SabuSense

(The story of this story) I had started Election day trying to google the email address of the historian Michael Bechloss so I could share an out-of-the-box premonition I had that someday historians would honor Trump for serving as the catalyst for flipping the national mind set from one within which we can only see […]

In 2004, The One Thing… a Simple Proposal revealed the key to Joel Barker’s success as a Paradigm-Shifting Guru. Then, after sharing that secret, it ended with a simple, and clear charge: “At a time when schools have neither the capacity, nor the societal support, to “fix” themselves, we have to develop and initiate processes […]

Since his recent death, David Broder’s eulogies seemed to cite a common insight about his unique success as a reporter. He could move back and forth between in-the-clouds issues faced by policymakers in Washington, and the on-the-ground issues faced by practitioners around the country …and at both “levels” his stories seemed to capture their meaning […]

I’m always a little jarred when I see an obituary for someone I’ve known, but several  weeks ago when I saw Jule Sugarman’s it was different.  For the 3rd time in my life I found myself reflecting on my experiences with someone who provided an experiential classroom from which I took away significant learnings. He taught […]

Data-Based Management (DBM) is an increasingly popular concept across all work sectors because it seems to capture the idea that decisions should be based less on assumptions and more on actual indicators related to the situation at hand. That makes a lot of sense. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the data make sense. Or […]

Once again I find unique “value” in the Answer Sheet — the Washington Post’s education blog shepherded by Valerie Strauss. But it’s not in its “answers” … but instead its the “questions” it forces me to raise. As an example, its October 9 posting – “The bankrupt ‘school reform manifesto’ of Rhee, Klein, etc.” correctly […]

It’s frustrating to see someone close to the answer he/she is seeking.. but unable to see that what’s being looked for is closer than they thought. Jay Mathews, the Washington Post’s experienced education writer, who has admitted to being “obsessed” with trying to make sense of schooling by focusing on it’s high school end, shifted […]

This Sabusense website is a product of the mind of Seymour Sarason who died on January 28th this year.  His way-of-thinking and his “Martian” metaphor frames and generated the knowledge it now embeds. In “The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change’’ (1971) Sarason spoke through a Martian hovering 20,000 feet above a […]

HARVARD… AND SABU Find a “Classroom” Teaching DIFFERENT Lessons Several months ago I was asked by AASA’s journal The School Administrator to review a new Harvard Business School publication — “Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Public Schools” by Stacey Childress, Denis Doyle, and David Thomas. This presented an interesting challenge […]

To start at the beginning of the 4-part article, go to Sharing the Pain: Drilling Beneath the 5th Why… and finding a tangled surprise. The 3rd Root Cause: The Gap-Causing Gap What I like about that metaphoric Sistine Chapel picture in Part II (The 1st Root Cause: The Quantum Paradox) is that while it illustrates […]