My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything … Read More
Reformed Critical Realism as A Dynamic Intellectual Paradigm for Christian Educators
It’s wonderful when you observe Christian educators make the giant leap forward in realizing that education is not neutral but is always driven by beliefs, as they come to understand the domineering influence, even in Christian schools, of the religion of secularism on pedagogical theory and practice. It then often turns to distress when you observe these same educators running … Read More
Praying for Love and Joy
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” … Read More
Our Deeper Learning Conversation Update
It was a joy-filled day in the western suburbs of Chicago as learning leaders gathered from all across North America for a substantive conversation around student learning! Our time together was bookended by an opening time of “singing” the parts of an orchestra as a celebration of community, reflecting on how our loving God sings over us, and closing with … Read More
Marketing Research for School Innovation
All change involves risk. Change that is truly innovative requires understanding and awareness. Research helps minimize the risk inherent in the decisions around innovation. For the school leader or educator, research provides the intelligence to make informed decisions based on real needs and parent expectations. Awareness of what parents (and students) want allows us to respond to those needs and … Read More
Who Is Ultimately Responsible for Learning?
How long will we continue to limit the learning of our children by our need to be in control of it? The new ELSE Education Act replacing NCLB, should have included an apology from the Congress for all of the mischief that the NCLB led to in spite of its good intentions. It was an inappropriate response to a misunderstood … Read More
A Typology of Paradigms for Improving School
After thirty years of significant criticism, perhaps it is time to go back to the past in search for future thinking about our schools. In 1846, Horace Mann’s 12th annual report to the Massachusetts Board of Education affirms, “… the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world to an education.” It required a national commitment to … Read More