Best. Video on Giving. Ever.

It is not good enough to merely get children to do the right thing -- we need them to do the right things for the right reasons.

Motivation matters.

And only through our relationships can we cultivate the kinds of communities that we would want to live in. Respect, honesty, trust and loyalty, the prerequisites for giving and caring, are only grown out of authentic engagement and real relationships.

Are we teaching this?

Responsibility and Authority

You have to take responsibility before you are given authority.

You should have authority if you are given responsibility.

Interview with Mona Knudslien & Joe Bower

Here is a 12 minute interview featuring my past principal Mona Knudslien and me. Together, we discuss how a school can innovate and improve while focusing on progressive education.

I enjoyed reminiscing with Mona how both of us experienced our time together, and I will be forever thankful for her supportive, and nurturing leadership.

Thank you to Brian Mason and Tim Lee for putting this interview together!

If we build it, they will come

There is a big difference between those who measure what they value and those who value what they measure.

When we pay attention to only what we can count, we miss a lot of what is truly important.

So how do we measure what is truly important?

Alan Stange, a teacher from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, left this comment on my blog:

Teachers always miss a lot. Students miss a lot. Everyone misses a lot. We don't have to catch everything. We simply have to create conditions in which learning can take place. If we build it, they will come.

I think Alan is saying that we need more trust. We need to trust teachers and students.

If we want to measure anything, we should place more emphasis on counting the inputs - the opportunities that kids have to engage in all kinds of learning - and if we can count the inputs, we don't need to be so obsessively empirical with the measuring of the outputs.

I use this quote a lot for a reason but all this can be summarized nicely by Albert Einstein:

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Thanks to Will Richardson for this post which is where I first saw this Calvin & Hobbes comic.