Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Be honest with yourself. How many of you remember how to factor a polynomial (math teachers, you are exempt from answering this question). How many of you have found a use for this skill in the real world, just like your teacher promised you that you would when you were back in high school? Am I being a little snarky right now? Perhaps. But as a former high school math teacher myself, I’m worried that the profession is doing a disservice to millions of students who are not making the deep connections with math in the same way that they do with other content areas, and our nation’s math assessment scores only serve to support that statement. What are we doing wrong, and what can we do to fix it? This is a question many of us in the field have been asking for years. There must be a better way. This article is not a knock on my fellow math teachers. In fact, I know many who would like to see a complete overhaul in how and...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . When they write the history books a generation from now, 2020 may actually get its own chapter. We are not quite two thirds of the way through this year and it is already proving to be one that has thrown us, as school leaders, more curveballs than we can count. While some may choose to only focus on the negative, I’d like to think that our experiences have given us clarity in our mission and our purpose as educators and as learning communities. As corny as this may sound, I’d firmly believe this entire experience has brought about a new level of 20/20 vision for our future work as school leaders in 2020. The clock is running out (or has run out) on summer vacation, and with it the time we all have had as school leaders to try to make some course corrections, or in some cases, a complete one hundred eighty degree turn, on what schools need to look like during a pandemic. Now more than ever, schools need resilie...