Data Collecting at the Grocery Store and at School

I went grocery shopping recently and paused for a moment at the checkout when I swiped my King Soopers card that entitles me to some discounts in exchange for sharing information about my buying habits. I wondered what my card might say about me to someone who doesn't know me. Clearly it can show that I prefer to buy organic and local, and I don't buy a lot of junk food. I am sure it helps them to know that a person like me, who will buy organic blueberries will likely also buy a certain kind of cereal or a certain kind of soap and they will find a way to entice me to buy it. If it encourages the grocer to provide more of what I want, and I have access to more choices that I like, I am fine with this exchange.

I wonder what it is not able to understand though. Does it show that I went shopping while I was hungry or if I was in a hurry? Does it know that I shopped with little helpers who made requests at every aisle? Can it tell that I am a list maker and that I plan out the recipes I will be using for the week? Can it tell what mood I was in or how am feeling about my weight or health? How does it explain my occasional absences, when I go somewhere else that is further away and more expensive because their are healthier choices or when I frequent farm stands in the summer? I am sure it makes plenty of educated guess about who I am, what I need, and what I will choose based on the information that I have given them and from others who shop like I do. I believe that it is limited in what it can know about me.

It made me think of the way we handle public schools. In exchange for a free or very inexpensive education, we give information about our students. Like my King Soopers Card, the information is quite limited, and is nominally beneficial for each student. If I choose not to share the information via my grocery card, I still get what I want but I pay more for it. In education, if you allow the constant testing in the form of quizzes, tests, State assessments, etc. you can get a free education. If you choose not to be tested, you must pay more for your education...elsewhere. Even if you were allowed to opt out of all testing, the curriculum and lesson plans are designed around the testing system anyway, resulting in an often inferior education.

Sometimes the tests really are used to assess the level of understanding of each student, allowing the teacher to make necessary changes to the lessons and spend more time on areas identified as deficits before moving on. Sometimes the tests are used as an institutional report card, showing how the teacher is doing, how the principal is doing, and if the school should be closed down. Just like the grocery card, the test scores leave more out than they reveal. They do no tell of a teacher's rapport with each student and how engaged they are in the learning. They do not explain what circumstances a student comes from that day or that year, like poverty or abuse. Because of the test-driven nature of the curriculum, it doesn't even show the talent of the teacher, because they are not allowed to use their talents in that environment. The tests don't even differentiate between a willing and an able student. Just as not all students are able to read in First Grade, or understand trigonometry, not all students are willing to learn in that environment and they protest through disengagement. A disengaged student is not going to be the high scorer.

What are the options for the student who is unwilling to constantly be tapped for statistics? Private school and homeschool if those are financially possible. Dropping out is another costly option. That person's earning potential is likely to be rather low and that increases the chances that he or she will rely on other government assistance, in the form of welfare or medicare for example. If we have to pay anyway, why not pay less, early on with a quality, engaging education that is designed to bring out the strengths and curiosity in every student?

The exchange at my grocery store seems far more beneficial for both parties than in public schools. If I elect not to participate in this exchange at the store, it is easy for me to do so, and my extra spending is often fairly negligible. This is in sharp contrast to the scenario for a student. The choice is difficult and the cost is huge. If testing were truly for the benefit of the students and education was more choice driven, the system would be in a lot better shape. We could learn something by examining the choices we make in daily life. If we wouldn't accept an unbalanced, unfair exchange, we ought to ensure the same standards for our children.

It's Not Just Black History - It's American History

I have never felt completely comfortable with Black History Month because I think it is a little odd to devote only one (short) month to exploring the history and contributions of one group of people who are an integral part of our American culture. Does that mean, then, that we can ignore them the other eleven months and focus all on white people? I like a more integrated, year-round approach. Despite the useful purpose and the good intentions behind Black History Month, by naming it as we do, we seem to highlight our separateness. There is no way to study black history without talking about the role of white people, of course - it is our common history and our shared experience, albeit from different perspectives. I am not even comfortable with the words Black and White. Neither of us is that extreme on the color scale. We all sit between black and white representing every shade of that spectrum. I read a biography on Samuel L. Jackson and he disliked the term African American. He is American. Why does that group need a qualifier before American when others do not refer to themselves as European American? They are no less American.

Of course I recognize an occasional need for identifying ourselves with or from others, but I am aware of how much that needlessly alienates us from others and also how transitory the importance of those identifiers are. If I look at the data one way, I see myself as a Buddhist. If I cut it another way, I am a woman. I am a liberal, midwestern, caucasian, heterosexual, homeschooler, literate, middle class, married, omnivore with dilemmas. I share something in common with millions of other people around the world in each category, yet separate myself from others with each category. We are human beings.

Our house is TV free, though we do play a lot of movies. Even with less media, even in a diverse city like Denver, they can clearly see that there are part of a majority with regard to skin color. I make it a point, on a regular basis to choose books and media that show more balanced perspectives and people of color - not just in February. On that note, we are set to experience a month of American history from the Civil War era, celebrations, good music and food! Here is what we we will look at:

• Character theme of the month: Tolerance
- Reading stories of tolerance from "The Book of Virtues”
- Movies around the theme of tolerance
- Beauty and the Beast story
- Feild Trip: Colorado Ballet - Beauty and the Beast
- Discussion on what tolerance is with personal examples of that quality; what do oneness and separateness mean; and what is prejudice.

• Country of the month: Botswana
- Identifying Botswana on a map
- Movies and books on Botswana
- Cooking typical foods of Botswana
- The art of Botswana
- Field Trip: Denver Museum of Science and Nature - Botswana Exhibit

• Slavery, The Underground Railroad, and Emancipation
- History of slavery and the Underground Railroad from the perspectives of slaves, plantation owners, the President, soldiers from both sides of the Civil War, and those along the underground railroad
- Music: Songs from the Underground Railroad
- Harriet Tubman
- Sojourner Truth
- Frederick Douglass
- Abraham Lincoln
- Civil War
- Movies and books
- Field Trip: Denver Public Library - Abraham Lincoln Exhibit
- Field Trip: Blair Caldwell African American Research Library
- Field Trip: Soul Food Restaurant (plus homecooking version)

• Valentine's Day, Groundhog Day, Chinese Lunar New Year, Nirvana Day, Ash Wednesday, Mardi Gras, Purim, and Muhammed's Birthday
- Explanation and history
- Crafts
- Books and movies

• Science - Oceans
- Tsunamis, and ocean life
- Books, movies, and science experiments on this theme.
- Field Trip: Denver Aquarium
- Field Trip: Denver Zoo
- Field trip: Denver Museum of Science and Nature - IMAX Ocean Life
- Fantasy Field Trip - BEACH ON THE OCEAN (in my living room we will sit on towels in our swimsuits in front of the fire, listening to sounds of the ocean, passing around sunscreen and beach toys)

• Miscellaneous
- Field Trip: Colorado Symphony Orchestra - Keeping Time (for kids)

Earth Field Trips

This weekend we went to Glenwood Springs for some special field trips. To cap off two months of earth science, studying rocks and minerals and natural disasters we took a tour of the Glenwood Caverns Fairy Caves. On the 70-minute guided tour of the 16,000+ feet caves, we got to see huge stalactites and stalagmites that grow about a hair's-width each year. We also learned about soda straws (the beginning of a stalactite), flowstone, and moonmilk. The coolest thing was the cave bacon, which actually looks just like cooked, curly bacon. It is formed when the water drops down a sloped ceiling, depositing white calcite in a line before dropping to the floor. The "meat" in the bacon is the iron oxide stripes.

We all felt like we were on the set of an Indiana Jones movie. The guide was very informative and patient with the younger guests. During her spiel on the caves, our four year old would raise his hand and patiently wait for her to finish and call on him to ask his "question". After she had explained such things as the history of the cave or how cave popcorn is made, she would acknowledge Jude's hand in the air and he would say with complete seriousness such relevant things as "My Mom made me a cape." or "I like sharks." This was terribly cute to us, but somehow it seems less cute when I am the one trying to explain something.

We also played in the hot springs there. After seeing movies and reading books about the geothermally heated groundwater fro the Earth's crust, it was really fun to feel in person just how the hot springs work. The kids went back and forth between the 90 degree pool and the 104 degree pool. It was also interesting to feel the relatively low temperature differences, as well as accidentally taste the minerals several times.

While we were there the kids got some rare TV time and how excited they were to have a TV in their own bedroom suite! For most of the evening we watched the Hope for Haiti telethon that moved all of us with the songs, messages, and images. They were able to see the effects of an earthquake on people and buildings and were proud that we donated (again) to the cause that raised an amazing $61 Million.

Even the trip to Glenwood Springs was instructive in many ways. The mountains with snow are beautiful to see, but the steep rise of the sloping canyons show vividly how the tectonic plates move great swaths of rock into the air and how the river at the bottom carves them back out again.

I really enjoy the field trips we take after studying something so carefully. It really brings the learning to life. At the end of this month we will hopefully see the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the probably very busy National Earthquake Information Center.

AXL Academy - An Interview with Audra Philippon

Recently I had the pleasure of touring AXL Academy in Aurora, Colorado. The school, which follows an Expeditionary Learning model, is in the middle of its second year and is doing very well. There are already hundreds on applicants on the waiting list for a few prized spots. The Head of School, Dr. Audra Philippon answered my many questions and showed us around, and allowed us to observe each of the classes in progress.

What was the impetus behind the new AXL Academy and how is it unique?
I had been baking the idea of this school for five or six years and moved from Philadelphia to Colorado for the purpose of opening the school because of Colorado’s generous charter school rules. I looked for an area where there was the greatest need for family choices, a lot of student diversity in an urban setting. I chose Aurora because it met each of these requirements and there were only two other charter schools in the city at the time.

The school is unique in that we believe everyone should enjoy the process of learning. We do not prepare students for the “real world”, we teach in the real world. We do not have to use gimmicks, incentives or behavior management tricks to motivate our students – real content is engaging to kids. We also believe that our teachers are professionals, and we treat each other accordingly. There is real diversity here, socioeconomically with 60% on free or reduced lunches, a dozen world cultures, and 11 different primary languages. We also have Spanish instruction starting in Pre-K. By 8th Grade they will be bilingual.

What grades do you serve?
This year is K-6, and next year we will add a pre-K and a grade 7.


Describe Revolution in Learning.
College-prep curriculum is interesting, active instruction is engaging, and discipline is treated as another form of learning. The environment is informal, warm, safe, intimate and caring. The students are with their teachers for two years, and the teachers not only get to know their students well, but form deep and significant relationships with their parents.

I understand you have 20 kids in each grade level – a class of 20 boys and a class of 20 girls in each grade. Why is it important to AXL that genders be separated?
Every kid can learn in a variety of ways. This way gives them more strategies and they come from a position of strength. It’s not so much that boys learn differently or even at different paces than girls, it is more about the social dynamics that seem to get in the way of taking risks. At previous schools, I had girls in pre-school telling me that they can’t play basketball. Not that they were unable to play, but that it was something that “only boys do”. It is important in children’s formative years to show them how capable they are, to build that foundation for learning and confidence. We have boys here in 3rd Grade giving hugs and writing poetry, and we have girls who are competitive in improving their math. [Organizing students into single gender crews is not about achievement per se, but more about social and emotional courage, and academic confidence and trust.

What is your philosophy on school uniforms?
Our students wear uniforms but they are not formal. They are khaki pants with the AXL green polo shirt and sneakers. They are not allowed make up or fussy jewelry. It is comfortable and safe, and they need to be prepared to get dirty in the process of learning. You never know when we might be digging in dirt, painting murals, or making our own paper! I love seeing girls not so obsessed about appearance, and boys even coming to school with bed head sometimes.

AXL students attend school year round with three short breaks and are in school longer than the average public school (200 versus 172 days). Students are also allowed 75-minute blocks, rather than the conventional 50-minute blocks of instruction. This changes the depth and continuity of learning. What made you decide on these scheduling factors?
Expeditionary Learning integrates all subjects (except math), so for example the 5th Grade studies solar energy. They use primary sources for content and cover that even in history, poetry, reading, science, etc. They prepare live presentations or videos and must become experts on their subjects. This takes more focused time and so teaching blocks are more like 75-90 minutes to allow for this type of depth.

Expeditionary learning is really growing fast. What do you attribute to this growth and popularity?
When you overhear a 3rd grader at a birthday party talking about the habitat of prairie dogs and the importance of a keystone species in the local ecosystem, or your child comes home with IRS tax forms to apply for a tax credit for solar panels on your home, it’s hard to ignore how excited the students are!

We did not do any marketing this year, and more than 200 students have applied already for fewer than 75 seats for 2010-11. Last year we had more than 600 applicants for 70 vacancies. As a network of schools, we are getting better at representing students’ achievement in the media, and we finally have quantitative research documenting the incredible gains at-risk students are making nationally learning in this progressive educational mode. Expeditionary Learning was one of the very first models of comprehensive school reform to get funded by Annenberg in the early 1990s. It grew out of Outward Bound, which nourishes courage, craftsmanship, respect, integrity, and authenticity, etc.

You mention that you go beyond Colorado’s mandated tests and use authentic assessments of students’ knowledge and skills. Can you describe how you do this and how effective it is?
[Similar to Odyssey School in Denver], students prepare portfolios, which are representative samples of their work. They demonstrate their knowledge and ability, reflect on their progress, and make presentations in formal settings. Sometimes assessments are not necessarily pencil and paper oriented. For example the student may have a diorama of the Highline Canal or a collection of scientific illlustrations of the tomato plants growing and being harvested by students. At the end of every two-year loop (the second year with their teacher) the students undergo a high stakes rite of passage, presenting and answering questions for an external, formal panel in order to earn their promotion to the next grade level.

For more information on AXL Academy, go to: http://www.axlacademy.org/

The Buddha Would Surely Approve of Love and Logic Parenting

We discovered the Love and Logic discipline program during our first child's toddlerhood and we have attempted to implement that with varying degrees of consistency and success ever since. I think my introduction to Love and Logic may have contained the seeds to my interest in Buddhism. There are plenty of similarities so it seems my leap into Buddhism was not so broad on further examination.

The main components of Love and Logic are choices, empathy, and natural consequences. The aim is to maintain close, loving relationship between parent and child, while instilling in the child a sense of independence, control, and self-discipline. The decisions and a sense of right and wrong are eventually recognized to be internally driven rather than a model of rewards and punishments meted out from an external authority figure.

In its application, a parent shares control with the child, offering choices that she can live with either way. For example, "do you want to put your mittens on first or your hat?" or for an older child, "are you going to do your science project first or practice for your piano recital?" Although the parent is clearly making assumptions that the child will indeed do one or the other, there is a sense of equanimity that reminds me of Buddhism. That sense of calm and composure is often contagious. The parent is asking the opinion of the child and taking what seems like a loving but detached interest in his plans. This gets the attention of the child, who might normally encounter adults who are uninterested in his opinions and plans and more interested in him following orders. The feeling of being valued and listened to seems to win the child over and encourages cooperation.

Love and Logic helps a parent to see that you cannot MAKE a child do much of anything if he doesn't want to do it. You can, however, control yourself and let the child know what you will or will not do. A classic example is the parent's desire for her child to brush his teeth. You can bribe, you can punish, and you can brush his teeth for him, but you cannot make him do it if he refuses. In Love and Logic, the parent would talk about what SHE is willing to do, not about what the child will do. "I give sweets to children with clean teeth." In this example the parent has to be willing to allow the child to test this out. He may still refuse to brush his teeth and that has to be a completely valid choice. In my house this test has never lasted more than one morning as sugar is very alluring. This example also addresses the logical component of discipline. A natural consequence to not caring for your teeth is the loss of treats that may cause further harm to the teeth. An unnatural consequence would be getting grounded or losing TV privileges. While those might be effective in their own way, they are not natural consequences that arise from a child's actions and thus are perceived as more of an externally imposed punishment, for which the child becomes mad at the parent, instead of himself.

The choices and the natural consequences that follow seem very much in line with karma, the law of cause and effect. The child learns from his own choices with consequences that he deems pleasant or unpleasant. Life in the real world outside the home looks a lot like this model and we want to prepare the child to look within not constantly to an authority figure for direction and blame. We want cause and effect to be the natural teachers and to empower the child to make better and better choices.

When a child refuses the choices before him or fails in some way, the consequences for his decision are given with love and empathy. This part is very important (and where I most often fail, instead I show frustration and anger sometimes!) The use of humor, optimism, and empathy is intended to maintain a good relationship between parent and child while learning life lessons in a way that promotes dignity, confidence, respect, and self-esteem in the child. Just as love and empathy are critical in Love and Logic, so is compassion a central component of Buddhist practice. Enlightenment is said to come from wisdom and compassion. In the Buddhist sense, compassion allows us to step out of view that you and I are separate and encourages an active kindness that helps to avoid suffering for both parties. In many ways Love and Logic seems synonomous with compassion and wisdom - both foster loving kindness and less suffering!

Many parents consciously choose how they would like to parent. In terms of control, there is the authoritarian way, which emphasizes rigidity, obedience, parental control, and subordination and then there is the permissive parenting style, which is so flexible that it tends to lack boundaries, consistency, or guidance. With regard to involvement, there is helicopter parenting, which assumes the child will fail unless the parent constantly monitors and intervenes on the child's behalf, thereby removing chances for independence and learning from mistakes or consequences. The other side of involvement is the uninvolved parent, which looks a lot like neglect. Love and Logic, when done well seems to tread in the middle of the extremes of both parenting. It is neither controlling nor out of control and it is appropriately involved.

It is easy to slip into unskillful parenting when we are not mindful. Love and Logic, for me anyway, does not always come naturally, so I have to be mindful of what I am doing and think about the desired outcome before I act. When I am not mindful, I slip into the authoritarian mode and it does not go well for anyone. In my quest to be less authoritarian I have also used Love and Logic unskillfully without enough involvement and was accused by a friend of allowing a "Lord of the Flies" situation during an unpleasant playdate several years ago. Ouch! We all learn from our mistakes and, if mindful, can improve. Mindfulness is a central component to Buddhism and meditation is encouraged to foster that quality, as well as skillful actions. Similar to meditation, the pause that I must take if I am mindfully and skillfully parenting helps me to act calmly and lovingly in the best interests of everyone.

In his quest for enlightenment, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) explored extremes as well. He went the route of hedonism, with all pleasures available to him all the time and discovered that, while obviously pleasurable, life seemed empty to him. He tried self-deprivation, starving and harming himself only to cause more suffering. In the end he discovered what he called the Middle Way: a path of moderation between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. Moderation in both Buddhism and Love and Logic avoids suffering and harm on both sides of the extremes and engenders Nirvana (which is simply the state of being free from suffering). Any mother or father would agree that when they parent mindfully and it goes well it comes close to feeling like Nirvana! Even if it is not full-on enlightenment, less suffering and more reasons for pride in ourselves and our children is a good thing and worth striving for. Parenting is so challenging and so is Buddhism but both help make me a better person, and certainly easier to live with.

January 2010 Lesson Plans

I often use holidays and local exhibits as the basis for forming the monthly lesson plans. The Gengis Kahn exhibit at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature and Martin Luther King's birthday provide just the excuse I was looking for to share that history with my kids and build on it. Here is what is planned for January:

• Character theme of the month: Perseverance
- Reading stories of perseverance from Buddha at Bedtime and "The Book of Virtues”
- Tortise and the Hare
- Introduction to famous people who embody the spirit of perseverance, including: Thomas Alva Edison, Martin Luther King, Teddy Roosevelt, and Jackie Robinson (books and movie)
- Discussion on what perseverance is and when you have been an example of it.

• Country of the month: Mongolia
- Identifying Mongolia on a map
- Movies and books on Mongolia
- Cooking Mongolian Hot Pot
- Mongolian artists (visual, music, etc.)
- Field Trip: Mongolian restaurant
- Field Trip: TBD (with the help of Sister Cities International)

• History: Gengis Kahn
- Movies and books
- Field Trip: Gengis Kahn Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature

• History: Martin Luther King Day
- Movies and books
- MLK March and Parade

• Social Studies: Blind/Deaf/Differently-Abled
- Movies, books, discussions
- Field Trip: Rocky Mountain School for the Deaf
- Field Trip: Anchor School for the Blind (done)
- Field Trip: Hospital Prosthetics (explanation and demonstration)
- Introduction to famous differently-abled people, including Helen Keller, Teddy Roosevelt, etc.

• Science
- Following naturally from the gems/rocks/minerals studies, we will study Natural Disasters – volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.
- Books, movies, and science experiments on this theme.
- Field trip: National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder


With all of that AND reading, writing, math, piano lessons, and playing, we will have a very enjoyable, busy month ahead of us!

The Auntie Clause

I have been accused for years of being a Scrooge around the topic of Christmas, but I feel that I have merely been misunderstood all of these years. I have earned this reputation over the many years of requesting family members to not buy quite so many presents for our children. Long ago I requested that there be no gift exchange for adults, or at least remove us from that when others objected as they did.

I read a book this year called "One Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas" by Bill McKibben and the book really resonated with me. The author argues that when Christmas (the commercial version involving trees and toys, not the religious version) was created (by merchants) it was a time when families lived and worked together and there were few diversions like TV or video games to interrupt that family time. What was less readily available was material wealth, so the gift of an orange in the winter was truly a special treat. A handmade doll, would likely have been a child's only toy and was therefore treasured and loved to pieces. Now, however, most people have far more possessions but a lot less time together, but we still treat others to things , which we have in abundance, rather than time, which we need.

Like Bill McKibben, I am not against the celebration of Christmas, even as a practicing Buddhist. I just don't like the material focus of it. I want it to be more meaningful, special, and spiritual. Even if you are not a Christian, there are plenty of opportunities for a more spiritual tone for the entire month. This month, for homeschool, we learned about and celebrated Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, Christmas, the Winter Solstice, and Kwanzaa. The history and meaning behind each of the rituals and celebrations was more important than the commercial aspect of them. I want my children to understand that happiness comes from within, not from things and Christmas as we know it now, undermines that lesson terribly.

I don't like how the season feels like more of a transaction than a celebration. We are reminded to give gifts of money in this season to people who serve us in various ways throughout the year, like nannies or teachers and the like. To me, when we are required to give now, it reinforces the commercial nature of the season and becomes an expected transaction that spoils the spirit of giving. It also stresses out many families, making December spending something to worry about later. Why not generously tip your waitress in September or every time you go out eat? What if we supported our children's teachers throughout the year, helping and participating all year? What if nannies and housekeepers knew just how much we appreciated them at any point in the year? I prefer to be generous with praise and gifts when it is not expected of me. It feels more meaningful and sincere that way.

Last night at dinner John asked the kids to name every present they got this Christmas. I added, jokingly, that if they couldn't name it, they couldn't keep it. When including the gifts from family, santa, and the contents of the stocking, each kid got more than 20 presents and they needed help to remember them all. Clearly as a whole, this family spent far more than $100 for the holiday. At one point John jokingly called me "The Anti-Clause" but my children, who didn't understand that, cheered and said that "Auntie Clause" was a great thing to be. I liked that and would prefer to think of myself as the loving Auntie who brings cheer and joy with as many interactions as possible all year long. The kind of Auntie who you are certain loves you, who wants to spend special time with you, and who you would turn to when you had a problem or a reason to celebrate. Auntie Clause isn't like Scrooge, she is all about love and joy.

Right now, my kids are playing in a fort built with boxes that held the multitude of presents they received. Although they liked the things that were given to them, they have had far more sustained, cooperative, laughter-filled playtime with those boxes than any of the presents that arrived in them. There is a lesson in that.

Repost: Wanted General Employee

This is a repost from a blog entry I wrote earlier in the year. Happy Holidays all!

WorkWorld is 200-year old unchanging industrial company dedicated to producing standardized widgets and superior scores on high-stakes reviews, regardless of market demand. The company is proud to offer a rigorous, rigid environment that promotes well-rounded employees who are responsible for work in all departments, which are structured as unconnected silos. Due to heavy turnover, WorkWorld is constantly looking for General Employees.

Requirements include:

• Willingness to perform seemingly meaningless tasks without question
• Propensity to work with isolated, fact-based data that is driven by the review process
• Superior rote memorization
• Commitment to performing only those duties outlined in the standardized review, and not more
• Willingness to labor alone (collaboration is cheating) and to show your work (use of calculators is cheating).
• Maniacal focus on the clock. You must be at work from exactly 7:25 AM to exactly 3:30 PM with a 15 minute lunch break
• A low attention threshold with the ability to switch focus to a different department every 50 minutes when a bell is rung.
• Willingness to take work home nightly, including weekends and vacations (two to four hours daily)
• Exceptional bladder control – bathroom passes are limited

Responsibilities Include:
• 50-minute workloads in the following departments: Accounting, Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing, Distribution, Customer Service and Software/Hardware Design (note: the Customer Service and Software/Hardware Design Departments are inoperative, though attendance and production in these departments is mandatory nonetheless)
• You will be assigned to a different micro-manager in each department and expected to conform to his or her leadership style
• No talking
• Raise your hand if you have something to say

Equal Employment Opportunity
WorkWorld is committed to employing a diverse, multicultural body of employees in an atmosphere that values compliance, respect for authority, the conventional, and quiet. All employment decisions are made without regard to emotional intelligence, competency, critical thinking, creativity, innovation, or even interest in the job.

To apply, fill out this scantron sheet with a number two pencil, filling all of the bubbles in completely.

Our Kenyan Visitor Heads Back Home - Being Comfortable with the Uncomfortable

Marta left for the airport early this morning. We all truly enjoyed her two-week visit here. Not only did we learn a lot about Kenya and an African's perspective, we learned a lot about ourselves in the process.

Marta was here with Critical Mass Leadership Education, who partners with the U.S. State Department Youth Leadership Program. There were 20 students here between the ages of 15-18 with four school administrators from Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Nigeria. The students were identified as future leaders in their country and the program helped them develop the skills, connections, and inspiration to initiate big projects in their home countries that have a profound impact on their communities.

Last night we attended a ceremony and presentation from the students and the teachers who attended, as well as the leaders who run the program. It was so moving to our family to be a part of the program and the presentation. There were many young African women who found their voice in the program and spoke publicly, with confidence for the first time to a standing ovation. There were some plucky, confident, earnest boys who proclaimed themselves to be their country's future presidents. I was so impressed with the level of maturity, caring, and commitment of the students. The teachers who attended more as chaperones learned as much as their students did and were so deeply committed to transforming this opportunity into responsibility for their community once they returned.

I understand that every guest and host family had a very positive experience and exchange. There was so much gratitude for the hosts who housed, fed and drove the visitors and made them as comfortable as possible. But, the hosts benefitted almost as much from our participation. There was a lot of laughter and sharing and learning for everyone and the younger people definitely broke the ice and made that learning and sharing easier. For example, the first morning I picked up our regular crew of participants in my neighborhood (we families shared the driving responsibilities) they were wide-eyed, polite, and quiet. On the first morning my passengers, who included Marta, our Christian, Kenyan, female teacher; Sengasu, a Muslim, Tanzanian, male teacher; and Ayla, a South African female student silently looked out onto a frozen, foreign, city landscape full of the discomfort of the unknown on the way to their classes. My normally shy four year old son, Jude, dressed in jeans with the underwear on the outside (Superman style), a blanket duct-taped around his neck for a cape, and shoes (always) on the wrong feet, uncharacteristically busted out singing loudly, "Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me". Everyone laughed and fell in love with him and all became friends right then. Jude struck up quite a friendship with Sengasu and at the ceremony on the last day, he presented him with a picture he drew.

At the presentation, one of the speeches that struck me the most was one that said that being comfortable with being uncomfortable is the key to growing and learning. Everyone who came here endured the scariness of the unknown, and the hardships of the unfamiliar, like the cold, the food, the customs....) sharing intimacy with people they did not know (yet). Even the host families had to contend with the first awkward moments of polite quiet and the challenges of having a stranger living in their homes. But as the speaker so eloquently pointed out, it is through enduring those difficult times that the best of us comes out and emerges far better than before. Knowing the payoff, it helps to be comfortable with the uncomfortable in nearly any situation in life. It was a great living lesson for us all.

Video Games vs. Nature

My husband bought Ronan a video game, despite my objections to the contrary. This is one of the hardest things about parenting - not being in complete agreement all the time on how to raise your offspring. I am sure that it is a phenomenon in our house. John felt this game not only would be fun, but educational too. It is called Spore and it is all about evolution. The player gets to choose how to evolve (get eyes, go from water to land, be a carnivore or an herbivore, etc.). Of course, Ronan loves to play the game and if we let him, he would sit at the computer for days on end without food or drink to play it. This sets up a constant negotiation in our house. We have decided that he can play the game in the evenings if he has earned it (meaning that he has done his school work with no whining, he has done his chores, he has been kind, etc.)and for a couple of hours on the weekends.

We've observed a few things about Ronan and this game. It is certainly a motivating factor and he will often remind himself that he wants to play Spore and will make choices that allow him to play it, but not as much as one would think. He only got to play it one night last week, based on those choices. When he does play it, he delights in the creativity he employs to create these multi-eyed, multi-limbed critters, and if you are passing by he will offer to show you how he has evolved. He is motivated to do a little bit of reading and writing in playing the game as well.

The most surprising observation we have made is that Ronan does not seem happy after he has played it. Although the game is not violent (except for the carnivore aspect) it does inspire him to new heights of cruelty to his brother, sassiness, and a general despondancy for several hours afterwards. We shared this observation with him and he couldn't explain it, but did not deny it.

Yesterday he managed to crack the code I put on the computer to lock it, and began playing it before anyone else was awake. He played for about two hours until I brought an end to the day's evolutionary effort. As usual, after the game he moped around the house, complaining that there was nothing to eat and nothing to do (except hurt his brother). We decided to go for a walk, which was met with howls of protest. We walked to a pond in our neighborhood that has been iced over, thanks to a very cold week here. The boys played an impromptu, make-shift game of hockey for an hour and wanted to come back with more gear, which we did. The moment Ronan's feet hit the ice, a smile came to his face that never left and a fun, loving attitude broke through the surly one. He was a happy kid again, joyfully playing in nature the way millions of kids before him have played, oblivious to the cold.

We will take them to ponds and ice rinks to play, though we hesitate to do the organized sports thing. When it is too organized it seems to spoil it for Ronan. Playing tennis or baseball or hockey with Dad is fun, but doing it on a regular basis with a team seems to take the joy out of it, and ends all willingness in that activity for awhile. The magic seems to be this formula: play + outside + Dad. The formula for me is more like: creativity + mom. Either way, the formula for happiness requires no electricity, and I think we will be pulling the plug!

Turning a Corner

The last few weeks of homeschooling have been brutal and it has tested this die-hard optimist to my limits. One evening after a particularly tough day, I found myself crying alone, thinking "I can't do this. This is too hard. I don't want to do this any more." I actually laughed because I sounded just like Ronan! What irony. Maybe I could empathize with him more?

I made some changes after that pity party. I had changed things here and there before that. I have made things progressively easier when he cried and protested about how hard some things were. I put away my strong German work ethic that said "all zhe hard verk must be done before the fun zhings can be done." I started taking "fun" breaks in between each reading/writing/math exercise and even began the day with more light, easy things like educational movies, science experiements, or me reading books to them. This was well received but it didn't do all that much for shutting off the whining, crying and protesting when the hard stuff began. After all of these changes and my low moment, I realized that Ronan and I have worked ourselves into a box. When I give him math, reading, or writing, to do he feels like, in order to maintain control, he must protest, regardless of how difficult or easy it is. Giving in, even something as simple as following the words with a finger, is met with a protest that would make any Green Peace activist proud.

I shared with him my observations after he told me one day that he didn't want to behave this way but that he couldn't help it. He asked me how to change. I told him that it was all about how you meet the world. If you choose to make it a positive interaction, it will very likely be that because the actions follow. We happened to be in the post office during this conversation and I said "Watch this, people who work in the post office are famous for not being very happy with their jobs, but I intend for this interaction to be friendly, warm, and helpful." I was summoned to the counter but an unenthused "Next!". I looked the man in the eye and spoke with sincerity, kindness, and openness. He responded with the same.

I told Ronan that following my suggestions about following the words with a finger or complying by doing a math assignment was not giving me control. I am not IN control. I no longer care whether he learns to second grade level numeracy or literacy on my watch. I have decided that love is more important than literacy. Do not confuse this statement with a parent who lacks backbone and wants to be her child's best friend. Of course I want him to have an easy time of things when he goes back to public school, but that is HIS choice, not mine. I can only facilitate the learning. It is impossible to make someone learn something if they don't want to learn it. I would rather look back on this year as a time of exploration, curiosity, and adventure. I want our relationship to be one where he can always come to me with his problems or triumphs, rather than avoiding me, the task master, out of bitterness or wariness. I explained to him the short and long term consequences of not doing the work now (and told him that I know he can do it). In the short term it is an easy, fun day to avoid doing challenging things and only sticking to science, geography, art, social studies, etc (i.e. the things that are interesting to him and that he is quite good at). In the long term he will be even further behind his peers in the challenging work and that will feel even worse than it has before.

Once he knew that I was not going to press him to do his work, or tolerate a 30 minute whining session, or take control, or pressure him, or get mad and yell, things got a lot better. He tested me on this many times and seemed to be satisfied that it was really how I was going to be. I still do hold some of the big fun things back until the work is completed, like art projects, or a video game he likes to play - I still think that is the right thing to do, but I could be wrong. It did get better though. Even on days that the whining and protesting are present, I do not rise to it and that has made all of the difference. I take away the assignment and say we will do it some other time, and just doing that usually causes him to immediately stop and request that we finish, without the whining. My letting go of the attachment to a certain degree of performance has made us both happier.

Hosting a Kenyan Woman

On Friday we welcomed the newest (temporary) member of our house - Marta Guyo. She is here accompanying five of her students who were chosen based on applications and interviews for a three-week leadership conference. Marta is a mother of five and a history and government teacher. Each of the students, and the others that were chosen from different areas are staying with different host families throughout Denver. Their first week was a retreat in the mountains, then they will spend two weeks going to classes and staying with host families like us in Denver, and then the last part of the trip they meet in Washington DC to tour and attend more classes.

Marta is shy yet affectionate. She spent a lot of time alone in her room the first few days. I recall needing the time and space to process everything when I did my overseas study in Spain, so I wasn't too concerned. Where she lives, in a remote village in Kenya very near the Ethiopian border there are very few cars or even roads and she said that people are always outside walking around. She says she doesn't see many people here - only cars. I wonder about her impression on many things here. For example, what does she make of a woman who goes to a heated yoga class and then occasionally treats herself to a Starbucks latte afterwards. I am not sure "yuppie" is in her lexicon, though she does speak English pretty well. Where she is from, exercise and sweat come naturally, without the aid of cute yoga clothes or thermostats. And there may be no Starbucks there but the coffee beans are native. I think she misses sweating - she has never seen snow before and spends a lot of time in her coat even indoors.

I asked her how American and Kenyan style of parenting is different (or at least our version of it). She said that she heard our four year old son shriek "Idiot!" at his Dad when he did not get his way during a trip to the mall. This word gets him a consequence each time. He has eight of them racked up this week so it doesn't seem to be working! She said that in Kenya a kid would never say that to his parent out of fear, but she thought that it was good for a child to be able to express himself because a Kenyan kid would feel that way too, but just be forced to keep it underground, which is not good. She didn't seem to be sugar-coating this for us and I was glad that it didn't merit a Kenyan Super Nanny intervention, though I am sure we could learn plenty from her.

Last night we took her to an Ethiopian restaurant that we love. Up until this point I had only seen her eating bread and tea. When she walked in, her shyness fell away and she immediately walked to the kitchen to warmly greet the owner in her own language - a dialect that was closely related to the owner's. She ate heartily, for once, and we were there for several hours talking about cultures, experiences, and life. I was glad to see her so comfortable and happy. We were invited back for a special Ethiopian breakfast and coffee ceremony in Marta's honor.

I look forward to our family learning more from Marta - about Kenya, the world, and ourselves through this experience.

Urban Organicz - Kids Growing Vegetables in Abandoned Lots in Detroit

A friend recently loaned me the movie “The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”.  It was a documentary telling of how the embargo nearly crippled Cuba, but also on how Cuba became stronger as a result of it.  Out of necessity, Cuba transformed nearly every facet of its society.  It changed the way communities were laid out and fed for power.  The bicycle and mass transportation dominated the streets.  The average Cuban lost 20 pounds through biking and walking and eating a lot less and a lot healthier.  Where they had formerly been one of the highest users of chemical fertilizers and oil-based pesticides on industrial farms, they were now farming every piece of arable land organically.  This was true in Urban settings (Permaculture) in addition to Cooperatives and smaller farms that people could have free of charge from the government as long as they were growing food on it.  Their country is now being studied by many countries around the world as the rest of humanity prepares for the inevitable peak oil stage.  For Cuba, peak oil came artificially early through harsh embargoes, but it turned out to be a gift in many ways.

Just as Cuba turned adversity into opportunity, Detroit is facing similar circumstances.  Detroit has been in decline for decades and it is only getting worse as Michigan’s economy, highly dependent on the auto industry, faces significant challenges.  Detroit’s landscape is littered with abandoned buildings and lots, but this adversity has many groups poised to make some incredibly positive changes for the city.

Urban Organicz is a not-for-profit, large scale, urban farming program founded Ashley Powell and Katrina Crawley.  Their mission is to revitalize and stabilize Detroit’s economy by using vacant lots to grow vegetables, fruit, and grains for lunches in Detroit Public Schools and for sale at local restaurants and farmer’s markets.  Doing so will attain the goals of providing jobs, agricultural education, healthy food for schools and communities, and motivation for young people to be environmental leaders in the urban community.  The organization has adopted 10 lots in northwest Detroit and they expect that by the summer of 2010, over 6,000 students from Detroit Public Schools participating and managing the urban farm plots in their neighborhoods.  

They are opening up these opportunities to those interested in working and/or living with them. In return for living in the Urban Organicz House as a Co-Op member, a small percentage of  time will be used to manage gardens surrounding the property; recruit and manage volunteers; fundraise; and most important of all use their creativity/entrepreneurial skills to contribute to the community. For more information on Urban Organicz, visit:  http://urbanorganicz.blogspot.com/

The Greening of Detroit’s mission is to improve the quality of life in the city through reforestation and educational projects. They provide students and educators with the tool to increase their environmental science skills and stewardship.  Their many programs include TreeKeepers Kids, where kids experience nature first-hand, participate in after school clubs and service learning projects designed to revitalize their community.  For more information about them, visit: http://www.greeningofdetroit.com/

I love how these and many other groups in Detroit are seizing on the opportunity to turn Detroit around by making it a healthier, sustainable, inviting community while encouraging young people to lead the way.  I hope that, like Cuba, Detroit will make adversity its reason to transform itself and in doing so, prepare the students of Detroit schools to advise and educate the rest of us on how to do it in our own communities! How great it would be to see Detroit filled with greens and vegetables, and young students taking back Detroit one green, sustainable lot at a time!

December 2009 Learning Opportunities

November was a great month! We are still working out the rest of our human body studies, including a tour of Rocky Vista University, a tour of a school for the blind, and the Denver Science and Nature Museum's Exhibition Health. For December we have so much to look forward to. Here is a sample of what we will learn about:

• Character theme of the month: Generosity
• Discussion on what generosity is

• Community Service: Feeding the Homeless with food baskets and gift cards

• Country of the month: Israel
• Identifying Israel on a map
• Cooking Israeli foods
• Field Trip: Jerusalem restaurant
• Israeli music
• An explanation of Palestinian/Israeli conflict

• Religious Studies and Celebrations of December
• History and customs of Kwanzaa
• Field Trip: Kwanzaa at the Zoo
• History of Jesus Christ, Christianity, and Christmas
• Stories of Jesus and Christmas customs
• Colorado Children's Chorale - Ring the Bells
• The Nutcracker
• A Chistmas Carol
• History of Judaism and Hanukkah
• Field Trip to Mizel Arts and Cultural Center
• Field Trip: Fiddler on the Roof
• Explanation and stories of Hanukkah and lighting of the Mennorah
• History of the Prophet Mohammed, Allah, and Islam
• Bodhi Day Celebration (Day of Enlightenment), including a history of Buddhism
• Winter Solstice explanation and celebration
• Field Trip: Blossoms of Light at the Denver Botantic Gardens

• Science - Gems, Rocks, and Minerals
• Various books and DVDs
• Denver Museum of Science and Nature
• Science Experiments

• Math• Addition, Subtraction, Skip Counting, Money, Time, Measurement, Multiplication/Times Tables

• Music
• Ben Zander discusses and shares the joy of:
• Mahler, Beethoven, and Bruckner (this is more for the adults in the family, but for a quick, inspiring video on how Ben Zander is on a mission to introduce the love of classical music to the world, go to http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html
• Crafts
• Making soap
• Making candles
• Various crafts for the celebrations

Judgments or Treasures?

I was at the grocery store this morning with my kids and Jude crawled into the bottom section of the cart, laying flat as if he were Superman. A man passed us and said to me, "he is about to get hurt". I smiled at him and said that I had just said the very same thing to Jude. He walked away, shaking his head at me in judgment. I assume the message was that I was too permissive or not protective enough. We moved on to the checkout line. Ronan said aloud that he wished he could have one of those balloons that were floating at each register. As the woman stopped checking us out and prepared to cut two balloons down, I interrupted her, thanking her for her generosity, but said that the kids behavior in the store did not win them a balloon (I left out the part about the fact that balloons always lead to tears at my house). Of course Ronan protested, but the woman momentarily gave me a look that seemed to say something like: "lighten up lady, don't be so strict." Hmmm. Too strict or too passive? Maybe both in different scenarios. While I don't expect people I meet in the grocery store to applaud me down every aisle for my parental consistency, for following through on my word, for allowing my kids to learn (some of) their own lessons when it won't kill them, for the decisions that I make based on my values and intentions...I wish that we, as a society were not so quick to judge others.

Judgements about parenting starts during pregnancy (or even before if you wait too long or start too early!). There are so many decisions to make and they many of them come with a certain degree of anxiety or guilt. Because there is so much anxiety and guilt, these decisions are typically made with plenty of consideration...and the opinions of others. Natural childbirth or epidural? Breast feeding or formula? Circumcision or not? Go back to work or stay at home? These decisions are just during infancy. There are thousands of decisions that follow those, and an endless supply of people to let you know how you are doing.

I can stress out about how the world views my parenting (and in my more difficult moments I confess that I do), or I can smile, thank the person for what I know is a good intention and see if I can learn anything from it as I walk away. Frankly I judge myself harshly enough (and so do my children) that I don't find I often need unsolicited outside consulting on most parenting decisions. I am not afraid to ask or read to educate myself when I feel I need help - in fact I am almost always in the middle of a book about some aspect of parenting or teaching.

A new friend recently gave me this beautiful idea for a project on finding the good in people. It is a Treasure Hunt involving people and the basic premise of the game is to talk to people you don't know, tell them that you are on a Treasure Hunt looking for the good in people and that you are looking for a compassionate person, a brave person, a thankful person, etc and ask them if they are one of them or know of someone who is. Then you listen while they share the good about themselves. I love how this looks for the good in people, how it emphasizes the importance of character in a non-judgmental way, and gets my family talking and listening to others. They guy who told me about this did it with homeless people and since we feed homeless people several times a month, it seems like a reasonable place to start, but it doesn't have to be the only place to find people with some good in them.

It is said that you get what you put out in this world. Perhaps looking for the good in me will allow me (and perhaps others) to see the good in me. Surely it will more good than be judgmental and that is reason enough to do it.

Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

For a beautiful character-strengthening message inside a great story, try this book for the 4-8 year old crowd: "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" The premise of the book is that we all have an invisible bucket and when we do kind things for others (helping others, saying something nice, including people, giving a hug) we fill their buckets and we fill ours at the same time. When we are unkind to people (calling them names, being a bully, hitting) we dip into their bucket and our own. The fuller your bucket is, the happier you are, so the idea is to keep your bucket full through kind deeds as much as possible.

The book has one seven awards and is a best seller. Many school districts in Michigan, where the author, Carol McCloud lives, have adopted not only the book, but Bucket Filling programs in their schools, allowing students to nominate and recognize kindness in others to promote those qualities in their student body.

The book really resonates with children. It gives many colorful examples of how to fill and dip into a bucket that kids can relate to. The visual of the bucket helps them to understand how this works and to sort out their own feelings. It is a great way of promoting not only kindness but compassion as well. This is one of my kids' favorite books and each time they do a good deed they comment on how many buckets that deed filled. For example, for our theme of giving this month we have fed the homeless several times and each time we do it, they comment on how we not only fed people today but filled their buckets and ours too. They love that!

I got to know the publisher of this book, Nelson Publishing and Marketing when I was trying to publish my own children's story. Although I decided not to publish it for various reasons, I became impressed with Marian Nelson's vision. Unlike most publishers, she will publish books by first time authors, but she will only publish books that somehow further such attributes as peace, tolerance, and understanding. Her mission is to create a greater understanding of humanity through the written word. I've read many of her books and that is exactly what her books do. I really respect that.

As I got to know Marian better she asked if I would be interested in selling her books in Colorado. I readily agreed even though I know it is not going to make me a wealthy woman, it is in alignment with promoting the greater good in people. If you are interested in seeing the other book titles that they offer, or in possibly publishing a book of your own, go to www.nelsonpublishingandmarketing.com. If you want to buy the books you can do so through their website, or if you are local I am happy to get you a copy of "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?"

Homeschooling Will Make Me a Better Buddhist

I decided that my son is my Buddhist teacher in many ways. It is often the case that the people who are the most challenging and difficult are those that teach us the most about ourselves and improve us in many ways. Because this is my (unpaid) job, he is essentially one of those difficult a co-workers - the only difference is that I love him deeply and his negativity is not merely annoying, it bothers me because I want the best for him. But just as he is, he will every day challenge me to remain calm, equanimous, unattached to an outcome or image, loving, patient, present, encouraging, compassionate.... He is a HARD teacher but good for me nevertheless. When I look at it this way, I do not get so bothered by his self-doubt and resistance (see last post titled "I Can't/It's Too Hard".)

Much as I try some days, I really cannot control my kids, but I can be aware of myself and control my own reaction. If I am clear on what is important to me and why, I can more effectively pause and reevaluate what is working and what is not, rather than what it is I am fearing. My friend James, a wise Buddhist, pointed out that frustration is a reflection of an attachment to something I want to happen to make me feel better. He reminded me that if we stay centered and present without letting what is happening reflect on our "goodness" or "ability" we can meet the challenges with much greater equanimity. I realized I am attached to Ronan showing back up in a school someday knowing a certain amount (reading, math, etc.) so that I don’t look bad as a homeschooler and so that he doesn’t struggle again. However, if I let that go and facilitate his learning where I can, in the best way I know how, it will work out fine. If he is a slow reader or not great with his time tables, is that really the end of the world for either of us? No. Of course not. It will come and he will be fine.

It is ironic that it is because I love him and care for him that I get frustrated with his response, and this frustration causes feelings of anger and separation in both of us. The irony is that love + attachment = anger and frustration. If I just choose to love him without attachment or worry it remains as just love. When I stop being attached to a response and just start meeting the one given, everything goes a lot better for both of us, just as James said it would. I have found that working on equanimity alone is enough to also increase compassion, love, and patience. I think it is also the case that if you focus on any one of those qualities, the others fall into place as well.

It is enough for me to know that I think I am doing a good job - that I am constantly striving, reading, researching and planning to make this experience the best I know how. Just like any other teacher, my students' performance is not necessarily an indicator of how I do my job. We cannot control everything. Besides, it doesn't really matter what others think anyway. If I look for detractors I will find them. If I look for supporters, I will find them. They are always there.

My greatest desire is that our children do well in life. This means to me that they are happy, resilient, capable, compassionate, and healthy among other things. I don't care so much what they grow up to be as long as they are happy with their carefully made choices. If I work backward to help them achieve that goal, it looks more like a strong family life, a meaningful education based on their interest, the building of confidence through daily risk and success.... It doesn't have much to do with reading assessments or math scores come to think of it. This realization and the longer term goal helps keep my perspective. And my sanity.

Let me be clear, I am not homeschooling for religious reasons. I've chosen to homeschool for a number of reasons, though religion is not one of them. I prefer to broaden their education, not narrow it, as one friend stated it succinctly. But it may be that my exploration on the path of Buddhism might be what allows me to teach with equanimity and joy for learning. My kids may not become Little Buddhas - that is not the goal, but what they might appreciate is how I show up everyday as the Buddhist homeschooler instead of the fearful, controlling homeschooler.

I Can't/It's Too Hard

Some days homeschooling, like any other job is really hard. For me, it's not ever that the work is difficult, but managing my emotions and handling my student's reactions is not always a pleasurable experience. Perhaps it is because I am an optimistic, can-do person that I find that the most trying aspect of teaching (and parenting - it's hard to separate that sometimes) is the self-defeating, pessimistic talk I get from my kids.

My older son had a difficult time in first grade in the public school setting due to a vision problem and reading readiness, so there truly were many parts of school that he could not yet handle. Back then, "I can't" and "It's too hard" were not only true statements but effective ways of getting easier and more appropriately challenging work to him. However, I've noticed that he has come to rely on such statements to get out of doing anything challenging and new. What he typically means by either one of these is closer to "I don't want to".

This week was particularly frustrating to me in a couple of different ways. In one lesson I was trying in several different ways to describe place value to him, but he was so busy telling me he didn't get it that he wasn't actually listening to me tell him what it was about. After several different explanations and attempts to try it together, he finally got it - so much so that we determined we should stop because it was way too easy for him. In another episode, I made pretzel dough for them and asked my older son to create three or four words out of his dough (he just had to copy it). This took him an hour with so much whining and complaining about how hard it was. It wasn't the spelling or copying of the words, but for him it was the perfectionism - he wasn't getting the letters the same size so that they would cook evenly.

We've tried to handle this a number of different ways to overcome his tendency to identify himself from a position of weakness. We've shared with him the quote by Henry Ford: "Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right." After reading a story about the Wright Brothers, we discussed that as it related to the their dream to fly - something that was thought to be impossible or at least too hard back then.

We have treated the subject with humor, actually making a song up to one of the Harry Potter Puppet Pals tunes, with the words "I can't", "It's too hard", "please!", "why", "I don't want to". They thought it was pretty funny and it is a great way to make light of the subject, but I can't say it has stopped it.

We've read books on and discussed perfectionism and why that is self-defeating. I explained that it takes courage to try things you may not be good at initially and even pointed out how when he started walking, talking and skateboarding he wasn't particularly good at any of them until he practiced. I even stopped saying the word "quiz" and now call it "an arena for mistakes", which helped one day but not the rest.

Today I thought of talking about "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", explaining to him that when he complains all of the time about his work, it is tough to know when it is really too difficult and when he is just not wanting to do the work.

I cannot control his reaction and I do want to be helpful, patient and responsive. Perhaps the biggest lesson in this for me is to manage my own reaction, to remain calm, optimistic, patient and helpful in the midst of so much whining.

Lesson planning is pretty fun and easy. Teaching reading and explaining math is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. It is this that I find the hardest part about teaching. There has to be a better way, but I don't know that I have found it yet. I welcome suggestions.

Differences Between Waldorf and Montessori - Classroom Structure

In a recent article I highlighted a few of the differences between two alternative education modalities: Waldorf and Montessori, focusing on classroom materials and fantasy versus reality. In this article I will explore the differences between the two in terms of the classroom structure and teaching.

In Montessori, transitions are structured in three year cycles. Students typically stay with a teacher for three years (less time for babies and toddlers) and there is a three year age span grouped together. This cohort works well in many ways. As the children get older, they take pride in showing the younger kids around the classroom and getting them acquainted with the rules and customs. The oldest children get plenty of experience in leadership and nurturing. The younger children seem to really like getting help and instruction from their peers.

Being in the classroom with the same teacher for three years is beneficial in that the teacher gets ample time to really get to know the children and to see them grow. Because there are three different age groups in the classroom and because of the nature of most Montessori classrooms with the students' ability to choose their own work, it enables all students to learn at their own pace. Montessori classrooms are set up with "work stations" full of manipulative materials that the students are allowed to choose to use. When it is done in pure Montessori fashion (which is not always the case) it is very student-directed rather than teacher-directed. The teacher acts as a facilitator and supervisor. This is anything but chaotic though. There is a hum to the classroom but the students are engaged in their work. In addition to academics, there is an emphasis on harmony, social graces, personal responsibility, independence, productivity and quiet. Montessori teaches "the whole child" and art and music are components of their day, usually done as "specials" taught by different teachers in different classrooms.

Parents with high energy children may initially find this untraditional classroom to be a good fit because students are not forced to sit in a desk all day, but it takes a high degree of personal responsibility and independence to thrive in this kind of classroom and many parents with these energetic children did not think the unstructured Montessori classroom worked well for them.

In Waldorf classrooms, the children are all generally the same age starting in first grade and they are with the same teacher for eight years in most cases. The students shift classrooms each year but all stay together. There are many advantages to this structure as well. The Waldorf teacher has the time to form a strong community. The teachers, parents, and students become a family after so long together. It promotes continuity and even more of a deep understanding of each child's growth and abilities. There is often the fear that if there is a poor fit between a teacher and a student, eight years is a long time, but this is relatively rare. Waldorf teachers tend to be very committed (it's a way of life for them, not just a job) and are also highly educated. They generally have plenty of support in their community as well to help students in any way they can. Because they teach more than just academics (the are also artists, musicians, singers, actors, story-tellers, knitters, etc.) there is plenty of ways to reach a child in ways beyond academics.

The Waldorf classroom resembles a conventional classroom in that learning is teacher-directed, not student-directed, there are desks (or tables) rather than work stations, and the day is very structured. Just like in conventional settings there are benefits and drawbacks to this arrangement. However, because the children get daily nature walks, art, music, and knitting, among other things (usually done by the main teacher in the same classroom - they are very talented, renaissance people!) there is opportunity for creating and movement that help with classroom management. In the pre-school setting, the classrooms look much more chaotic and are louder than any Montessori I have ever seen, but fantasy and play are being encouraged more than productivity and quiet as in the Montessori classrooms.

Our family was very fortunate to have gotten to know both of these modes of education and we appreciated many aspects to both of them. It is interesting to me that they are both alternative education and both have the goal of teaching to the whole child, yet they go about doing that in very different ways. The outcome is typically good for children in both environments.

What to Do About All of that Homework!

My guest blogger today is someone who is making positive changes by kindly questioning authority, educating people and getting involved. Kerry Dickinson writes a blog called East Bay Homework Blog eastbayhomework.blogspot.com and she was part of a task force that successfully rewrote an outdated homework policy in her school district. Last week Kerry wrote:

Homework is a hot button topic. Anyone who has ever been a student, is currently a student or who is the parent of a student has an opinion about homework. Today when I Google “homework ” I find 40,100,000 results. Many of these homework sites offer tips to help children with their homework and accept the status quo – that homework has been a part of the American public school tradition since the early 1900s and will remain a big part of our education system for many years to come.

I hope not.

But I didn’t always feel this way. I’m trained as a middle and high school teacher of English, history, and reading. During my teacher training, I accepted and believed in the validity of homework. After all, I went through school, did some homework, became a teacher and turned out fine, so homework must have helped me achieve those goals, right?

But I didn’t have a lot of homework as a child, and I didn’t mind doing the homework I did have. It wasn’t until I had my own children that I really began to question the value of homework. But, sadly, that didn’t happen until they were in the 6th and 8th grades. Why did it take me so long to really examine their homework and question its importance?

It took me so long because I believed everything I was told about homework. “It reinforces learning. It teaches discipline and responsibility. It prepares students for class…”

But what happens when it doesn’t do those things? What happens when I did everything I was told to do by the school – set up a regular homework routine, gave my children a healthy snack before they start their homework, provide a quiet, well-lit place for them to do their homework – yet they still struggled with it?

What happens when we explored more avenues of homework help for one of our boys in particular (multiple tutors, special education resources, psychological testing, medication) and he still struggled with homework?

At some point, I finally stopped blaming my child for his homework limitations and started blaming everything else around him. I blamed the school, I blamed the teachers, I blamed the administration, I blamed the system, I blamed myself, I blamed my parenting, I blamed it on his ADHD. But when the blaming didn’t change the fact that he still struggled with homework, and still had hours and hours of it, I finally changed my attitude about it.

All this homework turmoil was a blessing in disguise.

One day I finally started really looking at the homework he was being asked to do. I read “The Homework Myth” by Alfie Kohn and I had a revelation about homework. I agreed with almost everything Kohn wrote in that book, and felt a huge sense of relief that I wasn’t the only educated person out there who disagreed with the idea of homework and hated what it did to our family evenings, weekends and holidays. “Most kids hate homework. They dread it, groan about it, put off doing it as long as possible. It may be the single most reliable extinguisher of the flame of curiosity.” (17)

I found Sara Bennett’s website www.StopHomework.com and that became an excellent daily resource for me and helped me see that there were many more educated people all over the US who disagreed with the idea of homework. I also read her book, “The Case Against Homework,” and got many good ideas from it. I read countless Internet articles and more books on homework. I talked to and emailed people about homework. I learned about Challenge Success, Denise Pope’s program at Stanford. I started learning about many other pro-child programs that shared my views of homework.

I enlisted the help of a friend, Julie, who shared my feelings about education and homework. We got a small group of parents together to talk about homework. We found that as soon as we starting discussing homework as a group, the talk quickly morphed into discussions of parenting, education, standardized testing, ADHD, teacher-training, college admissions, curriculum development, student stress, AP classes, childhood obesity, mental health issues, competitive sports, tutors, over-scheduled lives, finding balance, etc. We concluded that there were many problems surrounding homework and no simple solutions, yet we wanted to do something about it.

We took an informal email survey about homework from other parents in our district and got 100 responses that we collected in a spreadsheet. We brought that along with many articles and books on homework to a meeting we had with our school district’s curriculum instruction director. A week after that, the district (which serves over 27,000 students) formed a homework task force to rewrite the outdated policy. I was fortunate enough to be on the taskforce as a parent representative. The taskforce had 19 total participants – a combination of parents, teachers and administrators.

We rewrote the policy in under a year. It was a difficult process where 19 opinionated individuals had to agree on something cohesive to be presented to the Board of Education. I personally enlisted Sara Bennett's help during this process. While I think the new policy is better policy than the original one, I think it still has a long way to go to being a really great, “outside of the box,” forward-thinking homework policy. To read the policy, go to: http://sites.google.com/site/eastbayhomework/

For example, I would have liked to include an “opt-out” provision where parents could sign a statement saying they are opting out of having their child do homework with no negative consequences to the child. I would have liked to see a statement included about the fact that any homework assigned would not be graded. I would have liked to see shorter time limit guidelines on homework. I would have liked to see that homework would be the exception and not the rule. I would have liked it to be more similar to Toronto’s homework policy. You can read that here: http://sites.google.com/site/torontoshomeworkpolicy/

Even if I didn’t get exactly what I wanted in the homework policy, being on that taskforce was a good experience for me and has led to other projects I’m working on now. See the film “Race to Nowhere.” The experience also helped me formulate more conclusions about homework. One of those is that homework is not the cause of, but rather a symptom of many problems in education.

Teachers often give homework because they say they don’t have enough time to complete everything during class time. If we changed the mindset from believing that we need to teach a set amount of information in a limited time, to focusing on individual needs and learning goals of each student, we would approach education differently.

Without pressures from above to fulfill state mandates and without pressures from administration to teach to a test, teachers would ideally be free to collectively and creatively decide how students learn best. This is no simple task, however, and it involves a shift in thinking about the principles of education that will then naturally lead to a change in practices of education.

The good news is that there are great teachers and schools doing this, successfully every day. Even a big, public school can learn from these smaller schools and teachers that have discovered how kids learn best. Learning is an organic process, not a linear one. We can’t fill up a kid’s head with knowledge, have him do his homework, take some tests, graduate and call it success.

We have to figure out what turns kids on to learning and how they learn before we can help them learn. In our new technological age of constant information, we have to shift from memorizing and regurgitating facts in school to making sense of all these readily-available facts by analyzing, synthesizing, creating, innovating and problem-solving. We have to move from teacher as expert, to teacher as facilitator. We need more student choice and voice. We also have to redefine success in this culture.

The truth is, I don’t actually mind if my kids have homework, AS LONG AS IT TURNS THEM ON TO LEARNING, and as long as it isn't just a spewing out of facts, and as long as it doesn’t consume their whole evening, weekend or holiday. But what I've observed over the last ten years is that their homework usually does TURN THEM OFF to the subject and it's usually a teacher-created exercise focusing on how well they follow directions rather than on how they synthesize and use information. I've only seen a few really inspired assignments through the years.

Sadly, what usually happens is this type of scenario: After doing a time-consuming English project last June, my older son said, “I’m so glad that’s done because now I don’t have to read another book until next year when school starts.” That was a perfect example of a homework assignment that killed the joy of learning (and reading!).

I hear comments like this from my kids much more often than I hear comments about how excited they are about what they are learning in school. The things that excite them in school are their friends, the extra-curriculars, and the precious few days without homework.

As I sit here typing, my son (who is doing his homework) just said "I hate school. But school wouldn't be that bad if we didn't have homework. Why do we have homework on the weekends?"

I rest my case.

November 2009 Lesson Plans

You can easily tell that my favorite part of teaching is the preparation. I love planning out a month, figuring out what books, movies, experiments, cultural events, and other materials will allow us to richly delve into the topics for the month. This time I included book and movie titles in the lesson plan because it helped me to chart out what materials would be part of our specific area of study. Although I have not included reading on here, it is what I spend the most time on. We are studying long and short vowels, and practicing reading and writing by doing dictation, copying, sentence scrambles, fill in the blanks, bingo, and books. Here is what else is in store for the month of November:

• Character theme of the month: Gratitude
• Reading stories of gratitude
• "The Book of Virtues”
• Let's be thankful / P.K. Hallinan.
• Thanks to you : wisdom from mother & child / Julie Andrews Edwards
• My book of thanks / B.G. Hennessy
• The secret of saying thanks / Douglas Wood
• Thanks & giving all year long [sound recording] / Marlo Thomas and Friend
• The most thankful thing / by Lisa McCourt
• Thanks for Thanksgiving / by Julie Marke
• The cool coats / written by Larry Dane Brimne
• The little red buckets / Lynda M. Nelson
• Henry’s Life as a Tulip Bulb – Linda Brandt
• Discussion on what gratitude is and when you have been grateful

• Community Service: Feeding the Homeless with food baskets

• Country of the month: Mexico
• Identifying Mexico on a map
• Cooking Mexican foods
• Field Trip: Mexican restaurant
• Mexican music
• Learning Spanish words and songs
• Day of the Dead – November 2nd
• Discussion: Who would you honor/Who do you miss?
• Crafts and Stories for Day of the Dead
• Mexico : a primary source cultural guide / Allan B. Cobb.
• Migrant farmworkers : hoping for a better life / Deborah Kent.
• The upside down boy / story by Juan Felipe Herrer
• The legend of Mexicatl / Jo Harper
• From here to there / Margery Cuyle
• Cristóbal and the witch; story by Jan Wah
• Under the lemon moon / by Edith Hope Fine
• Look what came from Mexico / by Miles Harvey.
• In Rosa's Mexico / by Campbell Geeslin

• Artists of the month: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
• Frida kahlo : an artist celebrates life Deborah Kent
• Frida Kahlo - DVD
• Diego Rivera : painting Mexico / Deborah Kent
• Diego Rivera : legendary Mexican painter / Laura Baskes Litwin.
• Making art like theirs
• Field Trip to the Denver Art Museum

• Mexican History – Cesar Chavez, Hernan Cortez, and Teotihuacan
• My diary from here to there / story, Amada Irma Pérez
• Cesar Chavez / by Ginger Wadsworth
• César : sí, se puede! = yes, we can! / Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
• Cesar Chavez [videorecording]
• Captain from Castile [videorecording] (Hernan Cortez)
• Hernán Cortés : the Conquest of Mexico and the Aztec Empire / Fred Ramen
• The travels of Hernán Cortes / by Debbie Crisfield
• 100 Hispanic Americans : who changed American history / Rick Laezman
• Teotihuacan : designing an ancient Mexican city: calculating perimeters and areas of squares and rectangles / Lynn George
• City of the gods : Mexico's ancient city of Teotihuacán / by Caroline Arnold

• Science - The human body
• Books
• You are weird : your body's peculiar parts and funny functions / Diane Swanson
• Immune system / Lorrie Klosterman
• Open me up / written by Laura Buller
• Lungs : your respiratory system / Seymour Simon
• The circulatory system / Christine Taylor-Butler
• The heart, lungs, and blood / Steve Parker
• The nervous system / Christine Taylor-Butler
• The brain and nervous system / Steve Parker
• My brain / Dana Meachen Rau
• The digestive system / Christine Taylor-Butler
• Sammy's day at the fair : the digestive system featuring gut feelings and reactions / Jerome Tiller
• The skeletal system/the muscular system.
• The skeleton and muscles / Steve Parker.
• Movies:
• Circulatory & respiratory systems [videorecording]
• How does your heart work? / by Don L. Curry
• The brain & the nervous system [videorecording].
• Digestive & excretory systems [videorecording].
• The bones of it [videorecording]
• Immune system [videorecording]
• Life's greatest miracle [videorecordingThe secret life of the brain [videorecording]Mysterious Human Heart
• Field Trips:
• Rocky Vista University for Doctor of Osteopathy (arrange for tour and possible participation/hands on event)
• University of Colorado Hospital tour
• Denver Museum of Science and Nature (Expedition Body)
• Science Experiments from the book Exploratopia (Part 1 – Eyes, Ears, Nose, Tongue, Hands & Brain)

• Math
• Addition, Subtraction, Skip Counting, Money, Time, Measurement, Multiplication/Times Tables
• Skip Counting Board
• Games like Bingo
• Bean counting
• Books:
• Breakthrough to Math workbook
• Math Through Children’s Literature
• It’s a Story that Counts
• Panda Math - Subtraction
• MathArts
• Quick and Easy Learning Games
• Math Play
• Janice VanCleave’s Play and Find Out About Math
• Math Practice
• Macaroni Math
• Cereal Math
• Exploratopia – Math expiriments
• Movies:
• Addition DVD
• Subtraction DVD
• Einstein’s Math
• EZ Math Trix Card Tricks
• EZ Math Trix Addition and Subtraction
• EZ Math Trix Number Fun
• CD-Rom
• Reader Rabbit’s Math
• Jump Start Study Helpers Math Booster
• Jump Start Learning Playground

• Thanksgiving
• Books on the origin of Thanksgiving
• The Thanksgiving bowl / by Virginia Kroll
• The Thanksgiving door / Debby AtwellCrafts:
• Thanksgiving Day : a time to be thankful / Elaine Landau.
• Thanksgiving / by Laura Alden
• This is the feast / by Diane Shore
• Celebrate the first Thanksgiving with Elaine Landau.
• Magic tree house. Books 25-29[sound recording] / Mary Pope Osborne (Thanksgiving on Thursday)
• Squanto and the first Thanksgiving / by Joyce K. Kesse
• Movies on Thanksgiving
• An old fashioned Thanksgiving [videorecording]
• Real heroes [videorecording] : inspirational stories of giving.
• Holiday facts & fun. Thanksgiving [videorecording]
• Stories for Thanksgiving [videorecording]
• Crafts
• Making bird/squirrel feeders out of Halloween pumpkins
• Turkeys out of hand prints
• Gratitude turkey feathers
• Making soap
• Cooking
• Pumpkin recipes
• Thanksgiving Dinner

An Education Emergency

Late night television recently aired a tape of a child who calls 911 for help while doing his math homework. Here is an excerpt of it:

Operator: 911 emergencies.
Boy: Yeah I need some help.
Operator: What’s the matter?
Boy: With my math.
.....
Operator: What kind of math do you have that you need help with?
Boy: I have take aways. 16 take away 8 is what?
Operator: You tell me. How much do you think it is?
Boy: I don’t know, 1?
Operator: No. How old are you?
Boy: I’m only 4.
Operator: 4!
Boy: Yeah.
Operator: What’s another problem, that was a tough one.
Boy: Um, oh here’s one. 5 take away 5.
Operator: 5 take away 5 and how much do you think that is?
Boy: 5.
Woman: Johnny what do you think you’re doing?!
Boy: The policeman is helping me with my math.
Woman: What did I tell you about going on the phone?
Boy: You said if I need help to call somebody.
Woman: I didn’t mean the police!

While this is funny, it is also pretty alarming to me. Even the Operator and the boy seem to realize that being "only 4" is really young for independently doing subtraction problems! You can see from his answers that this child is clearly not understanding such an abstract concept, yet he was expected to work on his own to do it.

In my neighborhood the first of the year's parent-teacher conferences are starting, and I have seen several requests for Kindergarten reading tutors through the neighborhood list serve. What is wrong with this picture? It is no coincidence that there are many Kindergartners who are having trouble reading - they are not typically developmentally ready for it! Back when a Kindergartner's day was determined by educators, it was about playing, socialization, art, singing, napping, and the introduction of letters, numbers, shapes and colors. Now Kindergartner's fate is set by politicians with no training necessary in child development, the "fun stuff" has been discarded so that there is more time to rush them to literacy and quadratic equations. There is something truly scary to me about a 4 or 5 year old getting that much pressure to be so serious. It doesn't seem all that different than putting them on a factory job at a young age. We, in this country, find that scenario appalling but too many seem to have no trouble robbing children of their brief time to be playful, joyful, and young.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that all parents who get tutors for their children are bad people. On the contrary! I think the problem lies with what we have allowed our schools to become. The ubiquity of Kindergarten literacy expectations, standardized testing, excessive homework battles,calls for longer and more days in school, etc. have caused parents (who want the best for their children) to conform to the pressure. We have been there. My older son had a tutor in first grade so that he could attempt to keep up with the rest of his class, where ability varied dramatically. We eventually stopped the madness. No more homework, no more tutoring, no more expectations above his abilities. Once we did that, Ronan regained his childhood, his confidence, his curiosity - himself. I truly regret that year, but we certainly all learned a lot (just not what was intended).

A friend recently shared a quote by Robert Kiyosaki. He said, "Our school system is based on the fear of failure not the love of learning, if that changes, when that changes, then we will have a more peaceful world cause we will develop more peaceful people." I completely agree, and when this does change, our children will have their childhood back and we will no longer be in a state of educational emergency. And, who knows, with the world at peace, maybe 911 operators would have no more calls about domestic violence, crime, or math problems, and could focus on health and accident-related calls!

A Nod to Jacqui Shumway

I am not a terribly political person, but when I did my research for this year's election of our local school board candidates I was impressed by one candidate in particular. She sounded like no one else, which both impressed and worried me. Jacqui Shumway is a teacher and parent who is running for Denver's District 4 Director because she believes that cutting art, music and physical fitness has resulted in a decline in graduation rates, academic achievement, and quality of children's mental and physical health. She believes that art, music, and physical fitness are not extras, but necessary to making an enjoyable learning environment. Hallelujah! She also wants teachers and principals to have greater autonomy and money in the classroom. She wants to put the joy back in learning. Hallelujah!

I am very much in favor of having real choice for schools and I support charter schools. In reading Ms. Shumway's webpage, she seems firmly in support of good neighborhood schools, saying that a child being driven across town to attend a school of choice is a child that is not playing, biking, or drawing. I agree, though I do want my choice of educational modalities! However, if schools looked more joyful, autonomous, and successful with her vision, I wouldn't mind going back to the neighborhood schools!

P.S. You would think I would not choose to turn to politics after my last foray on the heated subject of giftedness! I promise I am not looking to stir up controversy, rather I am making a rare political plug for someone I don't know who speaks my language!

Recommended Reads - Mrs. Biddlebox and Mrs. Murphy

I love children's books that not only entertain but teach in a clever, memorable way. In early childhood, story telling is one of the most effective ways to teach many things, like values, math, history, social studies among others. There are two books on my kids' bookshelf that fit this category and have become family favorites.

"On a knotty little hill, in a dreary little funk, Mrs. Biddlebox rolled over on the wrong side of her bunk". And so begins a story about a woman in a grouchy mood having a bad day from the very start. She decides to turn the whole rotten morning into a cake, taking the lawn, the sun, the sky and baking it into submission. As she goes about the business of making this unique, from-scratch cake, the reader can see she is taking starting to feel some satisfaction in whipping her day into something better. By the end of the day her cake is done and she sits down to eat, at first taking a dainty slice, but eventually eating the whole thing. Her belly is full, she has changed her attitude, and the first contented smile appears on her face she heads to bed. The illustrations by Marla Frazee are as imaginative and fun as the story itself, bringing alive her fierce determination to actively welcome something better. My kids love the funny illustrations and the fantasy of taking a bad day and making into something really good. I like the book's message of empowerment and responsibility to meet the day with a positive attitude, no matter what happens. "Mrs. Biddlebox" is all the more poignant in that the author, Linda Smith was inspired to write the book as she battled cancer. Intended for four to eight year olds, the book is a real pleasure to read for us as well.

"Mrs. Murphy's Marvelous Mansion", by Emma Perry Roberts is written for the same age group and is about the peculiarly dressed Mrs. Murphy and her quirky little house. She lives on a cul-de-sac surrounded by large, vanilla houses remarkable only in their uniformity. The neighbors try to ignore the eccentric Mrs. Murphy and her odd house, until the Very Finest Neighborhood Contest brings out their neighborhood pride and intolerance. The neighbors let her know that she doesn't belong on their street. Mrs Murphy is surprised but invites them all over to her house for lunch so that they can see for themselves that her house is lovely too. Merely out of curiosity the neighbors accept her invitation. When they enter her tiny-seeming house, they are surprised at how spacious it seems and how beautiful it is. After the guests are shown around and each has commented appreciatively on some wonderful aspect of her house, they eat lunch together and there are smiles all around the table. As the neighbors are leaving one comments, "On the outside, her house is so much different than I expected." Another neighbor agrees that when they looked only at the outside, they couldn't appreciate the inside. Mrs. Murphy closes her door, thinking to herself that "it is a fine day indeed when we learn that beauty on the inside matters more than beauty on the outside." The old message of not judging a book by its cover is brought home in a powerful way that kids can really relate to. The illustrations by Robert Rogalski are as eccentric as Mrs. Murphy, with bold, rich colors and strangely beautiful rooms that give a sense of vast spaciousness and whimsy. The book's message of appreciating and looking for the goodness that is found on the inside makes for a lively discussion and a fun read.

Schooled on Giftedness - An Apology, An Interview, An Alliance

A recent article I wrote on the subject of giftedness caused a rather heated discussion.  The end result of it (understanding and ideas) was very positive, but I wish to apologize all the same to many readers whom I might have offended.  While it did give a great springboard for discussion and learning, my attempt at humor at the beginning of the article obfuscated the message and I felt terrible that I had offended some without intention.  That humbling moment was not in vain, though.  I got to to talk to the fabulous Suki Wessling (after we both put down our dukes) and really enjoyed hearing her perspective.  Suki is a writer and homeschooler and knows a lot about the subject of giftedness.  We decided to do a written conversation on this so that others might understand this topic more.

Suki, you and I agreed that the term giftedness is a woefully inadequate descriptor.  I have never disputed that there are very advanced (gifted) children, but took aim at the lack of clarity and it revealed my general dislike for labels. You call it a different term.  Can you explain what it is and why it is better?

Parents and educators of "gifted" kids often bat around possible terms to replace gifted, which is such a loaded word because it implies a value judgment. As parents of gifted kids can tell you, parenting a gifted child can be very, very difficult, and their prospects for success are not any better, and sometimes worse, than other kids'. The term I prefer is borrowed from someone else: neuro-nontypical. A neuro-typical person is one who fits pretty easily into that nebulous region we call "typical" or "average" as far as their neurology goes (how they learn, behave, feel). A neuro-nontypical person is just different. Really, that term would include autistic people and Down's syndrome kids, and it's definitely not a value judgment. It's just an acknowledgement that when you're talking about educating a human being, a neurologically unusual child, whether learning disabled or "highly enabled," need a different approach.

Aside from the inadequacy of the term "gifted" why do you think there is such alienation and misunderstanding surrounding it?

A few reasons. One is that we live in a society that pretends to understand the value of intellect, but all indicators say that it doesn't value intellect in the least. Just look at our popular entertainment, our most revered public figures, and the relative salaries of intellectuals vs. non-intellectuals if you want proof.

Another reason is that parents are really feeling under the gun to help their children "succeed." We are bombarded with information that makes us anxious: Your child needs to know all his colors and numbers to get into the best preschool; your child needs to start reading in kindergarten to achieve testing goals; your child needs to be top in her class to get into the college you like. So when a parent says the word "gifted," imagine how loaded that is. "My child has a gift; your child is gonna have to work his butt off!" This is not true of most parents of neuro-nontypical kids, yet the word itself implies it.

When I went to the website called "Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted" (www.sengifted.org) I found a brochure on how to identify a gifted child.  I think that part of the problem in identifying giftedness is that is not very clear.  It includes characteristics like being very curious and observant, strong vocabulary and reasoning, pattern recognition, problem solving, and strong memory.  I realize that there is a matter of degree here, but it is understandable why so many people think there child is gifted.  What is gifted and what is it not?

It depends on the situation. Our public schools use certain measures for gifted programs, so some people would use those definitions. Psychologists who work with gifted children may use others. I think it's important to think of it similar to autism: parents of autistic kids often use the phrase "on the spectrum," meaning that a child is autistic, but is in his own unique place on the spectrum of the disorder. "Gifted" just means "good at something" in its most colloquial use. As a term for diagnosis, it's something you can certainly test: does the child learn in a different, faster way than typical children? Does she have any of the corresponding sensitivities and personality traits? Does he have special schooling needs because of the way he learns?

One reader used "smarter" as a synonym for gifted.  Does that mean smarter in every category?  If we just focused on the pure academics, does that mean a child is smarter in algebra, geometry, zoology, chemistry, writing, reading, geography, etc. or is it in a certain area?

This gets back to that "value judgment" aspect of the word. Frankly, a highly gifted person can be darn stupid in many ways. I remember a friend when I was at Stanford saying, "Why is it all these really smart women we know are so stupid about love?" What she was pointing out is that being good at test-taking, being articulate, good at analysis and dissection -- all those things that got us into Stanford -- have no relationship to good interpersonal skills, good hand-eye coordination, a good sense of humor, or any of the other many traits that we value in human beings.

Gifted people are usually not better at all academic subjects, and the more gifted (i.e. the more removed from the average set of learners out there) a person is, the less likely they seem to have average skills in a wide variety of areas. We all knew the math professor who forgot to wash his clothing, or the really smart 8th-grader who would get hit by balls on the head in P.E. because she was lost in thought, or the kid who hadn't learned to read but had diagrammed the entire New York City subway system inside his English textbook. These are examples of people whose brains were really good at some things, but were not able to function in situations that other people take for granted.

Most gifted people have wide areas of strength, though, so it is probably safe to say that a kid gifted in math would do well at everything that takes mathematical skills (including music, which is often tied to mathematical skills).

What about the Theory of Multiple Intelligences?  Beyond academic ability, what about musical, social, athletic, and other skills many of us are blessed with?

Some public school GATE programs take that into account, and include some non-academic areas of giftedness in their programs. The reality is, however, that academic giftedness is that one that causes problems for kids in school. All the other ones you mention are an asset to a student. Yes, a highly social, musical, or athletic child might not be doing great in academics because their passion is taking up so much time, but we don't really see that as so much of a problem. Does anyone know what Barry Bonds' high school grades were?

I think that the theory of multiple intelligences is a great way to integrate all children into a social group, and teach that we should value all children. However, I have seen at least one teacher use it to try to "put the smart kids in their place," which was very destructive. Multiple intelligences should not be used in a school setting to equalize, because we aren't all the same. It is our difference that makes us strong! We are the most highly varied species on the planet, and that is one of our greatest assets. We need to value all the skills that people have. Frankly, even the class clown who disrupts a test with farty sounds is an asset to a classroom, and teachers need to understand that and figure out how to work with it.

We talked a bit about IQ tests.  I don't feel they are a good measurement of a person's needs and abilities and have read a lot of Sir Ken Robinson's views on this subject.  He insists that IQ tests and scores are outdated, flawed, and changing.  Indeed the 100+ year history of the test has had it share of critics, including Alfred Binet, who pioneered the first intelligence scale.  Many critics point out that it is impossible to measure intelligence when we have not even defined it properly.  What are your thoughts on this?

My parents chose not to have their kids' IQ tested, and my husband I have chosen the same route. The number really doesn't matter to us, because we have found ways to create a positive learning environment for our kids: one of them is thriving in a public homeschool program; the other is thriving at a very socially positive and supportive private school.

The value that parents have found in the IQ test, as far as I have heard, is just that it sometimes can point out important things about how a child learns. Sometimes when trying to educate a child who seems ineducable, finding out that he has a top-of-the-charts IQ can help you understand how to reach him. Another value is that a child who has been pegged learning disabled in a school can be tested and be found to be profoundly gifted, which sometimes looks very similar to learning disabled, oddly enough. The number in that case is ammunition the parents can use to get their child the services she needs.

I don't see any value in IQ testing as a matter of course. It just seems weird to pin a number on people and then write them off. Rent the movie Gattaca!

Another point about IQ as it relates to determining giftedness is that the cut-off seems fairly arbitrary.  Who is to say that someone with an IQ of, say 129 is not gifted, but someone with one of 130 is?  It seems to me that the number does not change the fact that you still must meet the individual needs of each student.

Totally arbitrary. You suggested in your post that all kids need IEPs -- I agree with you. That is the beauty of homeschooling and smaller school programs: each child can be given what she needs and what inspires her. Once you get to large public schools, however, that cut-off is sometimes the difference between being stuck in a class that is going to drill the information for The Test yet again for the umpteenth time, and a class that's going to dissect frogs! That's when you get parents tearing their hair out trying to help their child "succeed." And that's when you get parents feeling like they're in battle with each other to get services for their kids. It's similar to the parents of kids in special education who feel they have to justify that their child has an aide when the classroom doesn't have enough money for crayons. If all students' needs were funded, I believe the cut-off would just be an arbitrary place for the school to start to say, "does this child have special needs that we haven't noticed?" Otherwise, yes, it is totally arbitrary and divisive.

In my original post I suggested that rather than focusing on our differences (high or low IQ, learning disabled or gifted) I thought it would be better to focus on meeting every kid right where he is (this was meant to be the main point).  I like the approach of each kid getting an IEP (Individualized Education Plan), which are typically given to struggling students.  Why not give each kid one?  Sure, it would not fit with the conventional model found in most schools and it does not do much for standardization, but the fact that we are talking about the challenges of giftedness doesn't speak much for the reality or goal of standardization.  In a Democratic School, students are given far more independence in their learning so that it meets their interests and needs, adding a level of maturity, responsibility, and customization to their education.  (See my post about a school in Denver that does this:
http://abettereducation.blogspot.com/2009/07/beautiful-marriage-of-opendemoc
ratic.html).  What about offering more schools like this?

I'm all for it! I have spent my kids' school years trying to keep them in programs that suit them. Here in Santa Cruz County (California), we are blessed with a huge population of families who care about education, and thus a higher than average number of special programs, charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling options. As my children age, I start to see their former preschool classmates trickling into these special programs as parents realize their children's needs aren't being met.

My utopic vision of a public education system is this: Each county (or whatever geographic area makes sense in each location) would be one district. The schools would be small and fluid: Some kids would go to the same school every day. Some kids would only go to school certain days and learn independently other days. Some kids would go to different programs at different schools depending on their needs. Some kids would never go to school. All kids would be able to take part in the programs that they enjoy. Testing would happen just a couple of times, perhaps 3rd and 6th grade, just to make sure that nothing is being missed as far as the basic tools of modern life are concerned.

Unlike many homeschoolers, I do believe that there is a real reason for public education, and I do strongly believe that education needs to be compulsory. How you put together an education for a child, however, would be much more fluid than it is now, more focused on what "success" means for each student rather than what "success" means for administrators of a school district.

What are the alternatives for students who are not challenged enough in schools?

That depends on the location. Private schools can often offer more, but that is not necessarily the case. Parents should pay very close attention to the peer group at a private school to make sure it's the right fit for their child, since private schools tend to have a student population that is more narrowly focused and often their educational approach is very specific, such as Montessori.

Some public school GATE programs are run with the child in mind, and really do offer a more appropriate education within the public school system. Some, however, are just geared to pile on more busy work, faster, which doesn't serve most children, gifted or not.

Public charter schools and special programs can sometimes be a great fit for a student who needs more challenging work. It's important to note that "challenging" does NOT mean more busy work! Most kids whose brains function at a higher level tend not to be satisfied with yet another worksheet of math problems that they can do. Instead, they will excel if they are offered experiential programs that incorporate and expand their skills. Find out about local charter schools through your school district office or at http://www.uscharterschools.org/.

Homeschooling is a very good option for gifted kids who are extremely unusual learners or who have emotional/social difficulties. Homeschooling can happen within all sorts of different programs or outside of programs. In California, any family can set up their own private school and homeschool that way. If families want to be attached to a school, most districts have homeschool programs (either charter schools or special programs). We also have multi-locale charters that families can sign up with if there's no homeschool program near them. (Some of these take kids from a wide geographic area.) To learn more about homeschooling in California, visit the Homeschool Association of California - http://hsc.org/.

Describe the emotional issues of neuro-advanced students.

You mentioned http://sengifted.org -- I highly recommend that parents of gifted kids go there to get help. Neurologically different kids are usually not just different academically. Common issues that can show up in neuro-nontypical kids include high sensitivities, difficulties with social skills, asynchronous development, behaviors that resemble oppositional disorder, ADHD or bipolar, and more. Often these problems cannot be addressed sufficiently unless the whole child -- including his advanced intellect -- is considered as a package. A significant number of gifted kids are probably given unnecessary drug therapy when a change in learning environment or help with life skills might suffice.

Tracy, thank you so much for responding the way you did to criticism from parents of gifted kids. We need to learn from each other so that we can figure out how to make education better for all kids. I know that the tight budgets and balkanized educational theories make us all defensive, and I appreciate how you are doing your part to break down the barriers. -- Suki Wessling

To read more from Suki, check out her blog at http://sukiwessling.parentclickblog.com/

Waldorf and Montessori - Fantasy Versus Reality

Many parents are familiar with the Waldorf and Montessori education models but not always clear on the differences between them. My children have been in both types of schools, so we had the pleasure of learning about both models in theory and in practice. I appreciate and respect many things about both modalities and I do understand that there can be a great deal of variation in many Waldorf and Montessori classrooms around the world.

Typically Montessori encourages a firm grounding in reality for a child and their materials help to cement that understanding. At the Montessori school my children attended, children were not to play with the manipulative materials in a way that is not in keeping with their purpose. For example, the math beads were to be used for counting in a certain sequential way when a child is ready to use them for math purposes. The classrooms emphasize order, with tidy workstations and plenty to do as a child chooses. While I do love the way Montessori encourages a child to learn through the use of manipulative materials instead instead of more abstract methods, I also appreciate the way Waldorf encourages fantasy play.

In a Waldorf classroom, play is considered a fundamental part of learning and fantasy is viewed as essential to creating happy and imaginative students. Waldorf teachers capitalize on the power of a story to teach children. The classrooms are beautiful and inviting. They are dreamy and colorful with found items from nature and plenty of gorgeous, natural fabrics draped to create a sense of space. In addition to creating the setting of the room, fabrics are also used to play make believe. Waldorf advocates for plenty of imaginative play and the teachers encourage it by providing natural toys made of wood or cotton that are minimally finished to encourage a strong sense of imagination. I love how the stories about Andy Add and Sammy Subtract help to bring alive an abstract idea.

In the Waldorf school we were a part of, there were plenty of stories on fairies. Children were told stories of fairies that mirrored their lives and helped them to make sense of their world and the world they cannot see. My children have built many a fairy house, using found objects in nature or a cardboard box. I love how it brings out the nurturing side of them (building a comfortable shelter for them) and their creativity. My children have written to their fairies and received answers and an occasional small gift from them. It is sort of like Christmas each time it happens, but it is not about the material item they get (a fortune cookie, a few coins, a figurine, some stickers) but the delight at the special connection and attention that they love.

In an eclectic education, the best of both can be used. I try to make use of manipulative materials and a story to make sense of an abstract concept. We do frequent nature walks, taking pictures of items that we will later use to learn. For example, we went on a photographic scavenger hunt this week, taking pictures of things that are brown, things that are dry, things that are soft, etc. to use for a sorting exercise later for my four year old. I am grateful that we can draw from the wisdom of both modalities to make our homeschooling experience all the richer.

"All kids are gifted; some just open their packages earlier than others"

That great quote by Michael Carr brings to mind a story. One of my children got his first tooth quite early, compared to his peers. We knew he was dentally gifted. We made sure he tested into the top dentists, we surrounded him with other dentally precocious children, and we gave him a special diet that would encourage his gift to grow further and faster. I also got a bumper sticker for my car to advertise his advanced toothiness.

All right, that's not true, but it is what I think of on the topic of giftedness. Any time someone talks about their child being gifted, I want to ask them "in what area is your child an early learner?" Giftedness is such an inadequate and highly charged word. It seems to imply that a certain group of children are blessed with an all-encompassing, ever-advanced intelligence while the rest of the population is hopelessly average or worse.

Some kids learn to read quite quickly but have no aptitude for math. Others are great at understanding patterns, but are verbally behind their peers. I know many little boys who have an early propensity for dinosaurs - they know the names and habits of every dinosaur known to man, yet they are socially or physically awkward. The term giftedness does not adequately describe a child's singular area of proficiency, but instead tends to confer a blanket of superiority around the child, leaving others in the cold.

Does early achievement really mean permanent giftedness? Well, what if you do have a child who is an early reader? By, say, 6th Grade, does that child actually read any better than the child who learned to read a year or two later? At age 10, can you tell which child learned to talk or walk earlier than the others? Just like those that are dentally gifted, a head start in a particular area of growth and development does not necessarily make for an enduring advantage. By the same token, a delayed start does not equate to mental inferiority. Albert Einstein is a great example of that. Not only would he not have been in the Highly Gifted and Talented Program as a young student, he would likely have had an Individual Education Plan (IEP) to help him up to average.

And what about the theory of multiple intelligences? Does giftedness take into account a particularly athletic girl if she horrible at algebra? Does giftedness include the musically talented boy who is an awful speller and grammatically delayed? Is a child with advanced social skills less gifted than a child who can read a Harry Potter book at age seven?

It is natural for parents to notice and take pride in each of the developmental milestones our children achieve. We are supposed to marvel at them and cheer them on, but we should stop short at pressuring them too hard or setting them on a pedestal above others. I overheard a woman talking to the head of our pre-school as she complained how hard the Highly Gifted and Talented test was. She had had her son take the test three times and he failed to qualify each time. I have to believe that is damaging to the child in some way. Why is it so important to her to have the title of giftedness for her child?

It is the job of every parent and educator to recognize the strengths that lie in every child and to facilitate further development in those areas. How would it be if we honored all learning differences in every subject, whether they were advanced or delayed, kinesthetic or auditory, etc.? All children should have an IEP custom-made according to their strengths and learning styles! What if we treated all children as gifted and we optimized the education of each child according to his specific gifts? Our schools and communities would be stronger if we were to recognize and grow the gifts that each child possesses to everyone's benefit.

Just like on their birthdays, I look forward to seeing what gifts my children got and how they will use them!

In Praise of BaLaNcE

Ronan got his first bike with training wheels on his third birthday, though he didn't want anything to do with it for a few months. Eventually he rode around on it until he had a minor biking accident that hurt and scared him and he stopped riding it again for awhile. Over the course of almost four more years we tried a few times to take the training wheels off so that he could ride a big boy bike but each time he requested that the training wheels be put back on. He wasn't ready. One day, we took off the training wheels, the crank and the pedals and made our own balance/push bike. He tried this out for a couple of weeks, getting the hang of balancing his body to keep the bike upright. On the last day of school when he was almost seven, I took him to a consignment bike store to pick out a bike that was appropriate for his size in anticipation that this would be the summer he would be ready to ride a big boy bike. He picked out one he liked and took it for a test drive and I let go. He took off, riding off down the sidewalk as if he had been riding without training wheels for months! We were both so thrilled!

Although he had a year of pedaling practice with a big wheel, we decided to start Jude off with a balance bike, which he got for his fourth birthday. Just like Ronan, he wouldn't touch it for a few weeks. Then he started riding it cautiously, and within a week he was not only balancing, but even doing tricks on a moving bike. Within a month he asked to try a big boy bike with pedals and without training wheels. On his very first try he rode off down the driveway like a seasoned rider. Again, parent and child were thrilled!

Given the popularity of balance bikes, we are not the only ones who have found that they are great for learning to ride a bike. I think that the balance bikes are a great metaphor for education. Just like on a bike, each kid learns at his own natural pace and what makes him ready is not the external work, but something from within.

A child will learn to read not so much by constant effort and badgering by another person, but by being ready and willing on a timeline that is natural and unique to each person. True, it does take effort, and practice, and plenty of opportunity to learn both bike riding and reading, but neither can be rushed. Both will happen when there is a sense of balance, confidence, and willingness - the internal pieces that must be in place for the independence on bikes or books to occur.

In education, a child that is pressured to read through nearly constant practice and tutoring has no balance. Academic balance comes from not only exposure to literacy, but to other important aspects of humanity, like nature, art, science, math, socializing, history, play, etc. Through the exploration of all of the interesting aspects that make us human we achieve a vital sense of balance that enables us to grow in each area. Not only is a maniacal focus on ever earlier literacy unnecessary and developmentally inappropriate, it also robs us of the opportunity to understand and explore other subjects. At a young age, breadth is what allows us to understand our world. This foundation gives us balance and the ability to grow. It allows us to achieve not only literacy but a strong foundation of knowledge in any other subject.

Balance and biking and literacy will all come if we act as facilitators for them to naturally unfold at their own rate with enthusiasm, encouragement, respect, understanding, and patience. Then, look out! They will take off with joy and confidence to fuel them forward!

Slowing Down

One of the greatest gifts and the hardest thing to adjust to homeschooling is the pace of life. People in my office used to hear me coming by the sound of my hasty footsteps approaching them. I used to drive over the speed limit even if I was going to be early. I love to get things done and I have often stacked a lot on my plate just to savor the goofy happiness of crossing it off my to-do list. Homeschooling has a way of slowing you down and redefining efficiency. It has a way of forcing you into being in the now and being present.

I am always planning things. I've planned pregnancies, fundraising events, social engagements, and now lesson plans. I even plan great vacations and then don't always enjoy them to the fullest because the planning stage is over and I don't know what to do with just relaxing. But I've noticed that homeschooling requires a lot of attention and executing on the plans, with little time for more planning. I have learned pretty quickly that I need to keep the momentum going with the schoolwork, or I lose my kids to chaos and play. I have to give them my complete attention for everything to go smoothly. On days where I succumb to looking up one more book on the library website, or looking through an anthology for just the right story, it does not pay!

I have also come to understand that getting things done is not going to feel like it used to. I used to get through a whole day's worth of work-related tasks, not to mention picking up children in two different schools, cooking dinner, cleaning up (well, sometimes), and getting everyone ready for bed. Now, an errand or two can eat up the entire day and leave me feeling panicked that not enough learning took place. Even on days when we do not leave the house, I have the notion we will get through reading, writing, math, time-telling, calendar work, geography, Spanish, sociology, art, music and cooking with plenty of time for play and lunch. I have yet to have a day where we worked all of that in! However, I have come to the pragmatic realization that, like nutrition, it is what you do over the course of the week that counts. Getting everything done every day is not practical or possible, so I am learning to relax about it and shoot for the larger goal over the course of a week or the month.

Jude, who learned how to ride a bike with no training wheels and no assistance recently, asked if we could ride bikes to the zoo instead of drive as I had planned. It's only about three and a half miles from our house, so I agreed. I knew it would be a slower ride than I am used to, but this was the kind of ride that was actually difficult for me to stay upright due to lack of momentum. A person with 12" bike rims has to pedal a lot more to move than a person on an adult's bike, but we made it to the zoo without any complaints. On our bike ride we noticed tree houses, birdhouses, dogs, gardens, leaves, and puddles. (Here's a tip: although drafting works well for Lance Armstrong, it is not a great idea to draft a four year old!) I would not have noticed any of these had I been driving or riding at my own speedy pace, in a hurry for no reason. Not only did we appreciate all of the sights and sounds along the way, it was so gratifying to see the obvious pride on Jude's face, having completed his first impressive bike ride and keeping up with the rest of us. That was definitely worth being present for!

Homeschooling Doubters, Here is Some Impressive Data

It is not unusual to encounter those that doubt the whole idea of homeschooling. Many think that all homeschoolers will be churning out a generation of socially graceless, academically primitive, brainwashed young adults who are destined for a life of wierdness, failure, and poverty. Sometimes these prejudices are even in one's family. There are some in our larger family who have voiced their concerns for my children's future. One of them pointed out that each generation in our family has done better than the subsequent one and we are responsible for making our children better off than we are.

My husband and I want a lot of things for our children. We want our kids to be happy, confident, well-adjusted, resilient, adaptive, curious, creative, wise, compassionate, kind.... We also want them to be comfortable in life doing what they love to do. Neither of us have any preconceived notion about how much money they should make and what profession they should be in. If I look back on three generations in both of our families, I see that they all managed to live relatively comfortably. Yes, each generation did better financially than the next, but how much money do we need to aim for? How much more comfortable do they need to be? I don't think that is up to us. Our job is to educate them: academically, financially, morally, spiritually, politically, socially.... They get to decide what it is they will be when they grow up and how much money they will make.

Lest you think that all my efforts are dooming my children to (gasp!) an obscure community college and a life of mediocrity, check out the the Homeschool Legal Defense Association's website http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200908100.asp The webpage features an article by Ian Slatter called "New Nationwide study Confirms Homeschool Academic Achievement", which mentions an extensive University of Maryland study on homeschooled students and 15 other independent testing services. The highlights are:

- On the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and the Stanford Achievement Test, homeschoolers outscored their public school peers by between 34 and 39 percentage points in every category.

- Each year there are 100,000 homeschool graduates, increasing 7% a year

- There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on scores, while girl's seem to out-perform boys in institutional school settings. Homeschooling seems to level the playing field

- There was surprisingly little impact of household income on test scores, which is quite different from public school demographics.

- While the education level of the parents made a difference in the student's test scores, even those of non-college educated parents score in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.

- Also making no impact on the test scores were whether the parent was ever a certified teacher, how much money was spent on home education, and how much government regulates homeschooling in the student's state.

This shows quantitatively that homeschooling can be the great equalizer across genders, economic and education levels. But not only does it equalize, it also shows that it significantly increases academic performance for a fraction of the money spent in public schools. The data shows that I am not dooming my children, but rather, I am giving them a tremendous boost. How much money they make is up to them after my work is done!

What's in Store for October!

When I got started this week in earnest with my kids, I did a lot of reviewing. Although I believe in the Waldorf philosophy of teaching kids to read in a much more gradual, art-based way than a conventional school does, I noticed that my first reaction was to cram and drill on letters and numbers! Instead of my goal of making this gradual, meaningful, and enjoyable, I panicked and thought, "he has to learn to read now!" I quickly came to my senses, but that was a valuable exercise in compassion for all of the pressured teachers out there in public school who feel they MUST get a kid to read to meet a certain standard or score for literacy and numeracy.

During my Michigan visit, I met with Pat Montgomery, who opened the first alternative school in Michigan – a school my husband attended. We talked all about education and one thing she said to me stood out: “You can’t teach a kid to read.” I think I feel more comfortable appending that with “until he is ready.” I think you can do all sorts of things to prepare them for literacy, like reading to them, having them copy and trace letters, sounding out phonetic words, identifying letters and beginning sounds, etc. However, none of this will matter until the child is ready to read. Waldorf schools do fantastic job of making that a natural, creative process that seems more like creativity or story telling.

So I slowed down a bit today and we reviewed more and did more creative, fun lessons, beyond literacy. I have planned each month in advance to include each discipline of reading, writing, math, science, geography, social studies, art and cooking. For example, here is what October looks like:

• Character theme of the month: Compassion
- Reading stories of compassion from Buddha at Bedtime and "The Book of Virtues”
- Introduction to Mother Teresa (books and movie)
- Other movies on compassion, including “Mask” (the one with Cher, not Jim Carrey)
- Field Trip: theatrical production of “The Ugly Duckling”
- Discussion on what compassion is and when you have been compassionate
• Artist of the month: Picasso
- Movies and books on Picasso
- Making art like Picasso
- Field Trip to the Denver Art Museum
• Country of the month: Spain
- Identifying Spain on a map
- Movies and books on Spain
- Cooking Spanish foods
- Field Trip: Spanish restaurant
- Field Trip: Flamenco music and dance
- Learning Spanish words and songs
- Field Trip: Colorado Ballet – Don Quixote (along with stories and movies on that subject in preparation)
• Columbus Day
- Movies and books on the holiday and the man
- Discussion of perspectives (why some people don’t like the celebration)
• Science
- Bird Migration
• Books about various bird migration patterns
• The movies “Winged Migration” and “Fly Away Home”
• Craft: Build and decorate a bird feeder
• Identifying birds
- The science of flotation, including experiments in what floats, what doesn’t and why.
• Halloween
- Books and movies on the origin of Halloween (and some just for fun!)
- Crafts: Shriveled Apple Faces, Egg Carton Spiders, pumpkin carving, leaf pressings, etc.
• Cooking
- Apple plumps
- Apple sauce
- Canning the rest of summer’s bounty (including a wee bit on the science of canning, and how it keeps bacteria at bay)

With all of that AND reading, writing, math, piano lessons, and playing, we will have a very enjoyable, busy month ahead of us!

Project Zero - An Interview with Larry Scripp

Larry Scripp, Ed.D is a musician, educator, research, program developer, and administrator. He is the Chair of the Music Education department (and its Music-In-Education program) at New England Conservatory. As Founding Director of Center for Music-In-Education, he designs and implements Music Plus Music Integration programs in public schools through a coalition of schools of music and education, arts organizations, and school reform organizations through the arts. I first was introduced to Larry when I had researched Project Zero, which he was kind enough to explain to me.

Larry, first please tell us, what is Project Zero?

Project Zero is an educational research group at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Its mission is to understand the relationship of human development in the arts, and to find ways to enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels. I believe that the name Project Zero was used because Nelson Goodman, its founder, felt that there was zero literature to start with in the field of normal human development and in the arts, and he set out to create such a literature along with his graduate students at that time, David Perkins and Howard Gardner

I understand there are many different research projects under the Project Zero umbrella. What areas of research were you involved in during your 10 years of work with this group?

I was involved in the Music and Early Symbolization Project, Arts PROPEL arts assessment in Pittsburgh Public Schools, Lincoln Center Institute Study, and a Music Technology and Composition Project. In the early days it was all about research guided by Piagetian frameworks, but in the 80s it began to focus on applied research, working directly with schools. Arts PROPEL is an acronym for essential components of artistic knowing - Perception, Reflection and Production - and it was the framework for organizating assessment practices in creative writing, visual and musical arts. The project was involved with setting standards of teaching, documenting frameworks from developmental stages, and creating devices and instruments in schools. This project developed new standards for the documentation, organization and assessment of student learning in the arts in public schools. We created prototypes for what are now considered common practice portfolio assessment methods. We didn’t just go into schools to test our own ideas, but worked with the teachers and talked about assessments in the arts and how to do it. This was a collaboration with Pittsburgh Public School District to develop authentic assessments that could be implemented in both general music classrooms and ensemble rehearsal studios.


Broadly speaking, what conclusions have you reached in your research about the arts in education?

I have reached the conclusion that although art forms are very different, each contributes an essential medium of learning and provides a model for learning in other disciplines; that multiple intelligence theory (penned by Howard Gardner), though valuable in its day, has now evolved to acknowledge the complexity of factors involved in artistic intelligences and their possible integration across domains. I have come to realize that the younger generation of music educators now acknowledge that authentic arts learning depends on the integration of other forms of intelligences.

In the Music-in-Education National Consortium – a group that I founded to explore learning both in and through music - we now believe in the creative tension between ‘differentiation and synthesis,” that is, the paradoxical notion that learning in the arts depends on knowledge of other domains of knowing, and that the productive integration of artistic knowing with other subject areas requires deep knowledge in each separate domain. Cognitive skills, intelligence in schools and in life develop in the constantly changing stages of dis-equilibrium between differentiation and synthesis of knowing in and across other disciplines. For example, there are certain parts of the brain where auditory abilities and linguistic abilities share neural networks, yet function within “separate” cognitive domains. Schools are still behind in recognizing this, but they are starting to come to that realization when music and music-integrated instruction takes root in both musical and academic studies.

How has this work helped communities and schools improve and enrich education?

By advocating arts learning in separate domains as a necessity for human development that enhances general education and whole school improvement. It has helped advocate for the arts and connect arts to cognitive skills. Those that learn music realize that there is a certain inextricable sense of cognitive interrelatedness and that the complexity of this interrelatedness grows as you learn and master music learning processes. With this interrelatedness and complexity comes a increasingly powerful musical imagination, critical thought and analytic perspectives that result in a greater sense of intentionality in the creative process. Cognitive-rich creativity is learned in the domain in the context of each art form; it is not a thing to itself. What we are now learning now is that integrated learning processes foster an understanding of parallel problem-finding and problem-solving skills that appear to result in a deeper and broader range of cognition embedded in this synthesis of interdisciplinary work.

Part of Project Zero’s mission is to foster critical and creative thinking through the arts. How does Project Zero and/or education through the arts accomplish this goal?

Mainly to demonstrate assessment of arts learning in relation to cognitive skills, and see that creativity is intrinsic to authentic, comprehensive arts learning. If we look at creative aspects of the arts and the cognitive skills involved in critical and creative thinking, we see something intrinsic to arts learning at every juncture of its developmental progression. Paying attention to the discipline of the art form is really important. Learning takes place both through and within the arts. It is important to learn the arts for its own sake but also to pay attention to the impact of arts learning across domains. Those who study music are more apt to understand proportion and balance differently than in other art forms. The arts can teach a different way of looking at things and a deeper understanding shared between disciplines. It is a particularly engaging way of learning. Arts learning and teaching is not a uniform phenomenon in formal education. How it is taught and supported makes a big difference. We need to get away from anachronistic views of talent (choosing only the very best and grooming them) to a policy that allows access and equal opportunity for arts learning to occur in unexpected ways across a wide set of problems and disciplines.

As Piaget says, to invent is to understand, and creativity informed by critical thinking is the hallmark of music cognitive development. I take that to heart in all my work in education. Creativity is not an ideal moment or special occasion; rather it is a staple of all kinds of problem solving situations. Ken Robinson talks about creativity as applied imagination, which is creativity to solve problems through imaginative thinking. We need to keep these concepts in play and we need to find ways to assess the potency of these skills in all learners.. With good arts-rich educational policy our schools will contribute a much healthier source of creativity to our society.

How do you foster collaborative relationships with schools, universities, museums and other institutions to improve education?

With Project Zero it was at first through assessment in individual art forms. I left Project Zero in order to pursue research in music learning in school networks. I started the Conservatory Lab Charter School as a major experiment in music and music integrated learning in 1998. Although this small school failed to achieve the promise of its charter on its own, the research findings that began with this project have since resulted in twelve years of federal funding for the creation of the Music-in-Education National Consortium and its Learning Laboratory School Network. If have tried to apply the Project Zero concepts of meaningful, authentic research, assessment, documentation, and assessments in my work to advance education today.

In your estimation what does an ideal learning setting look like in a K-12th grade setting?

It is an arts-rich, project and portfolio based, and a longitudinally assessed program within a school learning community. It is a setting where active, research-based professional learning and leadership modeled on music and music integration program development are valued. This productivity is constructive for both teachers and students. Engagement is a two way street with peer learning, group learning, visual learning, and the full diversity of process that includes music and arts integrated practices.. There should be plenty of expressivity, media, and materials as well as objects worthy of study. Education should be project and portfolio based. Students’ work should be about generating new knowledge based on a deep understanding of fundamental concepts that can be learned in the context of interdisciplinary cognition. The recitation of isolated facts is not necessarily indicative of a good learning environment; facts take on new significance when a curriculum of worthy objects of study is investigated on a deeply personal, yet rich informed basis. Even arts learning works best when it fosters an ethos of a school as a learning organization that constantly focuses on the optimal balance of creativity and imagination, inquiry and reflection, and performance and understanding.

I see that you are currently involved with the Music-in-Education National Consortium that furthers your work of integrating music in public schools. Can you tell me about this organization and your efforts there?

I have a personal focus on music as a medium and model for learning in other arts, academics, and social-emotional development. MIENC was created to use arts partnerships to bring programs and research into schools and the MIENC Learning Laboratory School Network, guided by 10 principles of school improvement, was created to investigate music based program development and its impact on schools. The organization publishes journals to make practices and research visible, and actionable in school networks (see journal.music-in-education.org and develops longitudinal assessments of music literacy learning in schools among other programs.

For more information on Project Zero, go to http://www.pz.harvard.edu/index.cfm
For more information on Music-In-Education National Consortium, go to http://www.music-in-education.org/

The First "Real" Day of Homeschooling

Today was the first day we did the home-bound version of homeschooling. It was a very busy day, though I didn't help matters any by choosing the activities the way I did. In addition to the school work, I also did laundry, made two dinners (one to share for a friend who just had a baby), general tidying, and painting a wall in the living room. OK, so I am driven! I am hoping that days with only one dinner and no painting projects feel less rushed.

I set up the spare bedroom with a desk, maps of the United States and the world, and a bookshelf with all sorts of materials to read and write with. We three sat on the bed and I had my four year old, Jude doing a workbook that had him identifying which thing belongs and which doesn't, matching, counting, and shapes. On the other side of me was Ronan (eight). We did letter identification, reading, and writing. We also did number identification telling time, and writing of numbers. He has done adding, subtracting, multiplication and division already, but I wanted to start at the beginning to review, build confidence, and to see if there were any problems at the basic level before moving on, which turned out to be a good idea.

This method of sitting with both kids at the same time presented its challenges and rewards. The challenges included the fact that it fragmented my attention, having to attend to each kid when they wanted my help. The other challenge was the each kid got a little distracted by what the other one was doing, but that was pretty minor. The rewards were that I could keep an eye on both kids at the same time and be right there to help or identify problems. If I let Jude run loose while I am with Ronan he tends to find more destructive ways to get my attention! It IS challenging to handle more than one kid at a time.

In addition to the those studies we read a story about Ramadan, which recently ended, and Yom Kippur, which was today. We also read a few stories that deal with courage, which is our character theme of the month, which included a story on David and Goliath. I didn't intend to give my kids a tour of major religions of the wold, it just worked out that way. We ended the day with an art project. and the kids were free to go play with the neighbors who were just getting home from their schools.

As far as goals for myself, I managed to do OK. I took the time to meditate this morning, setting the pace and intention for the whole day. I did my little service project of feeding a family other than my own. I kept the house in reasonably good shape and even added some color to it. I did take a shower, which is a sign of a good day. Who cares if I didn't do it until 4:30! I am also on my way out for Girls' Night out with a friend to see a movie that is not rated G. So I get fairly high marks in efficiency, creativity, spirituality, cleanliness, and patience. I got an F in physical movement though. Perhaps tomorrow when I put away the painting and getting myself outside for some fresh air and exercise. Not bad for the first day of the Homeschool year!

Lessons Learned

I am HOME! We arrived last night around 6:00 to a spotlessly shiny house and a homemade dinner that included champaign and flowers on the table. After one month, many adventures and more than 4000 miles of driving, we were thrilled to see John and sleep in our own beds. The next few days will be devoted to getting things back in order, which I relish. It is the physical work that matches my mental/emotional state!

Here are a few things I learned over the course of this journey:

• A little bit of absence can recreate a relationship. It can restore the appreciation, attention, and affection that can sometimes get lost when we are consumed with the "mundaneity" of life, like jobs, child-rearing and the like.

• If you value things more than you value people, you will be really stressed out about your stuff getting ruined all the time and miss out on the really important relationships right before you. When you are old, sick, or lonely your stuff won’t be as much comfort to you as the relationships could have.

• Chicago drivers could use decaf, Xanax, and mandatory grace and courtesy classes. Merging is not the same thing as taking cuts, folks!

• Kangaroos are fascinating, especially how the incredibly tiny babies have to find their own way to the pouch after being born. It’s amazing they are as prolific as they are.

• Spending a lot of time with my kids in an unfamiliar setting promoted a lot of bonding and affection. We truly enjoyed the company and comfort of each other, even with the normal rough spots. I have never felt closer to my kids than now.

• When I am feeling negative in any way, it helps to name how I am feeling out loud. Somehow that dissipates the feelings.

• The really fun parts of our trip were the less scripted ones, and also the much cheaper adventures. Playing at the beach, hunting for frogs and crayfish, roasting marshmallows on the campfire, or picking our own apples were more memorable and special than all of the museums. Outside fun almost always trumps inside fun.

• As long as there are books around, there are abundant opportunities for learning and engagement. High praise for libraries everywhere.

• The lives of frogs are fascinating.

• Receiving graciously can be much harder for people than being generous.

• An evening with my best friend makes the world a better place. Shared laughter and understanding would solve most of the world problems. It certainly works for mine!

• Incessant complaining is sharing negativity. Ask yourself if others really want that negativity. No thanks, I’m good.

• The science behind what causes a ball to bounce is incredibly interesting. And fun.


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On the Way

Despite wanting to be home already, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit at the cottage in Caseville with my old college roommate. There is nothing like sand, sun, and water to renew you! We loved the food and conversation as well.

We have already started our descent on Denver. The first leg began yesterday when we arrived in Chicago for one more visit with our cousins. We went to a fantastic Arboretum today and learned all about nests of various critters and birds, which they loved.

I can't wait to start the drive tomorrow and am even tempted to drive the whole 14+ hours in one day, despite my noble intentions. I will probably stop it at 7-1/2 around Omaha, but I like the flexibility that driving gives me (though to be fair, what flying lacks in flexibility, control and expense, it makes up for in speed!).

The next post will be from HOME, where I hear it is snowing today.

Gaining a sense of appreciation of home and family (read: homesick)!

“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.” - Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), aviator, author

We have seen and done a lot over the last three and a half weeks and I can tell you just how much we are appreciating home, love and understanding companionship right now! This time has gone by so fast and I am glad we have done this epic trip filled with adventures and experiences, but we are feeling homesick and ready to return. Everyone is missing Daddy and our own sense of place. Today was the last day at homebase in Michigan at my parent's house. Tomorrow we head up north to my old college roomate's cottage on Lake Huron for the long weekend. It will be fun to play in the sand and visit old friends for one last relaxing bit of fun before we begin the journey home on Sunday. I was actually excited to pack up this evening!

During the last week we visited a Cider Mill, a couple of petting zoos, went geo-caching, and visited with friends. We studied Amelia Earhart, Johnny Appleseed, apple trees (we were most impressed with the Greeks who came up with grafting that give us the apples we have come to know and love), marsupials, and amphibians. Math was done with bead work (counting and sorting) and we did some science experiments involving polymers and energy, which was really cool.

I am glad we are experiencing a Michigan fall. The leaves are just now starting to change - something we always have missed with a school schedule. The weather was tending toward autumn today too. It seems that we are in synch with this season as we too are starting to wind down from the high energy of summer. We are ready to get home, turn our attention more inward, and get a little more serious about school work and routine. After such a long trip it will be a welcome change!

A Revolution in School Cafeterias

Revolution Foods is making its mark in school cafeterias across the country. School lunches have had a well-earned, legendary reputation for barely being edible and barely resembling actual food. Revolution Foods is changing the way our schools do hot lunches, by making them tasty, nutritious, and easy.

How did Revolution Foods begin?

Revolution Foods began with a founding team who believed that all students should have access to healthy, fresh food and nutrition education on a daily basis. Co-founders Kristin Richmond http://www.revfoods.com/browse/board_of_directors and Kirsten Tobey http://www.revfoods.com/browse/board_of_directors met at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and shared a vision of creating a social venture that would make their idea a daily reality for schools nationwide. It didn’t hurt that they both loved great food as well!


Having a background in education themselves, Kristen and Kirsten knew that in order for this venture to be successful they needed to reach out those that matter most: the school communities that they would serve, interviewing teachers, students, families and school leaders from over 40 Bay Area schools. They built a key partnership with Whole Foods who believed in their mission of getting as much fresh, healthy food as they could to as many students as possible. Prior to launching they also had the incredible fortune to meet their first hire, Executive Chef and partner extraordinaire, Amy Klein.

Driven by passion and supported by their families, friends and greater Bay Area community, Kristin and Kirsten launched Revolution Foods in the Summer of 2006.

How are your lunches better than the standard hot lunches found in schools across the country?

Revolution Foods prides itself on its high food quality standards, and this is one piece of what makes our meals and our lunch program unique. We also have a comprehensive nutrition education program. In terms of food standards, our partnership with Whole Foods helps us gain access to the highest quality ingredients available, that we can then use to create meals that are student favorites. Here’s a little bit about our lunches:
• Every lunch is served with fresh fruit and vegetables
• Our meats, baked goods and produce meet Whole Foods Market’s stringent quality standards
• Our milk is rBST- and hormone-free and our meats are hormone- and antibiotic-free
• Our food is prepared fresh daily; we do not serve fried or overly processed food
• Our meals do not contain high-fructose corn syrup or trans fat
• We use organic and locally produced ingredients whenever possible

We highly value the input from our students, school partners, administrators, and parents. Each school site has a dedicated School Account Manager who visits regularly, eats lunch with students, and gathers their feedback about the lunches. The relationships that School Account Managers build with students and schools are a unique component of our lunch program.

How many schools do you serve?

Revolution Foods serves over 120 schools and programs in the California, and has recently launched in Denver and Washington D.C., totaling over 160 schools throughout the United States.

What kinds of foods do you offer?

We offer a wide range of menu options. A few sample Revolution Foods menus include:
• All Natural Grilled Chicken with Homemade Teriyaki Sauce and Sesame Stir-Fried Bok Choy, Red Peppers and Carrots served atop a Fresh Noodle Nest, served with a Clementine orange
• All Natural Honey Glazed Chicken served with Roasted New Potatoes and Collard Greens served with a local peach.

Other popular items include Handmade Chicken Tamales, All Natural Spaghetti and Meatballs, Chicken Caesar Salad, and All Natural Hamburger with Organic Cheese on a Whole Wheat Bun. All meals are served with fresh fruit and vegetables and a carton of all natural, hormone free, rBST free low fat milk. Many of our most popular items came from student suggestions.

I see you have a program for packed lunches too. What do you offer those students?

In addition to our home style, fresh meal platform for schools, we have a delicious retail line of 100% organic snack foods sold in Whole Foods Market, Toys r Us, Babies r Us, HEB, Amazon.com, Drugstore.com and more. A percentage of the revenues of this line are used to fund our healthy meal program in low income schools.

How do you balance nutrition with good taste?

We have always started with high quality, fresh, all natural ingredients and used feedback from our school communities to craft our menus. This student focused menu design coupled with the fact that we adhere to stringent food standards and our meals meet the USDA recommended portion sizes and nutritional guidelines for the age groups we serve helps us accomplish our mission of balancing nutrition with good taste.

How do you educate parents, students and school staff on nutrition?

Another integral part of our lunch program is nutrition education. We believe it is important to inform students, families, and schools on how to make healthy choices both inside and outside of the lunchroom. We provide students, schools and parents with written materials as well as lessons and activities at school sites that focus on nutrition and healthy eating.

Because you cook the foods made daily in your own kitchen, how can this save a school district or organization in the long run? Do they save on kitchen costs?

This healthy meal program is ideal for schools that do not have the facilities or infrastructure to prepare fresh, home style meals. We custom design a plan for schools and districts that makes sense for them based on their vision for a health and wellness platform and the resources they currently have in house.

Do you serve the elderly community and other organizations beyond schools?

Although we primarily serve schools, we also serve summer camps, after school programs, recreational centers and non-profit organizations. We are able to touch even more organizations through our catering services.

How can a school get Revolution Foods in their lunch rooms?

We are always eager to include more schools in this School Lunch Revolution. You can get in contact with us by emailing info@revolutionfoods.com . You can also check us out on the web at www.revolutionfoods.com.

Homeschooling - The Conversation Stopper

I am in Michigan for a few weeks with my children and recently stood at the curb with others from my home town to watch the Labor Day parade, which, incidentally turned out to be more lucrative than Halloween for my children, leading Ronan to declare that he would never again resist going to a parade. Afterwards I ran into a few old classmates and stopped to chat. I noticed a pattern to the conversations that begins just after the pleasantries:

"How long are you in town?"

"About three weeks. I drove here with my kids for a month-long road trip."

(A look of confusion dawns) "When do your kids start school?"

"I am homeschooling them, so any time, really."

"Oh."

At this point the conversation could use a defibulator or maybe an Epi-pen. To help revive it, I have sometimes provided more detail, explaining that I got laid off this summer and that seemed the best choice for my recently private-schooled children. However, this elicits sympathy rather than understanding and it implies a sense of resigned unhappiness that I do not feel. Although it is true that I got laid off, I look at it as a gift: an opportunity to simplify our lives, spend time with our children, and give them a great education.

I didn't always feel this way. There was a time in the not so distant past that I did not have much understanding or respect for the tradition of homeschooling. I felt that children needed more social time that being around hundreds of other children can provide and that only an institution could provide them with the pedigree necessary for entrance to a good college for the purposes of securing gainful employment. I also thought it would be difficult, frustrating, boring, and that it would even create unhealthy family dynamics. I was wrong on all counts and on many levels.

I've noticed many opportunities to change perspective lately. Where I have made a negative judgment about a person or a circumstance, eventually I seem to find myself experiencing the other side of it. Not only is it humbling, it broadens my perspective, opens my mind, and increases my compassion. It is karma in its best, most beneficial connotation.

From now on I am going to tell people that I am leading a year-long, experiential learning expedition that is tailored to meet the needs of each student. Because I am!

The Fastest, Cheapest, Easiest Way to Enlightenment

The Dalai Lama was onced asked in front of a live audience what was the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to enlightenment. His reaction was to put his face in his hands and weep. After a few moments, he said that this was not a question a practioner (of meditation) would ask, and that if he knew what enlightment was, there would be no hesitation to do what it takes to attain it.

In this same way I could weep when I hear those who wield influence in the field of education talk about the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to get a kid through school. If we knew of the value of a rich, purposeful, meaningful education we would not hestitate to do what it takes to provide each child with one.

While enlightenment and graduation are very worthy end goals, there is a lot of time and effort that goes into them that cannot be sped through or done without mindfullness. This time and effort is not only necessary, but valuable in and of itself. As tempting as it is to get to the end goal, there are tremendous benefits all along the journey.

It may be no coincidence that Buddhism is referred to as a "path" rather than a religion. A path is a journey. The Buddhist path is full of opportunities for personal growth through and to self-discipline, practice, reflection, examination, striving, and compassion. It is through the thousands of attempts of mastery that we become masters. These are many of the qualities we would like for our children, and they each take time and effort. If education is viewed as a path, not just a goal, would we take the time to savor it, to value the everyday efforts and acheivement that make each experience an important step along the way?

How gratifying and powerful education would be if we all (politicians, parents, educators, students) viewed education as a path to explore slowly, carefully, and joyfully - as a daily gift. The thought that there may be no end to the path might change our perspective and our willingness to "do" rather than to "get".

Happiness, Freedom, and Peace of Mind

“There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.” —Peyton C. March (1864-1955); General, US Army

How true this is! It is interesting the way life works out sometimes. My job as a salesperson was drying up and getting less and less satisfying, making me wish I were spending more time with my family. Presto! I got what I wanted... with a layoff. In effort to give my kids a better education, more time, and plenty of good memories, they have become more relaxed, happy, capable, and interested. However, I never thought that I would be feeling the same way. I really thought I would often feel harried, worried, and overwhelmed. Instead, giving them what I think they need right now has given me the same exact gift. Although I had some fear and trepidation about homeschooling, it has re-energized my parenting, made us a closer family, and has been a seriously fun adventure.

This week, we went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival, where we watched a sword fight, a band with bagpipes, many curious costumes, and very funny performers. We visited Cranbrook Institute of Science, where we saw and learned all about bats, sloths, owls, dinosaurs, and astronomy. We've kayaked, steered a motor boat, and hunted for crawfish, frogs, and turtles. Jude, who is 4 decided he was ready to take off the training wheels, and he is now a bike rider! Stopping gracefully will come eventually too. We have been to the library to get many, many books on some of the subjects we explored last week and those to come in the next few weeks. We've also enjoyed playing with friends here. Ronan, trying to impress his friend today said, "Watch this. I am going to do what no other idiot would do." He then laid down in the creek with his clothes on. He got more laughs than he anticipated with that line.

Lots of laughter, learning, and lasting memories are being created.

We Have Arrived (Wet)

We did it - 1423 miles and 6 days of travel! It honestly went by incredibly fast because we have done and seen so much.

At Starved Rock State Park in Oglesby, Illinois we hiked around, reading about the Native American history. We discovered one of the many canyons, caves, and waterfalls there and were in awe. My kids groused a little about hiking but when they got to the waterfall they didn't want to leave. They thought it looked like a scene out of an Indiana Jones movie set and they explored the area for a couple of hours.

We had planned to head to the west shore of Michigan for sand dunes and beach fun, but the forecast made us rethink our plans. It called for more rain and 97% humidity. In some countries that percentage would be considered water boarding, but in the midwest it is called August. We instead opted for indoor culture in Chicago. We met our cousins at the Museum of Science and Technology and spent nearly 5 hours exploring there. The best parts were seeing a chick hatch and doing the many hands on experiments in the ideation room. We stayed only 24 hours in Chicago and many in our group parted involuntarily, so I promised to return for more culture and fun with the family on the way back.

The next stop was Anthony Cinzori's farm in Ceresco, Michigan. Anthony is a college buddy of mine from Michigan State University and he now runs the 270+ acre family farm, selling organic produce to Whole Foods Market, restaurants, and Farm Markets in the area. We toured the farm; ate okra, beans and watermelon right off the vine; drove a tractor; and saw the bee hives they rent for pollination purposes. We learned, among other many other things that green bell peppers are just unripe red, yellow, or orange bell peppers. That explains their stronger taste! My petless children admired the many cats and kittens in the barn for quite awhile. I called to see if we could bring home a kitten to Grandma's house. After the laughter subsided there was an emphatic "no", but we did leave with a lot very fresh vegetables in hand. I got a nostalgic dinner in at El Azteco, a restaurant I used to frequent in East Lansing and attempted to show my kids where I used to live and where I met their Dad but they weren't nearly as interested in that as I was. We made it to the Grandparents house by 7:00 PM.

We have lots of plans and down time with very little driving over the next three weeks we are here. Tomorrow we will visit the library and get some books on the subjects we would like to explore more after our experiences this week (like praying mantises, frogs and toads, planes and rockets, centrifugal force and more!)

Sand, Serendipity, and Solitude

The road trip is off to a great start! The kids have been marvelous with all of the driving, without a single fight or issue so far. About 200 miles into the trip I saw a sign for Lake McConaughy. Although it was unplanned, we decided to stop there and were so glad we did! We had the beach nearly to ourselves. There is no joy quite like kids jumping in waves, building sand castles, and swimming (fully clothed) in a lake that was an unexpected treat. It was a wise stop considering I could not find the skate park I had planned later in the day, making that one hour of joyful play even more important.

We got to Mahoney State Park in Ashland, Nebraska at 8:30 and I managed top set up the tent with a barely working flashlight and a helpful 8 year old. Mahoney State Park and the surrounding area is a great place for families. I had all sorts of activities in mind, but let the kids decide what to do all day. We played miniature golf, rented a paddle boat, spent time in awe at the Wildlife Conservatory (seeing bison, cranes, elk, deer, and more up close in their own habitat), and wandered around the huge and impressive Strategic Air and Space Museum for several hours. We ended the day with a campfire and stories and slept to the sound of insects in full song.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 with the urge to get going, but I made myself relax since I was purposely not hurrying! I waited for about an hour, took a surprisingly hot shower, and started tearing down camp. I wish I would have listened to my intuition, because about half way through it started pouring. Had I gotten started when I wanted to, we would have driven away dry just as the rain started coming! I shoved the tent in its bag, bulging with water (it is impressively water tight!), and drove off. We saw a sign just before Des Moines, Iowa for L.T. Organic Farm Restaurant so we followed it for our brunch. What a serendipitous find! We wandered around the farm, greeting the chickens, petting the dog, talking to the owners, and swinging on the tree swings while the food was brought out to the picnic tables outside amidst all of the vegetables growing. It was the best meal I have had in a long time! The rain resumed as we were leaving.

In Davenport, Iowa, we tried for another skate park and struck out again. We did, however, find Niabi Zoo, which was a really spectacular small zoo. Because of our homeschool schedule and our use of rain gear, we had the entire zoo to ourselves. We walked with kangaroos and emus, fed ducks and fish, offered cups of nectar to very friendly, hungry lorakeets and more. After a two hour "private" zoo trip and dinner, we headed to Oglesby, Illinois at Starved Rock State Park with enough time to explore the area to scope out how to spend our time tomorrow.

We've already done over 900 miles of our 1200+ journey and it has passed quickly and pleasantly. I have really appreciated being able to take advantage of serendipitous finds, the flexibility to adjust our plans on the fly, and the feeling of having each place virtually to ourselves. There are definitely advantages to homeschooling!

The Road Trip as a Metaphor for Education

I am taking my kids on a 2400 mile road trip. I have planned to drive from Denver to Michigan with many stops along the way. On the way there we will camp, hike, maybe ride some horses, go to the zoo, visit museums, go to a skate park or two, climb some sand dunes, play at the beach, and work on a farm. We plan on taking a week to get there, a few weeks in Michigan, and then several days to get back. Of course there will also be plenty of things to do and eat in the car to make the miles enjoyable. The idea is to enjoy the trip along the way, rather than just "get there" as fast as possible.

While planning this trip, I started to think of it as a metaphor for education. I could do this trip like my family used to do road trips from Michigan to Florida - straight through with very few breaks. Those miles were not a lot of fun for anyone and the goal was to maximize the time we spent at the destination before going home. This trip will be different. This trip is all about the journey, not just the destination. Instead of hurrying up to get to the goal, we are going to purposefully experience the trip all along the way.

I also think of education as a journey, rather than a destination. There is no agreement on what the purpose of education is, but obviously there are many benefits to a good education. John Dewey said that "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." I agree. Education should allow plenty of unstructured time for wonder and reflection - there is even value in boredom in that it encourages creativity, responsibility, problem-solving, and self-motivation. Education should be based on interests rather than mandates. It should grant equal time to and nurturing of the head, heart, and hands.

We have struggled to get this kind of education in the public schools, so this year I will be homeschooling. It is what allows me the luxury of taking a month at this time of year to travel and giving my kids broad, flexible, appropriately paced, rich educational (life!) experiences.

Of course I do have the goal that my children will be able to read, do math, understand science principles, etc., just as my end point goal is to get to Michigan and then safely back home. However, I don't plan on hurrying through to get to the goal. I will not be speed teaching by force or pressure or competition. There won't be a lot of drilling or testing. I plan on creating an educational setting that feels like an enjoyable part of every day life. I hope my kids get more than academics from this kind of education. I would like them to continue to learn, to be curious, to wonder, to investigate throughout their lives.

Although I am a former teacher, I have never homeschooled before. I plan to take an eclectic approach, borrowing from educational modalities that I have investigated and come to respect a great deal. Those include Democratic, Experiential, Waldorf and Montessori methods. I think the qualities in me that will be critical to making this year a success will be planning, an open mind, curiosity, discipline, compassion, and being fully present. A positive attitude and a good sense of humor will likely come in handy too. I do hope we meet other homeschoolers with whom we can share ideas, experiences, support, laughter and frustrations.

I have talked to plenty of people this summer about my plans for the road trip and to homeschool. Some of them view both as inadvisable at best and inescapable torture at worst. I have no doubt that both will be challenging at times, but I do feel that overall they will both be incredibly positive, rewarding experiences. I will be sharing these journeys of ours that are life itself all along the way!

Holistic Dance Instruction - An Interview with Between the Bones Founder, Mary Lynn Lewark

Nationally recognized for her solo choreography and performances by age 18, Mary Lynn Lewark's passion for dance, creativity and education fueled her desire to build a dance school. Since founding Between the Bones in 1996, she has produced and directed 11 original productions. Today, Mary Lynn continues to generate new and innovative dance experiences for her students and faculty. Her life experiences as a dance artist and educator – as well as mother to Sydney, Ellery and Lucy - bring a joyous “break the mold” dance curriculum to Between the Bones.

How did you get into dance instruction?

I have been a dancer most of my life. By the age of 18 I had my share of dance injuries. I had been teaching dance and got my degree in education. My first teaching job was at an Expeditionary Learning School, where I taught Kindergarten through 2nd grade for three years. I was struck at how the way the school is set up so that everyone wins and everyone learns. It is very collaborative rather than competitive. Yet, typically in dance it is very competitive and is designed to ensure that only the best participate. When I opened up my dance school I wanted to build on the idea formed in Expeditionary Learning that dancing, too, could be collaborative and inclusive and yet still competitive with other programs. I like the idea of working thematically and then building backwards; thinking about what you want a dancer to be in the end– expressive, graceful, talented and skilled, athletic, healthy and working backwards to put elements in place to allow them to achieve just that.

I understand you take an unconventional approach to dance instruction in that you teach in a holistic way? Can you describe that?

What is unique about our school is the somatic nature of it using the Feldenkrais philosophy. Somatic education has many forms but they lend themselves to teaching people how to use their bodies well. The Feldenkrais Method teaches possibilities of movement, through experience rather than imitation. Over the last ten years I have worked with Feldenkrais Practitioner Bethany Cobb applying the Method to our dance education. Typically you get to Feldenkrais only after an injury or as you get older. That is how I found it! But I thought, why wait for that? Including Feldenkrais in our dance curriculum builds a foundation along the way for knowing and understanding our bodies, when to push, when to listen and how to reduce the risk of injury.

What is Feldenkrais and how does it benefit people?

Moshe Feldenkrais is the man who originated it as a form of rehabilitating his self. I look at it as a constructivist model for learning. Its philosophy is to set up a situation for learning without telling the students what they will learn. Dancing is usually about imitation and this is the opposite. It is designed to encourage an internal knowing. It helps to make people to become more aware of their bodies and helps to reduce the risk of injury by breaking down movement so that learning can occur. These days we see a lot of people who are much less coordinated and less flexible. It is likely a result of our way of living, where we don’t climb trees or run, our play is restricted. No one comes in perfect. We all have missed developmental milestones, like crossing over the mid-line, right and left coordination, etc. Dance and Feldenkrais help to achieve these.

What is the mission of Between the Bones?

It is to provide a balanced dance education. What I mean by that is we want to balance strength with softness; technique with expression; skills with self-awareness. By balancing each aspect of dance with its opposite the kids become whole people, whole dancers.

How does Between the Bones help students grow, learn and succeed outside of the studio or off the stage?

Dance in general gives body awareness and confidence. You are the ultimate multi-tasker as a dancer – you have to be present yet think ahead. You have to do a difficult move with great concentration yet express a sense of ease or something else. It takes tremendous self-control and elegance. You have to be able to learn quickly. Dance students make great problem solvers. When you make a mistake on stage you have to be able to deal with that and move on. You don’t know exactly what is going to happen next, so you have to be open to it. Dancing in a performance will help build skills in any field. It helps with both process and product and encourages intellectual curiosity and interest.

The way you integrate dance with other related topics, like nutrition, classic literature, and history brings these lessons alive for your students. Describe how dance can make other subjects meaningful.

I am biased but I believe you could learn everything through dance! When you are researching before a dance performance, you look into the time periods and observe why they are wearing what they are wearing. You get a look at the politics and religious values of that time while preparing for the dance. When we did Alice in Wonderland we explored that period of time and talked a lot about the author, the historical time frame, and did a lot of critical thinking and questioning in preparation for the performance to really understand what we were going to be doing and telling.

I appreciate that you encourage students of all body types to dance. Please tell me about your philosophy in that regard.

Modern dance and jazz are particularly more accepting of bodies of all types. The goal is to be healthy and in shape and it is a challenge to balance healthy with rigorous. The dancing we do requires skill and discipline. We’ve had body types of all kinds and many on the too thin side. It is helpful if they get caught up in dance and find it in themselves to improve for their own benefit rather than through the external pressure imposed on them. Feldenkrais is good with providing a balanced approach and a sense of self.

How can dance help us tap into the Age of Creativity?

At Between the Bones we use the story to drive our work and our performances. When the dancers are a part of the creative process like they are at Between the Bones, they become part of a collaborative team involving teachers, costume makers, and students to take a leap and solve problems that haven’t been solved before. It is not just imitative or just a recital. The story gives boundaries and rules and allows us to think creatively. It is constructivist: you throw all of the pieces together that you can work with, knowing that those are the only things you can use to create. Let’s see what happens.

For more information on Between the Bones, visit: www.betweenthebones.com

Petition for Healthy School Lunches

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine needs your help to revolutionize school lunches across America! All students have a right to have healthful plant-based options in their schools. But unfortunately, most schools don’t offer these healthful options.

Now is the time for action. Congress is revising the Child Nutrition Act, which determines what foods are served in school lunches. Sign the petition today to tell Congress that students deserve nutritious foods—more fruits, vegetables, vegetarian foods, and healthful nondairy beverages.

Sign the Petition at: http://www.healthyschoollunches.org

Also consider attending the following Town Halls
Eagle County Town Hall
Aug 19, 2009 - Wednesday, August 19th Eagle County Town Hall Singletree Community Center 1010 Berry Creek Road Edwards, CO 81632 4:30 – 5:30 PM For more information, visit http://polis.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=140664

Adams County Town Hall
Sep 5, 2009 - Saturday, September 5th Adams County Town Hall Welby New Technology High School 1200 East 78th Avenue #105 Thornton, CO 80229 1:00 - 3:00 PM For more information, visit http://polis.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=140668

For more information, visit <http://www.healthyschoollunches.org/>

Opening a Public Waldorf School - an Interview with Alliance for Public Waldorf Education

How does the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education assist people and communities?

The Alliance for Public Waldorf Education is a member organization, supporting established schools, developing schools and initiatives in the planning and start up phase. The Alliance provides resources and free consultation from experienced administrators to its member schools. In addition, the Alliance provides an annual conference, professional development opportunities, and is developing partnerships in support of the public/charter schools movement.

How close does the public version of Waldorf come to the traditional Waldorf schools?

The curriculum and pedagogical approach looks very similar in both public and independent Waldorf schools. The public sector lens comes with additional transparency and accountability requirements, particularly around documenting grade-by-grade curriculum and academic standards. Most people wouldn’t notice much difference in the classroom if they visited a private Waldorf school or a public school inspired by Waldorf education.

With public schools' inflexibility on standardized testing, how do you keep the integrity of the pace of Waldorf with literacy?

At most public Waldorf schools, the curriculum doesn’t vary much from the traditional independent Waldorf program. Meeting literacy and all academic standards while nurturing the development of the whole child is integral to a Waldorf education. A Waldorf curriculum takes a different approach to reading in grades one and two; however, students are not tested in most states until grade three, by which time students’ literacy is basically on par with the testing standards. California schools test a year earlier than the federal government recommends or requires, and students tend to do poorly on the second grade exams. In later years, however, student test results are comparable and above, as would be expected with the full Waldorf curriculum.

In public Waldorf schools, do the students stick with the same teacher for 8 years or at least several years?

Yes. When a teacher has a class for several years, the teacher and the children come to know and understand each other in a deeper way. Children who feel secure in that familiar relationship, may be better able to learn. The interaction of teacher and parents also can become meaningful over time, which can be supportive to the child’s development.

How do you strive to keep the hands, heart and head balance in the public school setting?

Waldorf curriculum and pedagogy seeks to nurture all aspects of the child’s development leading to excellence in intellectual and academic capabilities. Artistic and practical subjects such as gardening, hand work, and woodworking play a significant role in preparing students for life in the ‘real’ world.

In addition to reading, writing, math, history, geography, and the sciences, children learn to sing, play a musical instrument, draw, paint, carve and work with wood, speak clearly and act in a play, think independently, and work harmoniously and respectfully with others. Lessons are primarily delivered orally by the teacher in a thoughtful, interactive and artistic manner, thereby engaging hands, heart and head into all lessons and activities of a student’s day.

How many public Waldorf schools are there in the United States?

There are 46 schools and initiatives in the United States.

How successful have they been?

Lower grade students moving to a comprehensive high school (public or private) are often recognized for their keen ability to think, for being well-rounded young adults, and as having experience as learners rather than merely digesters. High school graduates are likely to have well developed sense of themselves, sound thinking and reasoning skills, a genuine curiosity of their world, and love of learning. While public schools inspired by Waldorf education are relatively new in the United States, even the most prestigious colleges embrace Waldorf educated students as likely to be a contributing, engaged student and have a successful college experience. The Yuba River Charter School in Nevada City, CA, whose oldest graduates are now 25 years old, has had a group graduate from UCLA and Berkeley this year and has their first high school graduate attending Harvard. Other students are now finishing graduate school and one is a Waldorf teacher!

For more information on the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education, go to http://allianceforpublicwaldorfeducation.org/

Reggio Emilia - Another Fine Italian Import Interpreted by Daniel Bigler

Daniel Bigler, previously a guest blogger here has graciously returned to explain Reggio Emilia. Daniel is a former Reggio Emilia-inspired teacher and eloquently explains more on this education modality or philosophy.

What is the Reggio Emilia philosophy?

It might be best to understand the philosophy within the context of its birthplace: Reggio Emilia, Italy. Reggio Emilia is a small region in northern Italy and after the devastation of World War II, many of its local communities and parents began to realize that the way to move beyond this violence laid within education. So among the war-torn rubble, mothers literally began to piece their communities back together by coming around their young children and building preschools for them. Loris Malaguzzi was a young journalist and educator at the time and impressed by the parents' efforts. He helped them build a system of schools that would ultimately support their different concept of how to exist within the world.

In many respects, it's hard to separate what's become known as the Reggio Emilia philosophy of education with their larger philosophy of life. If I had to try, though, it'd be characterized by these things:

* A respect for children and their capacities and curiosities

* An emergent curriculum that comes from the children and their inquiries about the world, which often manifests in in-depth project work

* A belief that children can learn through different "languages" and art mediums, and that representing and exploring learning through these is central to true understanding. Thus, at the center of every classroom is the Art Studio

* A sense of harmony and connection between the classroom and the broader community, the natural world, and others

* A letting go of time, of hurriedness and unnecessary expectations as part of an attempt to get back to the joy of learning. "Nothing without joy," as Loris Malaguzzi once said.

There's probably many other defining characteristics of the Reggio Emilia philosophy and each person I've found working in it is drawn to the philosophy for different reasons. I can only explore and share what Reggio Emilia is to me – though many others, like Lella Gandini, Louise Boyd-Cadwell, and George Forman have done a truly fantastic job at introducing Reggio Emilia's philosophy and practices to American audiences. There's a wealth of wisdom about education and "the Reggio Emilia way" in their books, if you're interested.

I understand it is more of a guiding philosophy than a methodology or set curriculum. Can you explain that?

Reggio Emilia's philosophy about education can really be summed up, I think, with this question: What is your Image of the child? Do you view children as capable, competent, strong, and wise? Do children have something to contribute to broader society? Are they able to be in charge of their own learning?

I wonder if you really have to be in the right place mentally, to work in a truly Reggio-inspired way: a conceptual place where you no longer place any "value" on education in the sense that you expect it to do certain things, and produce pre-established sets of knowledge and skills. This approach requires you to take a step back and do away with all the adult expectations of what children "should be learning" and instead just allow and encourage the children in front of you to learn what comes naturally to them. The emphasis is really shifted from the system to the child.

It's often mistakenly assumed that the Reggio Emilia philosophy requires less work of the teacher, because you don't have a curriculum; but really, it is the opposite. As a teacher, you're asked to be constantly and deeply engaged with the children you're among, and constantly reflective of where they are at mentally, emotionally, physically – fully aware of the possibilities of where their learning might go from here.

It's sort of as if you're committed philosophically to making everything up as you go along, without the past theorists and wealth of knowledge about "child development" to fall back on and get in the way of recognizing the children as they truly are. You're certainly engaged with these ideas from the broader culture, but you take nothing for granted. Instead of some checklist handed off from above or an abstract theory a guy wrote in a book once of how and what children learn, the children themselves become the benchmark for whether you're doing it right.

Reggio Emilia touches on our connection to each other, the community, the food on our plate, etc. Why is relationship and connection so important?

I'm certain some of this is simply reflective of the Reggio Emilia philosophy's Italian roots: the Italians emphasize family, simplicity, enjoyment. Their worldview is one of living life slowly and appreciating it fully, with others close to them. In that way, the way Reggio Emilia does "education" is a natural extension of how they do "life" altogether.

I don't know how much of this transfers easily (especially to America), since so much of it is worldview, but I do think there some important truths here. For instance, if we want kids to really explore an interest deeply and passionately, mindful that it's largely the process and not the content that matters most in children's cognitive development, then we have to give them ample time to do so. We have to value unstructured, unhurried days and not be bound to the clock. We have to let kids continue to play and build, even though our adult heads might say it's time to put away the blocks and sit down for lunch. Children need to be able to depend on and expect a certain continuity to their work – they have to be able to trust that they can revisit, for instance, their pretend dinosaur play or pirate ship block building the next day and the next, and not be hurried along to another thing on some curriculum list somewhere.

Likewise, if we want our children to truly know the value of human life and learn how to work and collaborate together then we have to emphasize and build *real* communities, and we have to set the structure and culture of our classroom so that everybody in it (adults and kids alike) truly rely and depend on each other, with an equal investment in the community as well as self.

In the same way, the children *have to* be connected to the broader community, woven into the fabric of the broader social life happening around them. They shouldn't be shoved aside in a child care classroom, guarded by a gatekeeper, while the adults of a community go off to work and live. Children need to be present and an active part of the life of a community – they need to be known and accepted at the local farmer's market, the park, area businesses.

This idea of fostering true community among children and integrating them into the broader community might be the biggest obstacle for American schools hoping to transplant the Reggio Emilia philosophy. Our strong individualistic tendencies and emphasis often get in the way of children truly learning to be a part of a broader classroom, community, or world. We often want our children to "develop" enough and become "educated" enough, become autonomous enough before we weave them into our society. But if we stop and think, this is a rather silly way of doing it. If we what we're after is empowered, capable, strong learners and thinkers who can go out into our society and make the world better, then we absolutely need to have them be an integral, welcomed and supported part of that world first.

I think most Italians would be appalled at our "child care" centers – aghast especially at the idea that we treat children's care as an economic good. Children have become little more than add-ons to our lives, not connected in any meaningful way to the broader cultural life and community. Until they are quality, purposeful early childhood education in America can never be fully realized.

How is the role of the teacher different in this setting?

Most education occurs within a deficit-oriented, authority-based paradigm. Teachers work to put knowledge and skills out into the classroom, making them accessible to children "at their level", so that children can become filled up with those (very culturally-bound) things. It's a future-oriented setting, always with the teachers looking onward at what children need to know next, looking for ways to impart this knowledge to them. Simply put, most education has children as passive bystanders in their own education.

In the Reggio Emilia philosophy, the opposite is the case: teachers believe that children are natural learners and inherently empowered individuals capable of incredible thinking and inquiry. The world, as Reggio-inspired teachers see it, is rich enough for children to learn from – and unless they've been taught out of it, children have a natural and insatiable curiosity for knowledge and understanding. Children are encouraged to experiment and make mistakes, to explore their own interests, The teacher's role is simply to support this, taking their cue from the child himself.

It's easy to mistake this as doing nothing, but in actuality there's a lot more work involved with this kind of teaching paradigm. One of the main new roles of the teacher is as observer and documenter: teachers listen to children's dialogue and questions, observe their play and activities, and root out their deeper passions and interests. Then in documenting their observations, teachers give themselves something to reflect on, an insight about further "provocations" and subtle changes they can offer, that might add a richer, deeper dimension to the children's exploration and activity. You slowly see the classroom's curriculum "emerge" this way, with teachers using their observation and documentation to reflexively introduce just "one more thing" to the classroom at a time – careful not to get too ahead of the children, but at the same time artfully scaffolding their experiences.

There is, of course, many other role implications to such a drastically different teaching paradigm. The teachers are collaborators with children, and don't necessarily provide them the answers, rather they encourage open-ended inquiry. At its core is this different concept of relating to children.

What is meant by the expression, The Hundred Languages of Children?

Understandably, it's not a literal expression and it's also not meant to be limiting, as "the hundred" might suggest. Instead, the expression "The Hundred Languages of Children" encapsulates the idea that children discover, learn, do, and exist in endless ways. Think of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences: it's the notion that children learn and achieve literacy about a topic through multiple ways, many different languages. The Hundred Languages is meant to communicate this open expanse of opportunity about how learning can happen.

It's also meant to engender a certain respect and acknowledge for each child as a gifted, thoughtful, and unique individual. A child may be naturally gifted at dance. Or a child might choose to sketch a drawing to express his understanding of how leaves form and maybe resemble the "skeleton bones" in our hands. The visual arts, physical movement, speech, music, hand work, dance, dramatic play... all of these can be languages of learning for children. Reggio-inspired teachers recognize this, and work with children to open these languages up to them for their use. This is why the L'Atelier – the "Art Studio" – is at the heart of any Reggio Emilia-inspired classroom. Through developing a proficiency in and meaningfully using these languages, children can – on their own, in the very truest sense of empowerment – deeply engage and explore topics, ideas, and inquiries in very real and concrete ways.

From a scientific perspective, allowing and encouraging children to explore one topic or object through a diverse variety of physical media increases and enhances the neurological connections centralized around that topic or object, deepening a child's schema of understanding about that thing. Representing and exploring things in different ways allows our brains to fully, comprehensively understand and appreciate those things in a way that simple bookwork would never allow.

How does this approach address matters of balance (academic, emotional, social, physical, etc.)?

You know, I think there's just a natural holism to the Reggio Emilia approach. Teachers approach children as a whole, and I don't think that many people who work in this approach tend to think much about these matters of balancing the social, emotional, physical, cognitive domains. It simply comes rather naturally.

I sometimes think we, as adults break children's lives and experiences down too much. We narrow a child's life to such precisely defined parameters, that I wonder if we lose a part of it in the process. I don't think that the Reggio Emilia approach neglects any of these aspects of life. In fact, I think the balance is a lot richer and deeper than most educational approaches – but it's not something we spend any particular effort in doing. When you discard any adult expectations of how children should be, and view them simply as they are, it's much easier to meet children's needs.

How does the approach take sides in the debate of play-based education or early learning education in the younger years?

I don't know if the approach particularly does take sides. For its part, the Reggio Emilia philosophy is largely about culture. At its core it's a way of thinking about children, acknowledging their abilities and listening to them. There's a decent amount of mutual respect involved, but how this approach might actually "look" depends drastically on the individual community it's in and a part of.

Naturally, some classrooms may be more play and exploratory-based, while others might seem more "serious"; it simply depends on the children, the culture and experiences they bring with them, and how their interests manifest in the every-day activity of the classroom. Often this is through play, but sometimes it's through arts-based representation and exploration, project work, or other ways. As adults, we just try to let it happen, whatever it is and support it however we can. Of course as teachers we're kept incredibly busy but our roles change, from say, instructors and traffic monitors to observers, documentarians, provocateurs, and co-learners.

At the preschool I worked at – with many of our parents being working professionals – we had the children for a good portion of the day. We spent much of the morning engaged in more "focused" work, spending a lot of time in our art studio, either exploring and practicing different art media, or continuing long-term projects if we have any going on. The larger part our day has a natural, relaxed ebb and flow to it. We try to minimize transitions and group or adult-directed times during the day and children mainly work and play in small groups with their friends. The "curriculum" and activity of the classroom emerges from their own thoughts and ideas. In this way, "education" becomes a living, breathing thing, when put in the hands of the children themselves.

Is it only for younger kids?

Not at all! One of the very best (elementary) schools I've seen was a charter school in Portland, Oregon, that worked out of a Reggio-inspired philosophy. They had a preschool program, yes, but they also had grades above that – up to 5th grade, the last time I was there. It's very much a philosophy that largely transcends both age and, for that matter, culture.

The philosophy manifests itself in different ways at different ages, of course. When I was at this particular school, for instance, the 3rd and 4th graders were wrapping up these immensely impressive and elaborate projects on issues like civil rights, explored and represented through different media and experiences. They also didn't neglect the more "traditional" subjects like mathematics, although they explore them through holistic, interdisciplinary means, like integrating math with their other projects, for instance, or through kinesthetic and spatial means, like advanced architectural building with blocks.

The preschoolers, on the other end, had spent the year exploring issues of power and identity. The class had some unusually active young boys, and instead of having their unusually strong inclination toward rough-and-tumble play and pretend fighting suppressed, the teachers recognized its connection with another strong interest the children had that year – their interest in the animals that they saw at their semi-regular trips to a nearby zoo. The teachers magnificently wove both of these threads together, and, over time, these kids knew and, as unusual as it sounds, could innately sympathize with these animals on such an intimate level. Toward the end of the year, they spent several long weeks in the art studio, the children laboring intently over what would become these elaborately detailed, intricately painted paper måché masks that represented the different zoo animals. They finished them just in time for one last trip to the zoo, where the children donned their masks and truly, physically, emotionally *became* the animals on the other side of the fences. It's these transcendent moments that you only rarely get to witness that let you know there can truly be more – a lot more – to a child's education.

So the philosophy may appear differently at different ages, but it's very much for any age. If there's a central commitment to supporting children's inquiry, learning through arts- and materials-based representation and expression, and reflective, community-based teaching practices, then the Reggio philosophy can, in my mind really be taken anywhere.

How does the Reggio Emilia classroom look and feel compared to a conventional classroom?

In terms of the materials, I don't know if this is as defined as some would like to think. The philosophy can inspire any teacher or school – even those with few resources or funding – and it's really mostly the immaterial culture that stands in sharpest contrast to conventional classrooms.

I do think, though, that when teachers and adults are mindful about the environment that the children are in– "The Third Teacher," as the Reggio Emilia approach calls it, they find ways around resource limitations to imbue their environment with a certain spirit. Children learn just as much from the physical spaces and places around them, from the materials around them, so this is important. Even if a school is dirt-broke though, teachers can carefully consider what physically is allowed in their classroom, only permitting what they find to be meaningful or provocative to children's learning, in harmony with the children themselves and the spirit of the classroom as a whole. Teachers can foster attunement with the natural world by bringing in stumps, leaves, dirt, and so forth and they encourage resourcefulness and creativity by bringing in materials that are largely "blank" of their own accord in the beginning, but which allow children to project their own worlds and play onto them. In this sense, minimalism can often be a good thing – one of the best things, in fact. Children aren't distracted by the horrendously bright colors and flashy "educational" posters found in most conventional classrooms, and instead their classroom space really begins to take on, over time the simple lives and character of the children themselves.

It's this sense of harmony and attunement with the children themselves – not just some far off, distant concept of who the children are or should be – that I really can't adequately describe. It's very much a dynamic thing, changing over the years with different groups of children, and because it comes from individual children, it can never be replicated.

This harmony can in many ways be encouraged by setting a soothing, calm stage without distractions, by allowing the natural world in, placing live plants in and around the classroom, and by doing what is possible to let natural light in. This also means discouraging adult-designed or overly-specific toys or displays, and replacing the cute alphabet and weather posters with children's own artwork, carefully articulated documentation of children's learning, and photographs. Certainly, great attention is also given to the Art Studio, to make it a place of rich and diverse opportunity for exploring material languages and representing learning. There are a great many ideas and strategies that may physically set aside a Reggio Emilia-inspired classroom from others. But in the end, it's the classroom's teacher who has the responsibility to mindfully this place.

This place will be different for each context, taking into account the culture, material resources at hand, and the children's lives – but we usually find that if teachers take the proper time out to think through the environment, not simply settling for the status quo out of a catalog but carefully considering the physical space in the perspective of this different philosophy of children and learning, then they end up with a classroom offering children much more meaning and spirit than a conventional classroom.

Daniel's blog can be found at http://www.danielsaurus.com

Ecoliteracy - An Interview with Lisa Bennett

Lisa Bennett is the communications director for the Center for Ecoliteracy. She is also a former fellow at Harvard University's Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and is currently writing a book about parents and global warming.

What is the mission of the Center for Ecoliteracy?

Our mission is education for sustainable living. We provide expertise, inspiration, and support to the immensely hopeful and vital schooling for sustainability movement that is rising among a growing number of public and independent schools in the U.S.

We’re committed to this for two reasons: First, because schooling for sustainability is grounded in ecological knowledge and hands-on experiences in the natural world—and this kind of schooling inherently stimulating, relevant, and alive. It makes education exciting again.

Second, schooling for sustainability is a promising answer to our many environmental challenges. Addressing climate change, the end of cheap energy, and other issues, after all, will require citizens who can think ecologically. And where else can young people be prepared for this but at school?

What services do you provide for schools?

We offer a wide range of services, depending on what a particular school needs. In fact, our work typically begins with identifying the appropriate starting point for each school. Usually, this tends to be the theme or pathway most people in that school community care about. It might, for example, be around food, gardens, the campus, community, or larger curriculum.

We offer seminars that attract people from around the United States and many other countries, and books, such as Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World and Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability, which will be available in September 2009.

We also offer curriculum audits, coaching for teaching and learning, in-depth curriculum development, school sustainability report cards, and technical assistance. You can find more information at www.ecoliteracy.org/about/services.html

What kinds of schools do you typically work with?

We have worked with hundreds of schools, both public and independent, and seen extraordinary successes in almost every setting imaginable. The article, “Greening a K-12 Curriculum,” describes how we worked with one school that sought to integrate sustainability education throughout its entire curriculum. (See http://www.ecoliteracy.org/publications/head_royce.html)

Why is sustainability an important concept for an elementary school student? Shouldn’t they spend their time on reading and math instead?

The good news is that this is not an either-or choice. That is, schooling for sustainability is not another “add on” that teachers must somehow squeeze into their day. Rather, it is a richly creative approach to education that allows teachers to integrate an ecological shift in perspective into subjects ranging from art and English to science and mathematics.

To support this shift, the Center for Ecoliteracy offers a framework called Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability (also the title of our new book!) This is grounded in four guiding principles, which can be applied in a single classroom or entire K-12 school:

1. Nature Is Our Teacher
2. Sustainability Is a Community Practice
3. The Real World Is the Optimal Learning Environment
4. Sustainable Living Is Rooted in a Deep Knowledge of Place

I love the statement that food is an organizing principle for encouraging ecological understanding. It certainly brings ecology from the conceptual level to the practical, meaningful level. Can you explain this more fully?

Food is so central to human survival and experience that it can be a pathway for integrating nearly any subject—science, health, history, social studies, geography, art, economics. Nutrition education makes more sense when studied in the context of how nature provides.

How we grow, process, transport, market, prepare, and dispose of food is critical to the central issues of sustainable living: resource use, energy, pollution, water and soil conservation. Food serves as an ideal entry point for understanding the interrelations of such world issues as hunger, trade policy, energy use, and climate change.

Students can track the sources of the food in their lunches and calculate the resources and energy used to bring it to them. They can research what types of foods would be available to them if they were to adopt a regional “hundred-mile diet”—eating only food grown within a hundred-mile radius in order to emphasize fresh and seasonal ingredients, support local agriculture, and reduce the energy and expense needed to preserve and ship food over long distances.

You advocate education of the head, hands and heart. Why not just the head, as most schools focus on and test?

As our cofounder and executive director, Zenobia Barlow says, "We know from considerable experience that human beings struggle with cognitive dissonance, which means that we can uphold an idea or a value, while simultaneously acting in ways that are inconsistent with that idea or value, causing us to resolve those dissonances or rationalize them. Our current lifestyles are an example in terms of consumption and its implications. Left to the head alone, we are in trouble as a species."

Sustainability is also a practice that involves skills. Addressing environmental problems like climate change requires complex thinking and changes in behavior. For example, look at how the Southern Hemisphere—or the people on the other side of the tracks, so to speak—is forced to live with the consequences of our decisions to place toxic dumpsites or ship toxic waste to their backyards. To fully grasp this issue, one needs to genuinely care about who is downstream, and then act on it. The Head alone won't get us there.

Furthermore, living sustainably implies living in community. It's not for the faint-hearted or the single person dwelling in isolation. Living sustainably involves relationship, communication, and cooperation skills. We can’t achieve mastery by reading or philosophizing about them.

If you read the brain research on how people learn, it's multi-modal. Talking at people about ideas isn't a very effective education strategy. People learn by actively constructing their knowledge base—and that is best accomplished by engagement, grappling with real problems.

The people who dreamed up nuclear energy or bombs without having figured out what to do with the toxic waste exemplify what happens when education primarily engages the head.

Humans have a range of competencies. Education poses the challenge of responding to the vast spectrum of human capabilities. Remember the notion of "I think therefore I am." That was the Cartesian logic of a few centuries ago. We need an updated education model, don't you think?

It seems Ecoliteracy takes on not only the classroom, but the school at large, involving the staff and community as well. It demonstrates that schools are not just institutions for students learning, but, as you put it, they should be a healthy network of relationships that include everyone. What is the school sustainability report card and what is done to help schools achieve good marks on it?

Absolutely! Because, as we say in our Smart by Nature principles, sustainability is a community practice. That is, sustainability depends on a healthy network of relationships that includes all members of the community.

When educators, parents, trustees, and other members of the school community make decisions and act collaboratively, they demonstrate sustainability as a community practice. School communities also have the opportunity to model sustainable practice through the ways in which they provision themselves with food, energy, and other basic needs, and how they relate to the larger communities of which they are a part.

The Center for Ecoliteracy sustainability report card is a broad assessment of schools' sustainability policies and practices. It is conducted through the lens of campus, curriculum, community, and school food systems.

Tell me about Smart by Nature.

Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability a new book from the Center for Ecoliteracy and our senior editor Michael K. Stone. Available in September 2009 from U.C. Press and Amazon.com, it portrays the hopeful new sustainability movement that is growing among public and independent schools in the U.S.

Endorsed by Daniel Goleman, Alice Waters, the National Wildlife Federation and others, Smart by Nature offers a compelling framework for schooling for sustainability that is based on nearly 20 years of experience in schools. With its roots in systems thinking and whole-school change, this framework is organized around the four central principles I mentioned earlier: Nature is our teacher; Sustainability is a community practice; The real world is the optimal learning environment; and Sustainable living is rooted in a deep knowledge of place.

This book also offers concrete strategies for greening the campus and curriculum, conducting environmental audits, rethinking school food, and transforming schools into models of sustainable community.

Smart by Nature is also the name of our larger initiative that is dedicated to supporting the schooling for sustainability movement nationwide. You can learn more by signing up for our newsletter at www.ecoliteracy.org

Balance in Democratic Education - An Interview with Sam Chaltain

Sam Chaltain is the National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy, a DC-based education “action tank” devoted to restoring the public purpose of public education. He is also the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 principals create more equitable, high-functioning learning environments. Previously, Sam spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-director of the First Amendment Schools program. I approached Sam with some concerns and much admiration for the Democratic model of education. By the end of the interview I was convinced that this is one the best education modalities going.

Meghan McCain recently got slammed for not having an encyclopedic knowledge of history, when she admitted to not knowing much about a certain historic event.  While she did inadvisably blame her lack of knowledge on her youth, it begs the question: what *should* a child should know when he graduates from high school?

I am less interested in mandating what a child should know than I am in exploring what s/he should understand and be able to do. As I wrote in a recent Huffington Post op-ed <http://cli.gs/hJUVPp> , if our goal is to prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace, the standards we pursue should be whatever young people need most to be successful in college and the workplace. And in today's world, although young graduates certainly need a foundation of content knowledge, the greater measure of their long-term success will be the extent to which they learn to use their minds well.

Using one's mind well means more than just acquiring large numbers of discrete facts; it means learning how to find, analyze, and use information in adaptive ways. It doesn't mean content doesn't matter either - just that our decisions about which content to teach (and why) should be made at the school level, by the people who know students best - their teachers. Neither does it mean we should throw up our hands and say there are certain things we just can't measure. http://mc2paedia.wikispaces.com/habits

I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that, say, a school in California and a school in Mississippi are reaching for the same golden ring. Common standards would be useful, therefore, but they must be aspirational, not basic. They must be guideposts, not hitching posts. And they must be indicators of wisdom that students will need to be successful in college and the workplace, not shards of knowledge that make it easier to devise uniform tests and mandate standardized modes of instruction.

Is there a set of core skills, like literacy or basic math skills that you feel is important to someone fresh out of school and looking for a job?

I spoke to this a bit in the previous question, but I'll get more specific by using the example of a school in NH where the curriculum is organized around seventeen skills (the school calls them 'habits') of mind and being. Content is one of several ways - professional internships, wilderness treks, and shared governance are others - through which the school helps young people cultivate these core skills, including habits as elusive as "collaboration" and "quality work." http://mc2paedia.wikispaces.com/habits

I'm not suggesting this school's set should become the requirement for all schools - just that it is vital to decide as a school community what core skills you want your graduates to acquire, and to then work backwards from those skills to ensure that your school's curricula and activities are all aligned to help young people develop accordingly. Short of this, as it has been said before, any road will get you there.

I am respectful of everyone learning at his own pace, yet I know of someone in a Democratic school that is 15 years old and cannot yet read.  I am very uncomfortable with that.  I feel like that child has missed out on years of beauty, learning, independence - the very thing that Democratic/Open schools are supposed to nurture.  Can you comment on that?

This is the central riddle I try to answer in my forthcoming book, American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community. The crux of the problem is that many schools are unaware of a fundamental tension that exists in all of us - on one hand, there is the irresistible, universal human impulse for freedom - and for feeling in control of our own destiny and determining the shape of the world around us. And on the other hand, there is an equally pressing human desire for structure, safety and a sense of order to the world.  

These two universal needs – for freedom on one hand, and structure on the other – are particularly relevant to our nation’s school leaders, who must strike the right balance between the two in order to create healthy, high-functioning learning environments. And yet in my years as an educator, I have witnessed scores of schools that choose, consciously or unconsciously, to value one of these needs at the expense of the other. In some schools, like the one you described, students are given too much freedom, and adults end up abdicating their responsibility to serve as authoritative guides for the learning process. In others, schools provide too much structure, and adults end up becoming authoritarian presences who stifle student engagement and self-discovery.

We do not need to choose. It is possible – indeed, essential – to find the right organizational balance between individual freedom and group structure. In fact, research confirms that when school leaders do so, they create optimal conditions for student learning, motivation and engagement.

Now, more than ever, our country needs these sorts of schools. We need schools that provide young people with well-structured spaces in which to discover who they are and what they care deeply about. We need schools where adults prepare students for active citizenship and the 21st century workplace. And we need schools to reinforce democratic practices that extend beyond the school’s walls, helping adults unite behind the shared belief that all children deserve to be seen and heard. But before that vision can become a reality, we must ensure that the central elements of our social covenant are also in place in our schools: a clear sense of structure and shared identity on one hand, and an unwavering commitment to individual freedom on the other. And that's a very specific leadership skill, and one that isn't necessarily a part of most training programs today.

In the work world, if we are lucky, we get to choose which tasks to do, not whether or not to do a task.  For example, Terri Gross, the host of Fresh Air on NPR gets to interview all sorts of interesting people.  She can choose who to interview, but she doesn¹t get to to choose whether or not to interview someone ­ she doesn¹t get to keep her job if she doesn¹t do something.  Some schools give their students a lot of liberty.  How does his much liberty prepare a person for much less of it in the work world?

In schools that don't have the right organizational balance between individual freedom and group structure, kids are sometimes not prepared well for the world beyond those walls. This is why it's so important for those of us committed to democratic practice to become experts in organizational change theory, systems thinking, etc. It isn't enough to just tell kids they have rights. Jim Collins has a good way to put this, even though he was talking about successful businesses. “Disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action – operating with freedom within a framework of responsibilities – this is the cornerstone of a culture that creates greatness.” The same holds true for schools.

Without experience or much knowledge of the world about us, we don't know what we don't know.  How do you expose children to new ideas, other cultures, the history of the world, the wonders of the universe and still preserve their freedom to choose what they want to learn?

The learning process is the process of personal transformation. It's the chrysalis, the experience of developing the knowledge and skills to use one's unique voice, effectively and with integrity, in co-creating our common public world.

So the way you expose children to new ideas, cultures, and wonders is by aligning every aspect of your school to the shared goal of providing a healthy, high-functioning, supportive, relationship-driven culture of learning - one in which adults provide professional guidance and simple structures that help young people discover their passions and their inner voices. Once that is in place, the rest will take care of itself.

How does a Democratic school capitalize on the collective knowledge of our culture, for example our elders, our experts in a given field, our authors?
 
In short by creating a legitimate democratic learning community.

Myles Horton, the founder of the Highlander adult education schools that helped train activists like Rosa Parks, put it this way: “I think it’s important to understand that the quality of the process you use to get to a place determines the ends, so when you want to build a democratic society, you have to act democratically in every way. . . . When you believe in a democratic society, you must provide a setting for education that is democratic.”

Once such a culture is established, it's inevitable that the spirit of appreciative inquiry that is at the heart of democracy will ensure a steady stream of new ideas, opinions, experts, etc. This is because when we allow all voices to be heard, and when we engender a respectful exchange of ideas, we invite the creative power of “civil” friction. “One of the most reliable indicators of a team that is continually learning is the visible conflict of ideas,” Peter Senge explains. “In great teams conflict becomes productive. There may, and often will, be conflict around the vision. In fact, the essence of the ‘visioning’ process lies in the gradual emergence of a shared vision from different personal visions. . . . Conflict becomes, in effect, part of the ongoing dialogue.”

Identifying your own strengths, weaknesses, and interests comes from continually coming into contact with people, ideas and subjects, especially those previously unfamiliar to us.  How does a Democratic School provide this environment for self-knowledge?

C. Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT and an expert in organizational learning, offers a useful metaphor for the deeper level of understanding and awareness you describe. Scharmer, who grew up on a farm in Germany remembers his father teaching him to see the fields they tilled with a wider lens. “Each field, he explained to me, has two aspects: the visible, what we see above the surface, and the invisible, or what is below the surface. The quality of the yield – the visible result – is a function of the quality of the soil, of those elements of the field that are mostly invisible to the eye.”

Scharmer believes we should see “social fields”  the same way. “Social fields are the grounding condition, the living soil from which grows that which only later becomes visible to the eye. And just as every good farmer focuses attention on sustaining and enhancing the quality of the soil, every good organizational leader focuses attention on sustaining and enhancing the quality of the social field – the ‘farm’ in which every responsible leader works day in and day out.”

Understood this way, the most “visible” aspects of a school culture are the things parents, educators and students do, say, and see. Trophy cases. School bathrooms. Test scores. Cafeteria food. Uniforms. Policies. All are important indicators of a school’s quality and commitment to young people. And because these cultural indicators are visible, they end up receiving the bulk of our attention.

By contrast, the “invisible” parts of a school culture are far more elusive – and essential – to the cultivation of a healthy learning environment. Scharmer describes these features as the inner conditions from which parents, educators and students operate with each other. Our hopes and fears. Our emotions. The quality of our relationships with each other. The issues we have informally agreed never to discuss.

These factors are the deepest determinants of a school’s success (or failure) at creating a high-functioning school. And yet precisely because they are invisible (and so much harder to work on), they tend not to factor into most school improvement plans.

The central challenge in any organizational culture, therefore, is to help people become more adept at different ways of seeing – and of being seen. “We need to learn to attend to both dimensions simultaneously,” says Scharmer. “What we say, see, and do (our visible realm), and the inner place from which we operate (the invisible realm, in which our sources of attention reside and from which they operate).”

Attending to both dimensions – and balancing individual and group needs – is an essential goal for any organization. When a school finds the right balance in its organizational culture, it encourages all people to discover the power and uniqueness of their own voices. It helps young people chart a navigable path on their ongoing journeys of personal development. It helps members of the school community foster more meaningful, trusting relationships with each other. And it turns the old maxim about young people on its head, by creating a learning environment based on the belief that all children deserve to be seen and heard.

Sometimes growth comes from doing things we don't like to do, or through continual practice or effort.  How does a Democratic School nurture important qualities like resilience, mastery, persistence and the like?

The short answer is it doesn't - unless the school is intentionally set up as a place that welcomes "civil friction," and an environment that prepares people to feel comfortable with the discomfort of competing ideas.

This idea is not new - it's the core idea behind the First Amendment. And at the heart of that spirit is a framework for civil friction that my former colleagues at the First Amendment Center call the “Three R’s”:

•    Rights: The First Amendment’s guarantee to protect freedom of conscience is a precious, fundamental and inalienable right for all. Every effort should be made in public schools to protect the consciences of all people.
•    Responsibilities: Central to the notion of the common good is the recognition that the First Amendment’s five freedoms (religion, speech, press, assembly, petition) are universal rights joined to a universal duty to respect the rights of others. Rights are best guarded and responsibilities best exercised when each person and group guards for all others those rights they wish guarded for themselves.
•    Respect: Conflict and debate are vital to democracy. Yet if controversies about freedom in schools are to reflect the highest wisdom of the First Amendment and advance the best interest of the nation, how we debate, and not only what we debate, is critical.

These are the ground rules of our democracy. Properly understood and applied, they are equally useful for our public schools.

Chicago Arts Partnership in Education - Bringing Integrated Arts to Schools - an Interview with Amy Rasmussen

Amy Rasmussen is the Executive Director of Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE) and is responsible for financial management, marketing, and organizational planning. Amy joined CAPE in October 2000 CAPE after working with The Chicago Chamber Musicians for six years. Amy holds an M. A. in Arts Entertainment and Media Management from Columbia College and a B. A. in Music from DePaul University. She currently serves on the advisory committee for the Chicago Arts Learning Initiative. I caught up with Amy to ask her about CAPE.

What is the mission of the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education and what does it do for schools?

CAPE’s mission is to improve student learning through the arts by improving students’ creative capacity and critical thinking skills through the arts. CAPE’s primary strategy is to partner closely with teachers and schools. CAPE works collaboratively with teaching artists in Chicago and beyond to bring more ideas into the schools. We recognize that if this initiative is to be sustainable it must impact adults in the building and the system within which we all work, not just the kids. We provide support for educators, working with them on development and curriculum design. We have seen substantial growth with teachers’ capacity to serve as leaders in school. For example, traditionally arts teachers serve as preps teachers. They get kids for 40 minutes once a week for half the year. We work with teachers to help them develop their leadership skills. They become curriculum designers and integrators, and become professional development providers in their own building. With our approach there is inter-faculty collaboration and collaboration with teaching artists and arts organizations. Chicago is a major cultural capital, and everyone wants to work in schools and support arts education. This works best when teachers and principals know how to negotiate partnerships that will best serve the needs of the students, school and community.

How does music help to develop physical, intellectual, and emotional development?

I am an oboe and guitar player and, in my experience, music study and performance is a different way to think. It facilitates the use of a different part of the brain. Kids in school need to develop different ways of thinking. I know when I create music, I feel energized and creative long after I put the instrument down. There are countless anecdotes of kids not doing well in other subjects and then they pick up an instrument and it changes them. Music allows you to express in different way. Music definitely impacts social and emotional development. When you feel better and you have ownership of your capacities it correlates to better school performance.

Young children can gain exposure to music with singing and listening to songs. How early can children learn instruments?

I am a big advocate of early music – music education starts at birth! As early as age three, children can be encouraged to try an instrument or can be encouraged to listen to music or see a concert. The goal is not necessarily to develop a child prodigy, but to develop literacy in the broadest sense, recognizing patterns, developing language – in order to develop those pathways of thinking. It should not just be about listening; rather it should be actively creative.

There are many authors and innovators (Daniel Pink, Sir Kenneth Robinson, Richard Florida, to name a few) that are talking about creativity and imagination being among the most important qualities in our economic success going forward. How will music instruction play a part in that vision?

It’s huge! I think that our economy is totally tied to creativity and innovation. In order to train people to be creative and innovative they have to develop the kinds of skills that are taught through the arts. I think that kids need exposure to all kinds of contemporary art making, focused on concepts and big ideas. Art making shifts between the literary and the aesthetic to the conceptual and the abstract. People who are working in innovation and developing new businesses, products, or disciplines need to be able to move between all of those ways of thinking. They need to move between frameworks and concrete actions. When learning a piece of music, like a sonata from the very beginning it doesn’t quite make sense. At the beginning you are just getting fingers to go to the right notes at the right time. Later you get to the bigger concepts, like “what was the composer trying to say with this piece?” Later still you interpret the piece through your own lens. Not enough learning takes place in that way! Kids studying the arts learn the creative process and then create their own thing.

How does music help with balance in life?

Schools are becoming more aware of this issue and are endeavoring to exercise different parts of the brain. You physically feel different after playing music. It refocuses energy in a completely different way allowing you to go on and accomplish other things well afterwards.

We’ve seen erosion in arts education, including music in our nation’s schools. What has been the consequence of this?

Look at the economy. I think the public greatly underestimates the connection between decreased quality in school and the decreasing economy. The challenge is that increased quality in education does not have an immediate payoff – there is no immediate economic benefit, this is why it is so difficult for our political leaders to choose to invest in high-quality education. Hopefully, President Obama will inspire more long-term thinking in this area.

What can a school with a limited budget do to offer some form of music education?

In Chicago there is quite a music scene. There are six or seven universities with music programs and many people to teach and provide music. It requires leadership at school to find these resources and put it together in a cohesive way. Parents need to think about 24/7 education rather than 30 hours in school. While we all would love for each school to offer a comprehensive music education, we know that it is not always going to happen in the deepest, richest way. A parent should question what his or her child is getting in school and where else can s/he go to get more. There are community music schools and programs and local arts organizations. Parents can form groups to decide what they want to advocate for in their school. There is a school here that had a part-time music program and they wanted a full-time program, so they raised money for it. Is it the best way to get this in place or even ethical? I think it is the state’s responsibility, but the parents were motivated and inspired. There are resources available but it takes the leadership of parents and heads of schools to pull them together.

How can the arts integrated into a curriculum provide a context for learning history, science, math and other subjects?

CAPE’s approach to arts integration is a multi-faceted strategy that addresses students’ academic and social challenges. The organizing principle of CAPE’s model is the engagement of professional teaching artists who collaborate with classroom and/or arts teachers, as well as school leadership and parents to plan, document and implement arts-integrated learning opportunities for students. CAPE’s model of instruction begins with teachers’, teaching artists’, parents’, and students’ questions about learning. This methodology is inspired by Dewey’s theory of education, which holds that optimal learning and human development and growth occur when people are confronted with substantive, real problems to solve, and that curriculum and instruction should be based on integrated, community-based tasks and activities that engage learners in forms of pragmatic action that have real value in the world. The instructional process includes Inquiry, Documentation, Assessment, Evidence, and Reflection.

This inquiry approach to curriculum development creates common themes and ideas across networks of classrooms and schools, and creates opportunities for collaboration and sharing of successful practices. This process does not put in place a set of pre-designed activities, rather it creates a common approach for addressing curriculum content and standards, with ample freedom for creativity, and room for developing a wide-range of effective teaching strategies based on the needs of individual learners.

CAPE’s instructional methodology is based on its 17 years of practice and research on effective teaching and learning in and through the arts. CAPE’s achievements are documented in the landmark publication Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts On Learning, released in 1999 as well as cataloged at www.capeweb.org

Some specific examples:
The Green Unit at Agassiz Elementary School focused on increasing students’ knowledge of renewable energy and empowering students toward social action through the visual arts. Students were given the opportunity to explore, investigate and develop strategies to improve environmental behaviors at school and at home. Students also investigated how we power our cities and developed ideas for changes. The curriculum included science experiments with plants, soil, energy, light, heat and electricity. Students toured Agassiz School with their school’s engineer for a hands-on experience of vocabulary words like “boiler,” “compressor,” “generator.” The students developed a collective visual project that incorporated many of the ideas of renewable energy and energy conservation; expressed through photography, collage, painting with watercolors. “SOLAR TOWN” was a miniature city installed on the front lawn of the school made of small solar-powered houses that stayed aglow through the nights. Students documented their own work throughout the unit with poetry wheels, journals and digital cameras. Students also created a questionnaire and mailbox as part of the installation and asked for feedback from neighbors and passersby.


In the “INVENTORS MEET THE MEDIA” unit, 4th grade students from Mark Sheridan Academy compared processes and character traits of both inventors and video artists through creating short films. The fine arts teacher worked with the fourth graders on camera technology, shots, angles and artistic expression with film. Students practiced with digital still cameras and eventually camcorders. Students then researched specific inventors and created biographies about the inventors’ lives and inventions. This research served as a springboard for the content of the student videos.

After initial shots, students watched the footage using a rubric they created to make decisions about what to change, what takes they wanted to cut and what effects were needed. The teachers and teaching artists also used this rubric to evaluate student performances, filming technique, and content/storyline, but also to determine how well the students were able to self-assess their work.

How can parents encourage a love and learning of music outside of school?

This is done by example. When parents get excited about it, the kids get it. Parents can provide the opportunities for learning and enrichment. My parents let me take any class or course I wanted. I experimented with all sorts of courses, like the arts, great books, and a computer class. Eventually something sticks. Be open to all of the possibilities and opportunities.