Environmental Justice, Culture, and Education

I’ve written a number of new pieces for the Teaching While White and Carney, Sandoe & Associates blogs recently. For those who don’t follow the blogs, I thought I’d include a few links here:

Creating a Coaching Culture in Schools

A excellent book on professional coaching, a conference session on instructional coaching, and some related research got me thinking about the value of educators connecting more with mentors, experts, and colleagues.

Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month

This piece gave me a chance to highlight the 2017 book, “Citizens But Not Americans: Race and Belonging Among Latino Millennials” (NYU Press) by Nilda Flores-González. For the book, Flores-González interviewed more than 90 Latinx American Millennials. Her research touches on the experience of a broad range of young American citizens who are aligned, sadly, in feeling like second-class citizens or unwelcome guests in their own country. As always, we can do better in schools….

An Accelerated Learning Model that Works

With my close friend, Rob DeBlois, retiring as principal of The UCAP School, after thirty years, I needed to both honor Rob’s work and remind the world just how wonderful and important this school is

Environmental Justice, Culture, and Education

The Environmental Literature Institute, held each summer at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire remains one of my favorite events of the year. As we continue to wrestle with the question of the role of schools in helping students develop their environmental knowledge and ethics, this institute is digging right in.

Democratic Discord in Education

Many educators today — feeling pressure from every quadrant and too-often working in underfunded and under-resourced schools driven by competing mandates — struggle mightily with how to approach the question of education for democracy. They also wrestle with how to address challenging societal issues that arise in school with greater frequency these days. A new book from Harvard Education Press — “Democratic Discord in Schools,” by Meira Levinson and Jacob Fay — looks at these questions head on, with the goal of helping schools gain greater clarity about their role in educating students for citizenship in a world seemingly on fire.

What White Educators Can Learn from “Thanks for the Feedback”

This is my attempt to address the tendency for white educators to get defensive when questioned or challenged about their skills in teaching a multicultural curriculum. I examine Thanks for the Feedback, by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, as a way to shed some clarity (I hope) and being open to growing.