In 2009 I began an internship at the Innovation Unit in London. It being an internship, I was doing a little of everything, but my main project was Learning Futures, whose goal was to make school more engaging for students.
This issue opens with a piece that David Price wrote in 2023 about school improvement and continues with stories about schools and non-profits taking relationships seriously, professional development where teachers can actually try out their ideas, school lunches, music festival projects of course, fiction-writing during lockdown in India, the cardboard arcade in Minnesota, and the virtual-reality geology.
School operation teams, the backbone of making the school day happen across the country, are often invisible. With little acknowledgement of success, it's easy to notice when things fall apart: when buses don’t arrive on time, admission numbers are lower, computers stop working, or thousands of dollars are wasted on food ordered, but never eaten.
Third and eleventh grade students collaborated to research and share insights about local natural spaces, enhancing their understanding through lessons, writing, research, and videos.
“You know how you can tell you’re in a happy school within 30 seconds of walking through the front door?” This is a statement/question that I’ve experienced on countless occasions during a lifetime spent in education. It has a ring of truth to it and we’ve all felt it as visitors or (worse) inspectors.
M’s fourth graders were buzzing as they worked in pairs to solve the math problem M. had just presented to them. The other educators in the room circulated and listened in as students used academic language to discuss their answers with each other, jotting down notes about what their partner had said and the language they had used.
