[tap, tap, tap… is this on? Anyone still reading? Sorry I’ve been gone so long.]

This is an idea I’ve been kicking around… anyone who has been with me for my workshop on Where Does It Live: Building Systems and Structures Around What You Believe knows that I think schools need to do a better job of saying what they do and doing what they say. What follows is my attempt to distill a lot of that into an accessible question for parents and students to ask of their schools. It is, simply, this:

I believe than any parent should be able to walk into any school and ask any teacher, student, staff member, “What does teaching and learning look like here? What are the ways in which that is nurtured and developed for everyone in the school community?” and get a real, coherent answer that isn’t just lip-service.

Don’t we want families to ask those questions?

Don’t we want schools that can answer those questions meaningfully?

We can, as a society, hold in our heads that schools can answer those questions meaningfully and differently. And we can understand that any school that can meaningfully answer those questions probably has a better shot of being a school that truly matters than one that cannot.

We will only know what schools that matter look like when we work toward our answers to those questions and when we start sharing our answers.

So how would your school answer those questions?