Getting Unstuck – Cultivating Curiosity

As today's guest observed, "Many kids fall through the cracks somewhere." Maybe they've experienced trauma outside of school, and as a result, they don't fit in inside of school. But Jeff Rivero, veteran history teacher at Yosemite High School in Merced California, knows how to reach them and help them uncover their passion. How? He treats them like the natural resources they are.

Over the years, we've heard a lot of ideas from teachers, administrators and thought leaders on how to reform high school so that the institution would better serve tomorrow's graduates and the complex world they face. But we'd never heard students' ideas on how to improve their high school experience. In this interview, we get the details on the student-generated and award winning plan from Sheri Nelson (Assistant Principal) and Alex Campbell (teacher) of Elizabethton HS, Elizabethton, TN.

This week I talked with Janani Pathy, Principal of the Bill Hogarth Secondary School in Markham, Ontario Canada. Janani is one of those "unstuck" leaders that we profiled recently in our "unstuck" series. "Unstuck" leaders tend to demonstrate a few key behaviors, one being, they're highly adaptable and innovative. As a result, they don't tend to get stuck very often. That observation led to a discussion of a process for overcoming obstacles that Ryan Holiday outlines in his book, The Obstacle is the Way.

Over the summer, we've been running a series called "Unstuck" where we've profiled school leaders who are not just getting unstuck, they're already unstuck. A number of behaviors define them. They're adaptable, flexible and innovative community-minded, focused on life skill development and the whole child; and finally, they believe there is an imperative to develop student leaders. Today's guest, principal Janani Pathy, epitomizes the unstuck leader.

This week I talked with Peter McWain, the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Sante Fe Public Schools. We reviewed a number of positive instructional outcomes that emerged from living under COVID. Unintended consequences occur all the time from change. While planners usually target desired outcomes, they often don't consider the negative outcomes that could accrue. To avoid that, change planners could ask themselves a question such as "How might the opposite of our desired outcome emerge?"

We recorded our first interview with Peter McWain, Santa Fe Public Schools Director of Curriculum and Instruction during the summer of 2018. As schools emerge from COVID — and as educators try to prepare today's students for an ever volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, we wanted to revisit some questions from our initial conversation: What is the purpose of U.S. education? What do we want for our graduates to know and do with their knowledge? And what kind of people do we want them to be?

We recorded our first interview with Peter McWain, Santa Fe Public Schools Director of Curriculum and Instruction during the summer of 2018. As schools emerge from COVID — and as educators try to prepare today's students for an ever volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, we wanted to revisit some questions from our initial conversation: What is the purpose of U.S. education? What do we want for our graduates to know and do with their knowledge? And what kind of people do we want them to be?

This week I talked with Dr. Lindsay Lyons, an educational coach who helps teachers integrate student voice in classroom learning so as to develop shared classroom leadership. There's a lot of interest in student agency, but there's also concern from many teachers and students. Teachers are leery of giving up control and not being able to cover everything they need to cover. Students are simply used to taking direction from their teachers. The research, though, says "Just do it!" and the benefits will come.

If you asked people to identify the qualities they want to see in high school graduates, most people would respond with points such as Independent thinking, Collaborative, Problem solving, Emotionally intelligence and Adaptability. These are also all qualities that we would want to see in leaders, rights? But what kind of opportunities do we routinely give kids to develop these leadership qualities? And what kind of barriers stand in the way of practice? Leadership coach, Dr. Lindsay Lyons, explains.

This week I talked with Erin Mote, co-founder of the Brooklyn Lab Charter School in Brooklyn, New York. Erin is passionate about helping the school's "scholars" discover their interests, their passions, and in the process, help shape their individual identity. This idea that we can be shaped by multiple interests and passions led us to investigate the book RANGE and the TEDx Talk "The Hidden Power of Not (Always) Fitting In." Life, we discovered, should be about investigating and living possibilities.