Fort Washington

Posted: May 15th, 2014 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | No Comments »

Our office is near Ft. Washington Park, by the Charles River.

In 1775 George Washington put 3 cannons there. (The photo is from 1934).

The big picture goal: siege to the British forces in Boston and Charlestown. The key to the plan was really South Boston fortifications. The 3 cannons were a smaller part of the plan. They were paired with 3 cannons on the other side of the water to prevent the British from going up the river towards Harvard Square.

In the end, the cannons were never fired. The South Boston component worked. The Brits left. George Washington and the War moved south.

Sometimes you build something you don’t need.

In January 2014, we unveiled new curriculum. We were worried. Often in my USA experience, teachers don’t like new curriculum. They’re used to the old way. And often the curriculum isn’t very good — little details are wrong, enough to sink the whole enterprise.

That is part of what’s happening now with the Common Core in the USA. Some oppose the new quasi-national standards for political reasons, some for political-personal reasons (it’s supported by President Obama, who conservatives oppose, and by Bill Gates, who some left-ish folks oppose of Gates’ leadership on education reform).

But some teachers oppose Common Core because the little details have been bungled. They find the new stuff confusing. And the curriculum they’re handed which purports to teach to the Common Core isn’t very good.

The main part of our Kenya plan in terms of winning teachers was to

a) make the curriculum really good, by a ton of trial and error before we unveiled it,

b) talk to the teachers as we were trying out the new stuff, getting lots of opinions and feedback, and understanding their concerns and their language for expressing those concerns

then

c) training all 700 teachers in December 2013, before the new school year began. All “carrot.”

But I expected we might need some stick, too. Audits, observations, and various compliance regimes to make sure teachers were giving the new stuff a fair shot. Our 3 cannons. We hoped we wouldn’t need to invest a ton of energy here, but we were willing to.

So far as of May 2015, though, we haven’t needed it. Teachers genuinely like the new stuff. Their main complaint has been how fast we’ll create similar stuff for the other grades.

The answer to that is: the 2014 academic year (Jan to Nov) is 20% “new”; the 2015 academic year (Jan to Nov) will be 80% new. That will take a ton of effort. But we can do it.