Manami Okuda Wada: Explorer and Learner
Manami has spent the last year studying deeper learning at HGSE. Before HGSE, she worked with middle/high school students as an after-school program manager, where students were compared by test scores too many times. As a result, they lacked intrinsic motivation to...
Baxter Academy for Science and Technology: A Glimpse at a Democratic School in Portland Maine
Our student guides, faculty dean and Juan Boat builders Surfers Engineers Shoe designers Scientists What is common amongst this group of adults? They all love teaching and learning at Baxter Academy in Portland, Maine. I just spent a day with my colleague...
Educator as Facilitator of Transformation: Deeper Learning Redux
We gathered in the fall of 2022 to think about some of the ideas from a small but hopefully growing consortium called Deeper Learning. Perhaps, it’s a flawed name (deeper than what? shallow learning? who wants that!), but for the sake of movement building, we...
We are the Present, Not the Future: Franco Mosso in Peru
I had the chance to catch up with Franco over Zoom. Even through the two dimensional nature of the camera, his enthusiasm for his work is infectious. Still the realities of his country are difficult. He tells me that politically Peru has entered into a terrible...
Why Matter Matters: Kaitlin Pomerantz
I recently caught up with Kaitlin Pomerantz, an artist and adjunct lecturer in Philadelphia, and my former student at #HGSE. After developing her ideas and initiative in my class, Building Democratic Schools, she received a grant for curricular development from...
A Masterful Teacher: Demetrius Fuller
Demetrius in front of the "HOMies" If energy can be electric and calming at the same time, that’s the feeling in Mr. Demetrius Fuller’s art classroom at the Sokolowski School in Chelsea MA. Student letter plates I walk in and observe twenty-two fourth graders...
Building Readers in the Midst of Controversy
Nora Hassan Haddadi is an alumna of Perrone-Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership (PSi-5). Her Capstone Project focused on the design and implementation of progressive reform of inequitable instructional practices and systems that have historically underserved...
HomePlace Collective: An idea whose time has come
Kassie Infante and Marianela Rivera In this on-going series of short posts, I catch up with some of the authors in our upcoming book Building Democratic Learning Environments: A Global Perspective, to be published by Palgrave this fall. Kassie Infante and Marianela...
Civic Engagement at Humanities IV Charter High School
Hannah Kehn is the founding principal of Humanities IV in the Rockaways (a part of Queens, NY). The school is now in its 6 year. She is the founding principal. This week her seniors will defend their Capstone Projects before a series of community judges–...
How do we know what students know: Who decides?
For decades, questions of assessment have polarized educators. Assessment comes from the root word assidere, or, to sit beside. Over the last forty years, assessment in schools has become synonymous with high stakes tests and the results often dictate whether a...