Reflections From the AERO Conference... Day 1

Today was the first day of the Alternative Education Resource Organization conference, which, luckily for me, happens to be in Portland this year... and also lucky for me, the parents of a little student I worked with last year paid for me to go to! I've already gotten a lot of ideas and inspiration from the first day. I thought I would keep track of my reflections in this blog so that I might be able to hear what others think.

AERO is about different alternatives in education, including democratic schools, microschools, free schools, unschooling, etc. It is definitely a niche that Someday School fits into. Today we got to hear from some local alternative models of schools around Portland.

One of them was Village Free School, a school that is similar in many ways to what I envision for Someday School. The other was Village Home (no connection to Village Free School) which operates similarly to a community college by offering various classes, but is geared towards homeschooling students ages 3 to 18.

Here are some of the things I was particularly inspired by today.

Village Free School's Rules
Take care of myself and others.
Take care of our space and things.
Respect the freedom of others.

This is a variation of the early childhood education class rules I was taught to use back in the day, which were, Keep ourselves safe, keep others safe, and keep our things safe. The idea behind those rules was that if you make very specific rules, there is always a way to get around it, whereas if your rules are broad, they cover many situations.

With Village Free School's rules, children are taught to be mindful of taking care of themselves and others. This includes things like making sure they eat when they are hungry, thinking about what they need when they are feeling upset, and being kind to others.

Respecting the freedom of others is about not letting your freedom interfere with others' freedoms. This also is about dealing with conflicts. For example, if one student is whistling, and another is bothered by the sound, there is a conflict that needs to be worked out. Simply telling the whistling student to knock it off would take away her freedom to express herself musically, and telling the other student to just deal with it would take away his freedom to have peace and quiet. So instead, the two of them need to work it out. Sometimes they may need the assistance of an adult to help them come to an agreement. However, they both get to learn a lesson in dealing with conflict, rather than just being told what to do. If one or both people have been hurt in the conflict, the adult mediating might ask each of them, "What do you need?" and give them a chance to restore the relationship.
Teach the children that saying, "Stop," and "Stop, seriously," are ways of telling the other person that they really want something stopped.

All School Meetings
Every child and staff member at Village Free School has a chance to propose rules and ideas, and vote on them. When voting, they vote once, and then the people with the minority vote get a chance to explain why they voted the way they did. Then, they vote one more time, and that is the final vote. At All School Meetings, they also talk about what is coming up, and any problems that have arisen. Children can learn to run All School Meetings.

Theories And Ideas

• Children have an inherent interest in learning, and an inherent ability to manage their needs and their time. 
• Children will learn what they are ready for. 
• They will encounter a concept (such as multiplication) when it feels real and necessary to them. For instance, when they need it in order to play a game that they want to play, or to solve a problem. 
• Never be a barrier to what kids are ready for. 
• Classes and activities should be based on interest, rather than on age level. One 7-year-old may be ready for algebra, while another 7-year-old has not quite learned to count. 
• Don't adhere strictly to any one model of education or activity. Take a little from everything if it works. 
• Adults can engage children by asking, "What are you doing?" with real interest. 
• Don't provide constant supervision. Children need to learn how to manage their time without an adult a few feet away. 
• Create an environment that is about relationships, growing, and feeling safe. 
• Put more focus on people and community, rather than on having the perfect space. 
• Show Up And Be Real!

Family Conferences
Are held three times a year.
Are a chance for staff members, parents, and children to share their observations.
"Here's what I'm seeing."

Enrollment
Children get a five week conditional enrollment, during which time parents can change their minds. After that, families are asked to sign a contract saying they will stay enrolled for the rest of the school year.

Village Home Ideas
I didn't glean quite as much from them, because they are more of a place where children come and take classes but do not stay the whole day. There was also a lot of focus on teenagers. But I did get some ideas such as these.

Behavior problems are not frequent, but when they do happen, they may be because the child is in an environment or class that he is not developmentally ready for. Meeting them at their developmental level can eliminate the behavior.

When children do have continuous behavioral problems, they may be asked to enter into a behavior agreement. The child has to be the one to come up with a written plan about what they have to do, and how they will do it.

Classes have supportive and involved teachers who inspire children to find new interests.
They encourage authentic interaction among students. There are no set expectations for what students must accomplish in order to pass or be successful in the class. The focus is on helping children learn. There is no yardstick where children are compared to each other. There is no rule saying that a child of a certain age must be able to do these things and not these things.

Homework with agency - If homework is assigned, kids can say what kind of feedback they want. They may want written or verbal feedback or help with the assignment, or they may just want a witness for their work.

I took all of these notes with my colorful glitter gel pens in my green composition notebook, which is quickly filling up with ideas and knowledge. Tomorrow will be a day of mostly "mini-talks" by people who direct alternative models of schools, and also some workshops with acronyms that I have no idea what they are. Tomorrow evening, if I have any energy left at the end of the day, I'll let you know how it went!

Can Kindergartners Really Do This?

One of the most important concepts of Someday School is that it puts learning into the hands of the children. We will teach them to set their own learning goals and monitor their own progress.

A child who comes into Someday School on a Monday morning will be expected to have an idea of what they want to do that week. Do they want to learn to read? Do they want to build a fort? Do they want to find out the names of every single dinosaur that ever walked the planet? The child will not only know what they want to do, but have an idea of the steps they need to take to get there, the tools they need, and the people who can help them. They may come up with mini-goals throughout the week, and they may do lots of spontaneous activities or participate in organized activities that have nothing to do with their goal, but they will also be practicing self-directed learning.

Some people may be dubious when they read this. They may think, "Realistically, can a kindergartner do this?"

My answer is, yes... with guidance.

Think of it as Little League. My six-year-old nephew has been playing Little League baseball since he was four.  At age four, Freddy was playing the exact same game as a professional baseball player in the Major League. Of course, the rules were modified for these tiny people who hadn't even been alive for half a decade. That first year, they used a T to bat. Now, the coach pitches to the batters.  During the first few years of Little League, instruction is taking place during the games. Coaches are at all of the bases to provide encouragement and guidance to the players. I'm not sure that they even keep score, because winning or losing are not important at this stage... they are all learning.

As the children get older and advance to higher levels of Little League, they take over more and more aspects of the game. Children begin to pitch to each other. Coaches don't stand at every base anymore. They pay more attention to the score. They discover their favorite positions to play.

Eventually some of them may join travel teams, school teams, college teams, and maybe even minor and major league teams. Yet, even in the Major Leagues, they will continue to have coaches who help them improve their game!

So. Will a five-year-old come to Someday School in September knowing how to set their own goals and direct their own learning? No, no more than a five-year-old who has never played baseball can hit a ball without a T on their first day of  Little League. But with guidance, they can learn, and eventually it will become habitual to them.

Every Friday, children will take home a page that looks like this:

Their parents will be asked to help them fill out the sheet. We'll suggest that they start with one goal per week. The reading, math and social categories are to prompt them to think about academic and social goals, but really, the sky is the limit! On Monday, when they come to school, staff members will help them transfer their goal to a Kanban board. Staff members will also check in with children each day to see if they've accomplished steps of their goal and if they need additional help. On Friday afternoons, the school will come together as a group, and each child will have the chance to share what they learned or accomplished that week.

Some children may think of goals that will take longer than a week to finish. Others may be able to whip out their goals within a day. Each of them, however, will get to feel the pride that comes with working on their own projects... not something an adult instructed them to do, but something that is important to them.

Will learning be taking place? Absolutely! Children at Someday School will learn far more than just the basics. They will learn the joy of learning itself, for its own sake, not because "it is time to do math," but because the world is filled with amazing things to see, do and find out.

What Kodi Lee Can Teach Us About Quality of Life

I was at my aunt's house today and we were watching "America's Got Talent." We saw the episode where Kodi Lee got the Golden Buzzer. It was especially interesting to me because Kodi is blind and autistic. He is one of the rare autistic people with a savant skill, which means he is basically a genius in one area... music.  He has perfect pitch, and a photographic audio memory.

On the episode of America's Got Talent, Kodi's mother explained that when he was a toddler, she saw his face light up when he heard music, and she realized that it was going to be his passion.

I realize that most children, with or without autism, are not going to be savants or geniuses even in the topics they are interested in. But I let my mind wander anyways. When Kodi's mother first saw him enjoying music, she probably had no way of knowing how far it would, or could, go. What if Kodi's teachers and therapists had told her that she should restrict his access to music because it was overstimulating to him? Or that, because he loved music so much, it should be used only as a special reward? Or what if Kodi's life had been filled with so many therapy appointments that there was just no time for music?

A fictional, but realistic, example of something else that could have happened in this situation is from the British TV show, "The A Word." The show is centered around 5-year-old Joe, an autistic child whose special passion is music. He is constantly listening to music on his headphones and singing along, and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of it. His parents have recently found out that Joe is autistic. They are especially concerned about making him appear more "normal." They somehow get the idea that constantly listening to music is making Joe more autistic, So they attempt to stop him from listening to it. Luckily Joe is more strong-willed than his parents, and he gets his music back. But what if that same thing had happened to Kodi Lee? What if his parents, teachers and therapists had said, "He needs to be spending his time doing age-appropriate activities and playing in functional ways, not tinkering with a piano."

Long before I became a teacher, back when I worked as a paraprofessional the first time, I went to a training about autism. The speaker told us that quality of life means having the freedom to do the things you enjoy. The more time you get to spend doing what you love, the higher your quality of life is.

I am speaking especially to teachers and therapists here, because we are the ones who will encounter the most children. A parent generally has only their own children to contend with. When they discover that their child has autism or another special need, they usually don't have a whole bunch of background knowledge about it, unless they happen to also be a special ed teacher or a therapist. So they turn to us, because they want to do whatever is best for their child. Many times, parents will hear things like, "He needs to make eye contact," or "He needs to say, 'Hello' to his peers," or "He needs to play with  toys in an age-appropriate way." Parents may get the idea that they should focus on getting their child to appear as "normal" as possible, even (and maybe especially) if it means that he blends into the background instead of standing out as an individual.

My point is this. If you see that something makes a child's face light up...  the way Kodi Lee's face lit up when he heard music as a toddler... then fill his life with it. Don't try to steer him towards more typical interests instead... it is okay to try to broaden someone's horizons, as long as you don't take away the thing that lights up his life. Don't reserve it as a special reward. It can sometimes be used as a reward... for example, if he loves music the way Kodi Lee and the fictional Joe do, maybe he can be taken to see a concert as a reward or a treat, but he can still have access to his headphones and his musical instruments on a daily basis. If you want any child to have a better quality of life,  help them figure out what makes their face light up, and then find ways to help them have that thing as often as possible. They probably won't end up on America's Got Talent like Kodi Lee, but they will have something that makes them truly happy. And I think being happy is a lot better than being "normal."

Technology At Someday School

I saw a Facebook post this morning, which I cannot find anywhere now, but I wanted to mention it here. It was by a mother whose young son switched from a school where every student was required to have a tablet, to a school where every classroom had a few tablets for teachers to use but did not issue them to students.

These days, the popular thought seems to be that every child should have access to tablets and the Internet at all times. The post I read was by a mother who saw things differently. When her elementary school aged child went to a school where he was given an iPad and required to bring it back and forth between home and school, she saw his school performance decline. His attitude about school also changed. Plus, he lost his tablet several times, eventually for good. When he switched to a new school, his grades and attitude went back up.

I personally love technology. While I am definitely not any sort of expert, I am always fascinated by things like cellphones, tablets, apps, social networks, etc. On the other hand, I've seen bad things happen when children are given free access to technology. In the classrooms where I've taught, many of the kids who would have behavioral outbursts for no obvious reason would say they were angry because they wanted to go home and play video games. I heard from parents who were worried that their children were getting addicted to video games. When given the opportunity to earn iPad breaks, children would rush carelessly through their work just to get to the iPads. I also found that, with many children, if an adult wasn't watching over their shoulder at all times, they would find their way off of approved apps and sites and get into questionable content.

While it used to be assumed that children from wealthy families, who would have access to more technology, would be at an advantage over those from low-income families, it is turning out to be the opposite... well, as far as technology is concerned. Silicon Valley parents, many of whom have formed their careers around technology, are opting to restrict their children from technology and send them to schools where technology is limited. Why? Because staring at a screen all day trains your brain to just... stare at a screen all day.
Technology can be awesome. For me, as a person with autism, it opened new worlds. When I was just learning about my diagnosis, I was able to reach out to others who had it. I was able to find Meetup groups, and forums, and blogs. I was able to start my own blog. Being able to research experiences ahead of time also helped me to decrease my anxiety about them, which allowed me to experience the real world more fully. But, I was born in a weird era that floated between technology and no technology. My parents swear that I learned to read when I was one year old, and I was "addicted" to books earlier than I can remember. I was around 4 when I first played a video game, on my uncle's Atari. It was some sort of Pacman like game. Around the same time, my parents got us a Coleco Vision, and my 3-year-old brother and I would play those simple games for hours. But games were different then. Even when we graduated to a Super Nintendo, the games were innocent, with Mario and Luigi stomping on Goombas and fighting dragons. And we still played outside, and played with our toys, and read books, and had friends, and went places. Each summer we spent a week in a cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin, with no access to TV or even televisions... and we never missed it. We didn't whine or beg for our technology. It was a small part of our lives.

There is so much more in the world for children to experience, outside of technology. As a teacher, I want to use technology to open up more of the world for children, but not allow it to be the world for children. Did you ever see that commercial for a computer, where a little girl is sitting in a field beside a baby elephant, but instead of interacting with the baby elephant, the child is looking at a video of a baby elephant? The message was supposed to be that technology is even better than the real world. But if any of my children get the chance to be inches away from a baby elephant, I want them to be in awe of it. I want them to be seeing it, touching it, smelling it, talking to it, talking about it, and remembering the experience forever.

I've come up with what I think will be a good compromise for technology at Someday School. We will have a few Kindles, and each child will have a KIndle Freetime profile on one of the Kindles. This will enable them to use their Kindle for a predetermined amount of time each day, and then they'll be cut off. It will also help to keep them from accessing content that isn't kid-friendly. The Freetime program does allow children to use their Kindles for reading books even after they've used up their screen time, but that is probably okay. We all love books. If children need to use a computer to look up something they want to learn about, they can use a teacher's tablet under supervision.

This way, technology will be just one of the choices children will have during their day. They can choose when to have their screen time, and what to do with it, but when it is finished, it will be time to move on to other "real life" activities.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on tablets. Invaluable to the educational experience, something to avoid altogether, or would you just as soon take them as leave them?