Blogs on High (9-12)

Here, in California, another school year has finally dipped into the cool, blue Pacific. I've been reflecting on all that we've accomplished this year, including the fact that more than 90 percent of our graduating seniors will be going to college. I also can't help but think about everything that goes into the rite of passage that is graduation at Envision Schools.

There was a fight at my school last week, a big, ugly fight in the street just after students were dismissed for the day. Some older relatives of the girl who instigated the fight were involved. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of students, gathered around to watch.

Long before I arrived in Philadelphia for Educon 2.1, I was picking up clues that this was going to be a different kind of education conference. There would be no sit-and-get workshops, according to organizer extraordinaire Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy, which hosts this annual event.

Months before Americans chose Barack Obama as their forty-fourth president, Crista Lawson, from Aubrey Park Elementary School, in Eugene, Oregon, had a hunch that the 2008 election would prove to be historic. "I wanted my kids to pay attention and be informed about this election," she says.