Whatever your role — teacher, principal, or superintendent — when you work in a school system, you experience tensions between your reasons for going into education and how you actually spend your time in schools. You might be driven to support student-directed learning, coach new teachers, or initiate portfolio assessment, but you continually find yourself called away from those drivers. Instead, you have to assume some other responsibility that you may not see as essential but has gradually taken up more your time sometimes without explanation. How do we change institutions, like schools, to ensure that we are focused on our actual priorities? How do we jumpstart uncomfortable conversations? What can we learn from schools that were willing to totally rethink how they do things? In #EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education (Jossey-Bass, 2014), Grant Lichtman shares reflections following his three-month road trip across the country to visit schools and discuss innovation with stakeholders inside and outside the classroom.
Lichtman joins New Books in Education for the interview. You can find more information about his work on his blog. To share your thoughts on the podcast, you can connect with him on Twitter at @GrantLichtman. You can reach the host on Twitter at @tsmattea.

Trevor Mattea is an educational consultant and speaker. His areas of expertise include deeper learning, parent involvement, project-based learning, and technology integration. He can be reached at info@trevormattea.com.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices