The future of education

Mar 9, 2021

Getting Smart’s new publication 20 Invention Opportunities in Learning and Development is hopeful and a puzzle. Hopeful for the next generation, hopeful for the world, and hopeful for education. A puzzle for how we assemble the loose parts of the disparate collection of ideas, innovations, products, organizations, schools, and ideas termed “education…

Nate McClennen

Feb 25, 2021

Rigor/relevance framework amended

I have been intrigued by the rigor/relevance framework created by the International Center for Leadership in Education and cited in Sheninger and Murray’s book Learning Transformed. Rightfully so, it has a focus on evaluation of curriculum, instruction, and assessment…

Nate McClennen

Jul 31, 2017

What we have learned and wonder about competency-based learning

After spending six months building a set of competencies and performance indicators for our Place Schools model, we are in a deep-dive on mastery. This is what we know about our model:

Nate McClennen

Dec 13, 2016

NextGen Teacher Development

Let’s imagine you could design teacher development from the ground up. What would it look like? Programs like the Graduate Program at High Tech High or the Graduate Program at Teton Science Schools were built out of existing programs that saw value in innovative teacher education…

Nate McClennen

Dec 9, 2016

Innovation in small schools

Individual classroom teachers, inspirational school leaders, philanthropic and government funding, and the duress of failure all spur innovation, but how do we make it expected and normalized in small schools with limited resources?

Start small, think…

Nate McClennen

Nov 3, 2016

Competency mastery in project based learning

Students are working on a project together that has an impact in the community and the project finishes (deadline passed, construction complete, etc.). What happens to the one student who was sick, missed school, etc. and was not able to demonstrate…

Nate McClennen

Oct 31, 2016

Education corridors

This morning an email about Vertical University came up. The ultimate goal “is to engage multiple stakeholders to create a botanical conservation and education corridor spanning from Koshi Tappu, one of South Asia’s largest aquatic bird sanctuaries, adjacent to the Indian border to Mt…

Was engagement ever high?

Creating high-quality schools in high-poverty areas

Is your school’s Graduate Profile collecting digital dust?

Rigor/relevance framework amended

What we have learned and wonder about competency-based learning

NextGen Teacher Development

Innovation in small schools

Competency mastery in project based learning

Education corridors