STEP 1: Create Your Crossword Curriculum

Despite thousands of initiatives around the world, it remains difficult to change the hearts and minds and especially habits of both schools and their communities to change or modernize their priorities for learning in the 21st century. After all, we spent 100 years developing what we think school is and should be. I speak from experience having tried many initiatives myself as a school leader. Those experiences have helped me become a stronger leader and very much a realist. I am enjoying the challenge of helping teachers move their practice forward in ways they agree with, and that keeps the community comfortable. It is also crucial to minimize or eliminate adding extra workload to teachers who have suffered from having to deal with so many initiatives over the last 20 years.

To choose one first step for a school still practicing essentially the traditional 20th-century model of separate lessons in separate subject silos, I have found it useful to use the analogy of crossword in doing something that many schools have tried but not maintained long term. The first crossword appeared in 1913 in New York and as we all know became an…