PETER BERGEL – Recently my email brought two items on the same day which, when I put them together, seemed like a strong message for Independence Day.
Tag: cooperation
How Can We Identify and Utilize Best Practices for Problem Solving?
WINSLOW MYERS — When I was working as a teacher, I loved the phrase “best practices.†It suggested pooled wisdom, a collective weeding out of the more effective from the less effective, a distillation of the authentic out of a world of potential baloney. It implied disinterested cooperation to figure out what really does work when we’re trying to help children learn. Any collection of best practices would synergize with each other in a perfect storm of competency.
Why Not Ask for More?
I have been thinking about a verse from Leonard Cohen’s oft-recorded country song Bird on a Wire, a lot recently. Written in 1968, this simple, if depressing, song has been covered by artists as varied as Cohen himself, Joe Cocker, Willie Nelson, The Bobs, Dave Van Ronk, k.d. laing and the Neville Brothers, to name a few – a sure sign that it speaks to many kinds of people.