Tensions in Formal vs. Informal Education Solutions.

During the break-out sessions at the GNF Women’s Forum, I participated in “Leaders as entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs as leaders” and “Innovations & challenges in education” and was pleasantly surprised to hear how the conversations blended so seamlessly.  Entrepreneurs from around the globe raised questions about the role of formal education in preparing youth to lead.  “How can we teach our students differently?  How can they learn to harness the opportunities in their environment?  How can they learn to be entrepreneurs?  In Africa, we can’t create jobs for all of our people.  I wish that there was a way for the schools to give them the skills to create jobs for themselves.  How can we give skills to students to make them more self-sufficient?”One of our facilitators, Irina Anghel-Enescu (EF, Romania), is on the jury for Global Teacher Prize and asked us directly if we thought the entrepreneurial ecosystem would be improved if educators taught these skills explicitly.  All of the finalists for last year’s prize shared an entrepreneurial spirit—they created new models, founded schools, and expanded education access.  While they are all highly impactful teachers in their parts of the world, what set them apart was their entrepreneurial mindset and how they took the initiative to change outcomes for all of their students.

There is a growing debate about the role of formal education vs. informal education to prepare this generation for the future.  When our conversation took an overly critical turn of formal education, Pilvi Torsti (EF, Finland) of Helsinki International Schools reminded us that these are not competitions.  Me & My City is a Finnish example of how formal and informal education partner in the best interest of learning.  We have to invest in both levels for deep national or systemic change.  She shared that Finland’s decision to invest in education was made when it was a poor agrarian country.  Pilvi encouraged us to invest in our human capital now.  All sectors need to make conscious decisions to value formal education and integrate role models from other sectors into the sphere.Our panel during the “Innovation in education” session continued to explore this tension.  Bernardine Vester (EF, New Zealand) gave an overview of how the marketization and commodification of education has impacted New Zealand and asked what the growing privatization of education means for equity and inclusion.  Amr AlMadani (EF, Saudi Arabia) shared his start-up success for how deep, intentional partnership of informal education (robotics and STEM competitions) and formal education is reinvigorating student interest and parent support in his country.  Maria Guajardo (Kellogg Fellow, Japan) brought in cross-cultural perspectives on leadership and women’s empowerment. Common threads across their diverse experiences: formal education alone does not change social practices, expectations, or real-world outcomes.

“What’s missing is not the tools.  Everybody is watching, but nothing is changing.  Passion and love of the game is missing.” – Amr AlMadani

In Saudi Arabia, education has a high cultural value and high government investment (25% of budget towards formal education), yet those two high-level alignments have not inspired passion-filled teaching and learning.  Instead of blaming teachers, parents, or cultural practices, Amr decided to offer a solution to the passion question and inspire learning and positive parent participation.Maria inspired our group conversation with her One Good Question : As we become more globalized, how do we lead across differences?  How does leadership look the same or different?  For her, the question of intersection—where leadership development intersects with culture and tradition— is essential.   Education has to be the vanguard for leadership change.Like in every group of education thought leaders, our participants challenged each other to consider different lenses:

• On questions of feminization and devaluation of formal education: It’s the economy, stupid. How can we look at the curve of where education attainment and economics meet (personal earnings and GDP)?

• On questions of the role of women in formal leadership spaces: The perception of being a leader is different in various cultural contexts. You can be a leader outside of the home and inside of the home.

• On equality/inclusion: Can we explore this more? Urbanization and growth of the middle class are all supporting the privatization of education.  Does it have to be a negative view or is it an opportunity for more people to come to education?  Making the whole system public doesn’t seem realistic at this moment at all.

• On informal education: Are there growing demands within our countries where privates are stepping in to fill the gaps? Particularly where the state has failed minority/marginalized populations?  Are we seeing this growth and is it a long-term positive trend?

• In NZ we moved from social democratic state to one more focused on markets. I have not given up on public education, which is why I’m working with a nonprofit group to insure that t the best teachers end up in the schools with the highest poverty needs.  The rising social inequalities arise out of the growing tendency to commodify education and marketize it.  It’s no use trying to hold back the tide.  How do you use the process to ensure that those who have the least get the most potential?  Their potential is our future.  Most of the students in Auckland are no longer white and middle class.  They’re brown.  WE have to do something about it.

When Women Succeed, The World Succeeds: Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

Last night, we opened the Global Network Forum for Women, with a state on the world’s priorities from Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women - ‎UN Women.  We have seen Dr. Mlambo-Ngcuka pave the way, particularly in the UN, for women’s equality worldwide.What has improved in women’s status worldwide in the last 20 years :

• Girls education has improved, especially in countries with the lowest levels,

• Countries have created gender machinery- to promote gender equality,

• Lots of laws passed-- recognizing domestic violence as a crime, marital rape as a crime, women to have property rights, amended constitutions to reflect gender equality,

• Progress in maternal death & infant mortality. Not where we should be, but progress,

• Countries that targeted health services to women,

• Fight HIV & AIDS. Countries invested time, energy, research and hardwork. More people living with HIV AIDS and living a full life,

• Reduced poverty.

These efforts need to be celebrated. We have more women in visible positions of power and are at the center of the UN’s SDG agenda.  We cannot expect the world to succeed, if women are not succeeding.While Dr. Mlambo-Ngcuka prefers the glass half-full perspective, she was very clear that our governments are still marginalizing women’s development.  Governments only invest 10% of their funding towards gender equality (sewing machine syndrome) and continue to treat women’s issues like micro-enterprises instead of recognizing the major economic power and potential of over 50% of the population.  Violence against women has remained flat in the past 20 years and we’ve been in a complex transition from domestic violence to cyber crimes.We need to get decision makers to stop seeing women as the problem or charity case. We will not overcome inequality or poverty or sustainable peace if we do not improve the lives of women. There are only 20 women heads of state in the world. if we had more female leaders we would not be in this state. Women are part of creating the world we all want. We have to invest in women. When you leave women out, you compromise the rest of the nation.

"In every generation, there is a mission that we have to fulfill. We can either betray it or fulfill it. It is in our hands by 2030 to change the world significantly. I look forward to sprinting with you in this marathon for the next 15 years." - Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

One Good Question with Alex Hernandez: Personalized Learning and Design Thinking Matter for All Kids.

Alex Hernandez

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.”  These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question (outlined in About) and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

"In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

I see two big trends that guide how I think about investing philanthropy.First, we are in generational change towards school choice. No matter your politics, every family wants a say in where their children go to school. Even those who fight against other families’ right to choose schools, they consistently exercise ‘choice’ for their own children. The good news is Americans are making choices in more and more aspects of their lives and the pressure to give families a say in what happens to their children will keep growing. If we truly believe in a free public education, children should not be automatically assigned to schools based on how much rent or mortgage their parents can afford. That’s not free or equitable. That’s a price tag.Second, our society is in a relentless march towards more personalization and this will eventually impact how we organize our schools. I often think of one of our five-year-old neighbors who was an expert in trains but ‘struggled’ in school. He loved trains. He read everything he could he could get his hands on about them and had incredible content knowledge. Instead of listing all the ways he didn’t ‘fit into’ school, how could we create a school that ‘fit around’ him. Our families just need permission to hope for something better for their children. Silicon Valley’s biggest innovations are not technology solutions, they are the new business models facilitated by technology. So what will new school models look like going forward?The shift towards choice and personalization will happen over a generation but there is no turning back at this point.

“In your ThinkSchools blog, you highlight the benefits of personalized learning and design thinking as solutions to one-size-fits-all public education models. What's the relationship between the two and how can classrooms, schools, or systems take a first step to embrace that paradigm?”

My interest in personalized learning kind of happened all at once. At work, I have the privilege of visiting a number of high-performing charter, district and private schools. These schools are doing incredible work, yet, after great gains, their students seemed to be hitting these stubborn ‘ceilings’ around reading comprehension, writing, college persistence, etc.At the same time, my twins boys began kindergarten at their local neighborhood school. I observed a four-to-five year grade level spread in academic ability among the five-year-olds in their classes. Our boys attended a ‘good’ school and the teachers did many of the things I’d want to see as an educator and a parent. But it became painfully obvious that many children were not getting what they needed academically which also impacted them emotionally. One kindergartner wrote a letter to the teacher begging her to teach her some new math content while another five-year-old arrived at the conclusion that she was no good at math because everything seemed over her head.I began to wonder if squeezing the proverbial lemon harder would get us the results we wanted or if we needed some radical new approaches.I believe in personalized learning because I think we can do better than organizing school into boxes with thirty children and a teacher for thirty hours a week. I see school as more blank canvas than foregone conclusion.Design thinking is simply an approach for educators to re-think school based on deep understanding of what students and families want/need. I’m on the board of 4pt0 Schools which uses design thinking to help education entrepreneurs launch Tiny Schools. With Tiny Schools, we are rapidly testing new school concepts with students and families participating at the beginning of the design process.Now using student input may sound obvious, but, if you’ve ever created a high school schedule, you know that the deep human needs of students are at the end of a very long list of other priorities.Or take textbook adoption as an example. Committees of adults spend hours poring over textbooks even though there is little to no research showing that textbooks are effective learning tools. Plus, textbooks are insanely expensive. If the text selection process were based on how how kids actually interacted and learned from textbooks, I suspect we’d see some very different decisions being made.It’s counterintuitive, but, once you decide what your innovation is, have actual kids inform the design of your innovation. I was just at Summit Schools with Diane Tavenner, who explained that their personalized learning platform relies heavily on student input. At every turn, Summit solicits feedback from students as the ultimate end user. They built the student-facing dashboard first and then they built the teacher interface. When in doubt, you don’t seek expert judgement, you ask the kid.

Alex's One Good Question: I asked this question earlier on Twitter. I’ve been thinking a lot about how our philosophy of education as parents is different/similar to our approach as educators. The places where those two perspectives are in tension are the most interesting areas for me to explore. As a parent, I value personalization, socio-emotional development and self-directed learning a lot more than I did as an educator. What do those seemingly disparate perspectives mean about high quality education for all children?

Alex Hernandez is a Partner at the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit that supports the growth of the nation’s best public charter schools. In that role, he leads CSGF’s Next-Generation Schools practice focused on personalized learning and school model innovation. He is a former Area Superintendent at Aspire Public Schools and joined CSGF in 2010. He taught high school math in South Los Angeles and later served as a Broad Fellow at Portland Public Schools. Before that, Alex worked for several years with JP Morgan and Disney’s venture capital arm, Steamboat Ventures. He is a graduate of Claremont McKenna and has an MBA and Masters of Education from Stanford University. He is also a columnist for EdSurge.

Developing Student Agency Improves Equity and Access.

In the summer of 2006, I moved my family from Brooklyn, New York, to St. Louis, Missouri, and began searching for the right learning community for my children and myself. On the heels of teaching in Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP), I found that most urban schools were expecting minority students from low socio-economic communities to consume knowledge and not inform it. I started my own inquiry into school design. What if we offered the most engaging, academically rigorous education to an intentionally diverse community and made it free for all students? What if all children had access to the same education as children of world leaders? If they all learned to be bilingual and see the world through different eyes? If they saw themselves as change agents in their communities now instead of waiting for others or older versions of themselves to take action?When I founded St. Louis Language Immersion Schools (SLLIS), our vision was to create a total immersion, IB continuum school network of public schools. Our first three elementary schools, The Chinese School, The French School, and The Spanish School are authorized for the Primary Years Programme (PYP), and the secondary campus, The International School has begun their candidacy for MYP. All schools represent an intentional commitment to diversity: Title I, ethnic diversity that mirrors or exceeds that of our region, language and country of origin diversity, and family composition diversity.

We expect our school community to be one where students ask, “Why are we studying this? What does it have to do with my life? I’m seven, what can I do about it?”

And our teachers respond with relevant text-life connections and extend opportunities for age-appropriate action. Our grade two students are given their first action challenge as part of their unit on rights and privileges. Teachers ask what rights the students want to advocate for. Students identify rights, who they would need to lobby (siblings? classmates? teacher? parents? administrators?), and then embark on a campaign for change. When our second and third grade cohorts make sophisticated arguments for changing the uniform policy, adding multi-stream recycling, or using lockers, our adult community encourages them and engages in real-time conversations for change.

Look where SLLIS’s staff come from!

One of our first fifth grade exhibitions opened with a student from The Spanish School asking about fear. She began with a pie chart that revealed the most common fears: clowns, barking dogs, abandoned houses, and scary movies. Number one fear? Abandoned houses. Then she adeptly shifted to a map of GIS data depicting the number of abandoned houses in our city and shared her first conclusion: this means that people are afraid to visit my neighborhood, and residents, may be afraid to come home. She then linked the census track with the highest concentration of blighted property and correlated it to personal crime that revealed higher rates of crime in these neighborhoods as well. She continued with examples of the same phenomenon in other urban areas across the country.  What can we do about it? Invest in neighborhoods with services—fill the vacant properties with schools, community centers, art projects, give people something to come home to, all in the name of reducing their fears about urban communities.

Yes! This was exactly the type of reflection and attention that will prepare our urban student population for greater access and attainment of post-secondary studies and career paths.

When we talk about the success of IB World Schools in improving excellence and equity for a diverse population, let’s remember that this goes beyond performance metrics. What are the ways in our schools and classrooms where low-income and/or minority students are expected to lead purposefully? Where they are confidently challenging the text, their peers, their teachers, themselves? Where they are marrying analysis and action? Let’s share the stories of students who are changing their world because of inquiry-based learning. The agency and advocacy that students develop in PYP schools is an essential step in bridging the equity gap.

One Good Question with Marcelo Knobel: General Studies Reform for Brazil's Universities.

Prof. Marcelo Knobel

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.”  These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Sometimes there is an investment but the priorities are completely wrong.  In Brazil we have significant investments--- the government pays for K-12 and university education for all students -- , but the priorities are not leading us to strong education outcomes. Our system and needs are really complex, but there are two existing investments that could be better leveraged for change : value of the teacher as professional and scalability of non-governmental education organizations.  Our teachers are underpaid and not well-prepared for the work, and society provides no incentive to be a professor, or positive value of the profession.  To change that, for the next generation, it’s necessary to have a really smart and fast plan to change this situation. This is where scalability of non-governmental organizations matters.  There are philanthropic and social investment efforts here, but they aren’t as well developed as in the US.  It’s difficult to keep an ONG runnning.  There are a few ONGs run by the civil society or wealthy families, but their impact is very small in comparison to the need.  Fundaçao Lemann is making some interesting programs, but the number of people that these programs can impact is small.  Brazil should have 1,000 organizations like this, but we maybe have only 10. Scaling the impact of our ONGs would reach a much broader population than we can do currently.

ProFIS image

“In your upcoming book, you posit that Brazilian higher education would benefit from offering general Liberal Arts Colleges among existing post-secondary institutions. What void will Liberal Arts Colleges fill and how will they transform access and success for the greater population?”

My main concern is to advocate for the cause of General Education in university.  In Brazil 43% of the population completes high school, but only 12% has a post-secondary degree[1], so we’re already dealing with an elite population.  The benefits for these elite is very clear—better salaries, better jobs.  In our university system, we currently have no general education or liberal arts course requirements.  When a student tests to enter university, they are only applying to a specific career strand : medicine, education, chemistry, accounting, etc.  It may seem like a minor detail but it’s not.  Some careers are extremely difficult to access. At UNICAMP for example, less than 1% of applicants are accepted into the medical program.  If you are accepted and after one month you don’t like this course of study, you have to drop-out of university and start all over for the next year. A general studies or liberal arts base would allow students to experiment and learn more about specific industries before making a commitment to one of them.In the real world when companies hire engineers, they provide a 6 months training period for the specific content in that position.  The ideal candidates are excellent learners and problem-solvers first, then content experts.  Ususally companies prefer to hire people who can think outside of the box and have certain soft skills that we don’t learn here in Brazil at all. General education has been in place in the US for years. In the global market, companies and countries like China, Singapore, and Hong Kong are in search of more well-rounded professionals who can deal with problems and learn how to solve them across multiple disciplines.  If you’re learning only content in university, within 10 years your content may be outdated.ProFIS created at UNICAMP is a hybrid of my general education vision. This is a pilot that I would like to see the entire university adopt.  We recruit the best students from the local public high school, who wouldn’t normally attend university. On average 80% of students are living in poverty and 90% are first generation in the university.  We’re automatically increasing social inclusion by making a space for these students in university.Even when these students are the best in their schools, they still have strong gaps in their basic education.  ProFIS anticipates and supports academic and socio-economic gaps with an army of staff and resources: the best professors in university volunteer to teach in ProFIS, Teaching Assistants provide extra tutoring, Social Workers help with problems at home—if students don’t show up for one week, we call the home to get them back, and we pay students a minimum wage to prevent them from dropping out because they need to earn money for their family.  Fifty percent of our students continue on to traditional university studies.The problem is that ProFIS is only a tiny drop in the bucket.  We can only admit 120 students per class (about 10% of applicants) but we have thousands who have this need.  If this program could be replicated in 100 universities, it could start making a difference.  We need advocacy with the university system, the legislature, and large employers.  If employers are clamoring for this particular employee profile with a well-rounded education, then our country will make changes.  Politicians need to advocate the change.  Universities need to replicate.  We also need to educate the general population to know that this can exist so that they can demand it.  My upcoming book will show how this is possible and trending all over the world.  Brazil is out of alignment with this trend and we should make a difference to catch up.Read more here about the ProFIS model and impact.

Marcelo's One Good Question: This is hard. My question.  Of course I have children, is it possible for them to have a better future ?  I am seeing here in Brazil we face immediate threats to global warming.  Strong period of economic depression.  Huge problem in education. Do they have a good future ? Thinking more globally, will they even have any place to go ?[1] from BRAZIL – Country Note – Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators 

Marcelo Knobel is Director of the Brazilian National Nanotechnology Laboratory (LNNano), of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (University of Campinas, UNICAMP). From 2002 to 2006 he coordinated de Núcleo de Desenvolvimento da Criatividade (Creativity Development Center, NUDECRI), of UNICAMP and from 2006 to 2008 he was the Executive Director of the Science Museum, also at UNICAMP. He was the Vice-President for Undergraduate Programs from 2009 to 2013.  He was a 2007 Eisenhower Fellow to the US taking a deeper look at scientific culture and the popularization of science via science museums.

One Good Question with Karen Beeman: How Biliteracy Supports Social Justice for All.

Karen Beeman

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.”  These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“Voy a una party con mi broder."

When Karen Beeman gave this example of a typical statement from a bilingual student, the room of language immersion educators nodded and smiled in agreement.  We had all heard our students mix languages before.  But Beeman’s point was not about the typical interlanguage that occurs during language acquisition.  Her example was of children whose first language is bilingual.  Kids who inherit this natural mix from their bilingual homes and communities and learn later, usually in school, to separate the two languages.In her practice at the Center for Teaching for Biliteracy, Beeman contends that we need to acknowledge that while bilingualism is a starting point for many of our students, it is not the anticipated outcome.  She prides herself in making education research accessible for K-12 teachers and this workshop exemplified that belief. 

Just a few minutes into her talk, Karen had the audience building linguistic bridges between Portugese and English to understand how the practice would support student constructed learning.  To the untrained eye, bridges look like translations and Beeman knew that, once teachers created their own bridges, they would see the value in leading their students through this construction.Karen has dedicated her career to elevating and protecting the status of minority language in a majority language education system, specifically Spanish in the US.  When I sat down with her to talk about her One Good Question, I assumed that her focus would be on investing in language minority education.  What I learned, however, was far more about her vision for all youth in our country.  Karen grew up the child of Americans in Mexico and when she moved to the States for university, she had the unique perspective of appearing American and having strong linguistic and cultural identity in Mexico and Mexican Spanish.  Karen quickly became an education advocate for bilingualism and champion for elevating the status of Spanish in urban communities with significant Hispanic populations.Karen’s inquiry starts from that place of language specific, culture-specific instructional practice and quickly progresses to questions of social justice and equity: How are we preparing minority students to see themselves in the culture of power ?  For the 71% of ELL youth who speak Spanish[1], access to bilingual academic communities that support literacy in both languages, means that they get to comfortably exist in majority culture.

"When students feel visible and what is going on in school matches who they are, we reach their potential."  - Karen Beeman 

For bilingual and heritage students, this visibility begins with equal access to and respect for their home languages.  Karen is agnostic about the type of academic model schools choose.  Traditional bilingual, dual language, and two-way immersion programs are all built around English language expectations. What makes the biggest difference?   Looking beyond the monolingual perspective and the English dominant perspective.  "We cannot use English as our paradigm for what we do in the other language,"  Karen insists.With respect to the pedagogy and materials in current Spanish-language programs, Beeman contends that  we’re creating our own problem.  Most texts in bilingual classrooms (fiction, non-fiction, and academic) are translations into the non-English language.  This means that they are translating English grammar and syntax progressions into a language with completely different rules.  Bilingual students may miss out on natural, age-appropriate expressions in Spanish and often misunderstand the cultural context of a translated story.  Beeman traveled to Mexico for years and brought back authentic children’s literature in Spanish that also didn’t work for her bilingual American students.  In written texts the academic grammar and syntax is at a higher register than oral language.  Bilingual students whose Spanish-dominant parents may not be literate in Spanish, then have little understanding of the « authentic » text.What Beeman experienced was that neither monolingual contexts work for bilingual students.  If we are to capture bilingual students’ full potential, we need a third way. Enter language bridges : a constructivist approach that showcases the background knowledge and expertise of the students, and allows them to access the curriculum and complex ideas in the majority language. Beeman then takes this perspective outside of the classroom : we need to stop imposing monolingual perspectives on education policy, pedagogy and educator training. When we recognize that

1. We have a language of power (academic register of English) and a culture of power (middle-class, European-influenced discourse) that influence all of our instruction ; and

2. Our country is becoming increasingly diverse linguistically, ethnically, and socially ;

We quickly understand that the need for all types of language and culture bridges in our instructional practice encompasses the majority of the country.  Whether we’re addressing socio-economic status, home language, or student identity, most of our students walk into their classrooms as the « other » in the curriculum.  Looking at the trends for increasingly diverse population in the US, we have to ask ourselves what happens when our education system doesn’t embed respect for minority cultures.

Karen’s One Good Question : « How can a student’s experience build on his/her fount of knowledge, both linguistic and cultural ? »[1] Ruiz Soto, Ariel G., Sarah Hooker; and Jeanne Bataloca. 2015 Top Languages Spoken by English Language Learners Nationally and by State.  Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institue.

Karen Beeman provides national professional development for teachers and administrators in bilaterally and bilingual education. Karen is co-author, along with Cheryl Urow, of Teaching for Biliteracy: Strengthening Bridges Between Languages."

One Good Question with Ellen Moir: What's Trust Got to Do With It?

Ellen Moir, New Teacher Center

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.”  These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

"In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”  

First, let us acknowledge the world that we thought our kids would inherit.  We are finally getting out of the past, in which we designed our schools to train kids to grow up and work in factories. We are finally investing in preparing kids for the future (or, at least as far as we can envision it)—a future society and economy that requires meaningful connection, trusting relationships, and creativity to solve the increasingly complex problems we’ll face.In some ways, we’re trying to hold tight to the reins of defining what the next generation’s role will be. We’re trying to define it by applying our current frameworks, e.g., what our current jobs, economy, relationships, and geopolitical context look like. In reality, though, we can’t really define it for this generation. They’ll define it themselves. They’re already starting to do that by pushing our (adults’) thinking on how people learn, how people form meaningful connections with each other, and what innovation and social change looks like. Teachers are shifting their practice to meet the needs of this generation. What if we shifted what schools looked like to better meet those needs, too?We’re preparing kids to grapple with complex problems by investing in teachers who can build their critical thinking and empathy skills.  Investing in those teachers mean personalized, 1:1, on-the-job support, etc.  Essentially, we're teaching teachers now how to engage in trusting relationships and creative problem solving in their practice, so that they can authentically bring those experiences to life in the classroom.

“In your recent talk at the US Education Learning Forum, you spoke passionately about trust at the center of effective teacher feedback and that the complexity in improving teaching is not the "what" but more of the "why" and "how."  How do you link trust with the “why” and “how” for more effective teaching?”

Trust is an essential component of the how. Building trusting relationships between new teachers and their mentors (or helping new principals build trusting relationships with their teachers) is critical in order for any of our other work to happen.We build trust by starting from a place of respect, assuming positive presuppositions, and remembering that we all share a common goal: to ensure that our students receive the best education possible.  When we mentor new teachers, one of the first things we work with them on is creating a safe and positive learning environment. For teachers, building trust with their students is critical in creating a learning environment in which students respect one another and are willing to take risks in order to learn and grow.Ultimately, our work is not about telling new teachers what to teach. It’s about coaching each new teacher to find their best way to reach all students. And, teacher development needs to be contextualized and tied to student learning outcomes. In a trusting community of practice we can provide rich feedback that supports helping each teacher move up the learning line.

Ellen’s One Good Question:  If the most critical student competencies for the future are about addressing complex problems with diverse populations, how can we better prepare teachers to do the same?

Ellen Moir is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the New Teacher Center (NTC), a national organization dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers and school leaders. She is recognized as a passionate advocate for our nation’s newest teachers and for the students they teach.

Le but de L'enseignement.

“Un enseignement qui n’enseigne pas à se poser des questions est mauvais.” - Paul Valéry

Let The Students Ask Questions.

“One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.” - A. P. K. Abdul Kalam

Is Academic Language Enough? Social Capital and Minority Languages.

When I first listened to Suzanne Talhouk's Tedx Talk "Don't Kill Your Language," I selected the Brazilian Portugese subtitles.  I have been learning Portuguese for the past three months and it made sense to practice my reading comprehension.  But I mostly chose Portuguese because, of the 28 subtitles possible, my heritage language, French, wasn't an option.  What an ironic way to begin a reflection on the importance of language protectionism!As a language advocate, I'm accustomed to language protectionism arguments, but what I appreciate most about Talhouk's work, is that she isn't preaching to the choir at an academic conference.  She originally gave this talk at TEDxBeirut and is admonishing her peers for elevating the status of English and French over Arabic.  Talhouk gives familiar positions about native language fluency supporting mastery of additional languages (Cummins, 1994), and the emotional link to language and memory (Schroeder & Marian, 2012).  These are widespread logical reasons that we should maintain our heritage languages.  Talhouk herself is a poet and also invokes Khalil Gibran's work and complexity of thought in their language.  Essentially her argument is that Lebanese people are deciding that their language is less professionally and artistically valuable than English and French. She urges her peers to publish research, create art, and engage deeply in their language.  Don't take my word for it, let her tell you about it directly.[ted id=1803]My biggest idol in language revitalization work is New Zealand's Maori advocacy community.  So much of the success of New Zealand's Maori renaissance is due to the language immersion and korero maori community.  It's possible to study from preK through university and receive all of your instruction in te reo maori.  New Zealand has strong national policy to protect te reo maori and support the work of language advocates.  Picture the language revitalization platform as a three-legged table: policy and education institutions are significant.  In my native Louisiana, we have similarly strong policy and education movements for French heritage language.  New Zealand however, has made greater advances in their third prong: social capital of the minority language.In my parents' generation, we have artists and language activists like Zachary Richard and David Chéramie, who committed to writing in French before, and in great anticipation that, we would eventually be able to read their work in our language.  They were sowing the seeds for social capital and heritage language legacy.  Where New Zealand has created more momentum, is in inspiring my generation of artists to be equally committed to language activism.  Maori Television (especially their Te Reo channel) and Huia Publishing are institutional examples of promoting social capital of the minority language.   They produce a wide range of programs, texts and develop maori-speaking artists to reach broader audiences in te reo.  Rob Ruha, is a contemporary singer-songwriter, who writes traditional waitas, choreographs kapa haka and writes pop songs in te reo.  He believes strongly that he is writing in te reo to reflect our generation's experiences and inspire our children's generation to enjoy and value te reo.My children, now 10 and 7, are used to the fact that, whenever given the choice of language, we choose French.  From the check-out at Home Depot and the ATM, to our movie audio tracks, musicians and greeting cards, we're intentional about making memories in our language.  Speaking, and certainly raising my children in a minority language in the US, requires an effort on my part.   The irony is not lost on me though, that I'm writing this blog in English and not French.  Duly noted.If you are a champion for your minority language, ask yourself, who are the artists, poets, singers, actors, who are carrying the social status of your language for the next generations?  Then ask what legacy are you leaving the next generation now via social media platforms that will keep your language relevant?  Talhouk cautions Arabic-speakers in their use of social media.  She gives the example of transliterating an Arabic word in a tweet. "Whatever you do, don't write Arabic in Roman characters! That's a disaster!  It's not a language."  Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi are just a handful of languages that succumbed to Roman script long before the influence of social media.  On that point, she may be fighting a losing battle.I would love to follow Suzanne on Twitter, but, as you can imagine, her feed is entirely in Arabic.

6,909 Languages in The World. Wait- 6,908.

“Every two weeks, a language dies. The world is diminished when it loses its human sayings, just as when it loses its diversity of plants and beats.” - Eduardo Galeano

Throwback Thursday: Teaching Kids Across Language Barriers.

Kindergraten team building

From time to time, I feature an individual who has made a remarkable difference in the lives of our children. These education change agents care about one thing above everything else: the education of our children."When I had my vision for a school, I realized that as a parent, I am powerful. As a teacher, I am an expert. Armed with that realization, I knew I could start my own school." So says Rhonda Broussard, founder and president of the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools in St. Louis. Founded in 2009, Rhonda's unique school offers elementary school students a total language immersion experience starting in kindergarten. When her students enter their classroom, they are greeted by a teacher and classroom assistant, both fluent in the language for that school. From day one, these kids become engulfed on not just the spoken language, but the culture of the language -- which is exactly the experience Rhonda was hoping to provide.The seeds for Rhonda's school were sown from her own Louisiana creole roots. Rhonda's grandmother spoke French and always talked to Rhonda about the need to understand the culture of the French language. As a young girl, Rhonda resisted her grandmother's urgings and at 14, just as Rhonda was beginning to embrace them, her grandmother suddenly died. Rhonda still longingly speaks about how she always wanted the experience of the living community with her mother in the French world.Always drawn to education, Rhonda studied at the Washington University at St. Louis and earned a graduate degree in French Studies at New York University. Thereafter she reached her goal of becoming a teacher specializing in language immersion. She taught in New York, Connecticut, Los Angeles, Louisiana and Missouri. It was in New York where she became more and more connected with the idea of language immersion for her students. By then, Rhonda had a child of her own and longed to give her the cultural language learning experience that she never had with her own grandmother. When a friend from graduate school exposed Rhonda to a language immersion program in New York, Rhonda began to research those schools. Soon, Rhonda relocated to St. Louis and after many inquiries, was surprised to learn that there were no language immersion programs in St. Louis. When it became clear that she could not follow her passion inside the traditional school system, Rhonda explored using the state's charter school law to create her innovative school.At present, Rhonda offers Spanish, French and Chinese to her young students. She expects to grow those language offerings to include Japanese, German, Russian, Arabic and Farsi. While her school currently is K-4, she will add a new grade each year until she reaches her goal of K-12. Rhonda's school is incredibly diverse, in every sense of the word. Fifty-six percent of the students are on free or reduced lunch and the racial demographic is 54 percent African American, 29 percent white and 9 percent Hispanic. Walking through the halls of Rhonda's school is an amazing experience. In one classroom, I was greeted by a blonde-haired 5 year-old kindergarten student who described for me in French what the class was doing for the day. Since I had no idea what she was saying, she repeated her words in English. Thereafter, a young African American girl spoke to me in Spanish about an experiment her class was working on as I walked into the classroom. When shefinished, she noticed the dumbfounded look on my face. Whereupon, her teacher gently reminded the girl, "Now, please say it again in English for our guest." We then walked into the Chinese language classroom. Well, you get the idea.Throughout the tour, the love between students and teachers was palpable. When I mentioned this to Rhonda after I noticed the way she calmly made a couple of rambunctious boys walk quietly to their class, she said"We shower our children with care and love. Unfortunately, too many children come from homes filled with tension. Even some well-intentioned parents discipline their children by using threats. We don't threaten our students. We use love as the lever for teaching, learning, discipline, for everything."Well said, Rhonda. And thanks for running a great school for kids.This article was written by Kevin Chavous and originally published in his blog on Huffington Post.

Culture Makes People Understand Each Other Better.

“Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first hey have to understand that their neighbor is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.” - Paulo Coelho

Did I offer peace today?

Did I offer peace today?

Too often we expect that peace happens to us, that someone else gives us peace or extends the olive branch.  We expect that peace happens around us, institutions and organizations and entities make peace.  For this year's International Day of Peace, let's focus on how we are each offering peace to ourselves and others.

Educação Básica.

Na Liberdade, São Paulo, Brazil

During this trip to São Paulo, we stayed in Vila Madalena because of its street arts profile and the famous Beco do Batman.  Vila Madelena feels like Williamsburg, cutely packaged local artisan boutiques, architects and graphic designers, amazing restaurants and bars at every turn.  One morning we ventured out to the Liberdade neighborhood, home to Brazil's 120-year old Japanese population.  Our print tourist map outlines Liberdade like it is the eastern coast of SP, like there is nowhere else to go on the other side of Liberdade.  Our time in Liberdade was overcast, but the neighborhood was more gritty than VM.  Interspersed with street market vendors were homeless and and tired people, knock-off merchandise on tarps for easy transport.  Our Paulistano friend explained that cost of living in the center of town was too expensive and that people moved farther and farther to the outskirts.  There were not many tourist attractions past Liberdade, which explained why our map abruptly ended there.This mural rose above us as we crossed a highway overpass and it was perfectly timed and placed.  We stood on this overpass to take pictures of the mural, talk about education access and notice that the city continued far east of the Liberdade neighborhood.   Of the many murals that we saw that week, this was the most overtly political (not counting the anti-Dilma graffitis).

Basic quality education for all will put an end to hunger and poverty.

Brazil h\as one of the largest education achievement and access gaps in the world, based on their PISA results.  Fundação Lemann has launched an Excelência com Equidade program to address the disparities in education for lower socio-economic communities.  I'm looking forward to learning more about their work and what it will really take to achieve basic quality education in Brazil.

Throwback Thursday: Finland Offers Lesson For Building Student, Teacher Agency.

Rhonda Broussard is the founder of St. Louis Language Immersion Schools, a charter management organization. In 2014, she traveled to and explored the education systems of Finland and New Zealand as an Eisenhower Fellow (full disclosure: I was also a 2014 Eisenhower Fellow). As I listened to her discuss her travels this past May in Philadelphia, I was struck by how relevant some of the insight she had gained in Finland were for those creating blended-learning schools that seek to personalize learning and build student agency. What follows is a brief Q&A that illustrates some of these lessons.

Michael Horn:

Your observations around student agency in Finland and how it stems from the great trust the Finnish society has in children are striking. Can you explain what you saw and learned? Do you have takeaways for what this means in the context of the United States?

Rhonda Broussard:

What amazed me most during my school visits in Finland is what I didn’t observe. Finnish schools had no recognizable systems of “accountability” for student behaviors. Finnish schools believe that children can make purposeful decisions about where to be, what to study, how to perform. Whether via No Excuses or Positive Behavior Intervention Support, American schools don’t expect youth to be responsible for themselves or their learning. When I asked Finnish educators about student agency, they responded that the child is responsible for their learning and general safety. When prodded, educators responded that the child’s teacher might send a note home to parents, speak with the child, or consult their social welfare committee about destructive or disruptive behaviors. Despite the fact that Finland is the second country in Europe for school shootings (they have had three since 1989), none of the schools that I visited had security presence or protocols for violent crises.My first trip to Finland was during the immediate aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting. When I juxtaposed those events with the high trust I observed in Finnish society and schools, the reality of micro-aggressions in our schools became more apparent. In my piece “Waking up in Helsinki, Waking up to St. Louis,” I cite a few examples of what trust looks like in Finnish schools. The absence of trust in American schools requires educators to police our youth daily, and do so in the name of respect. Many U.S. peers respond to my observations with, “But our kids are different, they need structure.” Our country, society, and expectations are different, but our kids are not. American hyper-attention to accountability reinforces the belief that people, young people in particular, cannot be trusted.

How can average American public schools shift toward more student agency and decrease disruptive behaviors? Predict and provide responsive supports for academic, social-emotional, and physical interventions. Fifty percent of Finnish students receive academic interventions before 10th grade, adolescents study courses in social needs, all grades break for physical activity after 45 minutes of instruction, all school meals are free regardless of income. These shifts allow schools to meet the immediate needs of students that pre-empt distracting or destructive behaviors. Starting point? Ross Greene’s Lost at School.

Horn:

The level of personalization or customization in Finnish schools is much more extensive than I realized. Even siblings in the same school might attend school for radically different hours. Can you give some examples of what you saw? How does the system work, and how are families able to handle the different starting and ending times?

Broussard:

Children are expected to know their own schedules, and parents rarely manage drop-off and pick-up. Finland is a country of latch-key kids where:Students attend their neighborhood schools. Societal trust in education means that families do not shop neighborhoods for the so-called best schools;And students take themselves to school—they walk, bike, sled, ski, or take public transit—unless they live in an urban area and have a special need or great distance for transportation.In my “Hei from Helsinki!” blog post this fall, I noted that, “Within any individual elementary school, classes, grades or cohorts of students report for different periods of time. First graders will typically have shorter school days and may go home alone at 1pm while their older siblings are still in school. Many schools have aftercare programs for 1st and 2nd grade, but by 3rd grade everyone goes home at the end of their daily schedule. Kids call/text their parents to check in. If you have three children in the same elementary school, they will likely have different start and end times from each other and may have different start and end times for different days of the week. Students are expected to know their specific schedule and manage their time accordingly.”Below is a sample primary student schedule from a photo I took showing different start and end times by class, by day of the week:

Finnish School Schedule

Horn:

The agency and ownership doesn’t just extend to students it seems. Do teachers have similar expectations from society and for themselves? How does this manifest itself in the way that teachers improve their craft?

Broussard:

In Finnish Lessons, Pasi Sahlberg explains that, “Teachers at all levels of schooling expect that they are given the full range of professional autonomy to practice what they have been educated to do: to plan, teach, diagnose, execute, and evaluate.”Administrators know that teachers have the professional training to be successful in the classroom—all teachers have a research Masters degree before beginning their teaching career—and the professional curiosity to identify their own growth areas. Schools have no expectations of teacher mentors, instructional coaches, peer observations, or continuous improvement feedback. The Finnish education system distributes power and responsibility to create ownership and personalization at the school and classroom level. The Finnish National Board of Education defines the courses and standards, municipalities then write an aligned curriculum, and teachers write the lessons and assessments. Finnish teachers engage in similar professional work as Americans—curriculum committees, student support, school culture events, clubs—but they are organized more by teacher impetus and less by administrative edicts.

Originally appeared on Forbes.com Leadership

blog by Michael Horn

Do Struggling Learners Belong in Language Immersion Programs?

Yes.  But what about the students who have weak L1 skills?  Them too.  Our students in poverty don’t have the home supports to be successful in language immersion.  Isn’t this a hardship for them? Nope.  These students need longer time to get academic concepts, won’t language immersion delay them in comparison to their peers?  Uh, still no.Academic conferences are typically places to validate our perspectives, and, when we least expect it, really challenge our beliefs as well.  Genesee’s opening keynote for the Brazilian Immersion Conference (BIC) was about the striving (struggling) learner in immersion settings.  In North America, this work urges us to being more inclusive of ethnic minorities, children in lower socio-economic environments, students with special education services.  I appreciate Genesee’s keynote even more in the Brazilian context, where virtually all language immersion programs are in independent schools that serve affluent majority culture kids.  All educators needs reminders and inspiration that increase their expectations for all students.Genesee’s research addresses the dissonance between popular thought and research implications for language immersion.  Common sense argues that language immersion is not successful for students with perceived hardship: academic delays, low socio-economic status, new or poor speakers of the majority language.  Why add to their struggle?  Genesee compares language immersion students with similar demographics of non-immersion students and native speakers of the immersion language.  His results consistently demonstrate that L1 performance, when compared with peers in the control group, are not diminished for “struggling” students (Genesee, 1992; 2007a; Genesee, Paradis, & Crago, 2004).

“It’s important to believe that what we’re doing is right.  If deep down teachers worry about [whether these kids should be in language immersion], it compromises their students’ performance.”

The primary message of Genesee’s talk was that building strong literacy skills in L2 not only supports literacy development in L1, but, more importantly, it increases student access to and success in the academic curriculum.  Students in language immersion are expected to study complex academic topics in the immersion language by the end of elementary schools.  The primary academic reason that students leave language immersion programs in public schools in Canada, is due to reading difficulty and related frustration in the academic curriculum. Committing to and developing literacy skills in L2 unlocks deeper learning for students over time.Genesee addressed the four most common questions raised by language immersion educators:

1. What levels of proficiency in L1 and L2 can we expect?

2. Is it preferable to teach reading in L2 first or L1 first, or both from the beginning?

3. Should we keep the L1 and L2 separate when teaching?

4. What is the importance of oral language for L2 reading competence?

Based on the research demonstrating that language immersion education (L2 literacy) doesn’t diminish the learner’s literacy skills in L1, Genesee advocates for greater, concentrated exposure to the L2 as early in the program as possible. Literacy skills transfer from one language to the next, particularly in languages with similar alphabet characters.  Once a reader learns reading fluency skills in one language that they speak, they apply that literacy understanding to another related language. If your English teacher teaches you to that you can blend letter sounds, your Portugese teacher doesn’t need to reteach that same skill.  That said, he would encourage teaching reading in L2 first, and keeping L1 and L2 separate when teaching.  Genesee cautions that elevating the status of teaching reading in L1 risks reducing L2 reading competency and related academic access in higher grades.Proficiency levels in L1 and L2 vary depending on the structure of the immersion program.  Language immersion educators often fall prey to the myth of the “perfect bilingual.”  Even with high functionality, immersion students still make grammar mistakes in both languages, and have less idiomatic language than same-age native speaker peers. Within environments where L1 and L2 language instruction are highly distinctive (two different teachers in two different spaces), constructivist instruction and cross-linguistic connections support learners in scaffolding specific concepts and vocabulary development.According to Genesee’s work, language immersion students struggle more with reading comprehension than with decoding skills.  It is much more complex to diagnose reading comprehension difficulties if students have inadequate vocabulary and incomplete complex grammar.  These two deficits become the biggest barriers for students to access academic language by grade 5.  Genesee advises that teachers explicitly teach academic language starting in kindergarten and across all disciplines.  This includes complex grammar as well as discipline-specific vocabulary.  Language immersion teachers need to know, understand, and teach academic language from the early grades to give students the tools to thrive in reading comprehension, not just reading fluency.  Early grade teachers in particular should constantly teach phonological awareness, word knowledge, content, and complex grammar to give students the specific tools they will need for reading comprehension.Fred Genesee is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at McGill University.  Prof. Genesee's primary research interests focus on bilingualism and bilingual first language acquisition in normal and impaired populations. In particular, his research examines the early stages of the acquisition of two languages with the view to (a) better understanding this form of language acquisition and (b) ascertaining the neuro-cognitive limits of the child's innate ability to acquire language. He is also interested in second language acquisition in school and the modalities for effective acquisition in school contexts.

The Point of it All.

“The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren’t simply hobbies or minor influences.” - Pierre Bourdieu.

We Must Teach Children to Learn: Language Lessons from Neuroscience.

Memory in silent neurons

Language educators and researchers are fascinated by neurological data.  We love to cite the latest research --Have you read Bialystok's work on the bilingual brain? -- and share documentaries like The Secret Life of the Brain.  Because we still subscribe to the notion that "hard science" is more respected than social science, we tout scientific research that validates our pedagogical framework. So when Dr. Elvira Souza Lima opened her keynote speech at this year’s Brazilian Immersion Conference, and declared that “Pedagogy is the most important change in education,” the room paused.  Did she really mean that pedagogy is more important than neurological function for teaching and learning?For the first half of her talk, Dr. Souza Lima paid homage to 2000 Nobel Prize recipient Eric Kandel's research on memory and neurology.  The auditorium full of international immersion school educators delighted to learn about synapses, Long-Term Potentiation (LTP), and plasticity.  How exactly do our brains convert short-term experiences to long-term memory to knowledge?  What we can do to keep our brains learning as long as possible? We watched researchers animate the precise moment of "learning" in the human brain and marveled at the density of learning in the child's brain vs. the adult's brain.Dr. Souza Lima’s talk quickly gave way to neurological implications for language learning.  First, she parsed out oracy (listening and speaking) from literacy (reading and writing).  Genetically, humans are programmed for oracy yet must learn literacy.  Singing, melody, and repetition of natural sounds developed in Neanderthals before speech.  Everyone can hum, cry, or sing (however poorly) without having explicitly learned to do so.  In the first three years of life, the brain's language function is focused on listening and singing.  During early childhood years, humans learn in the vocal area of our brain, which allows us to improve our brain’s plasticity. Prevalent recommendations to speak, read, and sing to your infant are not only the most important receptive functions that their brains are developing, but they expand their capacity to learn more later.From ages 3-6, the young brain develops twice as many synapses than an adult brain and this is the best time to begin forming long-term memories.  Long-term memories developed during preschool years provide children with background knowledge necessary to acquire literacy skills.  According to Dr. Souza Lima, the purpose of early language instruction (immersion or otherwise), in students ages 4-6, is to further oracy and build plasticity.  Plasticity is highest in children through age 7 and then is extinguished by age 10.  Daily exposure to music, arts, graphic arts, drawing, imaginative play all contribute to plasticity in the young brain.  These assertions reinforce play-based preschool and kindergarten curricular frameworks that focus on providing rich environments and new experiences for young learners to discover more about their world.

“It is not only what the child speaks, but what the child thinks.”

Dr. Souza Lima frequently quoted Vygotsky during her talk to remind us that our work is not simply getting students to produce speech and words, but that in forming language, we are curating thoughts as well.  Learning literacy, specific reading and writing skills, requires that your brain forms long-term memories. During the formative years of oracy we can train our brains to learn new information and store it for long-term access.  By age 7, at the peak of plasticity, the brain is ready to start learning discrete literacy skills. Can we begin learning literacy before the age of 7 ?  Absolutely, and our world is full of autodidacts who have mastered reading fluency before they begin formal education.  Developmentally, however, youth who begin reading at 4 do not significantly outperform youth who begin reading at 7.Enter significant dissonance between neurological research about literacy learning and current US curriculum expectations.  With little exception, American schools subscribe to earlier and more aggressive academic and literacy instruction in attempts to accelerate learning outcomes.  Not only is this practice counter to neurological productivity, but time spent “teaching reading” in early elementary years actually usurps the time that the brain could be developing plasticity.  Recent research demonstrates that, while they may initially outperform their peers, students who have been taught explicit literacy skills in grades K-2, tend to plateau their reading comprehension and language use after 3rd grade (Stefanou, Howlett, and Peck, 2012).  Early explicit literacy instruction may actually be limiting our youth at the peak plasticity, and access to deeper learning in later years.Dr. Souza Lima's message was subtle, yet insistent that rich, daily experiences in music, creativity, arts, and imagination contribute significantly to the brain's capacity to learn over time.  These activities are what teach the young brain to learn and provide ample opportunities to build capacity and plasticity.  Exposing young learners to a wide variety of life experiences allow them to create scaffolds to which they can attach new information as they grow.Dr. Elvira Souza Lima is a researcher in human development, with training in neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and music.  She works in applied research in education, media and culture.  Follow her blog at http://elvirasouzalima.blogspot.com

One Good Question

"I want to ask one good question."That's all? I can ask one good question now.  That's what I thought when I heard my colleague share her intellectual goal for the new school year.  I had no idea how difficult it would be to ask my students one good question, a question that wasn't leading, that didn't tip my hand or reveal my beliefs, that didn't force students to defend a single position, nor one that allowed them to respond solely with anecdote and opinion.In the fall of 2003 I was working with new peers in the second year of Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens, NY.  This was the year that would challenge my teaching forever.  Over ten years later, I'm still challenging myself to ask one good question.  My work in international education has changed, but the need for good questions remains.  In this blog I will be exploring international education and access for all students through multiple lenses, but all with the same question: In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation's role in the world?Spoiler alert: I am completely biased. My education career is built on ways that we are increasing access and opportunity for all students to connect with the world outside of their local neighborhood: multilingualism, cross-cultural and intercultural competencies, international perspectives, peace-building, youth action and agency, socio-economic diversity.  I look forward to having my assumptions challenged and learning innovative ways that different countries, communities, and schools are answering this question.