Transformative Principal

Michael Horn is the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and author of Blended and Disrupting Class, and the new book coming out this week called “Choosing College!”, which is the book we are talking about today!

• The book is about more than just choosing college, right? Tell me about that.
• There are a few stats about college that are just appalling, so many people not finishing, so much debt. Why do we still support it?
• boost in wages, employers require it.
• military or college!
• Personally fulfilling
• A lot of people don’t know.
• What language do people use to describe what they did.
• A lot more students should be taking a gap year.
• Working on the newspaper in high school.
• Let’s talk about quality assurance. I hear people give advice that it doesn’t matter at all where you go or what you major in.
• What’s the value I’m getting from this experience?
• We don’t have enough data while we do have too much data!
• I am not a historian, even though my major was history.
• We don’t know what we don’t know.
• We have to give kids experiences about what they can be doing.
• Make it tangible with an emotional connection.
• Give kids immersive experiences in those fields so they can see themselves in that setting!
• Do your strengths and abilities allow you to get into that field?
• Learning starts with engagement.
• What do you think about something like Lambda school, which doesn’t offer a degree, but rather a skill, and you don’t pay for that?
• More than a coding bootcamp.
• Might ultimately replace college.
• Purdue university has an income share agreement.
• University of Utah.
• Traditional top universities are going to continue to drive up costs.
• Price competition among universities.
• understanding your “why” is important.
• Understanding what progress looks like for you.
• Find out what you want and work backwards.
• Not seeing distinct spheres but rather integrated parts of our lives.
• Kids look more at what you say than what you do.

• Loves this from the Forbes’ piece:

  “Because no one understands the precise mix of what external supports cause student outcomes to improve, a theory of innovation—the theory of interdependence and modularity—suggests that schools must integrate to control every critical component of a student’s life that isn’t “good enough” to ensure academic achievement. In other words, when driving toward greater performance with moving parts that are unpredictably interdependent, in order to do anything, schools must do nearly everything.”

  “From the vantage point of our theory, it appears one of the reasons for City Connect’s success is that its school-based coordinator starts with the teacher and each student’s academic goals. That is, the organization integrates the supports it provides in a tight, interdependent manner with each teacher and around the needs of each individual student in a personalized way—not in a tiered way that treats cohorts of students judged to have similar risk profiles in the same way.”

• Much to love about the personalized approach,
• Let’s play to your strengths and support you in your weaknesses.
• How to be a transformative principal? Principals ought to step back and ask, how do I integrate more authentic experiences?

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments