox, I get some practice with that skill.   I remember how to do all of this math because I do it on a regular basis.

I also know that folks can lose the computational math skills that most of us take for granted.  My father has lost most of his cognitive function due to Alzheimer's.  While he may recognize a number on a clock, he has no concept of what that number means.  He doesn’t know the difference between ten dollars and a hundred, and he couldn’t count twenty paper clips on a table.  While Alzheimer's has done other terrible things to his mind, it has also taken away his ability to make sense of the world by using math.  

The ability to use math in our lives is a skill that is frequently overlooked and taken for granted, but without it we could not function successfully.  It is no wonder that we teach math in school.  However, I do wonder about the math that we teach and the way that we teach it.

If the function of math is to help us make sense of the world around us and to solve problems in that world, then shouldn’t we spend some time practicing how to recognize problems, how to get the information we need to solve them, and then how to apply the math that we carry in our tool box (or that we can access from a resource)?  Unfortunately nearly everyone who attends school in the United States gets little practice at this, which I would argue, is a more important skill than memorizing algorithms.  

We need to present our students with situations and scenarios where they actually have to determine the problem, find the information that they think they need to solve it, and then reach into their toolbox of math algorithms to find a solution.  Students who are taught to recognize problems that others may not see, who are taught to seek multiple solutions, who are taught to appreciate the possibilities of alternate perspectives, and who are taught to synthesize other’s ideas into their own -- these are the students who are going to have control over their lives.

Yes, of course students still need to know the algorithms necessary to solve problems.  However, for math to be truly useful in their lives, students must develop the capabilities to know how and when to use the appropriate tool in the box. They can't do this without practice.

Google Sees Little Value in Test Scores and GPA

It must be reassuring to the folks who believe that school shouldn’t prepare students for the workplace to read the following written by Max Niesen from Business Insider:

In an interview with The New York Times' Adam Bryant, Google's Senior Vice President of People Operations Laszlo Bock explains that some of the biggest stalwarts of the hiring and recruiting world, the interview, GPA, and test scores, aren't nearly as important as people think.

Google doesn't even ask for GPA or test scores from candidates anymore, unless someone's a year or two out of school, because they don't correlate at all with success at the company. Even for new grads, the correlation is slight, the company has found.

Bock has an excellent explanation about why those metrics don't mean much.

" Academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment," he says.

While in school, people are trained to give specific answers, "it's much  more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer," Bock says. "You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer."

When I started teaching in the early 1990s, I had already worked for a bank, done some oil and gas properties management, and run different divisions of an automobile dealership.  My first teaching job at Robert E. Lee High School in San Antonio was a shock on many levels, but the biggest head-spinner was that it became clear to me that school had little to do with other workplaces or real life.  Some teachers were unmotivated and would have been fired in a week if school were anything like the working world.  I’ll never forget one seasoned teacher asking me why I worked so hard.  There was little focus on the customers, e.g. , the parents who paid our wages through taxes and the students who were the passive recipients of knowledge that was of little use in their lives.  A lot of time and energy was spent in managing the students’ days, making sure that everyone was accounted for and trying to limit the opportunities for students to engage in illicit or unsupervised activities.  Even amidst this mind-deadening, controlled world, there were many dedicated faculty and students who struggled to teach and learn in a system that really wasn’t conducive to helping students learn how to be successful in their lives outside of school.

The students who were successful at Robert E. Lee High School and most other high schools around the country, the students who learned how to “do school” and be successful in what Bock calls an “artificial environment,” went on to ply their school skills at college.  Then they faced what I and nearly everyone I knew faced when I graduated from college:  they faced a world of work that was quite different from high school and college.  While a college diploma may have given them a ticket into the workforce, it did little to prepare them for what they would be doing.

The most frustrating thing to me is that we know how to help students learn to be succesful outside of school.  We know how to teach students to examine and solve open-ended problems; we know how to instill grit in our students to give them long term perseverance; we know how to help students develop character strengths; we know how to create environments and methods that hone students’ communicative and collaborative skills; we know how to help internal motivation flourish within students; we know that we should limit curriculum to what is truly “lifeworthy.”  If you don’t believe me, pay attention to the experts who have spent the better part of their lives researching and reporting on these topics:  Check out Dan Meyer’s work in implementing problem solving, look at Angela Duckworth’s work on grit, read Martin Seligman on developing character, don’t forget Daniel Pink’s and Alfie Kohn’s books on motivation; listen to what Dave Perkins has to say about lifeworthy skills.

There are many things standing in the way of making school more relevant to life, but the primary obstacle is the collective mindset of institutions, parents, teachers, administrators, and students that we all think we know what school looks like.  In our minds, even though many of us know better, school should look like what it looked like last year, or ten years ago, or fifty years ago simply because that is school.  Unfortunately, the school that we are comfortable with, the school of our memory, grows in irrelevance as the rest of the world speeds toward the future while we remain firmly planted in the past.

Postive Psychology - A Summer Project

A few weeks ago, Missy Sullivan gave me an article to read about Positive Psychology written by Martin Seligman.  Missy has her headlights set on the completion of an advanced degree in School Psych, and during the summers we sometimes discuss ideas that apply to psychology and school.  I admit that I knew little to nothing about Positive Psychology, and although I found the article interesting, I was also a little skeptical.  In the meantime, I came across a large section in the book, How Children Succeed by Paul Tough, that described the theory and outcomes of Positive Psychology.  It seemed too much of a coincidence for me to be exposed to this theory twice in such a short period of time, so I’m following the serendipitous guidepost and delving into the theory, process, and outcomes.

The following is an excerpt from Martin Seligman’s Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being

First, a quiz:

Question one: in one or two words, what do you most want for your children?

If you are like the thousands of parents I’ve polled you responded, “Happiness,” “Confidence,” “Contentment,” “Fulfillment,” “Balance,” “Good stuff,” “Kindness,” “Health,” “Satisfaction,” “Love,” “Being civilized,” “Meaning,” and the like. In short, well-being is your topmost priority for your children.

Question two: in one or two words, what do schools teach?

If you are like other parents, you responded, “Achievement,” “Thinking skills,” “Success,” “Conformity,” “Literacy,” “Math,” “Work,” “Test taking,” “Discipline,” and the like. In short, what schools teach is how to succeed in the workplace.

Can and should schools attempt to teach well-being?  The list of adjectives that Seligman describes as what parents “most want for their children” seems pretty squishy.  Is it really our job in school to teach kids to “love each other” or to “find meaning?”  Truthfully, great teachers have always taught these skills and attitudes.  It is one of the things that promotes such strong bonds between teachers and students.  However, what if schools adopted systematic and coordinated approaches to teaching well-being?  This has been done and, according to Seligman, done with success.  

I’ve got some research to do this summer.

"The Road to Nowhere" and Finding the Right Fit

The “Nowhere” depicted in the film The Road to Nowhere does not refer to college as some may think; I believe “Nowhere” is the college application process.  The principal theme in the movie is that high school, for many students, is not about learning but about creating a resume full of exceptional grades, honors classes, AP courses, extracurricular efforts, community service, and various awards in order to gain acceptance to the highest-rated colleges possible.  Under our current system, students become experts at “doing school” rather than experts at learning skills and long-term knowledge.  This has to change, and there are many courageous schools that are fighting this battle to prepare students for life, not college acceptance.

In the Q and A session following a recent viewing of A Race to Nowhere, Warren Wilson College President, Steve Solnick, made some comments about the college selection process that rang true to me.  He said that the ranking of colleges by students and the ranking of students by colleges has created a situation where too many students end up at the wrong college.  Students should be choosing colleges by best fit, not by attempting to attend the “best” college.  Likewise, colleges should attempt to find students that best fit their college, not attempting to enroll the “best” students.

As Solnick pointed out, the strength of higher education in America comes from the great diversity of colleges.  There are colleges that train students to be athletes, that conduct research, that emphasize particular religious beliefs, that promote outdoor education, that focus on relationships between faculty and students, that require all students to spend a year abroad, etc.  Choosing a college because it outranks another on an arbitrary list inevitably ends up with students at the wrong schools.  

One indicator that students are choosing the wrong colleges is that one-third of all college students end up transferring (Chronicle of Higher Learning).   Of course there are other reasons for transferring than discovering that your “best college” choice in high school was a poor fit, but certainly the lack of fit must be a determining factor for many students who transfer.

Unfortunately buying a seat at a college is under the same marketing and status influences as purchasing other goods and services.  Many Americans drive particular cars to impress others, choose wines because of a name or rating, and wear emblems on shirts and shoes because they are brand conscious.  So, it should come as no surprise that young Americans are susceptible to marketing ploys and status seeking with regards to college.  

This makes the job of conscientious parents and faculty even more important.  We must help our children and students to understand that college is much more than a name on a list and more than a flag that can be waved in front of the world to show how well they “did school."  When any young person says, “I want to go to college at _________,” the adults who love her need to ask why and probe deeply to help her discover the right fit.

Who Knows the Question?

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. -- Voltaire

Our society loves clever kids.  We hold spelling and geography bees, lauding those whippersnappers who memorize and spit back the facts.  When a high school student scores a perfect 2400 on the SAT, we marvel at this amazing feat and the college doors that will be blown off the hinges by such prowess.  On a daily basis, teachers call on students with hands held high and give them a big smile or maybe even a Jolly Rancher if they answer correctly.  Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t appreciate these children and young adults who are exceedingly good at memorizing and maybe even applying some knowledge, but I think that we are really looking at the wrong end of the equation.  What we should be focusing on is teaching students how to ask the questions -- good questions.  That is a skill that will transcend knowing the capital of Botswana or even knowing how to spell “daiquiri.”

I love to hear adults tell kids, “Now, that’s a really good question.”  Is it a good question because the answer is not obvious?  Or, is it a good question because the answer is complex and may vary with circumstances or conditions?  Or, is it a good question because it demonstrates that the child understands enough about something to ask the right question that will get to the root of the problem.  Or, is it a good question because no one has yet found the answer?

It is not difficult to teach students to ask good questions, but too often we are intent on asking the questions themselves to get “right” answer.  I remember years ago attempting to get my students to write “good questions” after reading chapters in a novel.  Initially, they were terrible at asking meaningful questions simply because they had rarely been asked to do it.  But as the year progressed, they improved dramatically as we continued to discuss the meaning of “good questions,” and as we modeled good questions for each other.  It was freeing for the students not to have to remember inane details in the text to prove that they had read chapters 4 and 5.  Their questions showed that they had read and understood deep and sometimes subtle aspects of the story.

Of course the big problem for many schools and students is that the BIG TEST does not care about questioning.  I would love to see a big stakes assessment give students a picture, story, or scenario and tell students -- “After reading this passage or viewing this picture, ask a question about it and then explain the importance or significance of your question.”  Wow, that sure would be hard for the folks at ETS to score. I guess that's the problem . . . in order for this scenario to play out, we need to acknowledge that there is much more to school than answering someone else's questions.

Gain Control

In the second week of the ECCMOOC course, ELearning and Digital Cultures, we have been asked to explore the future of digital technology.  The first two videos on the resources page are ads by large corporations, Corning and Microsoft, that show how they believe their products will integrate into our future lives.




These videos emphasize the need for a different type of education, one that embraces technology and prepares students to use and interact with technology with ease.  We want our students to understand technology well enough so that they can use it to better their lives and the lives of others.

I frequently tell parents and students, technology is a tool, but it is a seductive tool.  We have to recognize when technology is changing the way that we live our lives and interact with others, and make conscious decisions how we use it.  One of the biggest faults for most of us is that we have become users of technology without making conscious decisions on the impact of that use.  While some say that the ability to conduct a search online will be the most useful skill for our current students, I would argue that being able to decide when and how to use technology will be an even more important skill.

As I was driving into work this morning, I heard an interview with an MIT professor who is concerned with the effect that technology is having on relationships. She thinks that sending texts and email makes it easy for us to disconnect from important relationships without having to face the consequences of the disconnection.  Concepts like this are what our students need to be discussing and understanding, so that they can actually understand the consequences of their use of technology -- the pluses and minuses -- before they make the choice to use it.

For those seeking some good advice on how to make technology work for us without gaining control over us, I recommend the last few chapters Clay Johnson's book, The Information Diet.  Johnson gives some practical ideas on how we can become "conscious consumers" of media and users of technology.

MOOC's: Massive Online Open CHANGE

While I took an online graduate course several years ago and liked several aspects of it, I have become increasingly interested in the trend toward Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC’s).  I recently enrolled in a MOOC that is presented by the University of Edinburgh through Coursera. The course is an introduction to online learning called “E-learning and Digital Cultures.”  What better way to learn about online learning than to participate in a course about online learning.

It is boggling to think of the implications of the growth of MOOC’s.  What will happen to traditional education?  What are the economic and corresponding political ramifications of opening cheap or free education to anyone in the world with access to the Internet?  As I struggle to consider the possibilities, my mind starts to feel like this:

Over the next several weeks, I will be posting about the content of the course “E-learning and Digital Cultures.”  I’ll give you the opportunity to peek into this world without having to feel fully committed to the coursework.  Maybe after reading a few posts you will feel inspired to venture into the world of MOOC’s and explore the future of education. Change is a comin'; get ready.

Listen to Me

I spend ten or fifteen minutes nearly every day looking through my Twitter feed for interesting ideas.  As I wade through Diane Ravitch’s daily diatribe or scan Eric Sheninger’s hourly updates (honestly, when does the man work?), I sometimes come across an idea that is immediately accessible, implementable, and worthwhile.  This was the case with a video that explains how to use podcasts for feedback in writing that I was referred to by a tweet.
After I sent the link out to my colleagues, I started thinking about how I could use it to give meaningful feedback. I thought about all the times in my day when I'd like to offer positive feedback, but to give it on the spot would be impractical or impossible. I regularly observe situations like students listening intently to a partner’s idea on why they should use bigger wheels on an NXT robot, inviting a classmate to join a lunch table, or putting an arm around a buddy after the last shot did not go down.  Even if I could offer positive verbal feedback at these times, the feedback itself might detract from the action.  But, what if I could give a fifteen to thirty second affirmation of these acts at a later time?  Something like:


It takes almost no time for me to take out my phone, make a quick recording, and then email it. Of course, this type of audio feedback won't replace the hand-written notes, emails, or verbal affirmations that I give daily, but it does offer me another tool that I plan to implement.

Digital Portfolios

British School 18th century, A Man with a Portfolio, Taking Snuff.

Portfolios have long been associated with visual art.  The primary reason is that this type of art is made to be seen and no written description will serve the observer better than a glimpse at the real thing.  All educators face the problem of the visual art teacher in that much of what we should be teaching is not easily described or measured.  We teach students to think, create, solve problems, value others’ perspectives, persevere, be compassionate, lead, innovate, and question; yet, we don’t have a particularly good way to assess these attributes.  A portfolio provides a way for students to demonstrate their ability and competence in these areas.

According to Merriam Webster, the word portfolio dates back to the early 18th century and is derived from the Italian “portare” (to carry) and “foglio” (leaf,sheet).  The root of the word tells us that the portfolio must have served two primary purposes:  to archive and to share.  Teachers have long used portfolios for the purpose of archiving student work.  Alphabetized folders in hanging files are common place in classrooms around the world.  However, in the past decade digital portfolios are becoming more commonplace as they have many advantages over paper/folder portfolios.  Digital portfolios are dead simple to share with others and also offer a way for students to add personal reflections and for others to offer comments and support.

A portfolio gives students the ability to archive their work for future use or reflection.  It can be a powerful documentation of growth.  The archive can also be used as a credential for future schools and jobs.  It is a more authentic description of a student’s work than a report card or a standardized test, and the best universities and employers are beginning to recognize it as such.

Sharing is all about audience.  As an archive of academic work and reflection on that work, a student’s portfolio’s initial audience will be the school community:  classmates, faculty, and parents.  However, a wider audience for a portfolio can create greater authenticity, as the student demonstrates the relevance of his work to the world, not just at school.  Students must also consider future audiences in the creation of a portfolio, in particular, future schools and employers.  

Want to develop your own system of digital portfolios?  Find a platform and test it, give students some control to personalize their portfolio, provide students regular time in school to archive and reflect, require students to share it, and don’t grade it.

What is Lifeworthy?

Several months ago, when I was exploring graduate programs, I came across the following short interview of David Perkins who recently retired from the teaching faculty at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education after forty years.  He still works with Harvard on research.  It intrigued and shocked me to hear a powerful policy voice say that “90% of what we typically teach in school is a waste of time.”  The short clip gives a general overview of Perkin’s ideas about what should be learned, but it left me wanting a more elaborate and specific explanation.   A short time after watching this interview, I saw that David Perkins would be one of the plenary speakers at the Future of Learning Institute at Harvard.  Last week, I got to hear David Perkins explain his ideas over what should be learned in an hour and a half talk. 

I find the following summary of some of Perkins’s ideas a poor substitute for listening to his plenary session at the FOL Institute.  Harvard did make a recording of the talk, and I hope they will release it to the general public at some time.  

Perkins started with the idea that we are educating today’s youth for an unknown world.  Previous generations could count on their children’s world looking fairly similar to their own.  However, with the rapid changes in technology and globalization, we can no longer say this is true.  Students need to concentrate on learning “lifeworthy” content and skills -- tools and knowledge that will be useful in an unknown world.

Lifeworthy skills and content, according to Perkins, lead learners to insight, action, and ethics.  He also believes that schools should focus on “comeupance,” that is things that come up regularly in a person’s life.  He gave a few specific curricular examples. First, students should learn basics of statistics and probability instead of the quadratic formula.  In evidence of this, he asked the 200-plus member audience to raise their hands if anyone had used quadratic equations some time in the last ten years.  Only a ten or fifteen people responded.  He then refined the search by asking how many use quadratic equations in a way outside of teaching it to others.  Only three people were left with their hands up, with the conclusion that “the main purpose of teaching quadratic equations seems to be to enable the next generation of teachers to teach the quadratic equation.”  Perkins would describe the teaching of quadratic equations to be “niche learning” that may be important to a deep understanding of the field of mathematics but is not a lifeworthy topic.  Another example that he gave of niche learning that is taught in almost all biology classes is mitosis.  Instead of spending time teaching mitosis, he argues that schools should focus on topics like communicable diseases and how they spread in a global world.  The last of his example was the the teaching of the French Revolution.  If we are teaching the French Revolution as a stand alone piece of knowledge, then it does not meet the criteria of being lifeworthy.  But, we can investigate topics like social injustice through the lens of the French Revolution to make them relevant.

Perkins certainly does not want to abandon the traditional disciplines that are currently taught in most schools.  He begs us to examine what we teach and only teach what will provide insight, lead to action, or help develop ethics. We must incorporate the "lifeworthy" and dismiss the "lifewimpy."

Beside(s) Content

“Developing content knowledge provides the foundation for acquiring these skills, while the skills in turn are necessary to truly learn and use the content. In other words, the skills and content knowledge are not only intertwined but also reinforce each other.”

http://www.hewlett.org/newsroom/news/national-research-council-report-highlights-importance-deeper-learning


Of course great teachers have always focused on teaching students to communicate, collaborate, create, solve problems, and innovate.  Great teachers ask students to work together through project-based learning to enhance all of these skills.  In our school, it is commonplace to walk into a classroom and see students working together to design a road trip across the US, or build a tower out of straws that can withstand an earthquake, or make a claymation video to bring awareness to a critical problem facing the environment.  None of this is news to anyone who sees and values great teaching.

The problem is that while these skills are discussed, written about, and extolled, they remain a minor part of most schools’ curriculum, behind content.  Unless individual teachers value these skills, they don’t get the attention that they deserve.  Even teachers who appreciate these skills often let them play second fiddle to content.  After all, content is what is in the textbook; what is assessed; and what parents, students, the State expect to be taught.  While the system doesn’t deny that 21C skills can be taught, it certainly doesn’t promote them or make it easy.  That needs to change -- now.

Every student and parent can tell you the subjects that define school -- English, history, math, science, art, PE, foreign language.  What would a school look like that raised the awareness and place of 21C skills to stand on equal footing beside the subject areas?  What if instead of asking a student how they did on their algebra test, parents asked how they did on their metacognition today (and it didn’t seem weird)?  What if administrators created a schedule that made it easy for teachers to plan lessons that gave students the opportunity to work and reflect on 21C skills?  What if a school decided to report on student growth on 21C skills in addition to mastery of content?  What if students knew they were supposed to develop their ability to innovate, rather than it being an unnoticed by-product of a project?  All of these what ifs are doable and pretty easily, but they won’t happen unless we (students, teachers, parents, administrators, the State) change our collective minds about what students should learn in school. 

Gaining Control

When I started thinking about why I want to create my own program in Educational Leadership, my first thoughts centered on why I didn’t want to follow a traditional program.  What that boiled down to was an issue of control. Gaining control makes this method genuine for me.  I will be intimately connected to everything that I study and learn.

I want control over what I learn.  I want to follow the pathways that interest me.  Along the way, I know those pathways will split, converge, and disappear, but for me to be fully engaged, I must have a large degree of control over my direction.  I am not planning on a lonely journey.  My desire is to have others who share the same interest in the same topics guide me, raise my level of awareness, challenge me, and push me.

I want control over how I learn.  I approach learning in many different ways.  I read books and articles, I watch PBS and TedTalks, I listen to podcasts and NPR, I read blogs and tweets, I talk to experts and practitioners,  I discuss with colleagues and students, I travel, I seek, I question.  For this experience to be genuine, I have to access every opportunity and resource.

I want control over my time.  At this stage in my life, I just can’t add another institution or person to the list of folks and obligations that tell me when to jump. I need to choose the time when I can work and not have deadlines imposed by others.

I believe that others feel this way and would like to find a new path to learning and credentialing.  I hope that I can serve as an inspiration and model for those looking for a different way.

Parallel Thinking

Two months ago conditions changed in my personal life that made me realize that I needed to shore up my credentials in order to be ready for the future.  I applied to and was accepted into an online Masters in School Administration program at Western Carolina University.  This masters program is designed primarily for public school educators who wish to work as administrators within the North Carolina State school systems -- a different path than I'm traveling.  As the start of the summer session came closer and closer, I kept feeling more and more apprehensive, not the type of nervous excitement that I got when I was driving to Sewanee from San Antonio in 1976, but more of a nervous anxiety driven by dread.  Something clearly was not right.  So, I had an informal meeting with two trusted friends, and they both told me to punt.  I punted, long and deep.  I think that I may have punted out of the stadium altogether.

My friend and colleague, Sam, made a podcast that focused on my situation and what he saw as the solution.  It will take you about twenty minutes to listen to, but it will be worthwhile.

How Should You Go to School?

At about the same time that Sam was making this podcast, I was typing this email to him:

Hi Sam,

I started extending the idea that I talked about in Missy's office to be an "experiment in higher education."

I am going to design my own masters program (maybe I will not use this term), using a template of courses derived from the best schools in the country.  I will create a blog to document my course work and reflections.  My coursework will be self-study, intensive workshops, on-line classes, collaboration with others who find their way to me from my blog, and ongoing dialogue with selected mentors.  I will ask my mentor/advisers to accredit and validate my coursework.  In the process, I hope to explore from the inside the new type of education that we know is going to influence the future world of education. 

I think we were both a little shocked when we read/listened to each others' ideas.  Parallel thinking with Sam Harrelson is pretty scary for me, and I'm sure it must have been scary for him to be thinking like me (but in an altogether different way).

This summer I will start my experiment in higher education, and I hope that you will be a part of it by reading my blog, offering suggestions, asking questions, and being a fellow traveler in pursuit of learning.