HOW PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA SOLICITED MY INPUT ON PRIORITIES FOR THE NEW SECRETARY OF EDUCATION

OK… so he didn’t really solicit my opinion.  I think maybe I just had a dream that I was sitting in my office talking to a couple of students when I got a phone call– totally unexpected– from President-Elect Obama.
“Dr. Riley”, he says. “It’s good to finally reach you. I know you have been [...]

WHY “GENERATION WE” KIDS INSIST ON DESIGNING THEIR OWN TATTOOS

Generation We kids are artists, chess players, musicians, singers, designers, athletes, dancers, actors, playwrights, fashion innovators, tech-savvy inventors, engineers, space travelers, environmental activists, civil rights activists, and scholars. They are forward thinking, technologically gifted (i.e., connected), intensely socially integrated, and ethnically diverse. Many of them just helped elect the first African American president in our [...]

A POEM FOR BARACK OBAMA UPON THE INAUGURATION OF AMERICA

A flurry of blogs—including Scott McLeod’s “Dangerously Irrelevant”– have invited their readers to write an open letter to President-Elect Obama.  It is a cool idea so I decided to write one.  If you scroll down to the next post you will find it.  But then I saw Larry King interview Maya Angelou about her poem [...]

A BRIEF, OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA NOW THAT THE TEARS OF JOY AND EXHILARATION HAVE DRIED AND WE HAVE A MORE GROUNDED ASSESSMENT OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY MOMENT IN OUR NATIONAL JOURNEY

 
Dear President Obama:

 
LEAD US!
Respectfully Yours,
Kevin W. Riley, Ed.D., Principal from Mueller Charter School
and the Students of “El Milagro”
Chula Vista, California

Wolf Blitzer Projects Win for Punahou School

Educators are supposed to be disciplined at presenting issues and election themes and even presidential candidates to students in a wholly neutral way. We want students to weigh the facts (what are the facts?) and think for themselves. It is an exercise in democracy and critical thinking. Even if they are only eight. We are conditioning them [...]