Think back to your favorite high school memories.  Chances are, they involve sports or extracurricular competitions like debate, theatre, science or even chess.   For charter school students, they don’t always have that choice.  Sometimes they have to give up the extracurricular experience to choose the charter school opportunity.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I love that word.  If you think innovation in education, then think Educelerate Twin Cities!  This is a community of 125+ to support education entrepreneurs and start-ups in the Midwest.  They work through social media networking and a monthly MeetUp.

What a thrill to be the graduation speaker June 2 for the 8th grade class of 2014 at Rochester Math and Science Academy charter school in Rochester, MN. Twenty-six graduates filed in with Pomp and Circumstance, as their proud families and elementary and middle school peers looked on. Several student speakers like this young woman shared their dreams for the future, with principal Adbulkadir Abdalla (right) at their side.  Several Somali elders also shared their message. At program end, the largest 8th grade class in school history proudly held diplomas and received the vigorous applause they richly deserved.

I just can’t believe it has been 40 years since we graduated from St. Olaf College in 1974.  What fun to see our classmates on campus for Reunion Weekend May 30-31!    The theme of this reunion was clearly retirement–or for some,  our next life phase.  I like to call that phase “preferment,” meaning we do what we prefer.  I was stunned at the number of our classmates already retired or close to it.    As for me, I’m still reinventing!

BookExpo America, the largest gathering of book publishers, authors and writers in the country,  took place May 29-31 in New York City.   Though I didn’t attend this year, Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story  was displayed in the New Title Showcase on the showroom floor...

What a thrill to be a presenter at the International Conference on Education (ICE) in Chicago May 21-23.  Participants came from 32 countries and presenters represented 21 different nationalities.  The theme?  “We the Teachers:  Meeting in an International Classroom for Better Education.”  And if there was one common response from attendees, it was this:  the challenges for teachers are the same all over the world, and we must look for practical solutions without constraint by borders.

Just as I arrived in Chicago to speak at the International Conference on Education (ICE) sponsored by Concept Schools, we learned that Zero Chance of Passage:  The Pioneering Charter School Story won the Education/Academic category of the International Book Awards!  The book also was a Finalist in the Social Change category.

What great fun to be part of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Program hosted by Hellmuth and Johnson Law Firm in Edina as part of an author panel, moderated by my long-time friend, Marshall Tanick (himself a prodigious writer who kindly came to my book launch in 2012, right).   I was particularly pleased to be paired with fiction writer Julie Kramer, a former journalist in the Twin Cities who has turned novelist.  She writes a mystery series set in the “desperate” world of television news—a world she knows well from her career as a freelance news producer for NBC and CBS, as well as running the WCCO-TV I-Team in Minneapolis, an investigative news team.  Her thrillers have won multiple awards.  I couldn’t resist bringing home her latest book Delivering Death, which my husband stole before I had a chance to read it.

If there is one word that describes what I saw from both students and teachersat the K-8 North Star Academy charter school of 1,000+ students in Duluth, Minnesota, it was Engagement.  In every classroom I visited,  students and teachers were engaged in projects in teams at small tables, working together on lab assignments, or actively working with other students around the room. In one room, the students were managing a computer-projected lemonade stand on the wall and observing what happened to their sales if they changed the cost of their ingredients or price of their product.  This group sold out too early!  They asked me my advice, but frankly, I didn’t do much better.

No one demonstrated the theme of the New Jersey Charter Schools Conference April 7-8 better than A’Dorian Murray-Thomas, right, a sophomore honors student at Swarthmore College and graduate of KIPP’s TEAM Academy Charter School.  Born and raised in Newark, this young leader is on a mission.  Besides creating a program to offer free SAT and Self-Empowerment Programs for Newark high school students and a support organization for girls and teens who lost a parent to homicide, she spends her time as a tutor and mentor for students at her former charter middle school, as a career peer advisor at Swarthmore, and coordinator of community outreach for Merit Preparatory Charter School. 

George Saad’s passion to change the world through education arises from deep family roots.  His great grandfather, Tanios Saad, started the first school for girls in Lebanon in 1886 against all odds–to close the gender achievement gap.  From that extraordinary mission, SABIS Educational Systems was born. And George, a SABIS alum, is now Vice President of US Operations at the SABIS headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

I was pleased to join Minnesota Congressman John Kline, chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, as he announced new federal charter schools legislation at Global Academy in Columbia Heights on March 31.  Rep. Kline was joined by Rep. Luke Messer (R-Indiana), chair of the House School Choice Caucus, Greg Richmond, President and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), and charter school leaders from Minnesota, as we engaged in a roundtable discussion about the future of chartering.

When Writer’s Digest asked me to write a guest post about writing or publishing, it took me a while to figure out what to write.  Although I’m delighted that Zero Chance of Passage:  The Pioneering Charter School Story was named their 2013 Grand Prize Winner of the Self-Published Book Awards, I don’t consider myself an expert on either topic.

If there is one other state in the union beyond Minnesota that was critical to the immediate spread of the chartering idea around the nation, it was California.  That’s why I was so pleased that the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) invited me to present at the California Charter Schools Conference March 3-6, 2014 in San Jose.  The pioneering California charter school story in 1992is even more incredible than the Minnesota pioneering story.

I was pleased to receive this update letter from the Hon. Hekia Parata, Minister of Education in New Zealand...

On February 24, Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, who represents the district that borders on Minnesota, graciously met with me in Hudson, Wisconsin to learn more about chartering.  Keith Glasshof, an Eau Claire business and civic leader, former board member of the Wisconsin Charter School Association,  and founding member of a former technology charter school in Eau Claire, joined us.

What an honor to be part of the opening luncheon for the Colorado Charter Schools Conference February 20 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the opening of the first two charter schools in Pueblo and Castle Rock, Colorado. Today Colorado has 200 charter schools with “97,000 students and counting.”  Fifteen new schools opened this year (11% growth rate) with the support of the “New Schools Department” of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, host of the conference. 

The new numbers on growth of charter schools over the last year exceeded even my expectations.  The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (www.publiccharters.org) recently released these numbers:  600 new public charter schools opened their doors in September, 2013, for 7% growth in the number of operating public charter schools and 13% growth in public charter school enrollment across the U.S compared to the 2012-13 school year.

I hope you had a chance to see my article “Charter School Path Paved with Choice, Compromise, Common Sense” in the current issue (February, 2014) of Phi Delta Kappan.  The magazine is a publication of Phi Delta Kappa International, the professional association in education, of which I’m pleased to be a member.

What a delight to welcome my long-time friend and chartering pioneer Anthony (Tony) Colón to Minnesota for several events highlighting National School Choice Week.  Despite major snowstorms that clogged the roads, a room full of hardy Minnesotans showed up for an early breakfast near downtown Minneapolis to hear his message.