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 […]
February 21, 2015
My dad took up bicycling in the 1970s. Biking with 10-speed bikes. No one biked with 10-speed bikes back then! I was a swimmer, so ever since I was ten years old, I was always in good enough shape to go for a thirty-mile bike ride. So my Dad would take me. We’d go on Saturday […]