“It’s easier to move a cemetery than change a curriculum.” – Woodrow Wilson I saw this quote on a slide the other day – and thought: what an inconvenient truth! But it’s not wrong: pedagogical change is hard. My perspective on this is hard-won: at R.E.A.L., we have worked with almost a thousand teachers to…
These discussion skills are the groundwork for knowing how to have a conversation with each other, how to advocate for themselves, and how to make friends. Discussion skills are life skills.
-Bridget Johnson
Our School Partners: What We’ve Learned Works – and Doesn’t! When I jumped in to build R.E.A.L.® full-time in 2021, I never would have dreamed that by 2024 we would have worked with seventy school partners. When independent school leaders see the variety of schools in the R.E.A.L.® community, we often get a raised eyebrow…
Launching and leading an academic initiative in an independent school can feel like walking a tightrope: what is the balance between fostering alignment and preserving autonomy for faculty? At R.E.A.L.® Discussion, we have partnered with Academic Leaders to launch and lead discussion skills initiatives across 70 independent schools since 2021. Here are two case studies…
I remember the moment I began to believe in the power of R.E.A.L.® Discussion. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 2013: Grandfriends’ Day in my eighth grade classroom. The kids had decided they wanted to show their grandparents a R.E.A.L.® Discussion, and I had pulled together a packet of primary sources related to the…
What Teachers Can Do to Help Students Through Moments of Polarity This summer I spoke with hundreds of teachers across nearly a dozen workshops about a near-omnipresent anxiety: how can teachers help students navigate moments of polarity with their peers during this U.S. Presidential election season? It’s worth noting that at R.E.A.L.®, we are big…
One Saturday night about five years ago, I found myself at TGI Friday’s at 10:30pm, just sitting down to dinner with a sports team full of disgruntled teenagers. The kids were grumpy after the afternoon’s loss and tired from a long day of travel; unsurprisingly, phones came out as we walked from the door to…
Adults everywhere lament kids’ conversational skills (or lack thereof) – in schools, restaurants, around family dinner tables. The causes are debatable and myriad: blame iPads, TikTok, parents, politics, COVID – the list goes on! Here’s what’s not up for debate: today’s students struggle to communicate…especially live, in-person, and across any kind of difference. As teachers…
Today, we’re thrilled to welcome Peter Nilsson — AI expert, seasoned school leader, and diehard humanities teacher — to the blog. A prolific writer, Pete has spilled much ink discussing the role and purpose of in-class education in an AI world — and he’s bullish on the part school still has to play, even amid…
At R.E.A.L. ®, we are big on listening! Over the past two years, we’ve listened to our partner schools, and we’ve heard one repeated thing loud and clear: we shouldn’t wait until middle school to teach students discussion skills. We listened, and we agreed. But per usual, we had a lot of follow-up questions. What…