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David Coleman presenting to principals. View his talk here.

A couple of weekends ago, with temperatures climbing toward 90 degrees, 1,400 school administrators stuffed into a non-air conditioned high school auditorium and listened to education officials talk policy.

“Energetic” isn’t the first thing that springs to mind from that scene, but that’s just how Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and other attending principals characterized it yesterday.

“The energy in that room was off the chart. Truly off the chart,” Walcott said on NY1 last night. He and principals had described the event in similar terms at a press conference earlier in the day.

So what exactly went on inside Brooklyn Technical High School during the June 4 conference for principals?

Besides a virtuoso performance by an all-freshman string quartet to welcome the audience, much of the excitement surrounded a presentation by David Coleman, a charismatic and self-effacing speaker who helped write the new academic standards being rolled out by the Department of Education. (more…)