Home? Recently I attended a mindfulness retreat at Plum Village whose message was Harmony in the Home, Joy in the World. Home as they defined it, was being in the present moment, aware of our bodies, own emotions, and habit energies. As an international educator, I have called many places my home. I’ve been lucky …
When I think about Who I Am as an educator at this moment, you could say that I’m 40% teacher, 40% student, 20% teacher-leader, but I am always 100% parent. Everything I think and care about in education is definitely shaded by my perspective as a parent and my hope for my daughter’s future. In …
I live in a world of curiosity, surrounded by buoyant imaginations and inquisitive minds. I forget what it’s like in the “real world”. But this past week my sister had her birthday and what I thought was a simple project of curating loving videos was an absolutely enlightening experience of how others perceive technology and …
The Nobel-laureate philosopher Jean-Paul Satre reminded us that things don’t have to be the way things are. We live in possibilities, and we have the opportunity to ordain anything with purpose and meaning. We don’t have to live in “bad faith”, constraining ourselves to norms, living a certain way, closing ourselves off to opportunities, shackled …
As I look out my window, my heart sinks as I can see that it’s an extraordinarily polluted day here in Laos. This landlocked country, sandwiched between the biggest manufacturing countries in Asia-China and Vietnam- doesn’t stand much of a chance of having “fresh air” during its dry season, especially when it does its own …
Michael Fullan describes in his book, The Six Secrets of Change: What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive, the attributes that are akin to what good leadership looks like in schools which I think are elements that are embedded into a Happiness-Based approach. In general, a “good leader”, always has hope, …
Perhaps it was a mistake to pick Refugee, by Alan Gratz for our family “listen-aloud”. It is tearing a hole in my heart, as the tales of 3 children are mingled together through time and space, as they escape atrocities in their homeland. The book said it was appropriate for 9-year olds, but I feel that …
They say that readers are leaders. I have often thought that this catchy rhyme was just a pithy statement to encourage reading. But we’ve had Natashya Hays from Erin Kent Consulting at our school, and she submerged us into the current research on reading. Obviously, it made me take a hard look at my own …
Is there really any end to mediocrity in our schools? I’ve been really pondering this lately. Are the PYP Enhancements really going to change this? You see, I’m a big Seth Godin fan. After reading the book Linchpin, it is hard not to look at the ways in which schools create mediocrity. Mediocrity in our ho-hum test scores, …
I didn’t enjoy Math until I was in high school. Trigonometry was the first time that I remember gazing up in amazement and wonder. Sin and Cosine. Identities, theorems, and proofs. Parabolas and Ellipses.  It suddenly became interesting even if it was hard. I loved using the nifty functions on the calculator as well. But why did …
