Peter Gow, Trying to Further Education and Educators

Archive for the NotYourFathersSchool Category

Looking At Student Work–A Fine Idea for Our Time

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had occasion to participate in a couple of Looking At Student Work exercises, and it’s been a treat. Based on protocols developed at Project Zero and elsewhere in the 1990s, these exercises today—amid all the cries (including those heard here) […]

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Schools, Sports, and Character

Mens sana in corpore sano – muscular Christianity – “There is no ‘I’ in team” These and other verbal pieties have a long history in independent schools, words and phrases that justify and exalt the ideal of sport as a crucible of character. That’s as may be, […]

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Reality Check: Schools Can’t Always Do Everything We Tell Them To

A few years back, in the summer after the 2008 Crash, I wrote a Financially Sustainable Schools advisory for the National Association of Independent Schools titled “Alive and Well: What It Takes to Thrive in Hard Times,” reviewing some survival strategies practiced by schools that had been […]

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Buzzwords, Beehives, and School Leadership

Global – Interdisciplinary – Green – Technology-mediated – Multicultural – Design-thinkingWhat do these have in common? They’re all buzzwords that have been hovering and swooping around independent schools like a persistent swarm of bees for the past couple of decades. Some are older, comfortably familiar, while others […]

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The Last Post for My Father

We’ve become accustomed to the moving spectacle of funerals of firefighters and police officers, where comrades from many jurisdictions show the colors, ride in formation, and remind us by their solidarity of the perilous and valuable work they do. Since September 11 of 2001 those events are […]

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In Memoriam–David W. Gow

My father’s school is a bit subdued today, as the former head, my father, died this morning. It’s a lovely, green campus, with some imposing brick edifices and a couple of the original converted farm buildings that still do good service. Despite its location in prime Snow […]

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What Our Schools Must Be: Behind the Manifesto

Other than being a kind of sideways tribute to my heritage, then, what is Not Your Father’s School supposed to accomplish? And where does this self-styled “Manifesto” come from, and where do I think it should take us? Since I was a kid reading the Rover Boys […]

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A Not Your Father’s School Manifesto

Previously I have told the story of how I came to be here, and perhaps at a later date I will write more on this, but since I have stated that Not Your Father’s School is “a kind of idealized place,” I think I am obligated to […]

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School–It’s a Family Thing for Me

I’m feeling a bit staggered by the last month, having taken on far too many tasks, and family events have me thinking it’s time to tell a story that might also involve coming clean about the title of this blog. You see, there was, and in fact […]

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Don’t Let "Innovative" Become the New "Excellent"–please!

It seems I can hardly get through a day lately without doing being innovative. Just this morning I tried putting the handle of the pan on the left instead of the right when I was boiling water for tea, and in a related discovery a few days […]

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TRADITIONAL LANDS

I here affirm that the offices from which I work are situated on lands that have a very long and continuing history as a locus of residence, livelihood, traditional expression, and exchange by the Massachusett, Wampanoag, Abenaki, Mohawk, Wabanaki, Hohokam, O’odam, Salt River Pima, and Maricopa people. The servers for this website are situated on Ute and Goshute land. We make this acknowledgment to remind ourselves, our educational partners, and our friends of our shared obligation to acknowledge and work toward righting the inequities and injustices that have alienated indigenous peoples from the full occupation and utilization of these spaces.