I had the opportunity earlier this year to talk with Patrick Walsh for the NewTech High podcast. Patrick and I have known each other since I was at the University of Minnesota, and he continues to make great things happen in my former state. In this podcast episode, Patrick and I talked about the basics of deeper learning, how to connect Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory to that work, and ‘push-pull’ and ‘loose-tight’ leadership. We also spent a few minutes talking about the impacts of AI on all of this…
We spent most of our time discussing how to make learning more meaningful for students, and how we support principals to do that work. We also closed with a recognition of the equity concerns that accompany deeper learning in schools. Unfortunately, we were in the conference center hallway, which means that the beginning of the podcast is pretty noisy during passing time between workshops. The background noise gets quieter at around the 8-minute mark.
For the past year I served as a Distinguished Educator Fellow for PDK International. The biggest highlight of that experience was getting to serve as an informal mentor for Owen Elsasser, a young educator from Nebraska. Mentor is the wrong word, though, because Owen is such a dynamo that I mostly have just been a cheerleader on the sideline, watching him do all of his awesomeness…
Owen is both a delightful human being and an unstoppable force of nature. I was introduced to Owen through PDK after he had just graduated high school. Owen already was a national officer for Educators Rising, PDK’s program to help high schools create and nurture ‘grow your own’ teacher pathways, and he has continued to be involved nationally with PDK ever since. Additionally, Owen has been connecting with college-, national-, and state-level leaders and organizations around teacher preparation. He is presenting at conferences, creating new resources, and talking with whomever he can about educators, preservice preparation, and advocacy for the teaching profession. Owen is incredibly well-connected given that he is only a college sophomore, and you can find him on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and Instagram, among others. I can’t wait to see what he does over the rest of his college career and as a classroom teacher!
This year Owen and I had a chance to record an episode for the PDK podcast. We discussed an issue that is near the very top of Owen’s list of interests: How do we get more men into P-12 teaching roles, particularly at the elementary and middle level?
The film is nicely done. The first half focuses more on the importance that math plays in all sectors of our lives. The second half focuses more on math education. High Tech High makes an appearance at the 53-minute mark. Interwoven throughout the documentary are themes related to democracy, criminal justice, workforce readiness, journalism, and social justice, to name a few. The movie is 90 minutes long. Be sure to wait for the two mid-credits scenes at the end!
Here is some good thinking about student usage of artificial intelligence from Debbie Millman:
A formed mind can argue or wrangle with the machine, reject its false polish and recognize when the language it constructs to redescribe the world has become too smooth or soulless. Someone who has lived with words long enough can sense when a sentence has not been earned, and someone who has already developed a voice can use the machine without allowing the machine to become the voice.
An unformed person may not know the difference, and that is also where danger lies. The obvious problem is cheating. But cheating is only the most visible and least interesting part of the problem. The more profound risk is that young people will use artificial intelligence to bypass the development of their own interior lives and fail to hone their actual intelligence.
We do not wait for children to turn 16 to hand them car keys because cars are evil, and we do not insist that surgeons train for years because scalpels are immoral. We build thresholds around powerful things because power requires judgment, and judgment can’t be downloaded or installed. Before a person asks a machine to write for them, they should know what it feels like to write from the depths of their own uncertainty and identity. Before a person lets a machine imitate their voice, they should have endured the long, uneven, often humiliating process of acquiring one.
[I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week.]
After weeks of discussing schools that focus on project-based learning, ‘no excuses’ learning, and the International Baccalaureate, in Class 05 we finally stepped into more-familiar territory: the hallways of the traditional, comprehensive high school. Chapter 5 of In Search of Deeper Learning featured Attainment High, which was instantly recognizable to everyone in the room. As you can imagine, my doctoral students had a lot to say because they had been saving up a bunch of questions about ‘that’s great, but what about OUR settings?‘
We were fortunate to start with Mike Riley as a guest speaker. Mike is the Executive Director of Secondary Instruction for the Roanoke County Public Schools in Virginia. I have worked on and off with schools and educators from Roanoke County for a few years now, including both instructional redesign work and leadership coaching. They have been extremely strategic about translating their Portrait of a Graduate into practice, including major efforts this past year to scale up student Portrait defenses across all five of their high schools. Roanoke County also has been working with the Carnegie Foundation and was featured in its recent publication, Reimagining Learning in the Classroom. Mike shared the school district’s historical journey, explained some things that worked (or didn’t) along the way, and answered a bevy of questions from my class. Thanks, Mike!
As we do for each of the schools that we discuss, we then talked about the learning theories that seem to drive Attainment High. We also put both Attainment High and Roanoke County on our Continuum Wall, complete with theories of action and some competing ones.
Our main act for the evening was talking about how to get beyond pockets of innovation. We had read some (hopefully) provocative pieces from both myself and Alfie Kohn to set the stage. Other main readings for the evening pertained to Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovation research, including the importance of educators’ perceived characteristics of the innovation, and Gaver’s research regarding a new innovation’s affordances. I also introduced them to Geoffrey Moore’s ideas around ‘crossing the chasm’ between the early adopters and the early majority.
The last third of our class was spent in small group conversations. In addition to the questions that they posted on our pre-class Padlet, this time was also when we resurfaced the pre-assignment that I had given them earlier in the spring to add five slides to a collective online slide deck. They shared examples of deeper learning in their own settings, and talked about how these pockets of innovation play out within the larger, more traditional school context.
We know from Kohn and McLeod that kids cram for tests and then instantly forget the material, meaning as educators we’re wasting huge amounts of time on empty compliance. Mehta and Fine discuss how difficult it is to break free of this performative cycle at the secondary level. So how can elementary leaders pivot away from “busywork” and test prep toward authentic learning projects kids will actually remember?
If students are achieving at high levels but are not consistently experiencing curiosity, intellectual risk-taking, or meaningful engagement with content, should educational leaders consider the school successful?
If the incoming Superintendent and School Board don’t actively protect this vision, how do they justify the massive investments of professional development hours, community resources, and tax dollars? Are they simply looking at another cycle where years of work and millions of dollars go down the gutter to satisfy a change in leadership?
Is there a way to transform AP courses into deeper learning, PBL-style formats? If so, what would the process look like? Would the “breadth over depth” concept be sacrificed with a total reconfiguration?
Kohn (2011) pointed out that a lot of bad practices in lower levels are justified by his notion of BGUTI (Better Get Used To It). That is, preparing students for future bad experiences by giving them the same ones in the present. While this is awful pedagogy, and definitely is holding schools back, the outside world and life after school are no more utopias than the schooling system. Might there be some value in teaching kids how to navigate the difficulties of life, such as going through bureaucratic processes and finding critical (sometimes life-altering) information from mind-numbingly boring texts? What are some ways schools might be able to prepare students for some of the bad experiences they will face in the outside world while still engaging them in deeper learning?
Mehta & Fine (2019) say that deeper learning develops students’ identities, creativity, and mastery. In Failing Our Students, McLeod (2019) argues that schools fail when students have good marks/grades/scores/etc. but leave school without curiosity or passions of the disciplines. If these outcomes for students matter (matter most?), how should we redefine what counts as evidence of success in our schools? What could we use as indicators beyond grades and scores?
Rogers’ framework reminds us that teachers won’t buy into a new initiative if it feels too complex or conflicts with their current teaching strategies. What practical things can elementary leaders do to create an environment in which teachers can take risks without the fear of failure, so that deeper learning doesn’t wind up feeling like just another stressful directive passed down from leadership?
How do we get competitive families who care only about the accolades of their individual child on board with systemic changes that would create greater learning for all students, including their’s, but would not “look” as fancy?
If schools claim to value curiosity, engagement, and lifelong learning, but continue to reward grades, test scores, and performance outcomes, how can leaders redesign structures, incentives, and accountability systems so that deep learning becomes an opportunity for all students rather than a privilege for a select few?
What have school districts learned since the pandemic about wasted time in the classroom? Nothing that mattered enough to change the teaching/learning models?
Our readings / viewings for Class 05 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Crossing the Chasm. End-of-class evaluations were once again very positive.
[I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week.]
I wasn’t happy with how Class 04 went. I didn’t think our flow was smooth. Our timing felt off. It just didn’t feel right afterward. And my students thought… it was great. Maybe I was just too hard on myself as an instructor (it’s been known to happen). Or maybe it was because in Class 04 we started to redesign!
Our chapter from In Search of Deeper Learning focused on IB High, which my students appreciated because they could empathize with the goal of increasing academic rigor without concurrently-heinous disciplinary practices (looking at you, No Excuses High and others…). As doctoral students, they could identify with the high-level, college-oriented, academic thinking that is intended to occur in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme. They also recognized that raising cognitive complexity alone is not the same as implementing a full suite of ‘deeper learning’ practices. We started class by identifying the learning theories that we thought were present in IB High (compared to Dewey High and No Excuses High), articulated both theories of action and some competing ones, and added IB High to our Continuum Wall in between No Excuses High and Laguna Beach Unified.
My students had familiarized themselves with the basics of the 4 Shifts Protocol before class, so after our instructional core conversations we were ready to move into a Redesign phase. We focused on Section C of the protocol and, as always occurs, they generated in a mere six minutes numerous great ideas for giving students in the observed math lesson some more agency and ownership. Throughout our redesign conversation with the 4 Shifts Protocol, I kept emphasizing that we can begin to do this work in smaller shifts rather than asking fairly-traditional educators to make the giant leap into full-blown, ‘gold standard’ project-based learning. As the Lego-style image in this post shows, a few teachers are somehow ready to bake the whole pie through a quarter- or semester-long project (green). Most need to start building their capacity by taking just one or two bites of the apple through a smaller redesign of that thing they are doing next Tuesday (red)…
We spent the rest of our evening in our student-led, small group discussions, and every group opted to sit or walk around outside for those conversations. Some of the questions that my students posted beforehand on the Class 04 Padlet included:
How can leaders redesign systems and learning environments so that student resistance is addressed as feedback rather than treated as a behavior problem?
We cannot keep kids trapped as compliant “achievers” or “producers.” As leaders, how do we help elementary teachers build true student agency when the system (and parents) are perfectly happy with kids who just follow instructions and get an A?
The Disengagement Gap describes Resister, Passenger, Achiever, and Explorer modes as student behaviors shaped by learning environments. But this raises a concern: if students shift between these modes based on context, then are we accurately diagnosing “student engagement,” or are we actually observing responses to instructional design conditions and system pressures?
Up to what point should students be allowed to choose what they learn?
How can structure be maintained while still granting students choice?
The more we try to measure student agency, the more we risk defining a “correct” version of it that reflects system values rather than student expression. Is it possible to design accountability systems that preserve flexibility and authenticity in agency, or does measurement inevitably narrow what agency looks like in practice?
I’m curious if others in our cohort have had success creating the common language needed to engage in [Elmore’s] seventh principle effectively, “Description before analysis, analysis before prediction, prediction before evaluation.” What are the best ways of establishing common language for teachers to describe what they see and do in classrooms?
To what extent can the IB framework, given “elite European origins,” be equitably adapted to meet the diverse needs of ‘IB for All’ initiatives in non-traditional school communities?
How do we balance the benefits and professional desire for teacher/classroom autonomy with the real fact that teaching in a certain way does result in better student outcomes? Is scripting really bad, or are we just giving teachers bad scripts?
We will continue our redesign discussions over the rest of the semester. We also will expand our frame from classroom- to building- to school district- to state-level, assisted by some upcoming guest speakers. My students submitted their audio/video Mid-Semester Reflections assignment over the weekend. So far, so good.
Our readings / viewings for Class 04 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Can We Build It? End-of-class evaluations were again very positive.
[I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week.]
Class 03 was… interesting. We are following the flow of In Search of Deeper Learning, which sets up a staggering contrast between Dewey High in Chapter 2 and No Excuses High in Chapter 3. Dewey High is a mature project- and inquiry-based learning model. No Excuses High is exactly what you think it is… a school that focuses on tightly-scaffolded, heavily-chunked academic content in the name of college readiness; some occasional Socratic discussion (with SLANT!); and command-and-control classrooms with draconian discipline for even the most minor infraction.
Additionally, my students read several articles that extolled the virtues of direct and explicit instruction and articulated why inquiry-based learning is terrible. I also asked them to watch numerous short videos of educators training students how to track the speaker, students chanting academic answers in unison, and teachers making students line up over and over again while explaining that this “prepares them for college.” There may have been a video or two of uber-happy dancing students and teachers standing on desks at Ron Clark Academy. We also read a research brief on teaching differences in math between Japan, Germany, and the United States.
We started our class with two activities. I have been a participant in the nationwide EdPrepLab+XQ Faculty Working Group this year. We have been exploring the utility and integration of the XQ Power-Ups and The First Class film in our university educator preparation programs. EdPrepLab and XQ asked us to get some student feedback on the Power-Ups, so I asked my doctoral students to complete at least one module. For our first activity, we spent about 25 minutes unpacking the Power-Ups and my students’ comments were positive and insightful. For our second activity, we watched a classroom video of ‘classic education,’ read a short piece describing Lisa Delpit’s ideas about school culture and ‘codes of power,’ and engaged in a walk-and-talk conversation in pairs.
We also articulated theories of action (and some competing ones) for No Excuses High, and posted them on our Continuum Wall. With Dewey High on the Deeper Learning end and No Excuses High on the Traditional Grammar of Schooling end, I believe that we now have established our end posts. We will place future schools that we discuss along the Continuum Wall as the class progresses this summer.
One of my design principles for this doctoral course is student co-ownership. I am trying to preserve half of every class for student-led, small group discussions. Accordingly, we spent the second half of the evening unpacking our readings and videos. Some of the questions that my students posted beforehand on the Class 03 Padlet included:
Why are visuals of order (straight line, no gaps, smile, hand raised correctly, stand when I count, clap when I clap, lid on the marker exactly when I say) so important in these schools? What purposes do these practices serve?
Does the use of explicit instruction require the use of heavy-handed, demeaning school and classroom management techniques? Would it be possible for schools to use explicit instruction methods while at the same time respecting students?
Is there a middle ground of an amount of structure and routine that is predictable and creates a “safe and inclusive learning environment” but that also allows for students to be valued and cherished children and individuals? What could the “Goldilocks” school look like?
The explicit instruction and cognitive load readings suggest that structure can be essential for learning, especially for students who are still developing foundational knowledge. However, I keep wondering whether these cultures of engagement can also unintentionally reflect and reproduce broader patterns of inequality, depending on which students are placed into which kinds of learning environments. If some schools are able to combine high structure with high expectations, while others are framed as needing strict control rather than rich learning, how do we know when “culture-building” supports learning versus reinforces systemic differences in opportunity?
The steps of explicit instruction are often included as accommodations in IEPs and 504 Plans. Mehta & Fine (2019) found that many of these steps “work against longer, more open-ended, and more uncertain explorations” and that students are not proud of their work. Are IEP and 504 accommodations getting in the way of achieving deeper learning in a school setting?
Ron Clark Academy seems to spend a lot of time and effort on appearances; it is almost the TikTok/Instagram-ified version of a school. Based on what you learned about the school, does it seem to truly serve kids or is it all appearances? Additionally, do you think the house system contributes a sense of healthy competition to schools or is it detrimental? Do you think a house system could help boys feel more connected to schooling in a time when they are struggling in academic settings?
If achievement differences across countries are influenced less by isolated teaching methods and more by the consistency of instructional design across an entire system, what does that suggest about the role of leadership in building shared instructional practices without oversimplifying cultural context or reinforcing unequal expectations across student groups?
Are we trying to build human encyclopedias, or are we cultivating critical thinkers who love learning once the basics are locked down?
How can education leaders pivot away from individual teacher evaluation and instead build cultural systems needed for continuous, shared lesson design?
Are there any schools/programs tracking their students’ “success” through alternative means, like eventual career placement and salary, happiness in their life, positive contributions to society? Should that data be more important than getting into (and graduating from) college, and how can we track that?
Most interesting for me this evening were my doctoral students’ attempts to try and bridge the two far ends of the Traditional Grammar of Schooling-Deeper Learning continuum (after all, we did discuss the Hegelian dialectic last week!). I heard many comments like “Well, our students need to learn content and to pay attention, and the school does well on the SAT” and “Are there ways to combine these two philosophies of schooling?” and “Ron Clark Academy looks fun. I love the idea of student houses!” and “Let’s be honest. We do a lot of these things ourselves.” I planted a few conversational seeds regarding behavior modification through conditioning techniques, including both swift punishment for small offenses and house-style point reward systems. I am eager to see how our discussions progress this summer about how we want to learn and teach, and how we want to treat the children who are in our care.
Our readings / viewings for Class 03 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Academic Rigor. End-of-class evaluations were again very positive.
![Prepare them for anything: Innovation, disruption, and the small shifts that matter [NAESP]](http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/NAESP-Logo-Square-1080x675.jpg){kind=logo}
![Supporting principals to make learning interesting [NAESP]](http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EDUp-1080x675.png)
