April - 2016

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What is Sacred in Education

|Originally posted on Dreams of Education on March 25, 2016| There’s nothing sacred about spelling tests as a way to learn spelling, flash cards to learn math facts, curriculum as a way to teach, testing as a way to collect data. There’s nothing sacred about most of what we do every day in education, and yet we hold tightly to these institutions as we make decisions about what school will look like. These constructs have been put into place to accomplish certain goals; namely

Who We Are > What We Do

|Originally posted on Dreams of Education on December 19, 2015| Perhaps the most heartbreaking outcome of the current systematization of education is the way that it unintentionally dehumanizes. Reduced to scores, we too often become pawns in a global game of competition. We seek to be valued while forgetting that we are already valuable. Worthy. There are a distinct collection of experiences in my own school journey that left me wondering if I was worthy. After educating hu

School is so much more than learning all the right thing

|Originally posted on Dreams of Education on October 26, 2015| The first question that I get asked when people find out that I’ve started a school: what makes Anastasis Academy different? And this is a tricky one to answer, because the truth is EVERYTHING makes us different. It’s hard to describe something that no one has seen before, so you begin to relate it with ideas and concepts that people are familiar with. The more I’ve talked about Anastasis, the more I’ve begun to r

Transforming Education Through Great Accidents

|Originally posted on Dreams of Education on October 6, 2015| In 2009, I left teaching. I didn’t do it because I was fed up with the system, or because I didn’t like my job. Quite the opposite. I really loved being a computer teacher. I loved the freedom of writing my own curriculum every day, and getting to know my students. I had a great time helping other teachers learn how to use technology, and coming up with ideas for how they could integrate it into their classrooms. I

Hanging a Question Mark on the Things We Take for Granted

Hanging a Question Mark on the Things We Take for Granted

|Originally posted on Dreams of Education on July 22, 2015| “In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and again to hang a question mark on the things you take for granted.” -Bertrand Russell This. This quote is one of my new very favorite quotes ever! This is where innovation lives. In the question marks. Too often in education, we talk about innovation as if it is something that we’ve created and something that can be owned. We talk about innovation in steps and processes and

Change Your Mindset

|Originally Posted on Dreams of Education on January 26, 2015| The problem with education reform is that we keep attempting to change surface level systems and hoping for deep systemic change as a result. What we actually end up with is new standards, new curricula (usually replacing one one-size-fits-all with another one-size-fits-all), new technology initiatives, more professional development, added “rigorous” expectations, new standardized tests, new assessment systems, an

Starting a School in the Age of Open and Freely Shared

|Originally Posted on Dreams of Education on November 18, 2013| So often in education we hear the excuse: it’s too expensive to implement. There just isn’t any money. Budgets are tight. That’s not an excuse I’m willing to accept. I know what is possible when you start with NO money. I know that lives are changed as a result of followed dreams and passion. I know that real success has nothing to do with a bank account. While money is helpful, it isn’t what is holding you back.

Students Have Names

|Originally posted on Dreams of Education on July 18, 2013| This post is in response to a Newsweek article titled “What if You Could Learn Everything” “Imagine every student has a tireless personal tutor, an artificially intelligent and inexhaustible companion that magically knows everything, knows the student, and helps her learn what she needs to know.” Jose Ferreira, the CEO of Knewton, has made this artificially intelligent companion a reality for k-12 students. He has p

Embodied Learning and Things that Don't Have Names

|Posted originally on Dreams of Education on March 26, 2013| I’ve been thinking a lot about how we talk about education. How we prove that learning has taken place. Inevitably we talk about standards, measures, awards, grades, success. Anastasis has given me the freedom to completely redefine education. There are no limits, except of my own making. I get to decide how to talk about education. This would be easy if I was doing all of this in a vacuum, but I’m not. There

Changing Learning: The Making of the Learning Genome Project

|Posted originally on Dreams of Education on October 29, 2012| I come from a family of entrepreneurs. If it doesn’t exist or it can be done better, that is what you do. This mind-set can be a bit of a curse…once I get an idea in my head, it is like a broken record that plays over and over until I do something about it. My dad is prime example of this, he started Koostik with a styrofoam cup and an iPhone. Once the idea was there, it stayed until he saw it realized…in this

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