Author: Errica Jensen

The realization that something truly unique is taking place at the University of Southern California occurs somewhere between learning that Solange Knowles has been named USC’s first-ever scholar-in-residence and discovering that the school’s journalism department is introducing a course titled The Creative Enterprise: Learning from Cactus Jack. This isn’t a university that updates its curriculum covertly. This seems more like an institution making the conscious decision to rethink what constitutes appropriate education. The Rossier School of Education at USC has long held a particular, esteemed position in academic life, producing educators, administrators, and policy thinkers. However, over the past few…

One type of institutional ambition is one that is not readily apparent. Press releases and camera ribbon-cutting ceremonies are not held by it. Instead, it manifests itself in grant applications, faculty research agendas, and the gradual development of collaborations between departments that don’t typically communicate with one another. That’s the kind of goal that George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, is currently pursuing, and it’s something to be aware of. MasonARC, the George Mason University Arts Research Center, is at its core. It is a multidisciplinary project that resulted from an improbable partnership between the university’s psychology department, the College…

On the North Carolina Central University campus in Durham, North Carolina, construction is underway. Five thousand square feet. Construction is still ongoing. However, the discussions that are already taking place within the organization about it indicate that the structure is essentially irrelevant. What counts is what NCCU is attempting to accomplish and whether it can do so before the time runs out. The university was established in 1910 as the first public liberal arts school in the country for African American students. Over the past few years, it has taken steps that would seem ambitious for any university, much less…

About twenty kindergarten and elementary teachers crammed into a third-floor classroom at Milwaukee’s North Division High School on a steamy afternoon in late June. The air conditioner was having trouble. It didn’t seem to bother anyone. They were too engrossed in a fractions lesson. Not because they had to. For some reason, math was making sense for the first time in many of their careers. It wasn’t an accident. It was the result of decades of quiet, unyielding, and frequently unappreciated work by a professor by the name of DeAnn Huinker, a woman who dedicated the majority of her career…

Graduate students at Harvard’s School of Education are being asked to unlearn a belief that the majority of them have held throughout their careers on a peaceful stretch of Appian Way in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The researchers and faculty who are changing the way the school prepares its next generation of principals believe that the notion that some people are naturally creative and others just aren’t is not only incorrect. It is actively damaging. For years, Project Zero principal investigator Edward Clapp has been advancing this claim. Clapp does not think that creativity is a personal quality. He is an advocate…

On a Tuesday morning in Tulsa, you might enter a third-grade classroom that doesn’t look much like school. A child in the back row is constructing a model out of leftover cardboard while explaining her design decisions to no one in particular. Near the window, two boys are having a sincere argument about whether the conclusion of their story makes sense. Instead of responding to the questions, the instructor is shifting between tables. It appears a little disorganized. Most likely, it is. Additionally, there is a plausible argument that it is currently the most significant development in American education. For…

On any given Wednesday afternoon, a professional muralist and a twelve-year-old are crouched next to each other in a building on Milwaukee’s north side, staring at the same partially completed wall as if they were trying to solve the same puzzle. There is no sign of the instructor. In a way, that’s the point. For years, Milwaukee has been conducting one of the nation’s more genuinely fascinating experiments in arts education, but it hasn’t received nearly the national attention it merits. Working artists and arts organizations are being directly integrated into public schools and youth-serving spaces throughout the city through…

For more than a century, crayons have been manufactured in a building in Easton, Pennsylvania. The subtle scent of paraffin wax and pigment permeates the area around the factory, a detail that seems almost too obvious when writing about a business that has been subtly integrating itself into one of the more somber discussions in American education over the past few years. Most people outside of elementary school classrooms haven’t yet noticed that Crayola, the brand most adults associate with carpet stains and childhood birthday presents, has been doing something worth taking a closer look at. It’s difficult to ignore…

On a clear morning, you begin to notice things as you drive east through Tennessee. The area between Cookeville and Crossville is home to a particular type of working environment, including furniture workshops, auto parts suppliers, and small manufacturing facilities where people have made careers out of their hands in ways that are rarely discussed in discussions about education reform. Therefore, it’s an odd setting for what may be one of the more subtly fascinating experiments taking place in American public education at the moment. The first state in the nation to implement a long-term, federally recognized teacher apprenticeship program…

Some institutions function best when no one is around. It’s not because it has anything to conceal, but rather because attention tends to complicate things: funders become anxious, bureaucracies become possessive, and the meticulous, slow process of creating something genuine is disrupted by the cacophony of people suddenly vying for credit. This has always been understood by the New York Foundation, which was quietly founded in 1909 with a million-dollar bequest from a man most people have never heard of. The majority of readers have probably scrolled past its name twelve times without pausing. And it’s most likely intentional. It…