Deborah Kenny > Quotes

“Imagine a school where students work so intensely that the world outside the essay or problem or experiment before them seems muffled and far away. Their work leaves them sweaty, exhausted and satisfied. They take their work home not because somebody told them that it’s homework, but because it’s theirs, they can’t leave it behind, they’re not done with it yet. The problem still needs solving, or the question must be figured out.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“He said the purpose of public education isn’t to serve the public, it’s to make a public. Like Dewey believed, the purpose of public education isn’t to replicate society, it’s to transform society.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“I believed schools should teach children to behave with “preventive discipline” strategies: clarifying expectations, establishing routines and practicing them, speaking with a tone of authority, and building relationships with students. And the most important preventive discipline strategy of all was an interesting, challenging, and well-planned lesson.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“One type of kounaikenshuu is called lesson study: teachers plan one lesson together, observe each other teaching, analyze the outcome, and then refine the lesson and teach it again.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“You hire people you trust completely to do the job. Then you create a culture that enables them to do their best work. That’s it. You have to appreciate and support people, and take away the roadblocks so they can do their job.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“it occurred to me that teachers are the consummate knowledge workers, yet they were being treated like manual workers.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“Children need long distance, steady, persistent advocates who do the hard, quiet, thankless day-to-day work.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“I wanted our teachers to refrain from providing conclusions as starting points, but rather insist that students assemble valid evidence to reach their own conclusions.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“A culture of learning in an adult workplace is not just about “training.” A culture of learning is when a community of knowledge workers is empowered and inspired to continually learn and develop as professionals. People learn best by actually doing their work, making mistakes, and collaborating to improve their own practice. It’s an upward spiral: the teachers get better every year as the curriculum gets better, each causing and caused by the other.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“we created the “HOURS” tradition, to teach them how to spend their evening hours at home constructively: the H was for Homework, O for Organize, U for Unwind, R for Read, S for Sleep (nine hours).”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion

“Education is not about developing products. It’s about developing people.”
― Deborah Kenny, Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential – A Memoir and Manifesto on Creating Workplace Culture That Inspires Passion