You can’t deny that seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong is probably the most recognizable cancer survivor in the world. His LIVESTRONG Foundation pioneered the support bracelet, the little yellow wrist band that millions of people wear every day to show their support. Now LIVESTRONG is bringing cancer education into the classroom.
According to the LIVESTRONG Web site, “one in three people in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. That means children in your classroom are likely to be dealing with cancer right now—whether through a grandparent, parent, family member, friend, or teacher.”
Dancing Through Science … and Math … and More?
When budgets get tight, one of the first things cut is the arts. “For decades, arts education has been treated as though it was the novice teacher at school—the last hired and the first fired with times get tough,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Thinking Differently, Change the “Rules”
Star Trek fans, remember the Kobayashi Maru (how could you forget—it’s got its own Wikipedia entry)? It was no-win scenario test that Kirk beat during his Academy training by “changing the conditions of the test.” Well, the band Atomic Tom did the same thing–and its innovation video has gone viral. Everyone sharing Atomic Tom’s subway ride! Yes, it is marketing, but it demonstrates how changing the conditions, the tools, the delivery can generate the spark of new thinking and new learning. Back in 1997, Apple’s slogan was “Think Different.” Well, Apple has become the innovator of the information/music delivery system, coming up with the “coolest” products—the iPhone and the iPod—that everyone wants. It's all part of the same thinking as the 21st Century School concept.
The 21st Century School: Strategic Schedule Review
Schedule reform is becoming one of the most important and adaptive strategies that academic administrators can lead and support—it has the capacity to shift student and faculty cultures in a dramatic and immediate way. ISM has always called for the schedule to be re-examined every eight years, but recently suggested that, with the increased strategic importance of the schedule, School Heads “require, fully engage in, and support schedule review every four years and have a standing faculty committee that continues to review the ongoing research and practice in schedule, student performance, and healthy faculty cultures.”1
Moonlighting: What to Do When Part-Time Jobs Clash With School Culture
Issue: A faculty member devotes a significant amount of his off-duty time and energy as an online writer for a controversial social cause that some feel is contrary to the culture of the school.
Issue: A faculty member’s role as an instructor of adult education classes on pole dancing at the local community college comes to the attention of parents, who contact the School Head to express their concerns.
Scheduling and Chronobiology
There’s a lot of scheduling theory! So let’s pick just one area of it and see what it says about our schedules, and whether we are providing optimal learning environments for our students. Chronobiology is an integral part of thinking about time. Go to Chronobiology International to see some of the applications that are being made using this research!
External Marketing for Your Summer Program
Recently, I&P published an article about internal marketing for your summer program. The following article shares effective ideas for external marketing of your program. The targets of your external marketing are families who have not enrolled students in your summer program in the last two years—whether the students are enrolled in your school during the academic year or not.
Paid Leave Banks: Compassionate or Risky?
Paid time off (e.g., sick, vacation, personal time) is an important element of a school’s overall compensation and benefits program.1 As a robust employee benefits and compensation program is one of ISM’s Stability Markers®, ISM encourages schools to be as generous in this area as financially possible. However, some schools extend this generosity in the form of paid leave “banks” in a way that creates risk for the school. This article examines those risks and proposes alternate paths to reach the same desired end—that is, attending to employee needs in a way that is compassionate but also significantly less risky.
Flip-Teaching for 21st Century Classrooms
In an algebra class in Delaware, students are asked to complete a short series of problems when they arrive in class. First, the teacher sees cooperative learning going on, then moves on to discuss what he calls the drill so that the students will understand what they did right and wrong.
Out in Colorado, algebra teacher Karl Fisch approaches his lessons backwards. He flips what we have all come to know as the standard class. Rather than spend time providing the lesson and then having students go home only possibly be frustrated and confused trying to complete the homework, Fisch uses class time to discuss the lesson, when he is there to help them understand it. Students watch the lesson at home on YouTube. Homework, he says is problematic. In the traditional teaching model, he’s found that one group of students “get it” and go home and do the homework correctly. A second group gives up before even trying, for a variety of reasons. The third group will struggle through it and probably do it wrong, which means going over the concept again.
Gaming and Democracy: Teaching Civic Involvement Online
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has embraced gaming to help teach children civics. iCivics.com is a Web site free to all schools and students.