Organizing is essentially about creating a coherent communicative community. “The need for community is universal. A sense of belonging, of continuity, of being connected to others and to ideas and values that make our lives meaningful and significant?these needs are shared by all of us.”  Sergiovanni
“I am we; I am because we are - we are [...]

“I know I’m younger than you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s best for me.
“I’m just saying that I need more of you.”
“More of what? I cook, I do the laundry, we screw, what more do you want?
“I mean I need less. Less of you rolling your eyes and spending your time at [...]

Consider a continuous parameter that delineates the state of order of systems, “on a scale of zero to one hundred…”For me it begins at the left with perfect order and ends at the right, perfectly disordered, i.e. chaos. The “new science of complexity” tackles systems just to the left of chaos; “complexity, and life itself, [...]

It’s been an interesting year and a half watching Arne Duncan and his Department of Education. They’re up to something, and what’s interesting is to figure out what’s the long-term strategy behind the actions we see reported. Three caveats; 1) if it’s not happening in your local school its not happening, 2) follow the money; [...]

A fisherman can make a poor living guiding fly fishermen on the Ausable river. Renting out a couple of canoes to pleasure paddlers is easy money on top. Marking up a lunch box for customers is easy, but takes getting up earlier. But the season is short, so the total is meager. There used to [...]

“We learn what we do” is not just a mantra of the progressive movement, it is a summary of current learning theory.
“Why,” said the Dodo, “The best way to explain it is to do it.” Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland. Pestalozzi said, “Life itself educates,” and Aristotle noted, “For the things we have [...]

Intelligence derives from the Latin verb intellegere, to understand, to realize, to discern. Not very sharply defined by the Romans, it was a loose bundle of characteristics of mental capacity. The age of scientific rationality is unable to leave a word like that loosely defined and not measurable. It took fifty-two researchers to report in [...]

They are warming up to play at his uncle’s funeral procession. Uncle Vos was his mother’s brother; a big man, mustachioed and smelt of garlic and often of tequila too. He did not live with them, but visited three or four times a year for a week or so. There were picnics and presents; he [...]

He was spoken to or about as E. J. Kapella, and the high school kids talked about him quite a lot. E.J. Kapella taught Drivers Ed and shop, the Drivers Ed brought him into contact with essentially all of the students and they all trash-talked him. You know high schools, you would be a queer [...]

The few who can remember who and when the Fourth of July activities were begun don’t agree on either who or when. There has been no attempt to reconcile the differences, folks just say, “It was either Bob Quill or Nell Starmup more or less around 1970 that started the bike race. Maybe it was [...]

A wise man will not go out of his way for information.” H.D. Thoreau said around 1850. Was he that much ahead of his times, some 150 years before what is now called the information age? No, I can’t believe that he  was foreseeing radio, TV and the internet; he was speaking to his own [...]