“A hybrid is a mixture of two different things, resulting in something that has a little bit of both.” https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hybrid There’s been a continuous stream of feedback following the publication of my previous blog post on resilience planning for schools, which confirms for me that this is indeed a hot topic for schools and kura here in NZ as we look ahead to the 2022 school year. It seems there are a number of schools already thinking about how they might create a hybrid approach in 2022, but questions about what to do and how to achieve this abound, so I thought … Continue reading More on resilience planning for schools

The past two years have been difficult for schools in NZ as in the rest of the world as they’ve faced periods of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As NZ moves from an elimination strategy to a containment strategy schools are now looking forward to a year ahead where they can be open for business, with students attending in-person classes again. While the prospect of ‘returning to normal’ appeals to our sense of ‘stable state’ thinking, the reality is that we’re likely to see the disruption continue into 2022 as COVID spreads into the community across all parts of … Continue reading Resilience Planning for Schools

The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems. John Dewey I’ve always enjoyed the outdoors, and at one point in my career I was an outdoor ed teacher. I relished the opportunity to take young people into the outdoors where they were often pushed beyond their comfort zone and had to learn to overcome challenges, relying on others to achieve what needed to be done together. The decisions you make and the actions you take in this environment matter. There are consequences (i.e. you’re either warm or cold during … Continue reading Designing Authentic Learning

A brief blog post today to share a video of a presentation by Valerie Hannon at [Re]Learn2020: The Learning Innovation Festival. (see below) It seems to be a timely reminder, a year since first aired, of the things we as … Continue reading So much reform… so little change

In his article titled A Fundamental Puzzle of School Reform, Larry Cuban poses the question “Why do schools and classrooms resist repeated and sizeable efforts to change them?” That article was published in 1988, but I’m certain is just as … Continue reading Reform resistance

This post has been prompted by a recent McKinsey article I read titled What matters most? Five priorities for CEOs in the next normal. It’s one of a series from McKinsey on how leaders can adapt to a different future. I need to acknowledge this from the outset as the source of the five priorities I’ve used below – my post here is simply a reflection on how these might apply specifically to the context of educational leadership, most particularly, school leaders. The driver for this reflection is the experience we’ve all had of the global COVID-19 pandemic. As the … Continue reading Five priorities for education leaders in the next normal