We need students who ask questions. We need students who challenge assumptions. We need students who wonder. We need students with a thirst for understanding. We need students who want to find better ways. We need students who reject the status quo. We need students who don’t believe everything they read. We need students who fight against injustice. We need students who don’t accept that “that’s just the way it is.” Continue reading Cultivating Curiosity
When I was in high school, I had a calculus teacher who would sometimes disparage some of his fixed-mindset colleagues. “In her lesson plans, there’s a week-long gap at the end of November,” he’d say. “It just says ‘No School — Kennedy was shot.’” Of course, he was exaggerating. This was 25 years after the Kennedy assassination. His point was that some teachers seem to … Continue reading Prepared for Anything
Last year, we spent a great deal of time crafting our portrait of a graduate. The trend in public education over the last several years has been to identify the characteristics that we would like our graduates to leave with. These characteristics — we call them “core competencies” — usually transcend any specific content standards. Ours is called the Vision of a Minuteman. We want … Continue reading Living the Vision
