An open letter to principals about the Seven Survival Skills, Tony Wagner and the Entrepreneurship Center at the Met School in Providence, Rhode Island

An open letter to principals and directors of schools

Tony Wagner of Harvard university spoke to Oxbridge Academy in the summer of 2011.  He spoke about the need to produce opportunities for students in high school to develop seven "survival skills."  Here is the list.




Here is the link to Wagner's list


Here are two blog posts about a school in Rhode Island that is putting the INITIATIVE 

POST 1 a visit to the Met Center in Rhode Island

POST 2 a visit to the Entrepreneurship Center



The opportunity
What school will offer the Met Center a second location for their system?
What school will be the first to contact Jodie Woodruff at the Met's Entrepreneurship Center and discuss collaboration?  (yes, that's one of the seven skills).

The Met Center has developed a model that can be duplicated.  Is your school ready to embrace and build on the Met Center's model?

Masschusetts school: "Throw out the security guards and invest in arts teachers" (with a comment about Dennis Littky's The Big Picture)

This paragraph caught my eye:

In 2003, Orchard Gardens Pilot School in Massachusetts, nearly 100 percent black and Hispanic, opened its doors with a posse of security guards to ensure the campus was under tight controls. Backpacks were prohibited for fear of weapons and discipline issues were rampant, including violence. In 2010, the current principal, Andrew Bott, threw out the security guards and put the money into arts teachers. Student achievement grew faster than anywhere in the state and student expression blossomed.

Source

Look at this quote from p. 67 of The Big Picture:  Education is Everyone's Business.

Here is the full blog that appears in smartblog on Education

The "Parent DVD" -- Send a collection of videos to homes -- An Invitation to Principals

INVITATION to use free ebooks and videos

Listen to the teacher
or listen to each other?

Principal

I’m an advocate of the transformation of education.  I’ve edited a commentaries book (which could be used as a training manual) by Dr. Abraham S. Fischler, former head of Nova University.  It appears as an ebook on the enclosed data DVD (see the first folder).

I would like to offer the following:

n     a free ebook to your staff for training (using the Fischler ebook)

n     free posters to help sustain the culture of learning that your school has clearly adopted

n     a free training workshop to help teachers adopt the “flipped Classroom” model (if your teachers want to try it)

n     a free training workshop using the Fischler ebook (we want to video the workshop so it can be placed on YouTube)

n     free ebooks about dominos to introduce probability and other math concepts  (the items are on the DVD that is enclosed)

I’ve been using videos in my teaching since 2000 and I’ve posted more than 600 videos on various YouTube websites.  See Youtube.com/FreeEnglishLessons and Youtube.com/MisterMath for examples.

Thank you for your time.  You are invited to adopt any of these materials that I’ve sent you for your school.  Dr. Fischler’s ebook is free – go ahead, share it.   If you have some comments, please send them to Dr. Fischler at Fischler@nova.edu (we can use blurbs in promoting the ebook). 

THE “PARENT DVD”

The data DVD is also free – the idea is to give every student (and any visitor who comes to your school) a free DVD with dozens of inspiring videos.    I’m looking to work with a principal to develop a collection of videos (you can add your favorites to the list) and then put the items on a DVD that can be donated to parents.  I have access to an educational charity that can pay for up to 2000 copies of the DVD for distribution.  Would you like your school to be a demonstration site for this “parent DVD”?

Steve McCrea

2314 Desota Drive, Fort Lauderdale FL 33301   954 646 8246

TheEbookman@gmail.com               www.TransformTeaching.org