Elliot Washor's TGIF 03.21.2025

“Are you with me now” A J Ryder

After my visits to Alabama, and North and South Carolina this year, I’m reminded of how a new iteration of Rosenwald Schools cropping up in third spaces in their communities is possible. As we explore the market through B-Unbound for unschool environments and how to possibly access and use vouchers in a BPL fashion, I came across this article about Abundance Academy in Mississippi. It is a great example of the need for this type of education and how with voucher funds to finance them they can be viable.

G’day 

We had another large meeting with our group heading to Australia. Right now, we have 38 people coming along and that’s a lot more people than anticipated. On this Zoom, Viv did a great job explaining the in’s ‘n outs of what to expect. The IBPLC and B-U loom large as we’re off to observe and join the work of Big Picture Schools in Australia. It is an exciting time that can set the tone and pace for the work ahead of us. Just this week quite a few articles came out that show how our timing is great to be in this space. One article was about the Classic Learning Test that is presently perceived by the SAT as a competitor. They got quite a nasty welcome from SAT lobbyists. Although we offer something completely different with the IBPLC that is not just for college but for all students it shows how the College Board behemoth will fight back to keep its position in the race for college admissions. And now in another article from Bloomberg called Want to Go to College Pay the College Board we learn that the College Board is expanding its reach into CTE courses and certifications. Can anyone see real-world learning or student choice here? Our friend Harry Feder of Fairtest had a few choice words in this article for what the College Board is up to given declining college enrollment. Hmm? Let’s now make money on courses and testing that measure yet another round of narrow bands of smarts for students not college bound. It’s enough to “make you wanna holler.” Once again, our timing is good here.

While I was at SxSW I ran into Josh Reppun from What Schools Could Be (WSCB). He asked me to do a series of articles of my choosing over the next year. WSCD has a fairly large reach to about 30,000 subscribers. So far I have articles ready to go on Craft and Skilled Trades, Rhythms and Algorithms, Math, Student Absence and Engagement, and Privileged Information. Since A.I. is still all the rage, we are going to start with the one on Privileged Information: The Unseen Knowledge That Shapes Learning and Work - "Little Gestures, Big Impact” It will be coming out in June.

In writing these articles, I referenced Sarason’s book Caring and Compassion in Clinical Practice that I just read for the third time. Written in 1977, it is a book that unfortunately, is still ahead of its time. It deals with why caring and compassion have never been seriously considered in the selection, training and professional development of doctors, psychologists and educators. Once again as Sarason points out when you deal with a demographic of students across race, gender, class, cultures, neurodiversity and communities you have to be more sensitive to who your students are and the smarts and capacity they have. Basically, our system only gives lip service to caring and compassion in the development of teachers and principals. Carlos’s book, Finding Your Leadership Soul – What our students can teach us about Love, Care and Vulnerability does an excellent job giving all of us a practical feel for the need of Love, Care and Vulnerability. He does this by cleverly flipping the role of teacher and student shows us a way forward for developing caring and compassion in practice. I’m hoping his book makes the impact that Sarason was hoping for in teacher and principal training and development. Do we have a shot at it? I believe so. Our work with ASU and a BPL Teaching Credential or something close to this is a great place to start.

Great talk with Andrew Coburn and Justin Mathews around BPLiving Fellows and Certifications. We have BPLiving Fellow candidates and with Quillen Domingue being the conduit to Namahana we have a nice trajectory to work going on 5,000 miles away. This will all have more than a moment at Big Bang as we go off and explore the third spaces where this work is happening.

Be well!