IALA

I’ve waited for years for this marvelous book, Lives of Passion, School of Hope: How One Public School Ignites a Lifelong Love of Learning. It tells a story of a K-12 progressive school (Jefferson County Open School, Colorado) that combined the best features from research and practice such as: strong advisory system, personal learning plan, learner centered environment, world as classroom, service learning, travel study and competency based graduation. I began such a school in 1971 but it did not have sustained progressive leadership after my first seven years as principal. Nor has it documented its successes, both immediate and long term in the graduates’ lives. This book does all that with statistics and a rich assortment of anecdotes. If ever we needed a blueprint about schooling, one could hardly do better than this book. Every student is expected to become an effective communicator, a complex thinker, a responsible citizen, an ethical person, and a quality worker. How’s that for a set of outcomes? This is one of the most important books I have read and I highly recommend it. The author, Rick Posner worked in the school and has produced a most readable and essential book for educators and the public.