Erik Ellefsen has served in education for 21 years as a teacher, coach, consultant, Grievance Chairman for the American Federation of Teachers, Dean of Academics at Boston Trinity Academy, and as Principal at Chicago Christian High School. He currently serves as an Academic and College Counselor at Valley Christian High School (San Jose, CA), a Senior Fellow for CACE, a Senior Fellow for Cardus, podcaster for Digical Education, and as Vice President of CCEI. Erik regularly organizes Christian school leadership seminars and speaks on issues pertaining to academic program, student leadership, and organizational development. He can be reached via email at eellefsen@vcs.net.
This past year, I’ve had the opportunity to start the Digical Education* podcast where I’ve recorded conversations with twenty-eight educators, innovators, or leaders. This opportunity has allowed me to ask questions about policy and practice in education that will allow us to be more successful in our work. Through these conversations, I’ve developed the following …
What is Innovation? When you think of the word “innovation,” what images or ideas come to mind? This is not a rhetorical question! Invoking the word “innovation” in education is a bit like challenging someone to a Rorschach test. When you look at the ink blot formed by the letters of that word, what do …
“MeTEOR stands for Methods, Tools, and Environments plus Relationships. It’s a true representation of our mission and vision to transform the learning experience.” – Bill Latham Introduction: Those who are familiar with my blogs and podcasts know that I am interested in the innovations that are happening throughout education, and I’ve had the opportunity to …
Introduction: I recently started following Corey DeAngelis on Twitter (@DeAngelisCorey) because of a battle of ideas he got into with some of the traditional education policy wonks that I also like to follow. I was impressed by Corey’s wit, his defense of not only school choice policies, and his knowledge of the research in regards …
Conclusion as the Introduction: Traditionally, an essay concludes with findings and ruminations, but for this blog I’m using a different approach as I’d like to frontload my comments before you dig into the information below. When I started this blog, my assumptions of leadership, which I’ve written about in many blogs are: School success is …
Review of Prior Blogs: In April 2016, I started a blog series entitled Building an Engaged School because of the misery of educators in their work, lack of stability in school leadership, and the ensuing educator shortage (which is now upon us). The blogs I wrote were intended to help school boards, school leaders, and …
Introduction: As someone who espouses innovation in Education I’ve always been skeptical of the technocrats who push the cure-all that technology should be for Education. My qualms have always been twofold, first technology as the replacement for the relationship between teacher and student and second the lack of relationship between learners in a communal drive …
Introduction: In his recent Better Schools newsletter Chuck Evans shared data on the slight growth of the private school sector where he suggests that the economic downturn of 2008 may have been a good thing as it forced school leaders through a re-calibration of expectations and re-assessing of educational experiences. Therefore, I chose to reach …
Introduction: T.S. Eliot once wrote, The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. […] The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates. This quote and some recent interactions regarding creativity in schools led me to …
At the beginning of 2017, I took a look through the most popular CACE blogs from 2016 and developed four themes to keep an eye on in the year ahead in what appears to now be an annual attempt to take A Look Back and a Look Ahead. In 2017, the four most read blogs …
