Nothing shifts my perspective quite like travel. I’m writing this on my phone from downtown Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, where among other wonders (dedicated bicycle lanes, poutine, friend and colleague Adam Haigler) I am surrounded by lilacs and tulips. More about the flowers in a moment. In Satire VI, the Roman poet Juvenal (the same writer who gave us, “Who watches the watchmen?”) describes a woman worthy of marriage as rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima c...

Last week, the White House published a Fact Sheet about an executive order “incorporating AI into education.” Teaching is dead. Long live the art of learning. I can deliver a lesson plan as effectively as anyone on Earth. I’ve been honored to work with a number of amazing educators who can make the same claim. But today’s learners need more than scripted, standardized content, and they most definitely need more than digital tools. Curriculum and instruction initiatives come and go every few y...

I love my brother-in-law. He’s a family man with a dry sense of humor. A practical guy who knows how to have a good time. A successful businessman and a savvy investor whose observations about the market economy often get me thinking. Last night we practiced Open-Source Learning’s Civic Fitness. Meaning, in this case, that I stood in his kitchen and howled at him. “What do you mean your MAGA broker didn’t see the market drop coming? You paid a financial professional to algorithmically brainwa...

What’s the difference between who you are and what you do? Can you become someone new by doing something new? I ask because I’m reconsidering the extent to which our actions define us. Many people believe in a static, universal sense of self, but we also often describe our identities in terms of our professions and avocations. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I admire people who establish their identities through practice. After all, doing something today (or not) informs what we have to s...

When I taught in the classroom I taped a sign to the board: “If you think of it before you act, it’s a reason. If you think of it afterward, it’s an excuse.” This last weekend I completed my fourth Ironman triathlon in the last two years. I had reasons. No excuses. On one hand, these events seem goofy and selfish. I bought a bunch of gear and spent months training just to spend an entire day swimming, bicycling, and running. On the other hand, training has made my life better in all sorts of ...

Last week I met a futurist for coffee. She didn’t tell me I’d be writing this article, but her observations about distraction and the social engineering challenges that compromise cybersecurity definitely influenced my thinking. What I noticed at first was how fast she talked. I’m a fast talker too, but she was REALLY fast. I tried to keep up but I kept falling behind, like Lucy at the chocolate factory. After about 20 minutes I took a step back from the easel to observe the whole scene. Sudd...

Last week the executive branch of the federal government moved to dismantle the Department of Education, while simultaneously using the Department of Education to launch DEI investigations of some college campuses and withhold funding from others. It got me thinking. Letter for letter, NO may be one of the most powerful words in the English language. (There are other great candidates. You can’t beat “I” for efficiency, ego, or Cartesian duality, but today I’m thinking about communication betw...

We have to figure out ways to get along. We have to demand accurate information. We have to take our lives and decisions back and remember that we are the heroes of our own stories. Health first. We have to get better.

Fourteen years ago today, Ryo Kanouya’s boss told him to go home: “By the time I got to my house, which was about one km [.5 miles] away from the coast, the time that the tsunami was supposed to hit had already passed. I looked outside toward the ocean through a window and I saw something like smoke rolling over the trees planted along the coast to stop sand coming from the beach. I wondered if it was fire. But it was spray of the tsunami wave.” Kanouya’s lived in Namie, just a few minutes no...

We need a place to exchange those ideas and questions, to help each other through a difficult time that promises to get worse before it gets better.