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!