A brief break from outdoor learning to present: HEAR Chicago Talk!

I am putting together a forum where people can share ideas about reaching folks and teaching folks. Click on the tab labeled HEAR Chicago Talk: Coming In June! to learn more...and possibly to help. I am looking for:

• A venue: A low-key bar or café with a designated performance space would be ideal. The venue should be fairly central (near north or near south side of Chicago), accessible by public transportation, and comfortable and welcoming for people of all backgrounds and ages. Please comment or email me (hear.k12@gmail.com) for suggestions, contacts, or offers.

• Presenters! Here's the prompt (modeled after Pecha Kucha): 

   In twenty slides of twenty seconds each, present something you’ve done or seen that has inspired you or others.

• Audience! Tell all your friends about it! Keep checking the HEAR Chicago tab for more developments!

What is K–12's checklist?

In my last post I mentioned  Atul Gawande’s article* detailing how many lives a  simple checklist system has saved in ICUs—and how astonishingly difficult it is to widely implement this humblest of processes. Here it is. I have returned again and again to this article over the years, and to similar pieces about how we in the United States are so dazzled by technological complexity that we neglect process. We therefore entirely overlook elegant solutions to  seemingly unsolvable problems.

What are some of the “checklists” that can help schools? That is a guiding question for me. They may not be literal checklists: what I mean is, What are the simple, elegant solutions that, while they can’t solve everything, can unobstruct a least one or two major arteries of dysfunction?

*Gawande later turned this article into a book. Stay tuned for a review.