Seth Godin just published his Stop Stealing Dreams education "manifesto."
I've read many, but not all, of the books that he references.? His manifesto and those foundational books resonate with me.? I have verbalized for the last four years that as a middle school teacher "I am part of the problem," but it's only in the last four months that I have some inkling of how to maybe actually change that status.?
I've taught for 14 years, mostly in the secondary level in the USA.? I'm part of an institution that is meant to do good and is staffed almost universally by good people wanting to do good.? And yet we do not do the good we mean to do (o wretched man that I am--who will deliver me?) and instead institutionalize obedience when what we wanted to do all along was to develop capacity and foster creativity.
My daughter and two boys are in currently in elementary school, and we their parents are grateful for their traditional classrooms, complete with its peer interactions (both the friendships and the dramas), recess, monkeybars, cafeteria food, spelling bee, penalties for late work, reward systems, science projects, and occasional homework.? I'm glad they are in elementary school and wouldn't have wanted to do those ages any other way.
Middle school looms.? My daughter is a 5th grader in a K-5 school and next year would go to a local middle school.? Now, my daughter is not yet a teenager and while we certainly hope for the best for her, middle school looms.? What a toxic environment to place the most emotionally fragile humans in our society.? Honestly, who would have invented, in this modern era, a plan that takes 500 of a town's middle schoolers to a central building and causes them to sit in clumps of 30 until a bell rings to signal that they should stand up en masse, jostle in the halls, and return to a different classroom of rows and columns for another hour of trying not to pay attention to the leader in the classroom?? Nobody would have thought that's a good idea if it hadn't already been that way when we found it.?
I believe adolescence is an artificially created "age" that is caused by society withholding responsibility from its emerging adults until too late. And yet, pubescent hormones are very real, and pre-teen turmoils are rarely avoided altogether.? There's something important there, though I really don't yet know what it is.? Something about adolescence not being in a causal relationship with pubescence.? Interesting to think more on.
We're the lucky ones, my family.? We live within the means of a one-salary home, and so we have the freedom to have our daughter at home with us next year rather than send her off to the middle school.? Does that mean we're going to home school?? No, I don't think so.? More like unschool, though I may be muddled in my terminology.? We're calling it HSI, Home Self Improvement.
Home Self Improvement:? Creative.? Capacity-building.? Exploratory.?
Foreign languages, math, geography, drawing, writing, typing, cooking, and EXTENSIVE reading.? In the reading category alone: biographies, historical fiction, science, Newberry Award winners.? Also TED Talks as jumping-off places for student-led research and discovery.
Is HSI going to be "school" for the Chase kids only until high school, or is this it through college?? I don't know.? The local high school has a fantastic DECA/FBLA club, and I'd love to have my kids get to do drama, culinary classes, and the upper level maths/sciences/humanities with engaged teachers and leaning-forward peers.? Can you imagine what their school experience would be if they could "skip" all the classes where peers don't want to be there--I'm thinking of my freshman health class as I write--and go right to the ones that are upper-level and not "required."? It's in those academic classes that you'll find kids leaning forward, and it's those classes that I'm excited to help my kids prepare themselves for.? The other credits they'll still have to get, but they can get them online.
I want each kid to come out of HSI a sleek, powerful racehorse of a person, not a fat little pony.
What Middle School Should Be (a bucket list for HSI)
Wonderopolis,
TED Talks,
http://thekidshouldseethis.com/
Typing
Volunteer Service
Language Learning
http://duolingo.com/
Dictation
Spelling/Writing
Blogging Explorations (photojournaling laser experiments, cooking recipes, etc)
Scratch/Alice
Khan Academy Math
Reading, Fiction and Non, historical fiction
Biographies: Temple Grandin: Animals make us human.
Arts Education
Geography
How Stuff Works
Newberry Award Books: www.goodreads.com
Rock/plant identification
Made to Stick, Rich Dad-Poor Dad and other similar "grown-up" titles.
Whyville
Quest Atlantis
World News
We'll set up in our home a pyramid scheme of incentive.?
Weekly requirements include extensive reading, blogging her way through her own explorations and discovery, and Khan Academy math, among other projects that will come and go.? She is only permitted to have a Chinese lesson if ALL other weekly requirements are in place and finished. I only release funds ($25 a week, in our case) if a Chinese lesson passes muster with the Chinese teacher (who requires homework/practice--she's no pushover).
Invitation to form a cohort:
We're unenrolling our daughter from school this June.? If she had another peer to run this race with, regardless of geographic place, she'd do better.? I can set up an Edmodo classroom for them to interact with and so they can comment on each other's HSI.? I don't think it's important that they be the same age, though most of my work will be toward challenging the middle school age range.? Any 6th, 7th, or 8th graders want to jump off the school train and see how it goes with unschooling and intentional self-improving at home?
Source: http://blog.edtech2020.com/2012/02/home-self-improvement-unschooling-our.html
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