Like so many others, I am compelled to plant seeds for a garden when spring scents warm the air. This year I will grow a variety of vegetables in a raised bed I plan to construct out of mostly found materials from a nearby beach.To start the process, I planted some seeds in an eggshell planter. I saved eggshells from breakfast eggs, poked holes in the bottoms, filled them with soil, added seeds, and put them in the egg carton to sprout. In just a few days, a whole group of seeds turned into fast-growing seedlings that had to be…

It’s been quite a week for me to be immersed in school reform. After speaking at the Voyager’s Community School education conference, I heard John Taylor Gatto and Ron Miller speak, among other reformers. I also went to an excellent differentiated instruction workshop with Jim Grant last Tuesday, in which he laid out many of the problems facing education today. On top of that, I just watched the film Waiting for Superman. Brewing on all of this led me to this question: What is education in our public schools for? Ask different people and you’ll get different responses. Is it…