Education goes 3D: the power of play

What makes a classroom different than a children’s museum? In many kindergartens today, children sit passively at their desk while teachers deliver the latest scripted lessons on vocabulary, spelling and addition—lessons sometimes dotted with classes in science and history. In children’s museums, these same students can be seen engineering bridges with tinkertoys, testing the force […]

Let’s get serious about play

Here’s my audacious idea: let’s show children just how seriously we take their education by making sure that every school has a least one adult whose job it is to make play happen. Let’s take play seriously. I don’t mean make it boring and regimented. Play is some of children’s most important work. The motivation […]

Informal science education enhances classroom learning

The chorus of proponents for increasing math and science education is getting larger and louder—and with good reason. Study after study indicates that as science and engineering (as well as almost every other part of our professional and personal lives) becomes more global, our students must have the education and skills to compete and to […]

The power of play

What do the American Association of Pediatrics, Robin Henig of the New York Times, and Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, have in common? They all believe in the power of play. Add to that list Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, who promotes play at children’s museums to ignite curiosity; and […]

Rethinking the school day

Baltimore is a playful, vibrant place.  You need go no further than the parking lot of M&T Bank Stadium to watch adults chasing each other around, football in hand, before and after a Ravens game.  If you stroll through Federal Hill, Patterson Park or Canton on any given evening, you will almost certainly run into […]

Joy: a radical solution for schools

Ask any creator…an architect, sculptor, writer, carpenter, choreographer,  composer or designer. Sometimes you just have to stop and start all over again. They say it is ‘insanity’ to continue doing the same things and yet keep expecting different results. Sometimes you have to detach, throw out and then re-create. This is the formula I suggest […]