Serendipity35

Sarah Luchs posted her seven takeaways from “Designing Breakthrough School Models,” the summer institute in San Francisco where Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) convened the 30 of their grantees.

Here's my slightly revised version of her list.

Expect change. In fact, plan for it.
A key factor to succeeding in college (uh, and life) is persistence or what some call grit.
Self-directed learning requires skills, knowledge and a supporting culture that is radically different from the model of traditional schooling.

If you are working with traditionally under-served student populations and small-group work is one of your key instructional strategies
It takes time and thoughtful preparation to engage high-needs kids in new learning models. (Hint: Setting them out on their own in the name of self-directed learning doesn’t work.)
Let technology help your students master the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
You will not get 100% of what you intend; you may only get 30%. And even that will take three times longer than you think.  Accept this. Keep going.

To learn more about the 30 grantees who are planning new breakthrough school models, view their info pages at http://nextgenlearning.org/wave-iv-planning