Place Based Education
Schools Worth Visiting
The Getting Smart team visits hundreds of schools each year and is grateful for the opportunity to see high-quality teaching and learning in action. This series features stories of schools that share best practices, lessons learned and next-gen teaching practices that support high-quality, personalized, project-based learning for all students.
Schools Worth Visiting
11 Alternative Schools that are Real Alternatives
Trying to push all kids through a content-centric, compliance-oriented model just won’t work. A variety of alternative approaches have been attempted; here are a few approaches educators have to develop for youth that haven’t been successful in traditional schools.
Schools Worth Visiting
A Lesson We Keep Relearning: It’s All About Relationships
Good schools build relationships into their structure, culture and practices. Strong relationships build a sense of belonging, they cultivate success skills, and they promote achievement. Strong relationships today makes possible a lifetime of success.
Schools Worth Visiting
Why Schools Need Signature Learning Experiences
Signature experiences and signature building blocks can promote model efficacy, prioritize important outcomes for students and serve to differentiate schools and networks.
Future of Learning
Acton Academy: Hero Launch Pad Goes Global
“We believe each person who enters Acton Academy will find a calling that changes the world.” In a world where most schools have mission statements about preparation for a fuzzy future, the Acton Academy promise is shockingly bold and full of agency. The promise is that through Socratic dialogs and…
Schools Worth Visiting
Dare to Imagine: The First Global School Opens in D.C. and Shenzhen
“Our job is to build the first modern school—not a little better but fundamentally, radically better.” That was Chris Whittle’s charge to the founding faculty of a new global school opening in September in Washington, D.C. and Shenzhen, China. “The campuses represent the best thinking from…
Schools Worth Visiting
Climate Collapse: Is AI the Antidote?
“It is worse, much worse, than you think,” said David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, about the climate crisis. Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history—and the rate of species extinction is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a…
Future of Learning
What’s Next in Learning? Four Future Trends
Imagine a platform that enabled you to access local and national opportunities from your smartphone or computer, a place where you can pursue your interests with mentors and peers, building new skills and habits wherever you are, whenever you want. LRNG, now part of Southern New Hampshire University, extends access…
Future of Learning
Four Trends Influencing Education
A fitness tracker changed my life—it changed how I think about goal-setting and monitoring my exercise, it changed the intentionality of my travels, and it created a new global community of people who share my interests. I’m not alone; about a quarter of U.S. adults use some kind of tracker.
Schools Worth Visiting
Four Emerging Trends in Learning
Imagine going to school in a museum and studying real artifacts. Imagine a sustained relationship with an advisor who helps you figure out what you’re good at and care about, and where you can make a difference. Imagine high school students designing practical solutions to community problems. Visit an innovative…
Schools Worth Visiting
Making Dallas Schools Work for Students, Teachers and Business
Dallas is in his DNA. Dr. Michael Hinojosa grew up raised a family, taught and coached, and has served as superintendent of schools for Dallas ISD for 10 years. The biggest metroplex in the south, Dallas added more than a million people in this decade. It’s a global business…