Kids Aren’t Bumpers

Kids aren’t bumpers, they’re human beings! My colleague yelled this in a crowded auditorium filled with teachers and administrators. We were all there for a staff meeting. It’s been a few years since this happened… and I think about it from time to time. I usually remember it when I think about the universal nature […]

5 Questions You Should Ask Students and Teachers When Observing

Next time you’re in a classroom and want to initiate a quality conversation with either a student or a teacher, ask them the following five questions: #1: What is going on? #2: Why? #3: Why? #4: How? #5: What’s next? Try hard to say nothing but these words and that you really, really listen to their responses – pushing […]

Mosaic FNG – Of Supernovae and Vision

As one of my colleagues put it, You can ask each Mosaic teacher about what Mosaic is and what it isn’t and you’ll get different responses from each of us. No surprise or disagreement from me. Much has been written about Mosaic over the past three years. We’ve each contributed in our own way to […]

The Freedoms to Learn and to Question

I was asked to respond to a question, which I will, but first a bit of a good old-fashioned soapbox style rant: When I think of popular movies like Good Will Hunting, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Stand and Deliver, Dead Poet’s Society, School of Rock, and a few others, I think of how these movies celebrate […]

The Buddy Bench: Nurturing and Encouraging Ideas

My family went on a walk this morning and eventually found ourselves at the playground of a local elementary school. While there my son pointed out the Buddy Bench that had been installed. The bench was inscribed with the following message: When you feel a little sad And don’t know what to do… Just have a […]

On Homework (Briefly)

In response to Brian Aspinall’s succinct post about homework: If homework is defined as independent work assigned to students to be done on their own and then checked at school or submitted for “points or checks” then homework – at all levels – can seem a bit silly – especially while in elementary school. There […]

Mosaic Development, Our Working “Bio”

Snapshot in the development of The Mosaic Collective… As we continue to develop here’s a “bio” that best describes our program right now: Born in 2014 out of experience, frustration, curiosity, and a sense of educational righteousness, The Mosaic Collective is a project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, and challenge-based learning environment housed in a traditional public high school. […]

Understanding by Design – Hands On, Minds on Design, That Is

T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. I’ve often stated that a grand experiment in education would be to simply erect a circus-style tent and fill it with children and […]

Rhythmic Learning or Scheduled Learning?

One of the ideas behind the design of the Mosaic Collective involves the elimination of a bell schedule and classes as we traditionally know them. I’ve been thinking about this more and more. We often describe this idea and its need as one of an elimination of unnecessary distractions and artificial time constraints. Thinking deeper, […]

From Vodcasting to TED…

In 2009 I attended a training on how to “vodcast” content. Our hosts were two teachers from Woodland Park High School, Colorado, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams. They taught us how to record video and audio … and how to edit and upload to various services. Anyway, quite a bit has happened since our time together in the […]