Warren Buck

Last week I told you about the day I walked into my counseling office in Florida with one more ask, and how sick I felt doing it. I ended that post with a line I've been sitting with ever since: let's build you a better score (you can tell, my school had a killer music program!) So let's actually build it. What I mean by "the score" A conductor doesn't walk into rehearsal and start waving a baton, hoping the orchestra figures out what to play. There's a score first. Every musician already...

We're starting a six-week series highlighting the heroic work counselors do in our high schools and sharing some insight and resources to help them. A few years ago, when I was a principal in Florida, I had to walk into my counseling office and ask my team to take on one more thing. I don't remember the exact initiative anymore (Florida has never met an unfunded mandate it didn't love), but I remember exactly how it felt to ask. My counselors were already drowning. Caseloads that had no...

For a long time, most of us have leaned on a familiar definition of what it means to be educated: strong grades, following directions, working hard, collecting credentials, moving successfully through the system. If a kid was responsible, articulate, and academically capable, we took that as proof they were ready for what came next. That definition doesn't hold up anymore. I'm not saying knowledge or discipline or academic effort stopped mattering — they still matter a lot. But in the age of...