One of the more harmful constructs in American culture is the belief that natural ability, rather than hard work, is the path to success.  And in the field of education, the attitude of “I’m not good at [blank]” can be quite harmful and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

24-year old Sam Priestly, a not-very-athletic English writer, was chosen by table tennis coach Ben Larcombe to demonstrate what hard work can accomplish.  Ben, convinced he could turn anyone into a top-tier player, coached Sam for one hour each day for a year.  The goal was to turn Sam into a top-100 table tennis player.   Continue reading →

When public schools get “innovative” on technology, we offer a high school course on Java, talk about 1:1 computing, promote a “day of code” or buy carts of Chrome books so that kids can interact with digital content for a couple of hours each day.

But that’s not what real innovation looks like.  How about a school where every class includes coding as part of the curriculum, even Art?  Where teachers are coached by Google engineers and IDEO designers?  Where students spend full trimesters in lab setting solving real-world problems?

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There are several important topics on the agenda for the school board work session this evening:

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I hope you enjoy the week off from school!

The blog is now six months old, and things have really picked up in the last 3 months …. more posts, more subscribers, more views, and more comments.  The blog has also gone global !?

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Tonight is the January UCFSD school board work session, held in the UCF District office on the south side of Unionville High School.  (All meeting materials are available here)

A few items on the Agenda are of special interest to me: Continue reading →

Thanks for reading in 2014!  Postings will resume in early January.

I started this blog three months ago.  So far I have published 27 posts, and about 90 visitors come to the blog each month.   This is my first experience blogging, and so far I really enjoy it.     I also face a few challenges …

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At Monday’s school board meeting, the Administration reported on UCF’s academic achievement results for 2013-2014.   Overall, the results are excellent, and you can view the report for yourself on the District’s home page, here (top right corner).  You can also watch the video of the presentation (90 minutes!)   Here is the administration’s intro to the report:

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