April 18, 2020
“I have raised an illiterate son.” Those were the words my dad spoke to me as a 17-year-old, as I was filling out my Harvard application. Harvard required that we list all the books we had read during high school, and left plenty of room on the paper application to fill in lots and lots […]
April 10, 2020
I’m a big fan of reading. But I have found that reading various news feeds on my iPad, computer or iPhone, while informative, does absolutely nothing to calm my soul. In fact, as I get pulled into the various rabbit holes courtesy of social media, I find myself actually feeling more stress – it’s not […]
April 7, 2020
I did not have any counselors in my high school. We had an English teacher, Mr. Bersey, who offered to help students in the college application process, but that was about it. Overnight, he went from being my sophomore year English teacher who taught me words like zephyr and zenith and who also gave me […]
March 30, 2020
“I haven’t been bored once. Not one bit.” That’s what my 17-year-old high school junior son Dawson told Jill and me after two weeks of isolation. I believe him. He has been training for this scenario for years. He certainly likes the outdoors. He’s OK with hiking, enjoys playing golf (he breaks 100 and has […]
March 28, 2020
People are seeking to know the expectations and objectives this new distance learning paradigm. I drafted a set of objectives for our district, then received feedback from a number of teachers and instructional leaders, and together we have developed version one of the MBUSD Objectives for Distance Learning.
March 23, 2020
As I have made these COVID-19 posts on Facebook, and I as tentatively enter the world of “social distance media,” I have heard from so many people from different chapters of my life. I have been fortunate in my 58 years of existence to have been a member of many amazing and magical teams. Sometimes […]
March 20, 2020
March 19, 2020 Today was Day Four of online schooling in MBUSD. Yesterday, I sent out an email to our entire MBUSD community with an update. I praised our teachers and staff who are learning on the fly, acknowledged that parents have it pretty rough these days with their new world (though there is some […]
March 18, 2020
March 17, 2020 Last week was one of the craziest weeks I’ve had as an educator and perhaps as a human being. Whether or not to close schools was a huge debate for our area and for the country. Many parents and medical professionals were saying that the sooner all schools closed, the more quickly […]
March 22, 2019
When I was a high school principal, a parent of a senior came up to me and asked, “Did you really tell my son he should turn down his college admission offers and go be a professional musician instead?” I smiled and said that yes, that was my advice to him. She shook her head […]
January 10, 2019
BCHD sat down with the heads of the three Beach Cities school districts to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing students today – and how they are tackling it all together. There’s so much happening in our schools and the lives of today’s students – from stressful academic demands to social-emotional well-being. So, we thought […]
June 14, 2018
Congratulations to the MBMS 8th Grade Class of 2018. Your class has chosen the theme, “Reach for the Stars” for this ceremony. And why not? It’s way better than themes that Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh might have chosen: What’s the use? I shouldn’t even try. Nothing’s going to change. Reach for the Stars is […]
May 24, 2018
I had the honor of attending an amazing event in our community today. Beach Cities Health District sponsored a Summit on Youth Stress and Substance Abuse. This is a huge issue for our community, for the communities of the Consortium 2030 group, and for the nation as a whole. We heard from 12 students in […]
September 16, 2017
When the last transmission for the International Space Station ended, the crowd in the middle school auditorium cheered wildly. The applause went on for over three minutes – more than 500 people swept up in the tremendous emotion of the moment. There were students, parents, and educators in the room, and every one of them […]
April 20, 2017
Back in 2015, I wrote a blog entry on AP classes. This entry is an update to that post. In the last two years, we have ramped up our focus on student stress here in MBUSD, and we are not alone. We have joined other districts with a similar interest through Stanford’s Challenge Success initiative. […]
March 31, 2017
March 31, 2017 I have written to you several times this year about our progress towards our Board goal of creating a culture of inclusion in our school district. I have witnessed powerful events in our schools, led by students, parents, and employees, that celebrated inclusion and discussed its importance in our community. Some of those […]
January 27, 2017
Students in Manhattan Beach are some of the highest achieving students in the nation. They graduate at an extraordinarily high rate and go to fantastic colleges and/or careers around the nation. But we have seen warning signs that indicate stress levels are higher than ever before. MBUSD is a proud member of the 21st Century […]
April 27, 2016
Twice a year, the superintendents and curriculum leaders from seven high-performing districts across the western United States meet to learn from each other and local experts. One of our themes has been how schools can help students develop into healthy, happy, thinking, and self-reliant adults ready to contribute to our society. We have worked […]
March 21, 2016
This is a speech I gave to our honors students and their parents in the fall of 2015. The 21st Century Superintendents’ Consortium is a group of seven high performing school districts across the United States seeking to learn from each other, from current research, and from schools around the nation. We are thinking a […]
February 12, 2016
Last week in MBUSD, over 500 people from around Los Angeles came to MBMS to participate in an all-day workshop featuring Dr. Jo Boaler, a world renowned professor of mathematics at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. We cohosted the conference with UCLA. All MBUSD secondary math teachers attended, and many of our elementary teachers […]
June 15, 2015
2014-15: The Year of the Maker in MBUSD Students are the core of all of our efforts in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District. The 2014-15 school year has been a year of significant accomplishments for MBUSD students and staff, yet we remain steadfast in our determination to engage in continuous improvement. To provide MBUSD […]
May 30, 2015
We are a reading family. It’s been that way since the words of Goodnight Moon and The Big Red Barn echoed through the house as our children were young. One of my favorite memories of reading is in 2007, when the last Harry Potter book came out. My son Ryan could not wait. He was, after […]
May 29, 2015
For the first time ever, we implemented a weighting policy in our high school. Advanced Placement classes will receive an extra grade point when we compute a student’s GPA. Students and parents may think it will provide an advantage in college admissions, but it won’t. We already do quite well in that area, and no […]
April 26, 2015
One of the major focuses for improving instruction comes in Common Core math. Our district is in the midst of adopting new teaching methodologies for our math teachers aligned to meet the demands of the Eight Standards for Mathematical Practices and the new standards in each grade. In spite of the politics that sometimes exists […]
April 15, 2015
I went with my son Ryan today to his Constitutional Law class in UOP’s McGeorge School of Law taught by Distinguished Professor Brian Landsberg. The class was one hour and twenty minutes long and was fascinating on a number of levels. First and foremost, the dominant style of instruction is Socratic. This is the second class I have experienced […]