In a park nearby the ASCD offices, a nest of red-tailed hawks high in a fir tree has been attracting attention from humans for several weeks. The mother hawk, who was injured by a car while possibly swooping down for road kill, left two baby red tails squealing in the tree.
Evidently it takes two parents to feed two hungry raptors all the rodents they require, and the father, after valiantly doing the job alone for a while, left the area. The mother, now returned from rehabilitation at a bird rescue site, is attempting to feed her growing hawklets on her own. It isn't easy, say the bird experts, as red tails have a 77 percent failure rate for capturing prey.
Meanwhile, the passers-by below wonder out loud why someone doesn't step in and improve conditions for the hungry birds, but all the time they hope that the birds will survive on their own. One bird watcher notes that the mother hasn't seemed to learn from experience. She still perches on a light standard over a busy street nearby hoping to evade the cars and pick up a squirrel or two.
What does a nature story have to do with The Best of Educational Leadership? Not too much, except as I open the September issue devoted to “The Whole Child,” the “aims of education” quotations that we scattered throughout the pages echo questions that seem to pertain: How do we awaken in students the capacity to do new things and to go beyond what other generations have done? How do we impart to students the wisdom of the ages and make them capable of surviving and thriving in an imperfect world? In some ways the May 2006 issue on “Challenging the Status Quo” sounds the same notes. How can schools learn from the past while preparing students to think and act anew in an unpredictable future?
In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert writes that you can tell a lot about a historical period by the way its philosophers filled in the end of this phrase: What sets humans apart from the animals is…. Language was considered the ultimate human attribute until, of course, scientists discovered that many species communicate with one another. Others suggested tool-making as a distinctive skill, but that too has been discounted. More recent answers have identified the following characteristics as unique to humans: the ability to invent, to be amused, to imagine, and, Gilbert's own answer, to think about the future.
Meanwhile back in the Educational Leadership offices, we know that educators are grappling with practical concerns even as they seek to help students answer the higher-order questions. In addition to pondering how to educate the whole child and the best ways to challenge the status quo, our issues this year have addressed the topics of reading comprehension, assessment to promote learning, learning in the digital age, helping struggling students, improving professional practice, and teaching the tweens.
We hope you enjoy this sampling of articles from Educational Leadership 2005-2006 on these topics, and we thank our writers for their insights. It's been a good year for us, with EL passing its 63rd year in print. This year our journal reached more than 170,000 members, and once again received recognition for excellence. In fact, four ASCD publications—Creating a Healthy School, Understanding by Design, Update, and Educational Leadership—earned the Gold Award for General Excellence of Editorial Products, awarded by the Society of National Association Publications (SNAP). Educational Leadership's December/January issue on Learning in the Digital Age also won a Gold Award for One-Theme Issue from SNAP and a Grand Award from APEX.
We won't rest on our laurels for long, however. We're already planning for next year, as we know you are, too. But let's not forget that there is still some summer left—time to reflect, time to learn, time to go bird-watching.
