Overview

In early 1999 I hosted a handful of teachers in a unique work environment I was helping to develop in Palo Alto, California. As I escorted these teachers through this environment and explained some of the things we did there the teachers asked me a lot of questions about a number of topics I thought were common knowledge – given I had been talking with colleagues about these ideas for almost 20 years (at that point).

Even though there were a couple of pieces of work by the Caine’s (Renata and Geoffrey Caine) at this time, after this group of teachers left I realized that these topics and ideas were not as commonly known as I had thought – particularly in the world of education – so I decided to write a book that would articulate these ideas. I created a working title for the book as: There is No One Right Answer – a case for reinventing public education.

After that I wrote several chapters and published them to the InnovationLabs web site. But since then, during the last 6 years I haven’t written much more – but instead have been busy working with educators all over the US.

Last week after working with a small group of educators I was handed a book entitled: The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business. Reading through it I saw many things that moved and inspired me. That experience as lead to this – I’m beginning to write again – but this time to use this blog as a tool to instigate me to write and as a publishing medium. I don’t know if I will ever finish a book but at this point I’m committed to putting my thoughts and musings down here.

If, during reading any of this, the reader is inspired to have a more in depth conversation about any of it I welcome that – please contact me at: mkaufman@innovationlabs.com.

The Big Picture