Take Note: School of the Future
Grading the Soft Skills
It’s the time-honored question from students: when are we going to use this in real life? But as we have seen in this season of Take Note, schools are increasingly focused on the “soft” skills that are relevant for the workplace, such as critical thinking and team work. That brings up another question for the…
Read MoreAre School Buildings Obsolete?
A “school without walls” is typically a euphuism for a building that substitutes collaborative learning for the standard approach of stationing teachers in front of a classroom full of students. But the internet age has brought us to a point where walls literally are superfluous — where students do their work online as part of…
Read MorePoetry And Motion
For Isra Abdullah, art is a release — almost like the steam from a teapot. A native of Kurdistan, and a Sunni Muslim, Isra’s family escaped the sectarian violence in Iraq a decade ago. A relief agency in Turkey resettled the family in Kansas City, Missouri, when Isra was a third-grader. Along with her parents,…
Read MoreEarly Childhood Educators Contemplate The School of The Future
Kansas City PBS recently hosted a professional development event for about two dozen early childhood education providers in Kansas City Public Schools. Held at Manual Career and Technical Center, the meeting introduced the providers to the children’s programming available through KCPT. Given the audience, we took the opportunity to ask participants about their vision for…
Read MoreRide the Wave: Preparation for the Real World Should Include a Sense of Uncertainty
In some respects, life is like an ocean — vast, unpredictable, and a little scary. That imagery came courtesy of Katie Kimbrell, director of education at the Kansas City Startup Foundation, which works to foster entrepreneurism throughout the city. She actually boiled the idea of the real world down to one word: ambiguity. And as…
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