Redesigning School

It's been a long time coming. The Mastery School of Hawken was a mere idea a few years ago, and now it's a thriving school with students, faculty, and an approach that upends how school generally works. Julia Griffin, Director of the Mastery School, and Nick Cheadle, return to the podcast to share their reactions and reflections on the opening and what's next. Be sure to check out the Mastery School's new website to learn more about some of the program elements discussed.

And we're back. Here at ReDesigning School, we've had our collective heads down for the past months, and now we're ready to look up. As have many in schools across the world, the Hawken administration and faculty have had to redesign just about every facet of school while staying true to our purpose, which is to deliver "Forward-focused preparation for the real world through the development of character and intellect." No easy task, but we've learned a few things that we can share. In Ep...

The transition to remote teaching and learning has surely stretched all teachers, students, and parents, but something distinctly challenging is happening in lower schools. To keep younger students engaged and learning requires planning, patience, and grit from all parties. It also requires a genuine strategy and a relentless focus on student well-being and growth. Courtney Martin, Hawken's Director of the Lower School, joins the pod to discuss how her teachers, students, and families ...

In the latest edition of our series on Remote Teaching and Learning, we wrestle with the whys and hows of creating inclusive, dynamic, and meaningful community while we're all working away from each other. Heidi Wilbrandt -- teacher, coach, dean, and member of the Diversity Equity Inclusion and Justice team -- joins the pod to discuss strategies for forming connections during a time when we risk many students -- and teachers -- feeling disconnected and alone. A few helpful reso...

Problem-based, place-based, project-based -- pick your P to accompany your BL. These days, many teachers are trying to figure out how to adjust their experiential learning plans when our shared experience is that we're all working from home. Many schools have projects and classes that ask students to engage with the community, but here at Hawken we have whole courses that we call Macros that use challenges from community partners as the primary learning and teaching terrain. We invited two ...

Eric Hudson, Director of Learning and Design at Global Online Academy, has been at this distance learning thing for years, and he has wisdom to share. He joined the podcast to share important background and advice to help answer the central question of this moment: "What does it mean to be a teacher when you don't have a classroom?" A few key concepts that Eric mentions: Cognitive LoadUnderstanding by Design

A not so funny thing happened on the way to summer this year... The global pandemic has disrupted the world as we know it, which has led all of us to reimagine, reconfigure, and redesign our lives. For teachers and students in particular, the moment has resulted in a momentous and sudden shift in how, when, where, and why we do our work. At ReDesigning School, we're going to change the focus of the podcast for the next weeks to explore how schools are adjusting their programs in real-...

A few days before schools closed and social distancing began, we spoke with Stacy Caldwell, CEO of the Mastery Transcript Consortium. She shared a lot of good news about how quickly and successfully colleges have accepted the Mastery Transcript. She also spoke about how the Mastery Transcript meets the moment when high schools are shifting approaches to focus on enduring skills, habits, and content knowledge.

Last month, we hosted the first cohort of accepted students at the Mastery School of Hawken for an evening of celebration and gratitude. It was quite a night and a key marker between the dream of a new school and its reality. To capture the energy of the evening, we set up the podcast and interviewed students and parents to hear their take on this enterprise. They had a lot to say! We also asked Rasa Drane, the director of admissions for the Mastery School of Hawken, to join the pod to shar...

The landscape of college admissions is always complicated, so what happens when you add in paradigm shifts like mastery learning and the Mastery Transcript? To answer that and other questions, we invited Renee Bischoff, Hawken's Director of College Counseling, to join the podcast so we could explore the intersection of the college admissions process and efforts to redesign school. The news, surprisingly perhaps, is good. A few resources that might come in handy: What about Colle...

The data around mental and emotional health in schools and college campuses are sobering -- to say the least. As we redesign school, we should think about ways for it to challenge, stretch and inspire growth without grinding kids down. That's the life work of Dr. Denise Pope, founder of Challenge Success, a non-profit school reform organization affiliated with the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. Besides being one of the kindest, smartest souls around, Pope is also a senior...

"Education is undergoing a period of dramatic evolution," Grant Lichtman writes in his new book Thrive. "The number of options families have for their children’s education is expanding at a rate never seen in human history. Schools that understand and deliver what families want and need will survive and thrive in the future; those that do not risk losing the critical mass of students they need to stay alive. This may not be the hand educators want, but it is the hand we have been dealt." Gra...

We know the story: high school can be an emotional rollercoaster for some (or most or many or all…) students. What if we designed school with emotional and psychological health in mind? That's one of the questions gnawing at Janae Peters, Hawken teacher and member of the team designing the Mastery School. Janae returns to the pod to talk about the whys and hows of embedding social-emotional learning into the very fabric of school life. For more, read her most recent post, "How to Make a Sch...

On November 17, 200 or so people gathered at The Mastery School of Hawken's Open House. We thought it was a great time to take the pod out of the studio and record an episode in front of a live audience. Our topic: a deep dive into Macros -- the core building blocks of the academic program at the Mastery School of Hawken. Julia Hodges, Roze Kerr ‘21, Luke Kim ‘20, and Katie McGregor of United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Cleveland join the pod to detail how the Engineering Macro works and make...

In our final installment of our Meet the Team episodes, meet Nick Cheadle, Spanish teacher and intrepid traveler. Nick joined Hawken this fall and serves as a key member of the design team for the Mastery School of Hawken. Hear about his background and his vision for how students can learn about language, culture, and themselves.