A Message of Thanks

If you’ve been reading my newsletter over the past several years since I first launched it and then moved it to Substack, I suspect it’s because you’re interested in being part of a community committed to ensuring that all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. There’s also a good chance that you want to change the schools and formal systems of education in which we learn. This is why I do the work I do.

Regardless of your why, thank you for your support and your readership. It’s thanks to many of you that I learned recently that my newsletter, the Future of Education, is among the bestsellers in the Substack community of newsletters. It’s also thanks to many of you that my most recent book, From Reopen to Reinvent, has already gone into its second printing, less than six months after it was published. Thank you.

For those of you who have chosen to become paid subscribers, I’m also continuing to find ways to create more opportunities to interact with you, such as through Substack’s recently introduced chats. If you have suggestions of what’s most valuable, please let me know.

For those who haven’t become a paid subscriber, I hope the expansion of the content has been helpful and enjoyable for you as well.

From the simple monthly newsletter with which I started, I’m now publishing two roundup notes each month that are free to everyone, as well as additional content (both opeds and podcasts) that appears at least once a week on Wednesdays—and sometimes more frequently (much of that content is behind a paywall, but all of it now contains at least a free sample to your inbox). Thank you all for your support.

With those thank yous as prelude, here are a few updates from the past couple weeks.

Choosing College

My book, Choosing College: How to Make Better Learning Decisions Throughout Your Life, which I coauthored with Jobs to Be Done and innovation guru Bob Moesta, was featured in the New York Post here as one of the top books for college advice and inspiration. Bob and I have always regretted the title of the book, because it’s really about helping individuals navigate any learning experience that occurs after high school (not just college), but it was gratifying to see such a great summary of the book in the article.

From Reopen to Reinvent

More thoughtful conversations and reviews of From Reopen to Reinvent came out (get your copy or review it on Amazon here!).

Longtime education reformer and education choice advocate Kevin Chavous brought me on to his podcast, What I Want To Know, to talk about “What should the school of the future look like?” Check out the episode here.

The prolific and thoughtful Christian Talbot, president of the Middle States Association accreditor, penned two more reviews and reflections. You can check out his thoughts here at “From Waterfall Planning to Discovery Driven Planning” and “From Uneven Levels of Agreement to Tools of Cooperation.”

And finally, longtime education reformer and education choice advocate Jeanne Allen hosted me and Phyllis Lockett, CEO of Leap Innovations, for a conversation with the 2022 Yass Prize Educator Cohort (learn more about the Yass Prize here) about innovation in education. She then turned the conversation into a podcast, which you can listen to here.

Future U.

Jeff Selingo and I remain busy over at Future U. We dropped two podcasts in the last couple weeks.

The first featured longtime Future U. podcast listener and the new president of Penn State, Neeli Bendapudi. In the conversation, Neeli offered some candid reflections on her own journey from India to America and the presidency at Penn State as well as the challenges and opportunities higher education has before it. Check it out at, “Leadership, Business and Athletics: Penn State University President Neeli Bendapudi.”

The second was a live conversation at the Chronicle for Higher Education’s ChronFest with three students enrolled at George Mason, Georgetown, and Morgan State. Their honest reflections and impressions about their campuses and their student experiences—both good and bad—were revealing. I was sadly unable to join the conversation because I was recovering from COVID, but University Innovation Alliance CEO Bridget Burns ably filled my shoes with Jeff. Listen to the episode here.

Class Disrupted

And finally, on the Class Disrupted podcast, Diane Tavenner and I delved deeper into the question of how to innovate within an existing school, with an exploration of how a school should choose what innovations to pilot based on its priorities. We got wonky on this one, but I hope it helps educators on the ground, because all too often in my travels I find schools either paralyzed by all the innovations they’d like to do—if only they had the time and money—and therefore doing nothing OR taking on way too much, doing the innovations poorly, and showcasing a lack of true priorities.

Check out our conversation, “What Should Schools Try and Test?” here.

As always, thanks for reading, writing, and listening.