I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, and I must say that I’m in the midst of grappling with how these ideas play out for education. I think there’s a lot in there that can be applied to school culture. I’m going to throw out some questions that could play itself out in the way we think about a school…

• What does it mean to think of our teachers as Mavens and Salesmen. (See the Wikipedia entry for the book for a quick definition.)
• Who is the Connector of the school? Is that one of the roles that a principal must play today? Do we shrink the school through our personal connections?
• Can we make the argument that authentic assessment is stickier than traditional curriculum? Is that why it works better?
• Is the Magic Number 150 the reason we need small schools? Do we need to find ways to divide even a school of 500 into smaller houses? Or is creating the advisory system enough?
• And does the Power of Context explain why teaching values… and living them within our schools… is so important? If we can create communities of care, can we create the environment where kids can care about each other? About themselves?
• And perhaps more to the point, what is the "epidemic" we want to spread? Is that the real life manifestation of the lofty goals of the mission statement? Is it an way of thinking? A way of learning?

Those are some of my school-based questions, and it’s clearly taking the concept and applying it on the micro-level. It’s that modest idea that Gladwell talks about in his new afterword. But The Tipping Point is has radical implications as well. I’m going to write about those in the next post. But I would love for other folks who have read the book to comment on this post with some of the other questions the text raises on the micro-level.

Thoughts?