Mike Falick's Blog

Pixar's Randy Nelson Discusses What Pixar Wants in Its Employees - Collaboration Anyone?

Here's a great video on what Pixar looks for in its employees and how Pixar uses improv to enhance creativity and collaboration.

 

John Cleese Talks About Creativity

One of my favorite performers, John Cleese, talks in this video about creativity.  Enjoy!

Spring Branch's Annual Parent U: A Great Day of Learning is Happening on October 2, 2010

Spring Branch's Annual Parent U: A Day of Learning, is going to take place on October 2, 2010, from 8:00a - 1:00p at Spring Woods High School. Registration is easy -- click here to register in English or here to register in Spanish.

Parent U offers dozens of sessions in the following 9 Learning Tracks:

• Academics
• Parenting Skills
• College and Career Readiness
• Health and Wellness
• Safety
• Special Needs
• Finances
• Grade Level Transitions
• Media and Web Resources

The day's course information is available here (.pdf).

Spring Branch to Celebrate New Elementary School Grand Openings - Westwood (9/23), Ridgecrest (10/14), and Hollibrook (10/21)

Over the next several weeks, we will celebrate the grand openings of our three new elementary schools, Westwood (9/23), Ridgecrest (10/14), and Hollibrook (10/21).  Of course, these schools have been open since the beginning of this school year, but you are invited to join us for the "official' grand opening.  Please RSVP by clicking on the image below.

Marion Brady Shows Why Dogs Can be An Unusual Guide to School Reform

I recently read a fantastic article in the Washington Post by Marion Brady that made the unlikely, but very effective, comparison between education in America today and dogs.  From the article:

It isn’t that many different breeds can’t be taught to herd, lead high-altitude rescue efforts, or kill foxes. They can. It’s just that teaching all dogs to do things which one particular breed can do better than any other doesn’t make much sense.

We accept the reasonableness of that argument for dogs. We reject it for kids.

The non-educators now running the education show say American kids are lagging ever-farther behind in science and math, and that the consequences of that for America’s economic well-being could be catastrophic.

So, what is this rich, advantaged country of ours doing to try to beat out the competition? Mainly, we put in place the No Child Left Behind program, now replaced by Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards Initiative. If that fact makes you optimistic about the future of education in America, think again about dogs.

The article is a must read that represents why the current thinking on "reform" by narrowing the curriculum is, in my opinion, wrong.

Recap of the Board's September 13, 2010, Workshop Meeting

Our Board held its monthly workshop meeting tonight. Here's a recap of the issues discussed and actions taken on tonight's Agenda.

We have significantly modified our agendas, both for the workshops and the regular monthly meetings, to provide far more time to discuss the District's academic program as we prepare to create the next Five Year Education Plan.  As a result, each month we have a presentation and discussion during our workshop meeting that is then applied to Spring Branch during the regular monthly meeting.  The intent is to provide leadership that will inform the community and the Five Year Planning group on the Board's educational direction for the District.

Tonight, we had a lengthy presentation and discussion on norm referenced testing.  During the last school year (2009-2010), the District implemented norm referenced testing for our 2nd graders in the form of the Stanford test.  The intent of this testing is to provide additional data that can allow us to determine our student's success.  This is especially important as we look to the significant limitations on the usefulness of the data from the TAKS test, which does not appear to correlate to either college readiness or future success.

We had two additional discussion items.  The first was a Discussion of the DProposed Legislative Priorities and Positions for the 82nd Session of the Texas Legislature.  The District's sole priority for the upcoming session, which begins on January 11, 2011, will be as follows:

The District’s goal is that all Spring Branch ISD students will graduate on time from high school, and go on to complete a 2 year technical degree, or a 2 year associates degree, or a 4 year degree.

In order to support this goal, SBISD believes the current funding system needs to:

• Maintain current levels of state funding per student for Spring Branch ISD.
• Revert competitive grants to formula distribution.
• Allow school districts to index local revenue to inflation and provide that, if a district’s budget is not increased by more than CPI, the district may approve a tax rate to fund its budget without the need for a rollback election.

We also have a number of Board Legislative Positions that can be reviewed here.

Our final discussion item tonight was a discussion on a proposal by Mary Landrum to create the Leadership SBISD Project.  The Board was very much in favor of the idea but agreed to postpone implementation until after the development of the next 5 Year Educational Plan.

Finally, we approved two revisions to the Board Calendar tonight - we added a meeting next Monday, September 20, 2010, at 5:00p to do our required 3 hour team building.  This meeting will center around a book study on Diane Ravitch's excellent book - The Death and Life of the Great American School System.  We also rescheduled our November regular monthly meeting from November 22, 2010, to November 15, 2010.

Animal School: A Video that Poignantly Shows the Fallacy of One-Size Fits All Education

Patience

Saw this great commercial during tonight's Texas game.

Texas PTA Honors State Representative Dwayne Bohac

[So, as you know, I am way behind on updating my blog.  Among the many, many updates I have wanted to post for some time is this one.]

In April, I had the privilege to attend the Texas PTA's presentation to Spring Branch's own State Rep. Dwayne Bohac in which he was named to the Texas PTA's Statewide Legislative Honor Roll for his leadership on public education issues during the 81st Session.

The Periodic Table of Videos - Share this with Your Favorite Chemistry Teacher and Student

The University of Nottingham has created a very useful version of the periodic table.  From the Periodic Table of Videos website:

Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century - but this modern version has a short video about each one.

We've done all 118 - but our job's not finished. Now we're updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.

Plus we're making films about other areas of chemistry, latest news and occasional adventures away from the lab.

Most recently we've started a new series - The Molecular Videos - featuring our favourite molecules and compounds.

Click the image below to go directly to the website.  Once there, click each element in the table to see the element's video.