MI-LIFE

Yellowed Pages

"Those phone books have been lying in that same spot since January," commented my son, Tim, Sunday evening, as he unlocked the lobby door leading into his Cambridge, MA apartment building, a three-story New England-style brick edifice of indeterminate age housing graduate students who attend nearby Harvard. "Nobody here uses phone books," he added. I asked him to take a photo of the bereft stack of unwanted directories as a silent testimony to their rite of passage into "history."

Tim is a member of the Net Generation, which Don Tapscott described in his book, Growing Up Digital, and so are the other young apartment dwellers on Chauncey Street. N-Genners were the first to grow up immersed in a digital and Internet-driven world, and my guess is, phone books are about as outmoded to them as inkwells are to me! Makes you wonder what other resources which we so commonly rely on are considered passe by our students!

Come to think of it, when's the last time you saw someone talking on a pay phone?

--Jane Perzyk

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Instructional Coherence, Culture and Capacity

Each piece of a jigsaw puzzle has a small part of a picture on it and when the puzzle pieces are fit together they produce a complete picture.  The jigsaw puzzle is a metaphor for the three courses of the Instructional Leadership Unit--Coherence, Culture and Capacity--and their impact on the "big picture," student achievement. No one piece is more important than the other; without all three pieces in place, student achievement can be compromised.

In what ways are these three pieces interdependent?  What happens if one piece of the puzzle doesn't fit with the others?  What are the corner pieces that need to be in place to ensure that the puzzle fits?  Comment on the interdependence of instructional coherence, school culture, and building capacity.

Extreme Makeover - School Edition

The original Extreme Makeover was a television program from ABC in which individuals volunteer to receive an extensive makeover in Hollywood involving plastic surgery, exercise, new hairdos and wardrobes. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition began broadcasting in 2004 as a regular TV series in which a family's house, including all rooms, exterior and landscaping, is made over by a team of builders and designers in seven days while the family goes off on vacation.

The idea behind EM: Home Edition is to put together a very run-down house, a deserving family, a team leader and several opinionated designers to build a new house, all in a race against time. The end result is that the lives of the lucky families are forever changed.

I am advocating for a spin-off of this series titled Extreme Makeover: School Edition where the makeover doesn't just change faces or facilities, it pushes the limits of what's possible in transforming education and the lives of the lucky students are forever changed.

We have all the necessary "ingredients" to validate the need for Extreme Makeover: School Edition -- outdated systems and deserving kids. We also have a ton of experienced (and, yes, opinionated) educators. And we certainly are in a race against time. Graduation rates are falling, we are losing our edge internationally, and evidence suggests that schools are a long way from leveraging technology's potential.

Our current system of education is not meeting the needs of our students. Statistics show that students dropping out of school don't do so because they are failing; they do so because they are disengaged, disinterested, and see their time spent in school as irrelevant.

We are in a state of urgency to provide 21st century solutions so our children can successfully compete in a new global economy. Here’s my challenge: If you could contribute to the new series, Extreme Makeover: School Edition, what would you recommend for the next-generation school and why?

--Marion Ginopolis

Cross-posted on LeaderTalk

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