School Reform

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Not Living Up To Potential

OMG!! Doug Johnson  has done it again. I might just have to put this into my email signature

“Maybe it’s time for somebody who had ‘not working to his potential’ written on her report card running education.”

Those are the kids that I love the best.  And often they are the ones that come up with the most innovative ideas.  They are living inside their very creative brains, and see no real reason to come out and play the boring school game we have set up for the masses.

Kids should have opportunities  to pursue their interests.  Who knows — they might even discover that Shakespeare was quite the “wild and crazy guy”! 😉

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A happiness formula? Have To or Get To.

In Have To or Get To,  Doug Johnson challenges us to create a “short list” of what makes us happy in our jobs.  I think he and Seth Godin are definitely onto something.

The higher the percentage of things you “get to do” as opposed to “have to do,” the greater the likelihood of happiness and success.

“If you won the lottery tomorrow and never HAD to work again, what things do you do at work that you would continue to do?”

Here’s my list:

  • I’d still want to talk about books with teenagers.  Don’t know exactly how to do that if I didn’t work in a school anymore.  Hanging out on MySpace makes we worry that someone from Dateline might pop out at me with a video camera.  Still – maybe public libraries would be open to book discussion groups with guest adult facilitators.
  • I’d still want to work with new books – I’d miss that wonderful smell.  Maybe I could find an understanding librarian somewhere who would call me when there were boxes of new books to open.
  • I’d still study library trends.
  • I’d still want to work on a library related website.
  • I’d still blog about libraries.
  • I’d still want to do workshops that would help busy school librarians make new technologies work for their students and teachers.

Doug goes on to ask:

How do we encourage those poor people who seem to live an entire work-life of “have to’s” to find a more fitting position?

I’m afraid I have no answers for that right at the moment.

Instead I’d like to ask a related question…. How can we redesign school so kids can “get to” do stuff they like at least part of the day – and not just lunch or recess.?

If we could figure out a way to answer that question – maybe we’d be more help to our students who don’t fit easily into the school mold.

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The times they are a changin’ – Sink or Swim?


“You’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, For the times they are a changin'” by Joyce Valenza


Although this blog post is directed to school librarians – there is a lot that can be applied to the classroom. And definitely a lot for our “flat world” /school reform committee to consider. Pay close attention to the sections on “Options for student projects, learning”; “What we know about how learners learn”; and “Typical assessment”.


We are preparing kids for a different world of work. Most workplaces today would not be recognizable by time-travelers from the late 19th-early 20th centuries. And yet – with the exception of the computer on the teacher’s desk and the computer labs down the hall – the classrooms of today are similar enough to the classrooms of yore to allow a time-travelling teacher to appear in a classroom one moment, and start teaching the next.


Case in point…. You probably will not be able to read this post in school. For some inane reason, the school filter blocks anything from Edublogs. It is a site run for educators and only educators, allowing them total control of the content. It has no ads for porn, online diplomas, nor does it promise to enlarge any body parts. And yet – the filter blocks it. Anyway – rant over. It is worth reading this post at home if you can’t get there from school.



tags: school libraries, flat world, school reform