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"The folks at Twisted Sifter shared a really cool compilation of maps this week in their article "40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World." These cool maps gave me a chance to reflect on the world from different perspectives and I wondered how awesome some of these conversations would be in the classroom. The Twisted Sifter post was a great reminder, especially here at the beginning of the next school year, that educators have a responsibility to share other perspectives around the world and invite those perspectives into the classroom. In fact, it's one of the seven College and Career Readiness Capacities that are the umbrella over the entire ELA Standards document. This capacity asks that students come to understand other perspectives and cultures."

"Choices. Kids need access to choices in instruction so that when the moment arises they can make discerning decisions about what they will do. I just watched that happen. At a conference with adults where kids were invited."

"This is a crucial time for education. Every system in every country is in the process of figuring out how to reboot education to teach skills, application, and attitude in addition to recall and understanding. Helping students be able to grapple with increased problem solving and inquiry, be better critical and creative thinkers, show greater independence and engagement, and exhibit skills as presenters and collaborators is the challenge of the moment. That's why so many educators are using the project based learning (PBL) model. PBL has proven to be a means for setting up the kind of problem-solving challenges that engage students in deeper learning and critical inquiry. It requires students to research, collaborate, decide on the value of information and evidence, accept feedback, design solutions, and present findings in a public space-all factors that create the conditions under which high performance and mastery are most likely to emerge. The rise of PBL, in fact, is a success story for education."