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the most important skill a school can pass down to its students is the ability to motivate themselves

“The mission of a progressive school should be to prepare young people to cope with change, or better still, to make them look forward to change. In the 21st century, schools should see it as their job to develop strong personalities.”

“The more freedom you have, the more structure you need,” says Rasfeld.

But what are they betting on? AltSchool is a decidedly Bay Area experiment with an educational philosophy known as student-centered learning. The approach, which many schools have adopted, holds that kids should pursue their own interests, at their own pace. To that, however, AltSchool mixes in loads of technology to manage the chaos, and tops it all off with a staff of forward-thinking teachers set free to custom-teach to each student. The result, they fervently say, is a superior educational experience.

heir own weekly “playlists,” queues of individual and group activities tailored to the specific strengths and weaknesses of each kid.

This puts AltSchool at the intersection of two rapidly growing movements in education. Along one axis are the dozens of edtech startups building apps for schools; along the other are the dozens of progressive schools rallying around the increasingly popular concept of personalized education. The difference is: AltSchool is not just building apps or building schools. It’s doing both. In that way, AltSchools are more than just schools. They’re mini-research and development labs, where both teachers and engineers are diligently developing the formula for a 21st century education, all in hopes of applying that formula not only to other AltSchools, but to private, public, and charter schools across the country.

Unlike Semmelweis, whose theory about the need for cleanliness was rejected because it lacked the scientific support that Louis Pasteur’s germ theory would eventually provide, today we have ample research that suggests a mismatch between learners and schools—a mismatch between how people learn and how educators think they learn.

emotion and cognition are intertwined and inseparable

“Emotion is the rudder for thought,”

He and a team of teachers set out to try to reconfigure how this big high school could structurally put student relationships with teachers at the center, and value mastery of content above all else.

‘If we don’t match our minutes to our mission, [teachers are] not going to shift.’

biggest obstacles to instructional changes of the sort Smith and his team were trying to engineer was the school schedule itself.

Tinkering is being promoted on college campuses from MIT to Santa Clara University, as well as in high schools and elementary schools.

The blending of technology and craft in tools like 3-D printers and laser cutters has made it possible for ordinary people to make extraordinary things. And many ordinary people, living as they do, more and more in their heads and online, are yearning to do something with their hands.

Constructionist Approach

if the changes to education are all in the service of doing the same thing better, they may be missing the point.

the current context demands a radically different vision of learning.

examples of schools and districts that are asking themselves difficult questions to propel change. The successful ones are letting the answer to the question, “How do kids learn best?” drive everything they do in schools.

for many people, change — at least at first — isn’t about growth or capacity building or learning; it’s about loss.

One of the most difficult things about leading change in schools, according to Evans, is that there often aren’t clear structures to deal with conflict or disagreement.

difference between congeniality and collegiality

For elementary-aged children, research suggests that studying in class gets superior learning results, while extra schoolwork at home is just . . . extra work

By the time kids reach high school, homework provides academic benefit, but only in moderation.

Homework supporters say homework teaches responsibility, reinforces lessons taught in school, and creates a home-school link with parents. However, involved parents can see what’s coming home in a child’s backpack and initiate sharing about school work–they don’t need to monitor their child’s progress with assigned homework.

High Tech founding principal Larry Rosenstock realised if he wanted a more collaborative  project-based pedagogy across the school in line with their beliefs about learning, then he would have to make time for his teachers to work together.

He also knew that after school, at the end of a long day is never a good time, so he rescheduled his school day …and school year to provide his teachers with time to meet in teams for at least one hour for planning and staff development every day before school

recent launch of Learning Pathways, a competency-based approach to instruction that emphasizes self-paced, personalized learning.

interdisciplinary coursework and out-of-school learning experiences

To evolve their teaching practice, teachers need to carve out dedicated time to regularly observe and reflect—on themselves and their peers—say Anderson and other staff.