Hi, I hope your week is off to a good start. I am writing this on Sunday afternoon at PAX East. Last year my kids wanted me to stick with them, but this year they don’t care, so I brought my computer and am enjoying watching the rain move over the Boston skyline and [...]
Good afternoon, I hope you are well. I'm hoping to get this to you before you fade into the weekend… This issue of the Coaching Letter is really just an attempt to keep up with all the many interesting things have been happening in the world of education. The "buy your way into college" [...]
CT Center for School Change's Executive Director, Richard Lemons wrote a commentary about the higher education scandal which was published in the CT Viewpoints section of the CT Mirror on Friday, March 15, 2019. Read the publication below or click here to read it on the CT Mirror website. Privilege games the system in K-12, [...]
Good afternoon, I hope this finds you well. It has been a crazy couple of weeks for me, so I hope your life has been calmer than mine, but probably not. This Coaching Letter is about psychological safety, because it’s the subject of our latest Reading for Leading book selection, The Fearless Organization by Amy [...]
As I write, policymakers and professional educators in CT are debating the opportunities and challenges of district consolidation. At the federal level, we’ve just learned that the President has proposed a 10% reduction in Department of Education spending, an elimination of well-established funding streams (Titles II and IV), as well as a new set [...]
Happy snow day! At least a foot at my house, took me 2 hours to dig out the driveway. Thank you for all the kind messages and emails about the publication of my Kappan article. If you haven't read it yet, here it is. Also, just a reminder that we are hosting a strategy [...]
Good afternoon! This isn’t a Coaching Letter, exactly, although it’s going out to all the Coaching Letter recipients. And you may receive this information multiple times, depending on which Center mailing lists you are on. If you receive the Coaching Letter but you are NOT on the Center’s mailing list and want to join [...]
Happy Presidents’ Day. I hope you’ve been able to disconnect from work today. This Coaching Letter is about lots of things, but mostly about the idea of "complicating the narrative". And how that should impact our decision-making. I was a first-year principal when the Columbine shootings happened. I have written about this before, and [...]
Good evening, and I hope you had a relaxing weekend. I was asked to do some consulting for a public defender’s office in another state. They are working with new lawyers and training them to be public defenders, and wanted help making their training more in line with best practices in adult learning. This [...]
Over the course of five hours, I had the opportunity to shadow a leader I have long admired. I sat in this superintendent’s meetings, followed her as she strolled corridors, observed her conversations with educators, and listened to how she spoke with leadership teams. It was mesmerizing. While this leader has granted me permission [...]