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Showing posts from 2016

Why Design Thinking is a No-Brainer in Catholic Schools

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I have been thinking a lot lately about teaching and learning.  We have had lots of Professional Learning over the last several years designed to bring our teachers "up to speed" on the current ideas being talked about and implemented in classrooms around the country (and around the world).  Topics like Project Based Learning ,   Design Thinking , Flex Furniture, the purpose of homework, how to maximize Google, and many others have been tackled by our staff.  however, it is Design Thinking that is most on my mind these days.  I am enamored with the approach and find that it is a logical sequence to follow for problem solving.  Our location, being only 13 miles from Stanford University, means that Design Thinking is becoming more and more main stream in schools and businesses,  Yet for some reason, I can't get our faculty to embrace this approach whole-heartedly.  Why?  Is it a case of initiative burn-out? Do we need more training?  Should we engage in a book club read (

Finding Leaders (or Unicorns?)

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Photo Credit Note: this blog was originally published in April of 2016. I have updated it in February of 2017 as part of the #EduBloggersClub challenge. This week's # EduBloggersClub challenge is to write about #Challenges. Now, for the past week I have been living with challenges as my school has been in the final countdown to our accreditation visit. But I have chosen NOT to focus on the plethora of topics that could provide.  Instead, I have opted to update and re-post an older blog that I wrote about a challenge I consider critical to our field: the Leadership Challenge... How many times a week do people say to you  in a conversation "I'm so glad I don't have your  job!"?  I have heard this a lot.  I honestly don't know if I am hearing it more than in the past, but I am certainly noticing it more.  So I started asking people: "Why do you say that?" and typically the answer I get is something along the lines of "I don't want to