A Brief History of Leading E.D.G.E.
The Formative Years
In the spring of 1989, Bruce Bonney, a veteran high school social studies teacher and Jack Drury, director of a community college wilderness leadership program, together attended a regional experiential education conference and participated in a workshop that was to transform their lives. The “Introduction to the Critical Skills” workshop conducted by Antioch New England University's Peter Eppig piqued Bruce's interest enough that he pursued training in the program model and in the fall of 1990 he returned to Morrisville-Eaton Central School to become the first New York State teacher to implement the Critical Skills Classroom Model in his classroom.
What were these "Critical Skills" and what did they have to do with teaching and Learning?
In response to the federally funded Carnegie Commission report A Nation At Risk, a document that assailed the woeful state of public education in the United States, representatives from several New Hampshire businesses, non-profit organizations, colleges and universities (Dartmouth College, University of New Hampshire, & Antioch New England Graduate School), the New Hampshire State Department of Education, and several school districts gathered in 1981 to form the Corporate Council for Critical Skills. This Council invited eighteen teachers from around New Hampshire to participate in a five-week summer institute to explore the questions, “What skills are vitally important for students to have by the time they leave school in order to be successful in their lives?” and “What would a classroom be like that gave conscious and purposeful attention to the development of these skills? At the same time that summer, representatives from the member organizations on the Council met to address the question, “What skills are lacking in the work force that impede individual and organizational success?” The teacher group and the Council member group independently determined that a virtually identical set of skills were at issue. These skills (Problem solving, Decision making, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, etc.) were thereafter referred to as “The Critical Skills.” The findings of this informal study become the catalyst for the mission of the Council – i.e., to develop classroom methodologies that focused on the integration of “Critical Skills” with content learning. The Council thereafter began to sponsor summer “institutes” wherein teachers worked to articulate the nature of “The Critical Skills” and develop a classroom approach that focused on problem-based learning (a.k.a., Learning-By-Real-Problems) as the primary means of developing both critical skills and content knowledge.
In 1986, The Council selected Antioch New England Graduate School (now Antioch New England University) to be the academic institution that managed the Critical Skills Program. Peter Eppig was named the director of the program.
Having enjoyed success with this approach in his classroom Bruce was asked to share his experience in workshops for other teachers in central New York. Dr. Barbara Stoehr (Director of the Catskill Study Council and faculty member of the State University College of New York at Oneonta) attended one such workshop, was enthused by what she heard, and subsequently along with Bruce took a lead role in bringing the Critical Skills Program to New York State.
Several BOCES in New York began offering "Critical Skills Institutes" with Bruce gaining experience as an Institute Coordinator. Peter Fox, Cindy LaPierre, and Karen Rowe among other Catskill area teachers took Level I training, implemented the model successfully in their respective school districts, and went on to be strong advocates and instructors for the program. Jack Drury followed up his training by successfully implementing the approach at the college level. Jack also quickly rose to Institute Coordinator status and became instrumental in introducing Critical Skills to educators in the Adirondack region of New York State.
In the fall of 1993, Bruce left his middle/high school classroom to join the staff of the Critical Skills Program at Antioch New England University as a field representative responsible for Critical Skills workshops, follow-up classroom visits, and institute coordination throughout New England and New York.
During the mid to late 1990s, the Critical Skills Program grew very rapidly as its influence spread throughout New England. At the same time, the Program created advanced follow-up staff development experiences to satisfy the demand from those educators who wanted to immerse themselves in the approach. In 1996, program leadership at Antioch determined that the name “Critical Skills” no longer accurately described the scope of the classroom model or the program’s work with schools. The program was renamed “Education By Design”(EBD).
In 1998 The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) sent a video crew to Gilboa-Conesville Central School in the northern Catskill region of New York to tape EBD trained teachers Peter Fox, his wife Jane Fox, Patty Ryan, principal Matt Murray and other Gilboa staff members in action. These Gilboa video clips took center stage in the ASCD staff development series it produced called The Brain and Learning.
By 1999, it was clear that EBD was on the move as an educational approach with widespread appeal. The growth of interest in New York State alone required the delivery of 12 or more institutes annually. Similarly, the United Kingdom beckoned.
In the Spring of 1999, Bruce Bonney and Jack Drury created Leading E.D.G.E., LLC (Educators Designing Growth Experiences) as a private consultancy to provide staff development services to a variety of clients. Many of the New York EBD “Master Teachers” decided to continue working with Leading E.D.G.E. as consultants delivering “teachers-teaching-teachers” experiences to educators both in New York State and in the United Kingdom. As the business grew, Leading E.D.G.E. formalized a relationship with ANE acquiring a license as the sole provider of EBD programming in New York State.
The United Kingdom Experience
By 1999 the ASCD The Brain and Learning video series had crossed the Atlantic and found its way into the hands of Colin Weatherley, a retired Head Teacher turned consultant in Scotland. Inspired by what he saw and curious to learn more, Colin called Gilboa-Conesville Central School to inquiry about getting some firsthand experience with Critical Skills. The inquiry was passed on to Bruce Bonney who through conversations with Colin encouraged a visit to Scotland. Peter & Jane Fox subsequently traveled to Edinburgh Scotland to conduct a memorable presentation to an enthralled gathering of Scottish educators. The Fox’s workshop planted the seed of a Critical Skills – United Kingdom relationship that grew beyond all expectations during the early 2000s.
Leading E.D.G.E. took the lead in introducing EBD to educators throughout England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Jersey. There, under the name The Critical Skills Programme, the model moved forward under the auspices of Network Educational Press, Ltd. of Stafford, England. Over the next four years, Leading E.D.G.E. provided the leadership required to facilitate over 120 workshops and institutes in the UK . In 2003, Colin Weatherley, Bruce Bonney and others, authored Transforming Teaching and Learning: Developing “Critical Skills” for living and working in the 21st century. This book chronicled the growth and impact of the EBD model in the UK.
Returning Home
Upon completion of their work in the United Kingdom Jack and Bruce shifted their attention back to the home front, Jack Drury, Bruce Bonney with others published the second edition of The Backcountry Classroom: Lessons, Tools, and Activities for Teaching Outdoor Leaders in 2005. This volume introduced a condensed adaptation of the EBD model under the name S.P.E.C. (Student centered, Problem based, Experiential, Collaborative) teaching and learning to outdoor educators as a way of bringing the power of learning in the outdoors inside the four walls of a classroom. Jack in particular led the effort to spread the word of this approach among college educators and outdoor leaders by presenting workshops around the country.
Jack also volunteered facilitation services to educators attending the Constructivist Design Conference organized by Don Mesibov at St. Lawrence University each summer. Jack found this gathering of like-minded teachers and administrators to be a fertile environment for planting the seeds of the S.P.E.C. approach and making contacts with numerous potential clients mainly from New York State. It was no great surprise then, that Jack encouraged Bruce to join him
When Bruce attended his first Constructivist Conference he was assigned to facilitate a group of teachers from the newly opened Ronald Reagan Elementary School in the Lake Elsinore school district in California. The match was perfect. Gary & Thenall Hanggi two very experienced teachers from the group returned to CA to share their enthusiasm about the conference with their principal Craig Richter. Convinced, the three made arrangements to form a long-term relationship with LE and in March, Jack & Bruce traveled to Lake Elsinore to conduct trainings with the staff at Ronald Reagan Elementary (RRE).
The Lebanon Experience
In 2005, Raouf Ghuysani Ph.D., Director of the Educational Resources Center at the prestigious International College (IC) in Beirut, Lebanon began a search for a college/university backed “program” that could bring the benefits of high quality Problem-Base Learning and Assessments to the middle/high school teachers and students his school, one already known for its long record of academic excellence. This pursuit led Dr. Ghuysani to a Critical Skills/Education By Design institute in the United Kingdom.
Inspired by the experience, Raouf decided to travel on to Antioch New England University in May of 2005. There, he met with Bruce Bonney and others and structured a plan for Leading E.D.G.E. to provide International College with a 4-5 year program of S.P.E.C. training. Learning from our work in the United Kingdom, Bruce and Jack designed strategies to provide services for approximately 100 trained staff members and eventually develop qualified institute instructors to facilitate the program’s continued growth upon our departure.
As Leading E.D.G.E. was to learn, working in Lebanon was an ever interesting and unique experience full of surprises as shortly before we were to depart to deliver the first training in the fall of 2006, armed conflict broke out in the region in August devastating much of Lebanon’s infrastructure.
Demonstrating typical Lebanese resilience in the face of such adversity, Raouf contacted us as soon as the regional ”unpleasantness,” as Raouf’s described it, subsided urging us to move forward with our revised plans to eventually conduct the training in September of 2007. At least twice a year for the next four years through March of 2011, Jack, Bruce, and Cyndi LaPierre traveled to this fascinating part of the world to offer Level I & Level II workshops, observe classrooms, and work very closely mentoring Nayla Hamadeh, Nawal Haddad, and Maha Sukayr.
Present & Future
Today Jack leads the effort to enlarge the market for Leading E.D.G.E. services to include work with businesses, government, and non-profit organizations. Through his efforts, Leading E.D.G.E. has established fruitful relationships with many organizations by improving employee relations, facilitating a variety of different types of meetings and gatherings, and leading strategic planning initiatives. Bruce continues to work primarily with classroom teachers and recently has designed workshops to explore and model classroom techniques that address the Common Core Standards and integrating 21st century technology with a S.P.E.C. approach. We find the challenges of implementing the Common Core Standards and associated assessments, integrating 21st Century Skills, along with the opportunity to maximize the use of technology providing us with opportunities to serve our more than 100 clients worldwide.
In the spring of 1989, Bruce Bonney, a veteran high school social studies teacher and Jack Drury, director of a community college wilderness leadership program, together attended a regional experiential education conference and participated in a workshop that was to transform their lives. The “Introduction to the Critical Skills” workshop conducted by Antioch New England University's Peter Eppig piqued Bruce's interest enough that he pursued training in the program model and in the fall of 1990 he returned to Morrisville-Eaton Central School to become the first New York State teacher to implement the Critical Skills Classroom Model in his classroom.
What were these "Critical Skills" and what did they have to do with teaching and Learning?
In response to the federally funded Carnegie Commission report A Nation At Risk, a document that assailed the woeful state of public education in the United States, representatives from several New Hampshire businesses, non-profit organizations, colleges and universities (Dartmouth College, University of New Hampshire, & Antioch New England Graduate School), the New Hampshire State Department of Education, and several school districts gathered in 1981 to form the Corporate Council for Critical Skills. This Council invited eighteen teachers from around New Hampshire to participate in a five-week summer institute to explore the questions, “What skills are vitally important for students to have by the time they leave school in order to be successful in their lives?” and “What would a classroom be like that gave conscious and purposeful attention to the development of these skills? At the same time that summer, representatives from the member organizations on the Council met to address the question, “What skills are lacking in the work force that impede individual and organizational success?” The teacher group and the Council member group independently determined that a virtually identical set of skills were at issue. These skills (Problem solving, Decision making, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, etc.) were thereafter referred to as “The Critical Skills.” The findings of this informal study become the catalyst for the mission of the Council – i.e., to develop classroom methodologies that focused on the integration of “Critical Skills” with content learning. The Council thereafter began to sponsor summer “institutes” wherein teachers worked to articulate the nature of “The Critical Skills” and develop a classroom approach that focused on problem-based learning (a.k.a., Learning-By-Real-Problems) as the primary means of developing both critical skills and content knowledge.
In 1986, The Council selected Antioch New England Graduate School (now Antioch New England University) to be the academic institution that managed the Critical Skills Program. Peter Eppig was named the director of the program.
Having enjoyed success with this approach in his classroom Bruce was asked to share his experience in workshops for other teachers in central New York. Dr. Barbara Stoehr (Director of the Catskill Study Council and faculty member of the State University College of New York at Oneonta) attended one such workshop, was enthused by what she heard, and subsequently along with Bruce took a lead role in bringing the Critical Skills Program to New York State.
Several BOCES in New York began offering "Critical Skills Institutes" with Bruce gaining experience as an Institute Coordinator. Peter Fox, Cindy LaPierre, and Karen Rowe among other Catskill area teachers took Level I training, implemented the model successfully in their respective school districts, and went on to be strong advocates and instructors for the program. Jack Drury followed up his training by successfully implementing the approach at the college level. Jack also quickly rose to Institute Coordinator status and became instrumental in introducing Critical Skills to educators in the Adirondack region of New York State.
In the fall of 1993, Bruce left his middle/high school classroom to join the staff of the Critical Skills Program at Antioch New England University as a field representative responsible for Critical Skills workshops, follow-up classroom visits, and institute coordination throughout New England and New York.
During the mid to late 1990s, the Critical Skills Program grew very rapidly as its influence spread throughout New England. At the same time, the Program created advanced follow-up staff development experiences to satisfy the demand from those educators who wanted to immerse themselves in the approach. In 1996, program leadership at Antioch determined that the name “Critical Skills” no longer accurately described the scope of the classroom model or the program’s work with schools. The program was renamed “Education By Design”(EBD).
In 1998 The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) sent a video crew to Gilboa-Conesville Central School in the northern Catskill region of New York to tape EBD trained teachers Peter Fox, his wife Jane Fox, Patty Ryan, principal Matt Murray and other Gilboa staff members in action. These Gilboa video clips took center stage in the ASCD staff development series it produced called The Brain and Learning.
By 1999, it was clear that EBD was on the move as an educational approach with widespread appeal. The growth of interest in New York State alone required the delivery of 12 or more institutes annually. Similarly, the United Kingdom beckoned.
In the Spring of 1999, Bruce Bonney and Jack Drury created Leading E.D.G.E., LLC (Educators Designing Growth Experiences) as a private consultancy to provide staff development services to a variety of clients. Many of the New York EBD “Master Teachers” decided to continue working with Leading E.D.G.E. as consultants delivering “teachers-teaching-teachers” experiences to educators both in New York State and in the United Kingdom. As the business grew, Leading E.D.G.E. formalized a relationship with ANE acquiring a license as the sole provider of EBD programming in New York State.
The United Kingdom Experience
By 1999 the ASCD The Brain and Learning video series had crossed the Atlantic and found its way into the hands of Colin Weatherley, a retired Head Teacher turned consultant in Scotland. Inspired by what he saw and curious to learn more, Colin called Gilboa-Conesville Central School to inquiry about getting some firsthand experience with Critical Skills. The inquiry was passed on to Bruce Bonney who through conversations with Colin encouraged a visit to Scotland. Peter & Jane Fox subsequently traveled to Edinburgh Scotland to conduct a memorable presentation to an enthralled gathering of Scottish educators. The Fox’s workshop planted the seed of a Critical Skills – United Kingdom relationship that grew beyond all expectations during the early 2000s.
Leading E.D.G.E. took the lead in introducing EBD to educators throughout England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Jersey. There, under the name The Critical Skills Programme, the model moved forward under the auspices of Network Educational Press, Ltd. of Stafford, England. Over the next four years, Leading E.D.G.E. provided the leadership required to facilitate over 120 workshops and institutes in the UK . In 2003, Colin Weatherley, Bruce Bonney and others, authored Transforming Teaching and Learning: Developing “Critical Skills” for living and working in the 21st century. This book chronicled the growth and impact of the EBD model in the UK.
Returning Home
Upon completion of their work in the United Kingdom Jack and Bruce shifted their attention back to the home front, Jack Drury, Bruce Bonney with others published the second edition of The Backcountry Classroom: Lessons, Tools, and Activities for Teaching Outdoor Leaders in 2005. This volume introduced a condensed adaptation of the EBD model under the name S.P.E.C. (Student centered, Problem based, Experiential, Collaborative) teaching and learning to outdoor educators as a way of bringing the power of learning in the outdoors inside the four walls of a classroom. Jack in particular led the effort to spread the word of this approach among college educators and outdoor leaders by presenting workshops around the country.
Jack also volunteered facilitation services to educators attending the Constructivist Design Conference organized by Don Mesibov at St. Lawrence University each summer. Jack found this gathering of like-minded teachers and administrators to be a fertile environment for planting the seeds of the S.P.E.C. approach and making contacts with numerous potential clients mainly from New York State. It was no great surprise then, that Jack encouraged Bruce to join him
When Bruce attended his first Constructivist Conference he was assigned to facilitate a group of teachers from the newly opened Ronald Reagan Elementary School in the Lake Elsinore school district in California. The match was perfect. Gary & Thenall Hanggi two very experienced teachers from the group returned to CA to share their enthusiasm about the conference with their principal Craig Richter. Convinced, the three made arrangements to form a long-term relationship with LE and in March, Jack & Bruce traveled to Lake Elsinore to conduct trainings with the staff at Ronald Reagan Elementary (RRE).
The Lebanon Experience
In 2005, Raouf Ghuysani Ph.D., Director of the Educational Resources Center at the prestigious International College (IC) in Beirut, Lebanon began a search for a college/university backed “program” that could bring the benefits of high quality Problem-Base Learning and Assessments to the middle/high school teachers and students his school, one already known for its long record of academic excellence. This pursuit led Dr. Ghuysani to a Critical Skills/Education By Design institute in the United Kingdom.
Inspired by the experience, Raouf decided to travel on to Antioch New England University in May of 2005. There, he met with Bruce Bonney and others and structured a plan for Leading E.D.G.E. to provide International College with a 4-5 year program of S.P.E.C. training. Learning from our work in the United Kingdom, Bruce and Jack designed strategies to provide services for approximately 100 trained staff members and eventually develop qualified institute instructors to facilitate the program’s continued growth upon our departure.
As Leading E.D.G.E. was to learn, working in Lebanon was an ever interesting and unique experience full of surprises as shortly before we were to depart to deliver the first training in the fall of 2006, armed conflict broke out in the region in August devastating much of Lebanon’s infrastructure.
Demonstrating typical Lebanese resilience in the face of such adversity, Raouf contacted us as soon as the regional ”unpleasantness,” as Raouf’s described it, subsided urging us to move forward with our revised plans to eventually conduct the training in September of 2007. At least twice a year for the next four years through March of 2011, Jack, Bruce, and Cyndi LaPierre traveled to this fascinating part of the world to offer Level I & Level II workshops, observe classrooms, and work very closely mentoring Nayla Hamadeh, Nawal Haddad, and Maha Sukayr.
Present & Future
Today Jack leads the effort to enlarge the market for Leading E.D.G.E. services to include work with businesses, government, and non-profit organizations. Through his efforts, Leading E.D.G.E. has established fruitful relationships with many organizations by improving employee relations, facilitating a variety of different types of meetings and gatherings, and leading strategic planning initiatives. Bruce continues to work primarily with classroom teachers and recently has designed workshops to explore and model classroom techniques that address the Common Core Standards and integrating 21st century technology with a S.P.E.C. approach. We find the challenges of implementing the Common Core Standards and associated assessments, integrating 21st Century Skills, along with the opportunity to maximize the use of technology providing us with opportunities to serve our more than 100 clients worldwide.