Take Note: School of the Future

In the Kansas City region, the story of education has many chapters. And with the launch of season two of our Take Note project, Flatland picks up that story again. Using a “school of the future” lens, we ask students, school leaders and parents what school should look like 10, 20 or 50 years from now, and what that means for future generations of students. We’ll ponder questions like, What does the classroom of the future look like? How will we protect our students in the school of the future? and How will we measure success? We hear an expert say, “There are big questions — huge questions.” Together, hopefully, we can start to craft some answers. Follow the project with #TakeNoteKC

two young women at work, one on computer, one with a pencil

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…

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Are 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…

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students race drones

Poetry 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,…

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Early 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…

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kids gardening

Ride 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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