The ‘Innovation’ is Doing What’s Right

Making High School Great Before it’s Too Late

An Address to the Harvard Graduate School of Education Learning Design, Innovation & Technology Cohort on November 13th, 2023

Back in my classroom, there’s this pennant and a photograph taken of the view out of my old window at Currier House, my dorm at Harvard.

What an absolute honor! An intimidating honor, honestly. I’ve done a lot of public speeches lately but I’ve been nervous about this one–mostly because I want to make it count.

When I was a student at Harvard, as an undergraduate, I felt an unbearable responsibility to do something super-heroic in the world, but also make enough money to support my family–and I thought that is an important place to start this talk.

I’m actually going to start by talking about my dad because he is a huge inspiration for me. Both my mom and dad live with my wife and me and our two teenage sons in Osterville, Massachusetts. My father, a veteran of the US Air Force, is in a wheelchair now, but my early memories of him are that he would walk everywhere with us and play with us all the time. He is and always will be a comedian, but when I was a child, he was a physical comedian, falling all lanky arms and legs wild in comedy. All of that comedy is more subdued now, and contained. He continues to be one of the smartest people I know, mostly for…