Detentionslip.org

Just came across this blog.  Some intriguing reads to be found there.

Our neighborhood school here in Boston

Did some looking into the public elementary school across the street from me and Greg here in Boston, and it has some great programs & approaches. The William W. Henderson Inclusion Elementary School: http://boston.k12.ma.us/Henderson/curriculum.htm

Bill Henderson, Principal, has written up some really helpful documentation on the school's efforts to engage non-reader students and their parents: http://boston.k12.ma.us/Henderson/images/How%20a%20Boston%20School%20Boosted%20Home%20Reading.pdf

I'll be reaching out in early January to see if we can chat with Bill H. or some of the Henderson school staff.

Cyberbullying

Somewhat off topic, but we must remember that children come into the class room from another place and environment, sometimes after being exposed to a variety of stressors. Reading this article was like driving past a car wreck.

Despite how disturbing it is, I just had to keep reading. I am amazed and disappointed that children are granted the freedom to do whatever they please on the internet with no consideration for their maturity or readiness to exercise the power that comes with access to social networking and the online world in general.

On the one hand, the offending children certainly behaved reprehensibly. But, on the other hand, I found myself more shocked with the cavalier attitude that some of the parents displayed. Minimizing the incident is a natural response, but refusing to acknowledge that any harm was done seems tragic to me--tragic because a valuable learning opportunity, which came at the cost of another human being's health and safety, was lost in a sea of parental ambivalence.

When I visited the Waldorf school in Palm Harbor, I asked one of the senior teachers how they handle bullying. She told me that any students which are involved, whether bullied or bully, have to sit down face to face and discuss what is going on, why it's happening, and how it makes each person feel.

I was surprised that any school would make a victim suffer through such a process. But upon further consideration, I did wonder whether or not it was more effective than punishment or expulsion. Perhaps it taught the victim to be assertive and strong? Perhaps it taught the offender that he would be held accountable for his actions? Perhaps it is humiliating enough to have to explain yourself in front of your teachers and victim.

In any case, it seems no matter who they are or where they come from, kids today have more stress on their minds than ever before.

"Cold Calling"

Link goes to You Tube video of a woman talking about how great it is to call on students at her own whim to answer questions.

This is an exceedingly authoritarian classroom, and based on the teacher's excessive restrictions on the students, I would guess that this is a drop-out prevention school.  Generally in such a school, students have been expelled (typically just until the end of the school year or some other predefined goal is met), though sometimes they just have "ADHD" or live in a neighborhood that has been identified as unhealthy for students and serves as an attempt to turn the tables.  I've taught as a substitute for a few of these kinds of schools.  Typically the class sizes are kept much smaller than a traditional classroom (though this varies), students are restricted in what they may wear, and they are not allowed to take any items to or from school.

I wanted to show this video I just found of a regular instructor for such a class and the sort of restrictions in place.  The students must "track" her.  She is attempting to teach attention skills.  The students are wearing uniforms.  The students are forbidden from speaking out.

Something about this video just screamed out to me that this is wrong.  It's not just the obvious racial background distinction between the teacher and the students, either.

Consider what secondary lessons students learn from such a change:  You are being punished for some crime you may or may not have committed.  This crime may be merely that your opinion of my importance is low in this world or that the information I demand you learn is immaterial to you.  You are someone over whom I have legal power and authority.  You must obey me or you will face consequences that are highly unappealing to you (which may include staying longer at this school).  My ideas, thoughts, and perspectives are superior to yours, and unless you conform to them, you will continue to be subjugated.

The most common thread amongst drop-out prevention students that I have seen, after spending considerable time teaching them and tutoring and mentoring them, is that they are interested in bucking the system.  They want to be independent.  They may want to see changes made that they are, ultimately, powerless to make.  Often they have other, more mentally pressing, issues at home which override their concerns for education for the time being.

These students are identified after skipping school, stealing, using drugs, acting out in class, getting in trouble with the law, or other similar activities.  Maybe they made the mistake of voicing their true opinion of an instructor at an inopportune time.  Maybe they are too egocentric to care whether anyone else in the classroom is capable of learning.  Or maybe it's just easier for them to be somewhere else.  And then this is how they are treated.  With more force, more emphasis on conformity.

I have to wonder in what way anyone is expected to benefit from that.  Is the intention to show some of the more ethically flexible individuals how to take advantage of a position of authority?

Two of the most common pieces of parenting advice that I hear from people (and immediately eschew as ignorant and insensible) are:  "Well, he's just going to have to deal with it." and "Just tell him no."  Sure, that sort of domineering is functional for certain personalities types.  And it's great for helping generate a population of sheeple.  But it doesn't teach anything other than fear of the Leviathan.  It doesn't help to train a person to find the reasoning behind a particular action.  It doesn't communicate the concept of goodwill and sharing and kindness.  Instead, it teaches children that they cannot trust adults with their thoughts and feelings. Children learn that they must keep their ideas of rebellion at bay, in a kind of perpetual state of fear.

To a certain extent, children do need to have a level of fear of their elders.  When they are toddlers, they have learned to grasp the concept of the "food chain" and can easily identify who is weaker and who is stronger.  My own son (nigh 3 years old) demonstrates this in playdates:  any younger or smaller or weaker child (even if they are up to 4 or 5 years older) is treated by him as an inferior; anyone his size or larger, as a sort of idol.  But if we are truly to become human beings, we must learn to grow out of this toddler phase, this hind-brain-fueled mentality.  While largely emotionally charged at a young age, children are gradually capable of more and more complex reasoning skills and should be afforded opportunities of using such.

I guess the gist of what I'm saying is that it seems insensible to punish those who are frustrated by a lack of power or control in their lives by taking away any of the small amount of such they possessed before.  Wouldn't it be better, instead, to give them an outlet for expressing themselves, some means of exercising control in their lives?  I fully believe the educational system is capable of making such a change.  It's just a question of whether or not they will.

Academic Integrity - Study Guides

Link goes to story about students at university level who were accused of cheating because they used an "Instructor's Manual" as a study guide for their exam--and the exam turned out to be identical to the one in the manual.

The instructor believes this to be a form of cheating, but it's not clear that the students were necessarily aware that the questions in the manual were going to be the exact same ones as on the exam, rather than merely similar ones.

Food for thought.

The Shadow Scholar

Man who writes papers for people spills his guts anonymously.  This is a very intriguing insight into the collegiate paper-writing underground world.

Emily Pilloton on Teaching Design for Change (TED talk)

Great video on TED demonstrating how a community and education system can be transformed via design.

The Education Manifesto: Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty defend their approach

WSJ article link

Rhee and Fenty sum up their approach as Merit Pay for Teachers = Success. But on review of their whole strategy and execution, it really seems like getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people OFF the bus was what made the most difference school by school.

(I'd like to vote the idea of merit pay off the island. A teacher should be paid for the role -- and perform well or be let go. A teacher is either worth having on the staff, or isn't. No wonder teachers' unions are upset. No one should feel like they have to deal daily political fealty to a particular school administrator in order to be fully paid for their job.)

The other piece of the right-on wrong-off staffing strategy success was to "...allow principals to make the layoffs based on the quality, value and performance of their staffs." This kept the decision-making local to each school and its own leadership. Principals got to own their staffing decisions; staff got to be accountable to their principals and not to every governing member of the school district. Cutting down on the I have eight bosses effect can't but help.

Notes for the future school administration file...

The Girl Effect

This site talks about the effect of helping to educate young girls.  Worldwide, vast numbers of girls are married before the age of 18.  Because they are most often poor girls who are married so young and have children almost immediately, claims the site, these girls often must turn to prostitution to support their families.  This helps further the spread of AIDS, among other problems.

The suggestion made by the site is that if we can help enable these girls, starting by around age 12 especially, to become better educated, to learn a trade, they can help their families without having to be bought off by a husband.  They can put off having children until they are capable of affording them--or having the option to decide whether or not they even want to be mothers at all.  By empowering young women, the idea is that they can help to elevate their families out of poverty.  They can reduce the number of children born in a given year and thus help prevent overpopulation.  By having fewer young women feeling a need to resort to selling their bodies, the spread of AIDS could diminish rapidly.  And the chain would continue on down the line.

The Girl Effect talks about foreign nations where this is a problem.  I think it's a global issue, including here in the US.  There are still places where the same behaviors of the third world are seen in our own country.  And if they are right, then education and thus, empowerment, can make (literally) a world of difference.

I mainly am posting this for information purposes and idea generating purposes.  Though I would be interested in discussing this tonight, if we don't have any other topic.

Fitness Affects Cognition

Article cites research which determined the brains of 9 and 10 year old children were more capable of executive function and scoring better on IQ tests if they were physically fit.  The fitter the child, the more pronounced the augmentation of certain parts of the brain related to cognition.

Additionally, the article cited research that revealed that students who run for 20 minutes before taking a test score notably higher.

Little Lake Free School

I haven't looked through this site completely, but I think it has some good thoughts from the small part I did glance at.

Several sides of the Gates Foundation's school evaluation work

My colleague Valerie will be blogging this week about YouthTruth -- CEP's work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's beneficiaries within their US Education program. She has some incredible perspective to share. I'll do some thinking aloud on indicators of school effectiveness in the comments here.

Meantime, the NY Times article today on Brockton high school and its success as a large school (4,100 students!) adds to a growing set of research and anecdata suggesting that school size by itself is no guarantor of failure or success. This directly contradicts the premise of a huge B&M Gates Fdn initiative to break up large high schools into smaller schools and to encourage charter school startups. If I can find any public Gates Fdn evaluation results from this initiative, I'll post them here as well.

Hello and Action Research

I am the new kid on the block.

I read all of the past material and agree with Greg that: “you need substance in our dialogue.” However, rather than presentations to each other about where you are, why not collaborate on where you are going – prospective rather than retrospective.

For example, I have been invited to give a 10-minute presentation to the USF College of Education’s Fall Diversity Forum on the “achievement gap.” I’d like feedback on my preliminary draft of what I think I they need to hear and I need to say, given my take on take on education. The text follows: is that of interest and does that make sense?

Action Research
K. Edward Renner

The research that you are most familiar with starts with a theory, is translated into an application, which you as teachers put into practice.

However, what I will talk about today is "action-research;" it reverses that direction. It is best illustrated by a story in which the principal actors can be a professor, a student, or a teacher depending on the audience.

Two students were driving across a bridge when they spotted a child being carried downstream below. No sooner had they pulled the child from the stream when they saw two more children in the water. The first student headed back into the stream, while the second climbed up the bank. The first one hollered "where are you going" while the second answered "up stream to see who is throwing them in."

Going up stream to do primary intervention is widely knowledge as the most efficient intervention, but it seldom happens. If it did, issues, such as the achievement gap, would not be the intransigent social problems they have become.

Why is that?

There is considerable social pressure not to walk away from someone in need. But if you went up stream you would find that it is your boss -- your own institution -- that is participating with related institutions to throw the children into the stream.

It is called iatrogensis. It is the process by which institutions contribute to the very problems they are responsible for solving. The most common illustration is that one third of all hospital days are the result of illnesses contracted as a result of being in the hospital. However, iatrogensis is a common affliction, as when correctional institutions increase the probability of recidivism or when schools, seen as the instruments of choice to create greater social equality, actually increase inequality.

In a city where I used to live my neighbor was principal of the local high school. As you may know, pregnant teens are often excluded from school and fail to graduate from high school. He tried to create a program where the home economics classes would take care of the children as a practical learning experience and their mothers would continue in their regular classes. Such was not to be the case. Home economics would continue to be taught through books, and pregnant teens were to be left to their own devices to take care of their children and to pursue a GED for their education.

In a university where I used to teach, a professor offered a class in which his university students ran an after school program in the largely poor and ethnic minority district. The program turned vacant lots into community vegetable gardens. In addition to food, there were other outcomes: parental involvement, home-school interaction, the creation of a community organization, a community newsletter and an interest in a food related additions to the curriculum. But, of course there were other push-back effects: One absentee landlord rejected this appropriated use of his land and attracted negative media attention when picketed. The city first agreed and then withdrew from citing absentee owners of overgrown lots with a code violation and offering a plea bargain of a monthly payment to the program equivalent to what a lawn service agency would charge for routine maintenance. The absentee landowner had a conversation with the University President at the country club about withdrawing his support as a booster of the football program, and a financial officer of University questioned the appropriateness of the department owning a tractor. You see, University presidents expect Dean's to protect them from such external intrusions, and Dean's expect the same from department chairs, who in turn want the same from their faculty. The Dean spoke to the chairperson who reminded the faculty member that such activity is not scholarship and would not contribute to obtaining tenure. In the end, the faculty member was not retained, the tractor sold, and the university classroom returned to theoretical teaching on how the lack of parental involvement, home-school interaction, and a stable community contribute to the minority achievement gap.

If you you go upstream to put together the "systemic" pieces you will be reminded to go back down stream and take care of the individual cases. The “real” cause, as the explanation goes, is that higher education cannot solve the achievement gap because of the failure of the public school system. The public school system cannot solve the problem because the poor children from dysfunctional families and neighborhoods are not properly prepared for school. So, until poor ethnic mothers heading dysfunctional families living in dysfunctional neighborhoods stop having babies there's not anything that can be done.

If course that is nonsense.

We know that it is the sum of the contributions of the component systems that keep the flow of children coming. The difficulty is that the only place you, as a person, can have an influence is within your own system. But, when you go upstream to do action research -- using practice to inform policy -- you will be sent downstream to do the job you have been trained for and are paid to do. This is where cynicism and teacher burnout comes from.

Your university education should prepare you for this. You need to learn about the methodology of action research and the challenges and strategies of going upstream. You should have within the College of Education programs like the garden project, ones that your faculty contribute to on a par with standard theoretical research. You need this to prepare you for interrupting the iatrogenic habits that exist within our systems, which collectively are largely responsible for the intransigent nature of social issues such as the achievement gap.

The alternative is a Millennial Generation dutifully volunteering down stream as the product of a complicit educational system helping to provide a steady supply of children who need to be rescued. All of this while the “systemic” educational system passively watches a consuming life style, in a deregulated economy thriving on a money driven political process having created a Millennial Generation dutifully volunteering down stream…

Quo Vadimus

We've been talking about schools, education, founding principles, and pedagogy within a framework of "education salon" for about two months now. Others among us have been talking about about these things for years.

We have salons in the form of video conference, we have this blog, we have the wave. All these tools. All this intent. What are we doing with them?

I ask this because I think there are different purposes at work here. Phil wants to physically found a school: paperwork, boarding school, everything down to picking the plaid of of the school uniform (Are there uniforms? I want to know.) Jess's vision of the school isn't necessarily the same - there are different founding principles and methods used by other schools, and Dewey (engaging though he is) doesn't hold the only golden corner on teaching the children. For my own part, I just like sitting in my study and listening to the ideas pour out of our brains and challenging myself to think about what really is best and what is broken in education.

So we don't really know what we're doing together in this thing, and perhaps what we need is a bit more focus. Salons are much fun - seeing all the people I love and gabbering back and forth about the best way to beat knowledge into the brains of tiny people is wonderful. But it's usually not very directed. One of the reasons that I like this blog is it encourages an author to string together multiple thoughts together into a coherent thread, build an idea into something that can stick to the wall when you throw it there. The Wave and Facebook chattering are fun, but not substantial.

We need substance in our dialogues too. So I propose a little change: let us revise the format of Salons - one of us will give a short presentation (15 to 30 minutes or so) followed by conversation about the topic of the presentation.

I can talk about math education, and share some of my experiences teaching above-average college kids. Jess has many years of experience teaching middle and high school students, and has researched a lot of institutions while thinking about the education of Jackson. Phil is nearing completion of his dissertation - perhaps he could talk to us for a half hour about Dewey and the functional operation of education philosophy. Rachel need only dip into any one of the sub-topics that she talks to me about in the evenings. Tessie must be bubbling over with ideas at the beginning of her grad school program. And these are only the people I've directly been in Salon with - I know there are more interested parties out there too.

What do you think? Have we been down this path before with the Society for Pragmatism?

Talk to me.

Charlotte Mason

I was just reading up on the Charlotte Mason method of education and came across this little tidbit:

"Education should deal with character issues, not just acquiring a certain amount of knowledge."

I believe this to be a true statement.  While I'm not keen on the religious aspect infused into the Charlotte Mason method, I do appreciate the main points I've been reading about on it:

"Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life"

Atmosphere in this case is the environment, both immediate and macroscopically.  This can mean the home environment, the school environment, the world at large, etc.  It can include the emotional overtones of the student's surroundings or the state of cleanliness or cluttered-ness thereof, for example.

The Discipline aspect seems to tie back into what a lot of people now refer to as Self-Regulation or Executive Function.  It all boils down to instilling an internal discipline in the student.  The student learns good habits, self-motivation, self-restraint, and logical decision-making skills.

The Life part is a bit harder to put to words.  The examples I've read describe, for example, a liveliness of character.  The books the student experiences in the learning process are not dry and dull but written by someone who has an interest and a passion for the subject of study.  The concepts are "living ideas" and, moreover, are considered in the Charlotte Mason method to be only 1/3 of the scope of education.

The information for this was culled primarily from this site:  http://simplycharlottemason.com/

Prototype schools

A short list of folks we can contact at Dewey-oriented schools in the US:

1: John Dewey Learning Academy in Leecompton, KS, was founded nine years ago as an alternative high school.

Based in Kansas, but we might want to reach out by phone and email to get a sense of how these folks got started and what they are accomplishing.

"The mission of the John Dewey Learning Academy is to provide an authentic, nurturing, and academically challenging learning environment for high school level students that is connected to the world outside of school, is meaningful for students, and promotes their positive sense of community and enthusiasm for learning."

2: John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, NY, opened in September 1969. They list some interesting core principles:

* Students should learn by doing
* Students should learn at their own pace
* A student's education should be validated by his/her experience
* Grades inhibit learning and promote unwanted competition
* A classroom should be conducted by many teachers and many learners, not by one teacher and many learners
* If you give students responsibility, they will be responsible
* Students must be active participants in their education

3: The John Dewey Academy in Great Barrington, MA, just down the highway from Rachel and Greg in the Berkshires.

This one is a boarding high school for students ages 15-21. Their mission:

"We provide an individualized and comprehensive education for bright, troubled adolescents with a history of self-defeating or self-destructive choices. Our peer-based approach leads our students to high levels of achievement and inspires them to develop in ways that promote self-respect, maturity, and respect for others."

I found their FAQs helpful as a reality check as we continue to consider student needs when dealing with students with less privileged or less stable histories. Clinicians on board.

John Dewey Director of the Urban Education Institute

Someone to interview:

Dr. Timothy Knowles serves as John Dewey director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute (UEI). UEI is dedicated to addressing the question, how can we reliably produce excellent schooling for children growing up in urban America? UEI addresses this question in four ways: by undertaking rigorous applied research lead by the Consortium on Chicago School Research; developing urban teachers and leaders; operating and supporting PreK-12th grade schools; and designing scalable tools and ideas to improve teaching, learning and leadership.

During his tenure at the University of Chicago, UEI has initiated the creation of 20 new schools across Chicago’s south side, four of which are designed and operated directly by the University of Chicago. This portfolio of schools is designed to serve as an existence proof that poor children can learn at high levels. The schools also serve as a locus for developing new methodologies for training aspiring, new and veteran teachers and school leaders.

Prior to coming to Chicago, Knowles served as deputy superintendent for Teaching and Learning at the Boston Public Schools. While in Boston he created two organizations devoted to building the pipeline of high quality teachers and school leaders for Boston Public Schools and served as co-director of the Boston Annenberg Challenge, a nationally recognized effort to improve literacy instruction.

Prior to his work in Boston he founded and directed a full-service K-8 school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York City. He also served as the founding director of Teach for America in New York City, and a teacher of African History in Botswana.

He has written and spoken extensively on the topics of school leadership, teacher quality, school reform, and accountability in public schools.

He received his B.A. in anthropology and African history from Oberlin College and an M.A. and doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Contact info at the link above. I wonder if anyone at the Boston Foundation might put us in touch? I'm going to reach out today and see what happens.

In a New Role, Teachers Move to Run Schools

With the gradual shift from "Principal Teacher" (19th century) to "Principal Administrator" (20th century), teachers are finally discovering what Waldorf has known for such a long time. Teachers must be leaders and, ideally, have control over the environment in which they teach. That means being responsible for the curriculum, the facilities, and the schedule. I cannot reinforce enough the role of appropriate leadership in the school system. Administrators are currently measured on their ability to enforce standards from above. Leadership and significant participation from below is neither cultivated nor appreciated. Is it any wonder teacher attrition rates are so high? I think not.

The Child-Driven Education: Sugata Mitra

Sugata Mitra's computer-in-a-wall experiment has shown some phenomenal results. His work is giving us a broader way to think about technology in classrooms, the way we expect students to learn individually and in groups, best uses of current information as curriculum material, and what it means to teach.

Thoughts on a Dewey school: student background edition

An "aha" moment getting at the thing I've been trying to pin down during our conversations -- what has us talking about disadvantaged/underprivileged students and boarding schools? Where is the emphasis on environmental factors coming from? What is it we're feeling the need to control for and/or eliminate entirely from students' lives 24/7?

In Experience and Education, John Dewey writes:

"I am not romantic enough about the young to suppose that every pupil will respond or that any child of normally strong impulses will respond on every occasion. There are likely to be some who, when they come to school, are already victims of injurious conditions outside of the school and who have become so passive and unduly docile that they fail to contribute. There will be others who, because of previous experience, are bumptious and unruly and perhaps downright rebellious."

Dewey goes on to say that neither the traditional "battle of wills" method of bringing non-participating students into participation, nor the straight out exclusion of these students from the school, are solutions to these kinds of student situations. He also goes on to discuss the need for sufficiently thoughtful planning on the part of the school, so as to make room for and have resources to deal with such students.

But the assumption I'm hearing is that students start out wanting ever so much to learn and participate democratically and prepare ahead and strike the optimal balance of respect for authority and confidence in their individual positions. This I tend to agree with, but only within the context of students' developmental levels. There is likelihood of student disengagement, rebelliousness, passivity, and poor previous experience no matter where students come from in the socioeconomic spectrum. These things are part human variant, part developmental stage (like separation from authority in high school or devotion to black & white thinking and social group definition in middle school), and part -- not all - environment.

In our next conversation, or one of the next anyway, I'd like to chat more with the group about how, if at all, we would like to continue exploring the implications of targeting specifically disadvantaged student populations for any school endeavor. Ditto the boarding school. There's quite a bit students lose when they are removed from their home environment into one created by, and consisting solely of, their school environment. The kind of students we start talking about when we talk about the benefits of a boarding school will need much more infrastructural support than just a caring set of teachers and a dorm dad.

(Just having an anti-Stand and Deliver backlash moment, and wondering if we can talk about who we want to be as educators without creating straw orphans to save by the sheer power of our great teaching and school administration in the process.)

Have at it with me in the comments?

Interview with an Adolescent

Hi all,

I have an assignment for a class that deals with interviewing an adolescent and I thought I would take this opportunity to ask you all if you have questions you would like to ask of a teen about their views/opinions on school.

I am to submit my questions on Thursday by 1pm. So, please take a few seconds to type down a question or two if you have any interest.

Each person in my class will be posting 10 question and we can use any questions we wish when we do our interview...so there is no issue with me asking you all if you'd like to help. Consider this an opportunity to ask a student questions that could potentially be useful in our research for our school.

Thx!

Tessie

Sleep

Since the concept of boarding our students has been brought up, something that we certainly need to consider is the amount of sleep our students will need. I would also emphasize this point even if we opt not to have any or all students board on campus.

http://nymag.com/news/features/38951/ This article by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (which is also in their WONDERFUL book, NurtureShock) talks about the critical importance of getting enough sleep. Not just a matter of it being a "good idea" or "helpful", but truly critical. The article hints strongly at the notion that a large portion of our population may even be functionally brain damaged due to our chronic sleep loss. An hour a day taken from the needed hours of sleep for a child can be so debilitating that it sets them back functionally an average of about 2 years of age. That's a huge distinction.

So, my proposal here is that whatever schedule we plan for the program, whatever we or the parents do as far as getting children to bed, we ensure that they are given the proper amount of sleep in a 24 hour period as often as is possible.

As a parent of a toddler, I am all too familiar with how easy it is to allow a child to stay up later than he ought. But everyone loses that way. Children (even tweens and teens) are no fun to deal with and are functionally depressed by even the loss of an hour's sleep a night for 3 nights consecutively. With Jackson, he is often incredibly cranky and even violent and excessively willful and prone to anger if he is woken even half an hour too early from his nap. When we had loud neighbors move in upstairs, Jackson became chronically sleep-deprived for 6 months. It was a living hell for our entire household, which has still not fully recovered.

Sleep is vital, so I want to be sure that we consider it well as part of our key elements of the project.

Who We Are as a Group

I'd like this post to begin a threaded conversation about the skills, qualities, personality traits, and general dynamics each of us brings to this group. We're a diverse and wacky bunch.

Foster Care - a specific outcropping of the Privilege/Disadvantage discussion

Jessica posts:

Not really a link so much as information relayed to me after discussing this project this past weekend:

Andrew's cousin, Wes, and Wes' wife, Carol, work with foster children in Oklahoma. It is a group home setting, almost like a small town, and it is heavily regulated. The boys are housed separately from the girls, and there is at least another site on the property for the elderly. There may be other houses or multiples for each set; I am not aware of the particulars in that regard.

The picture painted to me was provided by Andrew's aunt (Wes' mother). Brenda has spent a good deal of time visiting the foster home. The home is not owned by Wes and Carol. They are full-time foster parents in the home, and there is a rotational basis provided for vacations on a small level. They typically have around 8 boys at the home at a time. All meals need to be provided on site, and leftovers are severely limited or disallowed altogether, based on the type of food. Nearly every boy has been "diagnosed" with some sort of condition (mostly ADHD), and has medication that must be given from a box that is kept locked and checked with Wells Fargo-like security on a very frequent basis.

There are scrupulous and strict regulations that must be maintained, and the meals must be planned and approved. As caretakers of these children, they are responsible for taking them to all necessary doctor visits and court dates--for all 8 children. Regular inspections occur to ascertain whether proper care is being attended in the home.

The children, as one might imagine, are not from wealthy families, and so the foster home receives a large number of donations from locals in the town. The home is inundated with the latest in technology and toys, from iPods to skateboards to whatever the latest new trend is, to a level over and above that of the average middle class home.

The reason that I am portraying this, as you might imagine, is because of the suggestion that the school be a boarding school. Wes and Carol do not hold any other jobs beyond being the foster parents of all these children. They do not homeschool them. They do not have time.

It is a serious and complicated undertaking to house a number of foster children. To add their education to the pile is yet a further considerable burden. While I do believe it is something that could be achieved, I also believe that it would be a sincerely complex web of entanglements that would require the work of nearly as many adults as children in order to accomplish such a task.

Age Group(s) of Focus

What student group might be best served by the focus of this school project?


Rachel: Rachel's vote for age groups: small (K ish) through middle (13 ish). Early education prepares students to get the most and best out of even the shittiest high school environments and curricula, by teaching them love of & methods for learning from any available resources. 


Jess: I think we may also want to include a preschool option as well. Children can be ruined before they even begin public school grades. 


Tessie: Ages 11-17.  


Phil: I THINK we decided we'll do ages 11-17 


Jess: "Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why—sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions." http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html 

Mission Statements

What is our mission statement for this project?


Phil & Tess: We aim to found a school where the culture promotes a democratic, participatory lifestyle by utilizing inquiry-based pedagogy, an open-source curriculum and cultivating a community cohesion without enforcing uniformity. We seek to write a grant which will allow for research and development of all the various aspects of founding the school (administration, human relations, staffing, budget, tuition costs, IT integration, etc).


Rachel: (posted Exeter's MS, which is as follows): The founder of Phillips Exeter Academy defined its mission more than two centuries ago. "Above all," John Phillips stated, "it is expected that the attention of instructors to the disposition of the minds and morals of the youth under their charge will exceed every other care; well considering that though goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous, and that both united form the noblest character, and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind."

Exeter today continues the commitment to unite knowledge and goodness. It seeks students who combine proven academic ability, intellectual curiosity, and tenacity with decency and good character. At the Academy, exacting inquiry and thoughtful discourse foster the life of the mind, instruction and activity promote fitness and health, and the daily interactions of a residential school nurture integrity, empathy, and kindness. Because learning and growth at Exeter arise from each individual's engagement with others, the richness of education here requires diversity in all its dimensions; students and faculty value the differences they bring to the community they share.The challenges that students meet at Exeter and the support they receive have a common purpose: to stimulate their development as individuals and as members of society. Exeter seeks to graduate young people whose creativity and independence of thought sustain their continuing inquiry and reflection, whose interest in others and the world around them surpasses their self-concern, and whose passion for learning impels them beyond what they already know.-1991

Answering the question: "What student group might be best served by the focus of this school project? What's a more coherent and concise way to talk about what we're doing here? Two sentences tops." [This may also be posted elsewhere later.]

Jess: We aim to find a solution to educating the future (i.e. minors) that accounts for abilities, disabilities, sensibilities, rationalities, and human respect. Our goal is to provide this education with a focus on developing core skills in executive function, logical reasoning, health consciousness, and a general sense of community and social responsibility at a developmentally appropriate for the child.

Phil: I would like to add environmental awareness to the principles to ensure they have an ecosystem to grow into.

Ideal School

What does the ideal school look and feel like?


Rachel: Ideal school - students feel beloved in their school. Have relationships in the school (teachers, parents, other students). Less transactional, more community focus. Picturing an elementary school. What are ages, etc? Class sizes? Ability to explore having groups of students stay with one teacher. Schoolhouse model. As opposed to graded system with different teachers. Keep teachers with students for more years, so students know class etc along the way. Amalgam of montessori and home school. 

Phil: About age groups. If a boarding school, what can we get? If we can get at kindergarten, then let's do it. Get them educated as early as can. Small ratio, community orientation, "communing" with other students. Multiple years of teachers, good. Like to talk about the role of the teacher in the classroom. The role of teacher is dependent on the philosophy. If it's to inculcate the habit of learning, teacher is a guide not a sage. Teacher is not an authority figure. Students must take an active part in their own education. Allows students to excel in their own interests. Inquiry based education as opposed to graded content system.

Phil: Our school: interest based, engaged education -- without the Montessori guide-less model. More structured than Montessori, less structured than PS 89.

Waldorf - a viable alternative school system based on anthroposophy 

John: going back to community -- you have a school where kids are excited about being there, eventually the students will be involved in tutoring, teaching, engaging other students in projects, meal prep, working together as a team -- the culture develops as a side effect of the structure. 

PB - a well run school is like a happy family. 

Rachel: I know of a school in New Hampshire that does interesting things despite demographics, like immersion Chinese, cricket, etc. 

Phil: I'm committed to making a new school, not copying an existing one. Don't know of any school based on Deweyian education. Is about being a good person and citizen as well as knowledge gains. Don't know about you, but education system did not prepare me for real life. 

Tessie: How to fix a flat, plunge toilet, change an electrical fixture. 

Rachel: Some of that is luck of the draw. Not everybody gets the parents that will teach you this kind of thing. 

John: These kids can grow up to be that kind of parent. 

Greg: One of teh things we could do for math education is to focus on using the computational tools we have -- instead of teaching students how to do the integral, teach them how they can use modeling an integral (using a real world problem) and then have computational tools to do teh integration, then analyze results.Any real world math problem breaks into : understanding, modeling, solving, and analyzing. We currently teach step 3. Dewey's steps: admitting/recognizing problem; hypothesize; test; revisit as necessary. Ties heavily into inquiry-based education 

Jess: Other than the anthroposophy influence, I've been very impressed by the Waldorf model. There are a lot of good parts to each educational system. We should see what bits work and what bits do not and go from there. No point reinventing the wheel. 

Jess: My greatest hope is that we can find a way to have a school that I would be proud for my child to attend with few if any reservations. 

[These were our initial comments on the subject.]

SUMMARY: We want a well-rounded educational system that does not just teach facts but also instills an awareness of the environment and community, as well as enabling students to develop executive function skills. They will become knowledgeable, practical, wise, compassionate, and nurturing individuals if we succeed.

Tech Issues

Okay, I'm reeeeally not liking the formatting that gets copied over from Wave.  It messes up everything when you go to make any edits to text in a post.  Grr.  I give up trying to figure out how to put spaces into the previous post.

Anyway, here's a post for any technological issues we have with the blog and communications in general.

Stated Goal of the Project

Question: What does each of us want from engagement with this project? 


[Below are copied the responses from various members of the group initiated on Google Wave]

Phil: Would like to circumvent a great deal of the alienation and estrangement in current human interaction by educating students from "the bottom up"

John: Likes influencing the minds of the wee ones and teaching - believes in Phil's ideas and wants to see them put into action - wants a small army of munchkins who will be amazing people

Greg: Wants a goal for the google wave & meetings: we should try to set a specific goal of putting to gether a grant/proposal. We don't have to submit it to anyone, but it would be good practice to write one: to clarify what we're trying to accomplish, and to practice the fundraising we'll need to do anyway in order to set up school. Establish framework, principles, & motivation -- as well as the "how". Greg would like to end this series of conversations having written a grant for the school project itself.

Phil: shorter term goal? regular meetings of groups of people (just a few more) to gather people with interest - to gain momentum 

Rachel: Interested in organizing and keeping moving forward. Have interesting, talented people (but no organizers, boo). Want to see it happen, and am happy to be part of midwifery.

Tessie: Thinks there is a certain best way to behave and act, and would like to model and frame that behavior for the next generation - to influence more people than just her own kids - to change the culture through education.

[added now]

Jess: I have been wanting to create a system of education that addresses the real needs of students and that takes into account the science behind the way people learn best. Unfortunately, I'm usually great at coming up with ideas for projects and not so great at follow-through. Rachel will be much appreciated as a midwife. Doing this project as a group, I hope, will give it a greater likelihood of success, much like having a workout partner makes one more likely to go to the gym.

First!

Rachel and Jessica have created this blog to help us start a new method of communicating.  We have decided to make new posts for each subtopic of this venture, with discussions to follow in the comments.  Enjoy!

Please read the tab above for About this Project before posting.  Thanks!