Happy Friday Everyone,

The season is changing. The trees are dropping their leaves, making their branches less vulnerable for when the snow and ice arrive. The trees have learned to live in a changing world.

Formal education is our intentional effort to respond to change. Focusing on new skills and content  generates bodies of knowledge and enables individuals to become experts, who then address complex problems. Currently, our scientists are putting their education to work on behalf of all of us. We are not a species that sits back and accepts – we study up and evolve.

This week at school we witnessed the power of education as students came onto campus knowledgeable about the habits we all need to practice during this time: wear a mask, wash your hands, and watch your distance. We practiced specific routines connected to travel between classes, mask breaks, lunch, bathroom use, arrival , and dismissal.  Our collective understanding of mask wearing, hand cleaning and sanitizing, and social distancing enabled us to come together for school.

Presented with a problem (the virus) we conducted research, learned from trial and error, identified a body of essential knowledge and skills, created a curriculum to organize the information, and designed lessons over two days of school to practice the implementation of our new knowledge and skills. I other words, we used schooling to to have school. Formal education is a wonderful invention and during these times of disruption we have the opportunity to join with our students in a collaborative effort to rethink the best ways to continue our learning and teaching.

I wish everyone a healthy weekend.

Peace,

Chris