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"We had a delightful visit to The School of the Future in New York City the other day. Lots of engaged kids, a great blend of instruction and constructivist work, and an obvious intellectual culture. And as the picture illustrates, everywhere we went we also saw helpful visual reminders of the big ideas and essential questions framing the work we were watching: School of the Future staff have long been users of UbD tools and ideas. But far too often over the years I have seen plenty of good stuff posted like this - but no deep embedding of the Essential Question (EQ) into the unit design and lessons that make it up. Merely posting the EQs and occasionally reminding kids of it is pointless: the aim is to use the question to frame specific activities, to provide perspective and focus, to prioritize the course, and to signal to students that, eventually, THEY must - on their own - pose this and other key questions. (Note: I am not criticizing what we saw and heard at SoF, rather using this teachable moment to raise an issue that needs addressing by almost all faculty using our work.)"

"At Big Picture Learning, we are always trying to see learning with "new eyes" in order to enrich our school design and to sharpen our practice."

"Education has to focus on learning how to learn - metacognition. School will still be important, but not to impart what happened during the Revolutionary War or to teach the quadratic formula. School, he said, should focus on teaching young people the intangibles, the things that make humans unique: relationships, flexibility, humanity, how to make discriminating decisions, resilience, innovation, adaptability, wisdom, ethics, curiosity, how to ask good questions, synthesizing and integrating information, and of course, creating. "