Put videos on a DVD and call it "The Yearbook on DVD" ... plus some videos that you might enjoy clicking because they show themes from the Coalition of Essential Skills

Let's take a moment to look at each of the other 10 videos that are currently on the CES national youtube channel.  None of these videos has more than 6000 views ... let's work together to get more eyes on these prizes.

Exhibitions

Goals apply to all students

Democracy in schools

Mastery in schools

Get the ENTIRE school involved in the innovation

Let's learn about PERSONALIZATION

Resources

Student = worker

Teacher = coach

Learning is TALKING

Teaching is LISTENING

Learn to use your mind well

Less is more

Where can you find an Essential School?





To give you something to read, if you want to see something besides a string of photos taken of the list of schools that are involved in Coalition of Essential Schools, here's my offer of virtual mentoring to teachers and students.

SKILLS
POSTERS:  I have a collection of posters that are essentially quotes from blogs and research papers.  The idea is to highlight one or two sentences and entice the reader to look up the article or at least put into practice the innovative procedure that the paper describes.  If you would like a free ebook with these posters, send me an email  or download the collections from www.TransformTeaching.org.  
DIGITAL YEARBOOK
I have offered to help schools create a digital year or "yearbook on DVD" and I got some success with Highland Park High School in Los Angeles.  (Thank you, Enrique Gonzalez, Ireland, Drake and others).  
WORKSHOPS for GOOGLE DRIVE and Digital Portfolio Making

I'm posting my resume here to entice someone to contact me so I can mentor a teacher who doesn't currently flip the class or who wants to learn how to use Google Drive (the way HighTechHigh.org uses digital portfolios) or who doesn't currently use posters and projects in the classroom.  I'm happy to donate my services ... that's the point of creating ebooks.  If there is a paid consulting  or volunteer job to be done, I'm there.  How can I serve you and your organization's mission?  As one of my students told me, "We are here to serve."



 My big issue currently:  Make a yearbook DVD... A DVD can cost under $2 to reproduce.  
Excuses (that I've heard from administrators)?  "Students put these videos on youtube and on facebook.  They won't buy a collection of videos."  Fine.  But at least SOMEBODY has the collection so that when it's time to meet again in 10 or 20 years, you have the sound of Mr. Dyke's voice and the image of John Corlette skiing.  Oh, yes, that's right... we didn't have DVDs 40 years ago, so I can't see and hear my old professors.  

I hope the previous paragraph inspires some students to get in touch with me to be guided toward making a Yearbook on DVD.

Here's why I support the Coalition of Essential Schools (and I invite you to subscribe to their Facebook page)

I'm a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools.

I have adhered to their principles for over ten years, but today, 28 October 2013, I became an individual member, paying $75 to say, "I support this organization's aims."  WATCH THIS VIDEO

I am a member of ASCD.org because that organization published The Big Picture by Dennis Littky and Samantha Grabelle (2004) and I just don't know when the next "good gospel" will be published by that organization.  I spend $39 a year on the basic membership and that's my vote for keeping The Big Picture in print.  Two chapters (1 here and 4 here, "One Student at a Time") of Littky's book are available for download on the ASCD website and for that, and for the free chapters of other books published by ASCD, I am happy to pay two pizzas a year to support their online web=books.

I admit that I learn something from the Educational Leadership magazine that arrives in print every two months.  Oh, yes, I'm a fan of EL and I use the articles in my workshops and to prod principals to innovate.

But when it comes to effective positive disruption, what organization does more than CES?  I can't think of anything more positively disruptive than to bring Linda Darling Hammond the stage (she's the keynote at the Nov. 8-10, 2013 event in San Francisco).  CES keeps the name Ted Sizer in front of me, so I feel compelled to contribute four pizzas a year to the organization.   Even the language used in their brochures and email blasts are positively unsettling.  "Critical Friendship."  I also like their constructive use of the semi-colon in the list in the first paragraph (in green) below:

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For more than a quarter century, The Coalition of Essential Schools has gathered its members and our larger community for its annual meeting – The Fall Forum – to continue what our founder, Ted Sizer, coined as “a conversation among friends”.  This ongoing dialogue has served our schools and the larger educational community quite well as is evidenced by the countless communities and organizations that thrive with CES and our cornerstone 10 Common Principles explicitly or implicitly inside their values and design.

Whether we are talking about Advisory programs for personalization; Exhibitions and Portfolios as authentic and alternative assessments; Project-Based Learning as culturally relevant curricula; or Equity-Based Critical Friends Groups for making adult learning transparent and results-focused, CES is inside.

Making the Invisible Visible 

When we consider the impact of power (as influenced by race, gender, class, language, sexuality, etc.), what are the counterstories that can inform or transform our practice?  

Even with the strides we have made, we continue to be part of an educational system that, by default, favors some voices over others despite the fact that our schools and classrooms hold within them multiple, diverse and unequal experiences. "Making the Invisible Visible" is about creating conditions for us to surface, share and hear those voices from our classrooms, schools and communities that traditionally (and systemically) are unheard. "Making the Invisible Visible"will require us to consider these diverse and sometimes competing perspectives and beliefs as they relate to education and school in order to fully transform our own practices.  

At Fall Forum 2013, we will continue to hear from educators who have made and continue to make progress in improving education for our students regardless of social demographics. We will offer nearly 100 engaging and action-oriented workshops (here and here) that move beyond the status quo and challenge participants to question and reconsider our current beliefs about schools and education. On Sunday, we will create space for students, teachers and all educators to employ what they learned on Saturday when any attendee will be able to bring and share their own work or dilemma to a group of peers for critical friendship.   

Please join us, November 8-10 in San Francisco, as we not only continue, but expand the conversation, reflect on our own practice, and commit to new actions in service of our students.

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I hope that many of the workshops leak out into YouTube. I wish I could attend (I'm spending the weekend with a mentor who created several businesses and I'm trying to learn how to teach that entrepreneurial mindset from her).

Just imagine the list of schools that are associated with the organization. I've scanned the list (it's available to anyone who signs up for the free email newsletter... I feel I could volunteer as a yearbook mentor at distance for many of these schools, just because of their names).

Go ahead, subscribe to the free email newsletter.

Here is the CES Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CESNational

YOUTUBE CHANNEL

By the way, here is my resume on their website