Practical Theory

It strikes me that we need to talk about this.

There is a big difference between these two things - deep knowing and knowing about. I know about a lot of things. I read a lot, I've paid decent attention throughout my own 41 years, I watch the occasional TEDTalk, etc… but the things I deep know are much smaller subset than the things I know about. I know education, its history, its processes, the how, the why, etc... I know Philadelphia sports - history, current, etc... from a very deep level. On some level, what I suppose I am talking about is the idea of expert knowledge.

It's important because it raises the question of what we want our students to know against what we simply expect them to know about. In the course of a high school education, an American student will take course work in English, US History, World History, Biology, Chemistry, some Physics, higher level math, a World Language, some Arts education, and maybe an elective of their choosing or two.

To what end?

I ask that seriously.

One of the things I talk about with teachers a lot is the idea that, in any given class, if you are lucky, 10% of the kids will major in a field that is related to the course material you are teaching. If we only teach to those 10%, we will lose the 90%. But we also have to teach in such a way as to not lose the 10% of the kids who are rabidly passionate about the subject. And in addition, we assess those students the same way.

More than that, I worry a lot about some of the assumptions that seem to be getting made about what real learning looks like. I've watched a lot of TEDTalks. I love them. They are amazing brain candy. But I can't presume to really know anything more than the most surface information about the talks I've seen. There are several TEDTalks that have so inspired me that I've gone on to do deeper research and really learn a lot about the topic so that I feel even mildly competent about the topic, but even then, I wouldn't argue that I deeply know those topics. So what are our goals for kids? Do we want them to exposed to lots of ideas or do we want them to be able to deeply explore ideas.

And the answer, of course, is both.

But both is hard because whether we like it or not, our greatest limiting factor is time. At the high school level, we have the kids for four years, and we ask them to take somewhere between 22-30 classes across five or six core disciplines in that time, and they have lives outside of school as well that should and must be nurtured and valued. We need to be much more deliberate than we are now if we want to help students maximize that time in such a way as to be able to deeply learn anything.

It strikes me that much of the goal of high school is to expose kids to ideas and concepts they can know about in empowering, enriching ways that will do the following:

1) Build a love of learning about in kids.
2) Expose kids to enough stuff that they can find their own passions - the things they want to deeply know (and then actively do stuff with.)
3) Build the skills necessary to learn deeply and build meaningfully now and keep learning and doing once they leave our walls.

But it also strikes me that we create a lot of roadblocks - both at the policy level and at the individual school and classroom level - that get in the way of that. And while it won't be easy to get some of those roadblocks out of the way, we should examine the ones within our zone of control and work to do so.

It is my hope that Jakob and Theo would want to go to SLA or a school like SLA that has an inquiry-driven, project-based, modern-schooling approach to learning.

I admit - much of the vision of SLA, both in how we originally conceived of the idea and in how we continue to evolve today is, for me, based on what I want for my own children.

I say this because there are a lot of powerful folks right now who are advocating for a pedagogy that they do not want for their own children. Some of these powerful people are running networks of schools that have a pedagogical approach that is directly counter to the educational approach they pay for for their own children. Moreover, these same powerful people tend to get upset when asked about the disconnect, saying that that question is off limits.

I don't think it is.

I think we should ask why people of power advocate for one thing for their own children and something else for other people's children, especially when those other children come from a lower rung on the socio-economic scale or when those children come from traditionally disenfranchised members of our society. I think that's a very dangerous thing not to question.

Because we've done this before in America, and when we did that to the Native Americans, it did damage that has effects today.

To me, when you ensure your own child has an arts-enriched, small-class size, deeply humanistic education and you advocate that those families who have fewer economic resources than you have should sit straight in their chairs and do what they are told while doubling and tripling up on rote memorization and test prep, you are guilty of educational colonialism.

And it's time we start calling that what it is.

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One of the great challenges to running SLA is the fundraising that has to happen every year to keep our 1:1 MacBook program going. Every year, the fundraising kicks into high gear with our EduCon planning, and we cobble together the $180,000 we need from EduCon, grants, donations, district-level grants and school budget when we have it. Worse, I'm a bashful fundraiser - especially when it comes to donations from citizens. I don't like having to ask people for money, but it seems you cannot be a principal these days unless you understand that part of your job is to be head-fundraiser.

As most readers of this blog know, the past few years have been exceptionally challenging for the School District of Philadelphia, and SLA's fundraising needs have risen dramatically at the same time that more and more schools are in more and more need, and funding dollars are getting harder and harder to come by.

This year, we worked with a Philadelphia Tech Social Entrepreneur as we used his new site - FundingWorks - in an attempt to crowd source a significant portion of the laptop funding. Funding Works works in such a way as to set a deadline for funding whereby if you do not meet your goal, you don't get any of the donations. High-stakes fundraising, indeed. We had set an overall goal of $80,000 - because that was what we needed at the time, but we set up a $20,000 threshold that we had to hit to receive anything.

Getting the fundraising going has been tough. Emails have been sent, phone calls have been made, and we have been watching the funding thermometer grow slowly toward $20,000 for several months, but as of last week, we were still $9,000 short with the deadline of July 15th rapidly approaching.

I am humbled to say that we made our fundraising goal with three and a half hours to spare tonight. And when I look over the list of donations, I see SLA families - including many alums. I see members of the Philly Tech world who have - over and over - adopted SLA as one of their own. I see educators from all over the world who gave what they could to our funky little school. I see old friends and former students. And I see over $8,000 in anonymous donations to which I can only hope that some of those folks read this blog and know the incredible deep sense of thanks I have in my heart.

Overall, I see an incredible community, and I am reminded of how lucky I am to have such wonderful people in my life - people who support the school that is, for so many of us, a home. I am truly humbled by the fact that so many people took the time to give, to spread the word and to care about our school.

Thank you to everyone who gave. Thank you for supporting SLA. Thank you for allowing our dream of what a school can be to continue.


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Ginger Lewman asked the following question on Facebook the other day:

Is it possible for a person to talk about, even advocate for, educational change, yet not believe in it?
What might be the first (or most obvious) indicator that a person doesn't truly believe in what they're talking about? What will they be doing (or not doing) that demonstrates they don't believe?

This is not a rhetorical post. I'm truly asking.

It's an important question to ask right now, because there are a lot of people who are claiming to be working in service of educational change when really their true motives should be questioned. The question becomes, how do we know the difference between a change agent who is legitimately working in service of their ideas, and someone whose motivations may be driven by something other than the ideas they are actually espousing? I think those of us working in education today need to get good at what Howard Rheingold would call "crap detection."

We get there by asking good questions. Here are a few I like ask of anyone advocating for education reform:

1. Who benefits most from what they are advocating.
   
2. Who stands to lose the most from the idea?
   
3. Are there too many cliches that sound good but mean little?
   
4. Are the solutions and the problem stated in such a way as to be reductive?
   
5. Is there a price-tag attached in such a way that only the speaker or the speaker's organization can fulfill the change they speak of.
   
6. Is the solution to the problem so complex as to necessitate consultants to do it?
   
7. Would the speaker advocate for this change for their own children? (Probably the biggest question.)
   
   

I wish we lived in a time where those involved in education reform were all honest agents. In all truth, that time probably never existed, But today seems that we must be very careful to consider the motivations and motives behind those speaking about educational change. In her book, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson writes, “If you want to keep your teeth, make your own sandwiches.” It is incumbent on all of us to listen deeply, with an open mind and an open heart, and then make up our own minds, thoughtfully and critically, about what we believe needs to happen to positively affect educational change, and to understand that not everyone who says they have the answer -- or even an answer -- is doing so because they have the best interests of students and educators at heart.


It is time for everyone who is acting as an honest agent in education today to understand that a healthy skepticism about everyone who claims to know just what we need to do to fix education is not only important, but necessary.

One of the things that happens in schools is that people think they can divorce things curriculum and pedagogy from the other systems and structures that exist in schools - things like food service and discipline and parent relationships and hiring and the dozens of other processes and interactions that happen in schools, but it is our experience that is not the case. When you have a vision for what a school can be, it has to permeate every pore of the school. Every process, every interaction, every system needs to be held to that process. And while there are pieces of the school that may only be tangential to the mission, it is important to go through the process of stepping through how the core vision of the school affects each part of the school.

Because the thing is… when you move to a more inquiry-driven, student-empowered school, it really does affect everything. When students become empowered to ask questions and seek out answers, everything changes, and you cannot -- and should not -- think that you can leave inquiry at the classroom door. When teachers see themselves as learners and researchers and planners, they will question traditions and policies. And as a community, everyone has to learn how to bring these ideas to bear to make the school whole.