LifeReady Hub Team (LHT)

Getting it Backward? Backward design is not a new concept—at least not in some arenas. Performing artists and athletes, for instance, live by this logic: a play or concert has a firm opening night, and a football team has a definite kickoff. Artists and athletes then work Backward from the result they hope to achieve in order to plan what they need to do to be successful. Well-known frameworks like Understanding by Design and Teaching for Understanding have influenced a generation of school...

For too long, the craft of teaching in an independent school was an individual endeavor: adults with degrees and expertise were let loose to teach kids with the hope that they'd do amazing things. Often as not, this was the case. But "often as not" isn't good enough. Learning must be designed, and one's craft should be deliberate. We wouldn't hire a surgeon who had a "feel" for surgery—and we shouldn't hire a school that only has a feel for what works. If your school is curious to explore an...

It's a familiar scene: you teach all week, your students take a unit test, most do pretty well, and in a week—poof!—the learning is (mostly) gone. In fact, given what we know from the learning sciences, that new knowledge wasn't all that secure in the first place. And so it's hard to move on, but you have to. And then next year's teachers wonder aloud, "Why did they never learn this?" and somehow you're to blame. This scenario doesn't offer a great window into what students are really...