Readers responded in remarkable numbers to my posts on building better K-12 schools in America. Thank you for your energy and ideas. I plan to write much more in the weeks and months ahead about this enormous challenge in our midst.

I got lots of comments on my last post on the crisis in our schools. I was encouraged by the commitment and passion of so many people out there, those who are in the trenches as teachers and administrators in our schools.

In The New York Times on Sunday, April 10, 2011, Jonathan Mahler has an interesting article about the “deadlock” that has settled into our debate about school reform in America today.

Several years ago, John T. Casteen III, then president of the University of Virginia, made a statement that has haunted me in my own leadership.

Several weeks ago I mentioned an article by William Deresiewicz called “Solitude and Leadership.” The article was adapted from a speech Deresiewicz gave to the plebe class at the Military Academy at West Point. It appears in the spring issue of The American Scholar. Because I’ve been reflecting on this notion of solitude, I’d like to pull out a few more thoughts from this article...

Our society is constantly trying to measure the distinctions among colleges and universities. U.S. News and World Report has made a fortune on its annual publication ranking our institutions. People watch these things. Most presidents talk about how these rankings don’t matter, until their school moves up a notch, and then they trumpet it to the world.

A week ago two essays appeared in separate newspapers — The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — suggesting much the same thing: The desire for liberty and freedom seem to reside universally in people all across the globe.

I found myself remarking to a colleague and friend the other day that “I am absolutely overwhelmed at the moment. There is just flat-out too much to do. I can’t even find time to think.”

… We all seem to think we need to multitask, talking on the phone while doing email, texting while driving, skimming the newspaper while talking at the breakfast table.

On the plane late last night … I became intensely absorbed in George Weigel’s brand-new book The End and the Beginning. … And somehow my reflections on what is happening in our nation’s capital seemed to come together with new thoughts about the life and leadership and teaching of Pope John Paul II.

In his latest book titled After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, the great N.T. Wright says that what the disciples discovered in Jesus was “a way of being human which nobody had ever imagined before. …”

In her weekly Saturday column in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan alerted me to an amazing article on the economic crisis in Greece. The article is written by Michael Lewis and appears in Vanity Fair. The discovery of this crisis took place with breathtaking speed …

We were in England this summer just days before the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. A visit from the pope of the Roman Catholic Church to Anglican England does not happen often, and such a visit is always fraught with some measure of tension.

This is the season for the long evenings in our northern part of the world, and finally we are getting a taste of summer. I decided to go for a walk in downtown Seattle. … Quite a joyous scene, a feeling of genuine community. But I noticed in the midst of it all there were the broken people.

The late, great Jewish novelist Chaim Potok once said “we live in a world of colliding maps.” We construct our maps of reality out of the bits and scraps of information we have been given by our circumstances of history, culture, training, genetics, family, opportunity, and so on. This is our story.

The over-hyped LeBron James circus is finally over. We can all take a deep breath now, a sigh of relief, and get on with our lives.

I begin writing these reflections … several hours before the United States meets the Black Stars from Ghana in World Cup competition.