Goddard College, Here I Come!

I wrote the following application essay a few months ago.  I've just found out that I have been accepted into the programme and I am pretty darn happy about that!

That's the first hurdle.  The second is how I am going to actually pay for the schooling!  No matter - have will, will travel.

Having re-read it just now, I think it's kind of a neat little summary of my journey so I thought I'd share it here with you.  Enjoy!

After almost a decade of facilitating learning and, through that process,  growing in leaps and bounds as an educator, the time has finally come for me to pursue my degree in Education.  

I began facilitating a nursery group at a local private school when I first enrolled in a satellite campus of Sojourner Douglas College to obtain my Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education.  I found that from my very first moment in the classroom, I was completely fascinated and captivated with the process of learning and discovery.  Being the one to help create the space, and help children to make those discoveries was especially transformative for me.  

Not long after I started teaching, I gave birth to my first child.  She became my priority and I took an extended leave from my school and schooling in order to care for my baby.  

Between my experience at the school and having my own child(ren), I made my own discovery that education as I know it is fundamentally flawed.  I began to conclude that the systematic institutionalization of the learning process has stolen something - a big, important something - from the learners and teachers alike.  At the time, I couldn't name what that missing something was, but I just knew there had to be another, better way to go about educating young children.  

This was the beginning of a long journey - one I am still on with dogged determination - to finding out what education really means, and how we can evolutionize* prevailing pedagogy.  

My search led me to Maria Montessori and her pioneering work in literally hands-on education and through her theories, I began to see that learning was a so much more interactive and purpose driven than it has been interpreted in traditional schools.  Though I was beginning to re-orient with Montessori, I still felt driven to keep searching.  

Rudolf Steiner's Waldorf Schools came next.  I read everything I could put my hands on about Mr. Steiner's philosophy and theories; and, of course, the principles of the schooling itself.  Here, too, I learned more about learning, particularly about play and the critical role it plays in a child's development.  My encounter with (the theories of) Waldorf Schools left me with with a wider scope of understanding about education and learning and still, I needed to keep searching.

What else?  How else?  When else?  Who else? These questions drove me to understand the history of education and to incorporate the truths about the history into the theories I was developing about learning. 

By this time, I had given birth to my second child and we were all three happily playing and growing together.  Spending those years with my two children as my teachers has taught me far more about life as a learner than any other encompassing experience ever could. 

Learning is innate.  Learning happens organically when there is meaning and relevance.  Learning is driven by the learner, not the teacher.  The role of the teacher is to create space, know the learner and help the learner access what she needs to gain deeper understanding.  

I was reading books and listening to talks given by profound thinkers in education such as John Holt, Chris Mercogliano, bell hooks, Lisa Delpit, John Taylor Gatto, Herbert Kohl, Sir Ken Robinson, Paolo Friere ... the list goes on and on and on.

I've not only been facilitating learning for my own children, but I hosted several school year long 3-days/week playgroups for 2 to 4 year olds.  A simple, play-based learning environment that met the ideals of parents seeking, too, a better way.   

My path eventually wondered into the Unschooling movement when I attended a Rethinking Education conference in Texas in 2009.  Having been an "unwitting" unschooler for several years prior, it seemed a perfect fit... for a while.  As usual, more questions began to surface for me.  The most important of which was: What about everybody else?  What about people who, struggling to meet the basic needs of Maslow's Hierarchy, could not afford to home- or unschool their children?  Who would help those children? 

These questions helped me to learn about democratic education and schooling; Sudbury and Free Schools all over the United States were already providing learner-centred education as a service.  But still, it was primarily mid- and upper economic income brackets who could afford the private schools offering this.

My next stop was the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) conference in 2010.  It was here that I was able to meet, hear, and interact with some of the authors I mentioned earlier, as well as a wonderful group of forward thinking educators and learners alike.  It was also here that I first learned about Goddard College.  

Since then, I have most recently attended the 20th Annual IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where I strengthened my resolve to be a catalyst for educational reform right here in my country of residence: The Bahamas.

My life has take me on varied and scenic route.  Rather, my life has been the route -and I know that one of the things I must do is to create a space for learners to come and discover their own amazing individual selves so they can know that they really do matter and that they have gifts that they can share with the world.  [...]

I am excited about the possibilities that will become accessible to me should I be accepted into your profoundly relevant and dynamic programme!  

There is so much more that simply will not fit into this essay.  So I will conclude with this:  I believe that Goddard College is the right place for me to pursue a degree in Education that will be meaningful and applicable (which can hardly be said about many degree programmes out there!).  As a working mother, the low-residency aspect is especially attractive to me because it offers me the freedom and flexibility to pursue my education in the spaces that best suite me.  I have heard good things about the program offered there, particularly the ability of the learner to construct their own learning.  It is my desire to obtain a degree that will focus on Progressive Education with a component of educating for sustainability and ecological awareness.  

*- "Evolutionize" is my own word that I am using because it's the best way for me to articulate what I am trying to say - which is that education doesn't need a 'turn around' (a la "revolutionize") but rather advancement, diversification, transformation and adaptation to where humans are today.

There you have it, guts and all.

Dreaming This, Part II

I've spent the last three weeks immersed in the vibrant and abundant green of Jamaica.  The aliveness of everything is both intoxicating and soothing.  It is all at once peaceful and riotous with life and living things: the gentle white noise of thousands and thousands of leaves brushing each other in their lofty treetop dwellings, the intermittent high-pitched hum of cicadas, the squawking of black birds and the melodious chirping of others; and at night lizards that croak make a symphony with the orchestra of cricket.

The Dreaming began to reshape itself with and through this beauty.

What about a little ecologically focused boarding school somewhere in the rolling hills of Jamaica?  I thought.  In a small settlement, with land for farming and space for being?  What about that?

I became energized and excited as the idea began to take shape - to come into focus a bit more.  I started saying out loud to my husband and the words were like bees.  The buzzed and hummed, the went out and came back.  Yes, I thought, what about that?!

It would be a day school for local residents and a boarding school for those in other locales.  It would be like the mountain top, democratic version of The Island School.  In situ Green living and learning.  I mean, just imagine a school where this is your backyard!

The hillside backyard of a friend's home in St. Catherine

And there would be plenty of other stuff happening at the same time.  We can grow all kinds of food.

Banana and plantain growing around my father's home on White River.

We can work together with the artisans and tradespeople of the surrounding area to create small, sustainable cottage industries.  

It would be so perfect!  It makes me think about The Green School in Bali.  We can do that!  

The Dreaming is big and expansive.  The Dreaming is all around me and in me at the same time.  The Dreaming is everyone who wants to be a part of this story.  

Please, tell me your thoughts.  

Welcome to The Dreaming, Part YOU.

This Dreaming, Part I

It would appear that I can not stop dreaming.  

It's not that I'm trying to stop dreaming, it's that I keep being surprised at how many shapes this one core dream keeps taking.  

I sometimes wonder - Do I really want to start a school or is it an idea that I've become attached to, am defining parts of myself by and therefore won't let go?  I suppose it's those moments of doubt that cause the central is-ness of this desire to be refocused.  In the way that blurriness causes to one to adjust the dials on the binoculars.  There.  That's better.

I know this because I have actually tried to put it down.  There was a time when everything became so blurry, my eyes in so much pain that I had no choice and I put it down and stepped away.  I didn't look for a long time.  

But that dream persisted.  It would gently stir - a light breeze skittering some leaves on the ground.  It would wake me from actual dreaming to pull at my mind and heart.  It would speak to me in the voices of others.  This Dreaming belongs here: in me.  It is a constant companion.

Still, it's not so defined.  It changes shape; is malleable.  Just the way it needs to be.

Post Apocolyptic

Last night I watched a History Channel "what if?" piece about life during and after a massive, population-eradicating pandemic.  It was an interesting piece in which the story follows one family and their attempts to survive the widespread disease and death as it plays out in their home city of LA.

Towards the end - 25 years after the 'panpocolypse' (my word), life requires a new oldish way of doing things.  The people are living in smaller communities and growing their own food.  There are small towns with small town doctors and local law enforcement (as in a kind of Sheriff.)  Some may call it a sustainable lifestyle.  As it's wrapping up, there is a mouthful of words about education.  The narrator says something about how the children are now being taught useful skills/information and then a somewhat glib comment follows that 'the [text] books didn't get sick' [and can therefore continue to be used].

Of course, I got snagged on the phrase "useful skills/information".  Useful.  The children are now (in this new, old world) being taught useful information, useful skills.

While I am completely aware that things may not go this particular way, I am also aware that the time for people to learn Useful Information and Useful Skills is right now.  Why wait till our thin veneer of civilization has crumbled?

The point I am trying to make to both you and myself, is that I snagged on the whole 'useful' terminology because what it means is that much of what children are being taught now is useless.  The way I see it, the fundamental goal of education is to help the learners to begin to grasp two things:  1) How the world around them works (including what we understand about the Universe) - which is easy because all children are curious about this, and 2) How they work (which is to say, knowing themselves) and what that means in the larger context.

This qualifies as "useful information building blocks".  A starter kit, if you will.  And a tremendous gift.

It's not the kids that need educating...

It's their parents.

I realize that parents who try to get their young babies a "head start" mean well.  But then, so did that couple who only fed their newborn soy milk and apple juice.  (That loved but very unfortunate baby did not survive.)  Obviously, people who are subjecting their babies to 'Your Baby Can Read', "Frogster" "Learning" toys and other 'head start' paraphernalia are not actually killing hurting their children. 

But they are very likely hurting their child's natural curiosity and desire to learn.   This whole idea of trying to teach an infant to read would be akin to people creating programs to help 6 week old babies to learn to walk.  (Positively preposterous!) 

There are well established growing stages which are critical for proper brain development.  Learning to creep, for instance, has to do neurological development. 

Another practical example of misguided attempts to 'force' development is the baby walker*.  Studies suggest that the walker is harmful to the child's cephalocaudal development.  That is, the walker forces the child to use her legs and feet to gain mobility before she has even learned how to creep.  (Not to mention, of course, all the terrible injuries children suffer as a result of accidents in the walker.)

I'm laying some ground work here to establish that - exceptional individuals notwithstanding - there are definite neurological, emotional and social developmental stages that are chronological and chronological for good reason!

And now, we come to "early learning".  Early learning is a Real Thing.  It is valid and true.  And it requires practically ZERO intervention from adults.   Guidance, yes.  Intervention, no.

Think with me for a moment about the acquisition of language by a newborn, infant, baby, then toddler.  This fundamentally necessary learning is carried out by a weak, completely dependent, tiny, wordless person who has no discernible skill set, no preparation for the task, no special instruction and most of all no carrot and stick motivation by the adults.  Language acquisition is a complex and long term event, for sure.  Yet when one considers the all that is accomplished in under a year... it is nothing short of monumental.  And still.  So Very Ordinary.  It's what human babies do.  They hear language, see body language and then they say and do it! 

John Holt has said in one of his books (I forget which it is, but it's either How Children Learn - probably! - or How Children Fail) that the babies employ true scientific method in the process.  They observe, make a hypothesis, then experiment.  Which explains how they sometimes mix up the pronouns and articles or tenses.  It's cute to us, but it's really the child making inferences from other situations in which he heard the language and then inserting it into another scenario where he thinks it will belong. 

Marvelous! 

And ALL on her own!

No instruction required. 

This person also learns, congruently I might add, an inordinate number of data about the world around her purely from observation and experimentation. 

And here parents and would-be educators come waltzing in on the assumption that the child is stupid and unable to learn anything useful without their help.  Which leads me to a very interesting book I am reading called The Ignorant Schoomaster by Jacque Ranciér.  This excerpt amazon blurb succinctly sums it up as such:

... It is the story of Joseph Jacotot, an exiled French schoolteacher who discovered in 1818 an unconventional teaching method that spread panic throughout the learned community of Europe.

Knowing no Flemish, Jacotot found himself able to teach in French to Flemish students who know no French; knowledge, Jacotot concluded, was not necessary to teach, nor explication necessary to learn. The results of this unusual experiment in pedagogy led him to announce that all people were equally intelligent. From this postulate, Jacotot devised a philosophy and a method for what he called "intellectual emancipation"--a method that would allow, for instance, illiterate parents to themselves teach their children how to read.

  It is this book and recent commentary on social media that has my feathers all sticking up in the air, charged with electricity again.  It is the old frustration with people confidently upholding a fatally flawed system and perpetuating -on a colossal scale- this poor facsimile of education.   I am enjoying reading it because the author articulates the thoughts that have been suspended like dark matter in my own consciousness. 

Thoughts which, yet again, have caused me to think about how we can change "The System".

I do not think it can change until the educators who are a part of (the facilitation) of this fledgling paradigm shift begin to fully and intentionally engage with the parents. 

Parents who want the best for their children.  Parents who want their children to be ready for tomorrow.  Parents who are expecting a competitive marketplace for high school, college, careers.  Parents who don't know how to think any other terms.  Parents who DO need guidance, sign posts, invitations even, to rethink what kind of life, what kind of world they hope for their children and future generations. 

The time of one-up-manship and competition is coming to a close.  The time of cooperative, collaborative community living is coming. 

People will still be wonderfully singular in what they bring to the world.  Everyone cannot be good at only one or two things.  Our strength is in our diversity, and more so in the embracing of the diversity and working together to create new (yet unimaginable) realities. 

It is imperative that we allow children to develop at their own pace, to encourage and support them.  It is crucial that we allow our children to continue to know that learning is synonymous with living.  That the two are one.  That there is no special place or time where learning begins or ends. 

It is even more important that we help their parents understand why this is so so SO urgent; so critical.

How, exactly, do we do that?

Education. Strangely, not a sauce.

Unless one is writing a thorough and detailed curriculum in which every person must know everything in the shortest possible time frame.  And then, yes, the process is the same as making a sauce:  toss all the essentials in, add some extras in for flavor, and let it reduce to it's essence.  Cool and pour into students heads.  Open (their heads) and check frequently.  


Repeat.


In all seriousness, what I am really trying to say is that one of my fundamental points of contention with systematic schooling is the reductionist nature in which teaching/information-transmission takes place. Which is to say that what is really fantastic and amazing about life and the world around us, what is practical and useful information, gets reduced to "subjects" which is further reduced to "units" which are even further reduced to "chapters" or "topics". 


The sheer awe of learning about solar systems, blue whales, 5,000 year old trees, physics, atoms, photons, the stuff of LIFE... are reduced to "facts to study and regurgitate".   Even practical knowledge loses it's value when it is taught as abstract concepts which are tethered only to themselves.   (For example:  I now know that Pythagorous' Theorem is supposed to be - or have been? - very useful for ... doing other things.  When I was in High School I'm not sure I realized who Pythagorus was or what he was trying to say or do with this confounded "Theorem" I was supposed to memorize.)


It is quite unfortunate that it is only now, in the approximate middle section of my life, that I am understanding how everywhere and relevant math really is.  I am referring, of course, to everything (one would learn) after addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division (but I never did) - even the teachers* couldn't keep the real use of those fundamental skills from me.   


I digress.  


As I was saying - 
Life becomes lifeless, the 
Awesome! becomes awful, and 
that which is Truly Amazing is 
lost in tedium and meaninglessness. 
There it is.  


Meaninglessness.  


Rather, Meaning.  Meaning is the true vehicle of learning.  Meaning is the path that both leads us toward greater understanding and then past static understanding.  Meaning is reason, motivation, reward.  Meaning is questions and answers.  Meaning is departure and arrival.  Meaning is "Why?" and "Because."  Meaning is a bit - if not exactly - like the hokey pokey: it's what it's all about.


Even if the only meaning is to satisfy curiosity - it is still meaningful to the learner.  
Everything else is static.  As in inert.  As in, interference.  
Who cares about an A in science if the learner is not genuinely amazed or excited by all she has come to understand?  Both the grade assessment and the information has no relevance; no meaning.  

It's gravy.

* This is not meant as a blanket statement about all teachers.  I am, instead, referring to the self-perpetuating cycle I found myself in once I no longer "got" math, and then became the disdain of all the math teachers whose classes I struggled through feeling stupid and alone.  Woe was me.  

Regaining My Stride

I've recently proclaimed that I find Education Reform is like a dip in the floor that I can't help towards; that this is the thing I cannot NOT do.  Even if I have good reason to be on the other side of said floor, the dip invariably changes my course and I at least veer toward it.  Lately, though, I find that I'm just walking right into it, stopping right there in the middle and settin' a spell.

Perhaps - from the outside in - it appears that I am taking the most circuitous path to my destination - which at this time, feels like the actual path itself.  I'm OK with that though.  The oft-quoted ... er... quote that the journey is the destination is very clearly defined by my path "of" (rather than "to") Progressive Education.

That said, I'm breaking out at least one of my bells and ringing it because I really feel Back!

It Only Took A Spark

It's been seven months since I last wrote words about education.  Seven long months of silence.

Despite appearances (or lack thereof) the fire had not died completely.  Under the ashes, there were embers that refused to die.  Couldn't die.  That fire was made of my essence - which itself, is greater than my personality or this life and it does not die.  So, it glowed.  And waited.  And kept me warm.

Then came a spark.  And some air.  Then more sparks.  And I felt the fire beginning to burn again.  An early starter fire, to be sure, but a fire nonetheless.  Complete with heat, light and sound effects.  I am ready to be ready to change the world again!

Amazingly, sometimes I am moved by my Spirit and my deep connection to the world around me - a generally positive motivation that comes from aspiration toward great things for humanity.  And sometimes.  Some times I am moved by my strong, immediate and forceful reaction to injustice.  The feeling that is a monolithic "This Cannot Be."

I see children being forgotten and left behind by the system and I think, This Cannot Be.
I see people hanging their child's every last hope and dreams on winning a lottery for a charter school and I think, This Cannot Be.
I see children being squashed, pressed - crushed by a system that does not care at all about them and I think, This Cannot Be.
I see parents struggling to put their children in a good school (in this case a "good school" is qualified by it's having basic amenities, moderate learner:teacher ratios and a variation-on-the-theme curriculum) and I know that This. Cannot. Be.

The spark meets fuel and the energy expands and becomes fire and I want to change how we do education ... again.

And soon all those around will warm up in it's glowing... I want to pass it on.