Episode Details

Ira Socol is a former Technology Director and special education teacher. He is also He is the author of Timeless Learning and The Drool Room.

• The driver of change is where we want our kids to get to vs. where they currently end up.
• We’re not accomplishing 99% of what we want our kids to accomplish.
• We need to judge our work by how many choices kids have when they are 30.
• We focus on all the wrong things. We focus on content acquisition, when that has always been secondary.
• We’re not teaching the wonder of intrinsic motivation.
• I watch kids learn all sorts of things not in school.
• School without walls.
• Judo principle of education - use what the student is passionate about to everyone’s advantage.
• There are different choices we can make.
• What should we be focusing on measuring?
• 50% of kids who go to college don’t go back for the second year.
• They can’t assess anything without a standardized assessment.
• We need to look for very specific evidence.
• Step 1: Are you understanding what our responsibilities are in school/culture/society?
• See kids having a maximum level of freedom?
• If kids are in the halls, it means adults trust the kids.
• I’ve never seen learning happen where kids didn’t trust adults, and kids never trust adults that don’t trust them.
• You kids better get to work! Said one student to another.
• This is a win that will pay dividends forever.
• Changed summer school into maker camps.
• Teacher: “Tell me, is there a problem you have in baseball you would like to solve?”
• He can’t sit in a classroom. That’s our problem, not his problem.
• Music construction studios
• We didn’t define kids by any deficit.
• Talent development - Gifted and Special education working together.
• We found ways to make our kids succeed based on what mattered to them.
• Why don’t more schools do this kind of work?
• In many cases you can hear them spinning excuses from the moment they arrived.
• I don’t know how to make people more courageous.
• Your expectations of risk are very overrated.
• Because they were learners, they did fine.
• Kids live up to your expectations, just as they will live down to them.
• What do you have to lose?
• They just need to take the leap.
• All we ask is that they take a little leap each time from where they are.
• What do we want our kids to be?
• Lifelong learning competencies
• Wouldn’t it be easier if you were teaching all 8 year olds?
• How would he learn to be 9?
• How would he learn to care for the wee ones?
• They can learn anything they need to learn to go forward.
• Coder dojo
• Kids can do so much more. We just need to have the guts.
• Someone who is fearless is either uninformed our stupid.
• Courage is knowing you’re afraid and doing it anyway.
• Passion-based learning high school started with just 30 kids.
• Aim small miss small.
• How to be a transformative principal? Turn off the bells. Ask your teachers to open their doors and keep them open. Change your grade book so nobody can give below a failing grade.

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