HoneyFern School

Gifted Children Left Behind: Advocacy & Alternatives

2012-03-09T12:26:00.000-05:00

Here is my guest blog published on Parenting for High Potential's website.

Gifted Children Left Behind: Advocacy & Alternatives

BY MARIAM

PHP Guest Blogger, Suzannah Kolbeck is the executive director of HoneyFern, Inc., a non-profit private school whose mission is to create a community that cultivates caring, intelligent and curious learners. Suzannah has over a decade of experience in public schools, teaching and learning with gifted students.

Most gifted kids in traditional schools are not being challenged. Shuffled between No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, reorganized into Common Core Standards stretching across the country, and then, in some school districts gifted program entry standards have been relaxed, or muddled entirely, to allow services for non-gifted but high-achieving students, or to block services for the gifted yet underachieving, twice-exceptional, or those with conduct challenges. Gifted students get short shrift in their schooling, which shows up in their persistence and motivation as they come of age. Best efforts are masked by work that is too easy. Rather than being compared to their intellectual peers and inherent ability, gifted learners are too often compared to same-age peers. At root, their unique needs are not taken into account when curriculum and process are being designed most classrooms.

According to a research conducted by the Gates Foundation and reported in The Silent Epidemic, the result of the inattention to the unique needs of gifted learners is:

Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting. These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school. Almost as many (42 percent) spent time with peoplewho were not interested in school. These were among the top reasons selected by those with high GPAs and by those who said they were motivated to work hard.

Additionally,

Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) said they were not motivated or inspired to work hard, 80 percent did one hour or less of homework each day in high school, two-thirds would have worked harder if more was demanded of them…

So how can we change this, especially given the extent of the economic climate that continues to impact schools and their funding, including consolidating or eliminating some gifted programs altogether? Think of education as a three-legged stool with the parent, the school and the student holding up the seat. If one leg doesn’t work, the stool falls down. Here are suggestions for all three legs:

Parents

You know your child better than anyone, and you can be your child’s most effective advocate. Watch for sudden changes in behavior patterns, such as:

notations on the report card that your student is talking too much or bothering their peers, coupled with
suddenly sloppy work
a rise in grades across the board (e.g. all high-percentage A’s, 98-100% in academic classes),
sudden withdrawal and a precipitous decline in grades, or
an intellectually gifted student saying things like “I hate school,” or “It’s too boring/easy.”

These signs may indicate that your child is not being adequately challenged in class. Extreme fluctuations are warning signs, however, minor fluctuations one way or another is normal.

Talk with your student about the work being done in class. Sit down and look at their homework. Depending on your parenting style, there are a couple different approaches you can use:

Express your concerns to your student and ask for their explanation of what is happening in class. Ask them if the work is interesting to them, why or why not, and ask them if they have spoken to the teacher. Check in to see what the class routine is like – lots of whole-class instruction, lots of movement and independent work, a bit of both: whatever the day looks like. You are trying to determine where your student fits in and where the disconnect might be. Stress to your child that that they are a big part of their education, and sometimes things aren’t always fun or interesting. Help them to find ways to focus on what excites them about what they are learning, even if they are not thrilled with the subject. For example, if you have a student who hates math but loves gardening, work the geometry angle by having them design and construct a raised bed garden, then research plants that will do well, planning the season from start to finish. Have them figure out how much they will need to plant to feed your family for the growing season and how much money they will save.
Talk with the teacher. Tell them you have noticed that your student’s grades or engagement has changed and you are wondering what the teacher is observing in class. Work to keep the conversation with all school personnel win-win. Think of the teacher as your partner, and assume that they want the best for your child, too. Ask for suggestions of possible learning extensions for the curriculum, including field trips and other websites you can study with your student outside of class. Offer to provide needed classroom resources for your child. Keep an eye out for enrichment opportunities in your community that match your child’s interests, including volunteer opportunities for your student.

Schools

School culture is difficult to change and requires commitment and long-term thinking. However, there are some important developments happening in education that will help gifted students better engage in the classroom. Project-based learning (PBL, sometimes referred to as problem-based learning), an old idea in education that started in medical schools, is gaining new traction in schools, with successful projects all over the country. Even in standardized classrooms, PBL offers room for not only basic skill instruction, which is often what is holding back gifted students who already know the material, but also the chance to work collaboratively and deeply on a project of significance, building not only content and core knowledge but also critical thinking and problem-solving skills. PBL can be implemented school-wide or simply one classroom at a time providing both immediate solutions and an opportunity for cultural change. PBL helps students develop seven critical skills for success in life, not the least of which is flexibility and adaptability, as well as creativity and imagination.

In addition to PBL, schools can develop a way to individualize curriculum for students who must go farther to learn; this can be a period of independent study during the day (e.g. pursuing a student-led but teacher-mentored project), subject acceleration (e.g. if the student is highly gifted in reading they should move to an higher level for that class), whole grade acceleration for students who qualify with a combination of testing and portfolio evidence, or some combination of these techniques. Combined with daily quality instruction that includes tiered assignments, curriculum compacting and true differentiation of tasks, questions, reading materials and assessment opportunities gifted learners will have the opportunity to learn. Teachers can get better at getting to know their learners’ interests and abilities so that they can design effective and engaging activities for everyone in their classrooms!

Students

The Center for the Gifted identifies five patterns for underachievement. The longer a child is sent to the corner to read, the more likely they are to fit one of these patterns. Motivation is a four-letter word for the checked-out gifted kid, and the longer they are checked out, the harder it is to bring them back. There is a very simple math formula to solve this problem, though:

Patience + persistence = success/time

Learners must be involved in their education. By empowering learners to make decisions about what they would like to learn, asking them how they would like to learn, and the manner in which they would like to show what they know, motivation is fostered and life-long learners are created

Consider the following 9^th grade Common Core Standard:

Standard for Literacy in Ninth-Grade History

Compare and contrast findings presented in a text to those from other sources, noting when the findings support or contradict previous explanations or accounts.

Does it matter what the findings are in one text, or what the other sources are as long as they demonstrate these standards? And does it matter how the findings are presented for this particular standard? No. Students need to engage themselves in shaping their own understandings; this helps develop true confidence in their abilities while making them active participants instead of passive vessels.

Your advocacy for gifted child may make the difference in how her school approaches this standard.

Final Thoughts

There are other ways of educating gifted children outside of public school, away from expensive private schools. Many districts now offer free online schooling, which can be simply a continuation of public school, just at home, so be selective, and homeschooling has expanded its offerings to include co-ops, a wide array of classes specifically for homeschooled students and hybrid programs such as HoneyFern School that offer the accreditation and curriculum coordination of a private school with the flexibility and individualization of a homeschool. Dual enrollment and early enrollment in college, as well as internships and other travel and volunteer opportunities open up the world for gifted kids not being served in their traditional setting. Several families have sold everything they own, rented out their house and embarked upon a year of (low-budget) travel to experience the world they are preparing their children for firsthand. You can work and homeschool, and you need not spend your life savings to provide a good education for your child. One long-term, large-sample research study of homeschooled students showed that education level of parents did not matter at all when it came to the quality of schooling for homeschooled kids and that homeschooled kids scored an average of 18-28% higher on standardized tests (with no statistically significant differences for gender, income or race of the families). This is not your grandfather’s homeschool!

Regardless of the option you choose, do not let your child languish in the corner, skills undeveloped, talents wasted, bored. All students deserve to bloom!

Suggested Resources:

Differentiation: All Children Should Learn Something New Every Day!

The New Common Core Standards & the Gifted

Supporting Your Gifted Learning with NAGC PK-12 Gifted Programming Standards

Number Talk - Math Matters

2012-03-08T09:39:00.000-05:00

When I first starting teaching gifted kids I attended a professional development conference in Athens, Georgia. For the most part, it was pretty standard in that there were more vendors than new ideas, but one speaker (whose name escapes me, unfortunately) stood out. Her presentation was about profoundly gifted kids and what to do with them in class, and she used as one of her examples a nine-year-old who was taking college-level math with college students.

The speaker asked his parents, both high school dropouts, the mom a stay-at-home mom and the dad a mechanic, what they had done to encourage their son's math ability.

"Nothing, really," said the dad. "We just talked to him about numbers." They played with numbers in the car the way most families play with words (the license plate game, the alphabet game, etc). They talked about money, counted and moved numbers around. Nothing formal, nothing extra, just daily conversations.

Turns out, this is one big change you can make today to help your kid with math:

The frequency of number talk in the children’s homes had a big impact on how well the youngsters understood basic mathematical concepts such as the cardinal number principle, which holds that the last number reached when counting a set of objects determines the size of the set (“One, two,
three—three apples in the bowl!”). A subsequent study by Levine found that the kind of number talk that most strongly predicted later knowledge of numbers involved counting or labeling sets of objects that are right there in front of parent and child–especially large sets, containing between four and ten objects.

Also turns out that there is gender bias starting at home with math, with parents speaking to boys about numbers about twice as often as girls.

Does talking about math guarantee that your kid will be profoundly gifted? Well, no, but it gives them a leg up as they move through school and familiarizes them with simple concepts early on, perhaps making them more comfortable down the road, and that is one simple change everyone can get behind.

Teacher Fired for Making Math Homework Exciting

2012-03-07T09:08:00.000-05:00

I just love the headline of this brief snippet of an article. Essentially, a teacher went online and downloaded math problems from the Singapore math website (Singapore Math is popular with homeschoolers). Problems aimed at 4th graders included zingers like this one:

My grandpa and grandma had the same number of strands of hair in their nostrils. I volunteered to pull out their nose hair with my trusty tweezers. I removed 201 strands of hair from my grandpa's nostrils and 185 strands of hair from my grandma's nostrils yesterday. My grandma had thrice as many strands of nose hair as my grandpa after that. How many strands of nose hair did each of them have in the beginning?

This is awesome. Just the right level of gross for a 4th grader, and it is interesting (see the whole worksheet here). I am not sure who complained, or why the teacher was fired; hopefully (?) it was just the last in a line of issues and not another case of micromanaging curriculum and teachers. My guess is the latter, but that's just based on 12 years of experience with edu-crats and how they work, so I might be wrong.

How about this math problem:

Bob the Administrator had one problem with Jane the Teacher - she taught outside the norm and did not agree with standardized testing, even though her students always did well on The Test at the end of the year (students: as an historical interdisciplinary study, please trace the development of the teaching profession over the years and write an argument for or against having an inordinate number of female teachers managed by an overwhelming number of male administrators. Please reference recent comments from Rush Limbaugh regarding the worth of women as well as the movie trailer for the documentary Miss Representation in your argument.). Bob felt handicapped and oppressed by the teacher's unions (or at least, public opinion of the teacher's unions), so he knew he would have to find another way to fire her. If Jane does her job very well (but not as Bob feels she should do it), how long will it take Bob to find another reason in the media to fire her? Consider that the school year is between 178 and 190 days long but getting shorter as awful teachers like Jane are furloughed to pay Bob's salary.

Please present your answer on a PowerPoint as well as an Excel spreadsheet and cross-reference Race to the Top.

Happy computation!

Reading Shakespeare Has Dramatic Effect On Human Brain

2012-03-06T08:03:00.000-05:00

What I have suspected for YEARS is true: Shakespeare is exciting.

Yes, folks, it is merely teachers that suck the life out of Shakespeare (and yes, I confess, I have done that myself. Teaching is a reflective process, and, upon reflection, I realize that I have not always been the best at teaching Shakespeare, but I do love him so, and I am working hard to get better). Researchers in England (bias?) found that,

Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence. This process causes a sudden peak in brain activity and forces the brain to work backwards in order to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to say.

This is great. Teenagers, the general audience upon whom Shakespeare is inflicted in school, often seem to be speaking their own foreign language. Shakespeare himself coined words and used phrasing in ways that were completely backwards, even in his own time. The simple act of attempting to make sense of what he is saying makes your brain more active and, thus, makes you smarter. On the flip side of that, trying to understand teenagers and their phrases might also make your brain more active, so much so that it eventually explodes.

Kidding aside, some ways to make Shakespeare interesting when teaching:

1. Go see the plays. Shakespeare was written to be performed, not read out loud. Seeing the actors inhabit the characters of Shakespeare brings the writing to life in a way that simply reading in a classroom will not. We go to the Shakespeare Tavern here in Atlanta; they are dedicated to performing the plays in the manner in which they were intended to be performed as closely as possible. Plus, they are incredibly talented, very nice folks who understand what teenage audiences like (and adults; at night you can have a glass of wine or beer during the show). In addition to performances, the Shakespeare Tavern offers summer acting camps and school year playshops for students.

2. Have your students re-write the plays in their own language. Please, for the love of all things Shakespeare, do not buy them those awful "translations" that are already in modern language. Have them read the regular play and "translate" themselves. I recommend the Folger editions for older students, and the Barnes&Noble editions for younger (Folger's explanations are a bit wordy at times, whereas B&N are a bit simpler). Assign scenes and have students re-write; they can modernize with text-speak, change the time period, whatever. The integrity of the scene should remain, but playing with language is the goal.

3. Teach them how to insult each other, Shakespeare-style, with an insults generator. It is difficult to be angry with a student who tells another, "Eat a crocodile, thou impertinent, guts-griping harpy!"

Most of all, pick the plays you enjoy to teach. I have made the mistake in the past of teaching a play I didn't adore (or, let's be honest, completely understand past basic plot and character - Shakespeare is dense), and although I tried mightily, my efforts did not pay off. If I love something, my passion for it comes through. I may not convert all of my students to Shakespeare on the page (my own child is not a fan, natch), but hopefully they will appreciate the language, understand the context and enjoy seeing the plays performed. Even in the struggle, they will get smarter.

Delay Kindergarten at Your Child's Peril? Really?

2012-03-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

The latest in a series of "go to school or else" type propaganda comes from professors of molecular biology and neuroscience; they argue that delaying, or "redshirting" a child's entrance into kindergarten is detrimental and results in all kinds of catastrophes, from a five-points-lower IQ to less motivation in high school. The authors also say that school is necessary for socializing a child (see full article here).

I sent my child to kindergarten, right on time, where she learned her colors and numbers for the third time, along with her letters for the second time (she learned to read at home, well before they actually started reading at school). She also learned that "brown children play with brown children, and white children play with white children" (couldn't hardly believe when that came home), you shouldn't try too hard, and when you are "done," you should read in a corner. These skills and socializations were learned in one of the better public schools in the district.

I couldn't disagree more with the authors; in fact, I argue against sending your kids to this current iteration of public school at any age. Once again, I will say that I am for the idea of public school, and completely against how it is right now (including all of the "reforms" that are merely re-tooling, not reforming). The biggest proof against the argument of entering kindergarten on time is the following paragraph:

The benefits of being younger are even greater for those who skip a grade, an option available to many high-achieving children. Compared with nonskippers of similar talent and motivation, these youngsters pursue advanced degrees and enter professional school more often. Acceleration is a powerful intervention, with effects on achievement that are twice as large as programs for the gifted. Grade-skippers even report more positive social and emotional feelings.

Age is a number; grade skippers are happier and more motivated because they are working at their intellectual level instead of being held back and reading in the corner. These are two different articles completely. Grade acceleration for the gifted has almost nothing to do with entering kindergarten on time; most gifted students are working well ahead of their peers in at least one subject by the time they enter school, so entering kindergarten "on time" is a moot point.

Additionally, these younger grade skippers are working with their intellectual, not biological peers; they may be in classes with students who are two or more years older than them. This blasts a hole in the author's arguments as well; if school is supposed to be a normalizing, socializing mechanism, why do we insist on placing 30 kids of the same biological age in the room together? At what point in your adult life has that ever been the case? Grade skippers and late entries to school have a more natural social experience in that there is some variety of biological age (and intellect, and social/emotional maturity) where they are.

Of course there are benefits for some groups of kids to enroll in school on time (lower-SES families, for example, where there may be less literacy activities and experiences in the home), but the idea that everyone is placing their children in peril by not enrolling them in kindergarten at five is ludicrous. This article is nothing more than edu-cractic propaganda, aimed at parents who are unsure of their choices. Every kid is different; education philosophies like this one (enter by five, leave at 18) treat people like products, mass producing "Educated Person" in the most generic, efficient way possible.

The truth is that most parents DO put their kids in public school at five, and look at where we are as a country. Instead of focusing on age, how about we improve what is offered at every level and meet kids where they are? Instead of worrying about the dinosaur of same-age socialization, how about we work in grade bands and group kids on interest and ability, not biology? And instead of blindly following the edicts of the edu-stablishment like sheeple, why not look at our kids and figure out what makes sense for them?

Why Are We So Fascinated With Homeschooling?

2012-03-05T08:38:00.000-05:00

Perhaps this quote from the article of the same name explains it all: "... [by 5 years old,] public schools become a reliable source of child care...."

Really?

That's a rhetorical "really." Public school has been a reliable source of childcare since it was no longer necessary to educate factory workers (like, say, since the 1950s).

Homeschooling is attractive because the child is more than a number and their needs are met by people who care about their success. Homeschooling is attractive because the focus is on learning, not testing, and there are all kinds of options to get from point A to point B, not one way that only works for certain students.

The animosity directed towards homeschooling of late is a bit puzzling. Homeschoolers are called elitist or isolationist, unrealistic and tunnel-visioned. People assume homeschooling families are rich and religious. There are lots of misconceptions about homeschooling, what it means, how it is done and who does it. Before you criticize and denigrate, do a little research; you may be surprised. If the best public schooling has to offer is "reliable childcare," perhaps it's time to become more fascinated with what happens at public schools and less concerned with the work being done at home.

Science Friday!

2012-03-02T09:06:00.000-05:00

Yes, you can extract your own DNA with just a few simple materials! Works with fruit DNA, too! Have fun!

What Do You Wish You Would Have Known?

2012-02-29T09:33:00.000-05:00

Copied entirely from Paul Graham here. Some minor cursing (a warning for the easily offended), but my goodness. Imagine if someone had not only sat you down and told you this when you were younger but that you had also had presence of mind enough not to ignore it. Share it with a highschooler you love.

January 2005

(I wrote this talk for a high school. I never actually gave it, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me.)

When I said I was speaking at a high school, my friends were curious. What will you say to high school students? So I asked them, what do you wish someone had told you in high school? Their answers were remarkably similar. So I'm going to tell you what we all wish someone had told us.

I'll start by telling you something you don't have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you're supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.

If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You don't need to be in a rush to choose your life's work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.

It might seem that nothing would be easier than deciding what you like, but it turns out to be hard, partly because it's hard to get an accurate picture of most jobs. Being a doctor is not the way it's portrayed on TV. Fortunately you can also watch real doctors, by volunteering in hospitals. [1] (added: notes can be reviewed by visiting the link above)

But there are other jobs you can't learn about, because no one is doing them yet. Most of the work I've done in the last ten years didn't exist when I was in high school. The world changes fast, and the rate at which it changes is itself speeding up. In such a world it's not a good idea to have fixed plans.

And yet every May, speakers all over the country fire up the Standard Graduation Speech, the theme of which is: don't give up on your dreams. I know what they mean, but this is a bad way to put it, because it implies you're supposed to be bound by some plan you made early on. The computer world has a name for this: premature optimization. And it is synonymous with disaster. These speakers would do better to say simply, don't give up.

What they really mean is, don't get demoralized. Don't think that you can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good.

I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.

So far we've cut the Standard Graduation Speech down from "don't give up on your dreams" to "what someone else can do, you can do." But it needs to be cut still further. There is some variation in natural ability. Most people overestimate its role, but it does exist. If I were talking to a guy four feet tall whose ambition was to play in the NBA, I'd feel pretty stupid saying, you can do anything if you really try. [2]

We need to cut the Standard Graduation Speech down to, "what someone else with your abilities can do, you can do; and don't underestimate your abilities." But as so often happens, the closer you get to the truth, the messier your sentence gets. We've taken a nice, neat (but wrong) slogan, and churned it up like a mud puddle. It doesn't make a very good speech anymore. But worse still, it doesn't tell you what to do anymore. Someone with your abilities? What are your abilities?

Upwind

I think the solution is to work in the other direction. Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway.

In the graduation-speech approach, you decide where you want to be in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? I propose instead that you don't commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward.

It's not so important what you work on, so long as you're not wasting your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take.

Suppose you're a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.

Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for "don't give up on your dreams." Stay upwind.

How do you do that, though? Even if math is upwind of economics, how are you supposed to know that as a high school student?

Well, you don't, and that's what you need to find out. Look for smart people and hard problems. Smart people tend to clump together, and if you can find such a clump, it's probably worthwhile to join it. But it's not straightforward to find these, because there is a lot of faking going on.

To a newly arrived undergraduate, all university departments look much the same. The professors all seem forbiddingly intellectual and publish papers unintelligible to outsiders. But while in some fields the papers are unintelligible because they're full of hard ideas, in others they're deliberately written in an obscure way to seem as if they're saying something important. This may seem a scandalous proposition, but it has been experimentally verified, in the famous Social Text affair. Suspecting that the papers published by literary theorists were often just intellectual-sounding nonsense, a physicist deliberately wrote a paper full of intellectual-sounding nonsense, and submitted it to a literary theory journal, which published it.

The best protection is always to be working on hard problems. Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn't. Hard means worry: if you're not worrying that something you're making will come out badly, or that you won't be able to understand something you're studying, then it isn't hard enough. There has to be suspense.

Well, this seems a grim view of the world, you may think. What I'm telling you is that you should worry? Yes, but it's not as bad as it sounds. It's exhilarating to overcome worries. You don't see faces much happier than people winning gold medals. And you know why they're so happy? Relief.

I'm not saying this is the only way to be happy. Just that some kinds of worry are not as bad as they sound.

Ambition

In practice, "stay upwind" reduces to "work on hard problems." And you can start today. I wish I'd grasped that in high school.

Most people like to be good at what they do. In the so-called real world this need is a powerful force. But high school students rarely benefit from it, because they're given a fake thing to do. When I was in high school, I let myself believe that my job was to be a high school student. And so I let my need to be good at what I did be satisfied by merely doing well in school.

If you'd asked me in high school what the difference was between high school kids and adults, I'd have said it was that adults had to earn a living. Wrong. It's that adults take responsibility for themselves. Making a living is only a small part of it. Far more important is to take intellectual responsibility for oneself.

If I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job. I don't mean that I'd slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn't mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn't think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn't think of himself as a waiter. [3] And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to do real work.

When I ask people what they regret most about high school, they nearly all say the same thing: that they wasted so much time. If you're wondering what you're doing now that you'll regret most later, that's probably it. [4]

Some people say this is inevitable-- that high school students aren't capable of getting anything done yet. But I don't think this is true. And the proof is that you're bored. You probably weren't bored when you were eight. When you're eight it's called "playing" instead of "hanging out," but it's the same thing. And when I was eight, I was rarely bored. Give me a back yard and a few other kids and I could play all day.

The reason this got stale in middle school and high school, I now realize, is that I was ready for something else. Childhood was getting old.

I'm not saying you shouldn't hang out with your friends-- that you should all become humorless little robots who do nothing but work. Hanging out with friends is like chocolate cake. You enjoy it more if you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. No matter how much you like chocolate cake, you'll be pretty queasy after the third meal of it. And that's what the malaise one feels in high school is: mental queasiness. [5]

You may be thinking, we have to do more than get good grades. We have to have extracurricular activities. But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. Collecting donations for a charity is an admirable thing to do, but it's not hard. It's not getting something done. What I mean by getting something done is learning how to write well, or how to program computers, or what life was really like in preindustrial societies, or how to draw the human face from life. This sort of thing rarely translates into a line item on a college application.

Corruption

It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the people you have to impress to get into college are not a very discerning audience. At most colleges, it's not the professors who decide whether you get in, but admissions officers, and they are nowhere near as smart. They're the NCOs of the intellectual world. They can't tell how smart you are. The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that.

Few parents would pay so much for their kids to go to a school that didn't improve their admissions prospects. Prep schools openly say this is one of their aims. But what that means, if you stop to think about it, is that they can hack the admissions process: that they can take the very same kid and make him seem a more appealing candidate than he would if he went to the local public school. [6]

Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be a promising college applicant. But that means you're designing your life to satisfy a process so mindless that there's a whole industry devoted to subverting it. No wonder you become cynical. The malaise you feel is the same that a producer of reality TV shows or a tobacco industry executive feels. And you don't even get paid a lot.

So what do you do? What you should not do is rebel. That's what I did, and it was a mistake. I didn't realize exactly what was happening to us, but I smelled a major rat. And so I just gave up. Obviously the world sucked, so why bother?

When I discovered that one of our teachers was herself using Cliff's Notes, it seemed par for the course. Surely it meant nothing to get a good grade in such a class.

In retrospect this was stupid. It was like someone getting fouled in a soccer game and saying, hey, you fouled me, that's against the rules, and walking off the field in indignation. Fouls happen. The thing to do when you get fouled is not to lose your cool. Just keep playing.

By putting you in this situation, society has fouled you. Yes, as you suspect, a lot of the stuff you learn in your classes is crap. And yes, as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade. But like many fouls, this one was unintentional. [7] So just keep playing.

Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you're there.

Curiosity

And what's your real job supposed to be? Unless you're Mozart, your first task is to figure that out. What are the great things to work on? Where are the imaginative people? And most importantly, what are you interested in? The word "aptitude" is misleading, because it implies something innate. The most powerful sort of aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and such interests are often acquired tastes.

A distorted version of this idea has filtered into popular culture under the name "passion." I recently saw an ad for waiters saying they wanted people with a "passion for service." The real thing is not something one could have for waiting on tables. And passion is a bad word for it. A better name would be curiosity.

Kids are curious, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid curiosity. Kid curiosity is broad and shallow; they ask why at random about everything. In most adults this curiosity dries up entirely. It has to: you can't get anything done if you're always asking why about everything. But in ambitious adults, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep. The mud flat morphs into a well.

Curiosity turns work into play. For Einstein, relativity wasn't a book full of hard stuff he had to learn for an exam. It was a mystery he was trying to solve. So it probably felt like less work to him to invent it than it would seem to someone now to learn it in a class.

One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee.

Now I know a number of people who do great work, and it's the same with all of them. They have little discipline. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. One still hasn't sent out his half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox.

I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline. You probably need about the amount you need to go running. I'm often reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don't run for several days, I feel ill. It's the same with people who do great things. They know they'll feel bad if they don't work, and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.

Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That's why he's so good.

If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question. The critical moment for Einstein was when he looked at Maxwell's equations and said, what the hell is going on here?

It can take years to zero in on a productive question, because it can take years to figure out what a subject is really about. To take an extreme example, consider math. Most people think they hate math, but the boring stuff you do in school under the name "mathematics" is not at all like what mathematicians do.

The great mathematician G. H. Hardy said he didn't like math in high school either. He only took it up because he was better at it than the other students. Only later did he realize math was interesting-- only later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them correctly.

When a friend of mine used to grumble because he had to write a paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to make it interesting. That's what you need to do: find a question that makes the world interesting. People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.

And not only in intellectual matters. Henry Ford's great question was, why do cars have to be a luxury item? What would happen if you treated them as a commodity? Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, why does everyone have to stay in his position? Why can't defenders score goals too?

Now

If it takes years to articulate great questions, what do you do now, at sixteen? Work toward finding one. Great questions don't appear suddenly. They gradually congeal in your head. And what makes them congeal is experience. So the way to find great questions is not to search for them-- not to wander about thinking, what great discovery shall I make? You can't answer that; if you could, you'd have made it.

The way to get a big idea to appear in your head is not to hunt for big ideas, but to put in a lot of time on work that interests you, and in the process keep your mind open enough that a big idea can take roost. Einstein, Ford, and Beckenbauer all used this recipe. They all knew their work like a piano player knows the keys. So when something seemed amiss to them, they had the confidence to notice it.

Put in time how and on what? Just pick a project that seems interesting: to master some chunk of material, or to make something, or to answer some question. Choose a project that will take less than a month, and make it something you have the means to finish. Do something hard enough to stretch you, but only just, especially at first. If you're deciding between two projects, choose whichever seems most fun. If one blows up in your face, start another. Repeat till, like an internal combustion engine, the process becomes self-sustaining, and each project generates the next one. (This could take years.)

It may be just as well not to do a project "for school," if that will restrict you or make it seem like work. Involve your friends if you want, but not too many, and only if they're not flakes. Friends offer moral support (few startups are started by one person), but secrecy also has its advantages. There's something pleasing about a secret project. And you can take more risks, because no one will know if you fail.

Don't worry if a project doesn't seem to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to have. Paths can bend a lot more than you think. So let the path grow out the project. The most important thing is to be excited about it, because it's by doing that you learn.

Don't disregard unseemly motivations. One of the most powerful is the desire to be better than other people at something. Hardy said that's what got him started, and I think the only unusual thing about him is that he admitted it. Another powerful motivator is the desire to do, or know, things you're not supposed to. Closely related is the desire to do something audacious. Sixteen year olds aren't supposed to write novels. So if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus side of the ledger; if you fail utterly, you're doing no worse than expectations. [8]

Beware of bad models. Especially when they excuse laziness. When I was in high school I used to write "existentialist" short stories like ones I'd seen by famous writers. My stories didn't have a lot of plot, but they were very deep. And they were less work to write than entertaining ones would have been. I should have known that was a danger sign. And in fact I found my stories pretty boring; what excited me was the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the famous writers.

Now I have enough experience to realize that those famous writers actually sucked. Plenty of famous people do; in the short term, the quality of one's work is only a small component of fame. I should have been less worried about doing something that seemed cool, and just done something I liked. That's the actual road to coolness anyway.

A key ingredient in many projects, almost a project on its own, is to find good books. Most books are bad. Nearly all textbooks are bad. [9] So don't assume a subject is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. You have to search actively for the tiny number of good books.

The important thing is to get out there and do stuff. Instead of waiting to be taught, go out and learn.

Your life doesn't have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could be shaped by your own curiosity. It is for all ambitious adults. And you don't have to wait to start. In fact, you don't have to wait to be an adult. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age. [10]

This may sound like bullshit. I'm just a minor, you may think, I have no money, I have to live at home, I have to do what adults tell me all day long. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as cumbersome, and they manage to get things done. If you think it's restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids.

The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to get things done, and high school kids don't. That realization hits most people around 23. But I'm letting you in on the secret early. So get to work. Maybe you can be the first generation whose greatest regret from high school isn't how much time you wasted.

Creative Thinking - As Simple as Jelly and Peanut Butter

2012-02-28T08:51:00.000-05:00

If you could think more creatively by changing one routine thing, one habit, would you?

According to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, something as simple as changing your regular routine,

"...can help people break their cognitive patterns, and thus lead them to think more flexibly and creatively,” according to a research team led by psychologist Simone Ritter of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands."

Among other things, the study asked Dutch students to make a sandwich in the conventional way using bread, then butter, then chocolate chips. They asked a second group to butter the bread and then to scatter chocolate chips on a plate, using the buttered bread to pick up the chips.

First of all, butter and chocolate chips? Yes, please!

By approaching a standard task in a non-standard way (e.g., switching sandwich assembly order), participants in the study demonstrated more flexible thinking in the tasks that followed.

So what could this mean for schools?

Most teacher-training programs stress the need to establish a routine in the classroom, and up until very recently, parents, teachers and researchers have told students to approach studying in a systemic, linear fashion. This new study, although not necessarily refuting those strategies outright, could demonstrate the need for the occasional shakeup in the normal pattern. Some schools flip schedules completely mid-year (6th period become 1st, 5th becomes 2nd, and so on), and most teachers recognize the need for a break in routines at times. There are students who need to have predictable routines to function well (e.g., autistic students anywhere on the spectrum, from moderate to profound), but others might benefit from looking at a task in a different order, or approaching the day outside of the usual routine.

Food for thought.

Would You Hire Your Own Kid?

2012-02-27T08:35:00.000-05:00

So let's move beyond the conversation about testing, standards, curriculum maps and cut to the chase:

If you owned a business, would you hire your own kid?

If not, why not? What is missing?

Tony Wagner suggests there are seven skills that school should be teaching (with the implication, of course, that schools are not currently teaching all, if any, of them).

1. Critical thinking and problem solving

Critical thinking and problem solving are examples of divergent thinking, a practice that is generally frowned upon in school these days. Instead of getting the one, right answer, students should be encouraged to examine the problem or idea from multiple perspectives. This is teaching HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence

Mike Summers, who is Vice President for Global Talent Management at Dell Computers, said that his greatest concern was young people's lack of leadership skills. "Kids just out of school have an amazing lack of preparedness in general leadership skills and collaborative skills," he explained, "They lack the ability to influence versus direct and command."We should be teaching kids to work together as a group instead of blindly competing against one another. Doesn't mean everyone gets a medal, but it does mean that we more fully explore the idea that kids should be learning to collaborate locally in person and globally through webtools.

3. Agility and adaptability

Adapt or die - basic Darwin. The only thing constant is change - basic business speak. If we are raising kids who cannot be flexible and utilize new tools and ideas if they are the new norm, we will have kids who will not be able to keep pace with the speed of innovation in the world. This is not to say abandon all tradition or simply speed up; this means being more agile and less rigid in thinking and skillsets.

4. Initiative and entrepreneurialism

Mark Chandler, the Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Cisco was one of the strongest proponents of these traits. "Leadership is the capacity to take initiative and trust yourself to be creative," he told me. "I say to my employees if you try five things and get all five of them right, you may be failing. If you try ten things, and get eight of them right, you're a hero. If you set stretch goals, you'll never be blamed for failing to reach a stretch goal, but you will be blamed for not trying.

Risk-taking: not taught in school because risk = bad. Not so. There is stupid risk (drinking and driving) and calculated risk (think experiments with alternate road materials, like solar panels, to solve the energy crisis). What employer would not want a confident employee who takes initiative?

5. Effective written and oral communication

Schools like to think they do this well, but identifying a noun in a sentence is not "effective written and oral communication." Writing and public speaking are taught less and less in general, and writing and speaking for a purpose even less than that.

6. Accessing and analyzing information

Kids have the world at their fingertips, and in their purses and in their backpockets, in the form of iPads, iPods, tablets, etc. They are inundated with information, but so what? Plagiarism is rampant, so kids are not transforming the information they find, simply copying or parroting it. Do they know how to vet a website, or do they believe what they see because it is written down, and are we teaching this skill? Not so well.

"There is so much information available that it is almost too much, and if people aren't prepared to process the information effectively it almost freezes them in their steps."

7. Curiosity and imagination

Daniel Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind, writes that "Even in our best schools, we are teaching kids to memorize much more than to think. And in the 21st century, mere memorization won't get you very far." This goes back to #1 and is closely tied to divergent thinking. There is more than one answer, but if students only have four to choose from their motivation to go further deteriorates rapidly. To put it in global business terms, China is thrilled with the test focus in the US; conversely, they are developing more programs to teach creative thinking and are banking on the fact that they will move from simply manufacturing American ideas to manufacturing their own, cheaper and more quickly than the US. Best quote from this article? The Chinese professors laughed [and] said, ‘You're racing toward our old model. But we're racing toward your model, as fast as we can.'"

So where does your kid fall? Do they have any of these skills, and, if not, how will you help them?

Would you hire them as they are?

21st Century Enlightenment

2012-02-25T08:25:00.000-05:00

Shedding a little light on the subject of enlightenment and change in the 21st century.

Comments are also quite enlightening!

100 Teaching Tools You Should Know About

2012-02-24T07:53:00.000-05:00

This is not just for classroom teachers and homeschoolers; this list encompasses technology and learning tools that can impact both work and personal life out side of the classroom. A great Slideshare presentation!

Happy Friday!

Growing a Community Through Food - Food Revolution Blog!

2012-02-23T08:42:00.001-05:00

Here is the student blog published on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution site:

Feb 2012
Story by Sicily

We are a non-profit private school just starting out, a one-room school house on five acres. My mother is our teacher; she started HoneyFern in 2010 when she saw that kids need experiences and a voice in what they learn.

As we started the second half of our first year, we started to look around for community service opportunities, eventually finding Pastor Leonard and Hollydale United Methodist Church right down the street. Recognizing our common desire to help our community, even though HoneyFern is a secular school, we started running Hollydale's food pantry a year ago, helping families with a no-questions-asked food donation twice a month, relying solely on pantry items donated by church members and other people in the area.

Hollydale's congregation is a very low-income one; 90% of students at the local elementary school are on free or reduced-price lunch, and the church assists them as well with a brown paper sack of food every Friday, too (so they will definitely have some food over the weekend).

Many food pantries have two problems today: they are a never-ending supply of food, and they are a never-ending supply of (often) low-quality food. Every week we see the same people, if people know that they will have a constant food source for free, they may not try to supply the food for themselves. But sometimes the food they are being supplied with is extremely unhealthy. If we want to try and help people eat healthy at home, why are we giving people horrible food? Pastor Leonard also realized that all food given out is usually boxed, and filled with preservatives, additives, and all kinds of sugars. In the long-term, this didn't seem like we were helping our community at all.

At the end of 2011, HoneyFern met with Pastor Leonard and talked about the idea of helping without hurting; what could we do in our partnership that would take the people of the community out of their 'crisis mode', which is ultimately self-destructive and limiting, into a self-sustaining place of helping themselves?

We realized that opening the food pantry was a good idea if we just want to put a Band-Aid on the wound, but it was not great if you wanted to heal the wound. In this conversation we discussed the idea of starting a community garden; in this way we can either educate people how to grow a garden at home if they have space, or they can come to the garden and have a plot of their own, with support and education to start providing for themselves. We have decided to try to get fresh herbs and vegetables on the plates of the people who come to our food pantry.

Planting (and eating from!) a garden relaxes your mind and body. Eating healthier benefits your body because it builds strong bones and gives you less of a chance for blood clots, and it just makes you feel more alive. You have more energy to do things, and personally it makes me feel happier. Growing a garden is healthy for your mind, too. While you are weeding weeds you are also clearing your mind of weeds and focusing on one thing. You forget about car payments and mortgages and focus on the garden, the plants getting stronger in the sunshine and the good you are doing for yourself and your environment.

We hope to educate people on healthy eating so they can take that home and make healthy meals for the entire family; although we do not live in a food desert, the people in our community have limited incomes and many have fallen into the pattern of dollar menus and cheap meals in boxes, some of which we have provided through the food pantry. Although we will not give up the food pantry, as it does provide immediate food aid and relief to people who are truly in crisis, we feel that the community garden is the direction that will sustain and grow our community, long term.

This is our Food Revolution: helping bring healthy eating to those who are less fortunate than us. We hope that our gardening 'plot' (no pun intended) will help our community get back on its feet and gain independence in the world.

This is our first spring, and we are ready to break ground on a new beginning for our community; won't you come with us on our journey?

About the author: Sicily is a 6th grade student at Honey Fern School.

Wordless Wednesday - Making Mardi Gras Masks

2012-02-22T07:53:00.000-05:00

Taking a Test With...The Arts?

2012-02-21T08:26:00.000-05:00

I believe with all my heart the following statement: The arts and arts education are an integral, imperative part of a school.

For years now schools have been jettisoning their arts programs in favor of focusing on The Test and classes to prep for it, writing the arts off an expense that does not add value to the school. Nevermind the following assertions by multiple groups advocating increased presence of the arts in schools:

Benefits of Arts EducationSource: Americans for the Arts, 2002

Stimulates and develops the imagination and critical thinking, and refines cognitive and creative skills.
Has a tremendous impact on the developmental growth of every child and has proven to help level the "learning field" across socio-economic boundaries.
Strengthens problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, adding to overall academic achievement and school success.
Develops a sense of craftsmanship, quality task performance, and goal-setting—skills needed to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
Teaches children life skills such as developing an informed perception; articulating a vision; learning to solve problems and make decisions; building self-confidence and self-discipline; developing the ability to imagine what might be; and accepting responsibility to complete tasks from start to finish.
Nurtures important values, including team-building skills; respecting alternative viewpoints; and appreciating and being aware of different cultures and traditions.

Source: Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections, 1998, Introduction

Plays a central role in cognitive, motor, language, and social-emotional development.
Motivates and engages children in learning, stimulates memory, facilitates understanding, enhances symbolic communication, promotes relationships, and provides an avenue for building competence.
Provides a natural source of learning. Child development specialists note that play is the business of young children; play is the way children promote and enhance their development. The arts are a most natural vehicle for play.

Well, now there is additional research that proves the art-axers wrong; not only do the arts enrich the lives of students on an aesthetic and emotional level, they also raise test scores on The Test without any additional emphasis on skill-and-drill.

Sounds like plenty of added value to me.

Accidental Montessori

2012-02-20T08:14:00.000-05:00

I am familiar with the work of Maria Montessori, but I never set out to pattern myself on her practices (which are also similar to Reggio Emilia systems of schooling). Turns out I have inadvertently set up something very Montessori-like here at HoneyFern, and other schools are using this as a way to restructure and improve schooling in the older grades.

Turns out, student-led learning actually works, and it works just as well for the older grades as it does for children in the earliest stages of school.

As quoted in the article above,

"It’s a different style of teaching, another option for children who learn differently,” she said. “It’s geared towards students who are exploratory, that like to discover things. Middle school kids by nature like to have a voice and are very inquisitive. Developmentally, the Montessori program sits very well with the middle school-aged child who is curious and likes to have more ownership to his or her own learning.”

Sounds about right.

You Have To Be Willing To Take The Long View

2012-02-18T08:47:00.000-05:00

Recently I got into a disagreement with a friend on Facebook when I said that one in five children in the United States suffered from food insecurity. She refused to believe that assertion, even when I supported it with reliable research. We have a safety net, she said, and no one falls through it; my church alone provides food items, she said. Still, children go to bed every night not knowing where their next meal is coming from, and it is especially difficult during summer breaks from school, I argued. Just because you can't see it around you doesn't mean it does not exist.

What if I told you that some children have never been in a car? Or a parking garage? Or that middle-class children come to school having heard 35 million more words than a child living in poverty, a staggering inequality that results in lower reading levels achieved much later for low-SES kids?

Crazy talk, and yet it is true and happening in our country. The response from one school has been shockingly simple: experiences. Take kids to lots of different places, expose them to things they would not see in their daily life (the zoo, the parking garage, a museum) and have them write and reflect on what they see.

But, one might argue, I see these supposedly "poor" kids with brand-new shoes and iPhones; why don't their parents educate them? That is a knee-jerk response to the issue; Ruby Payne's groundbreaking work on poverty has shown that parents with a lower socioeconomic status (SES) demonstrate love through things (shoes, clothes and electronics), while parents with a higher SES demonstrate love through expereinces (classes, trips and such). This results in a kid with nice shoes and no understanding of how a parking meter works, a child who is handicapped before the real work of school even begins.

So if adding experiences works for the (shrinking) middle class, it stands to reason that it would work for kids in poverty. If you can show a student another option, broaden their horizons while teaching them something new (and piquing their interest in learning further or studying something related), why would you stay in the classroom?

Perhaps this quote is the best way to summarize why more schools do not recognize and address this uneven distribution of life's most basic experiences:

Daniel Feigelson heads the network of 30 schools that P.S. 142 belongs to. He said that he wished more principals would adopt the program but that they were fearful. “There is so much pressure systematically to do well on the tests, and this may not boost scores right away,” he said. “To do this you’d have to be willing to take the long view.”

Friday Resources!

2012-02-17T08:46:00.000-05:00

Science on the brain this week, along with ESL and math. Here is a compendium of links that have been very helpful this week:

ESL Tutor Resources

Honestly, this is also good for plain old English classes for native speakers. Lots of clear explanations and activities for learning grammar and vocabulary!

Brain Games

A great list of interactive and sometimes kinesthetic games for kids to review parts and functions of the brain.

The Great Plant Escape

A CSI-type interactive game that explores plants. Fun for 3-6 or as an introduction for slightly older kids with less background knowledge.

Bodies - Atlanta

Our field trip this week. An amazing way to explore the human body and all of its systems. We had originally planned to study all of the body systems and then go, but I overruled me. Exploring first is so much more fun!

Alcumus

Interactive, problem-solving algebra for high-performing math students. Helps develop critical thinking, is self-paced and FREE. (you're welcome)

Hope you had a great week!

Changing Paradigms

2012-02-16T07:54:00.000-05:00

A fabulous animation of a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson on changing the paradigm of education. Enjoy!

Hierarchy of Needs for Education

2012-02-15T07:55:00.000-05:00

Gotta love Maslow. He's the dude that tells us that until we fulfill our most basic needs we will not be able to be "self-actualized" (which I define as being the very best a person can be, guided by their own internal compass towards a work and a life that is fulfilling and joyful). Maslow based his work on extraordinary people (Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Frederick Douglass, among others) rather than what he termed "...crippled, stunted, immature subjects." Here's a visual of the result:

The first three are the easy three; it's the last two that are killers. Food, shelter and belonging can be rustled up pretty much anywhere in the United States, even if it initially takes a little effort. The last two are the killers, and they are the stages where students (and adults) get stuck most frequently.

Self-actualization can take a lifetime, but esteem is the major roadblock. Some people never get past that stage. Esteem - self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect for self and others - this is the stumbling block.

And why is this? Is it because kids get hollow praise and a ribbon for just showing up these days instead of working hard and earning a reward? Is it our school system which emphasizes one right answer instead of many divergent answers, thereby stifling creativity and self-sufficiency necessary to move through the stages to self-actualization? Is it many parents' tendency to rescue their child from suffering or feeling any type of struggle intellectually, eroding the child's confidence in their ability to rescue themselves? Is it because adults in our society increasingly lack persistence and perseverance?

Yes, to all of the above. Esteem is not simply feeling good about oneself for merely existing; esteem is having confidence in what you are capable of, a sense of actual achievement for a job well-done and the self-respect to do it on your own. Esteem is not warm fuzzies that are fleeting, the result of hollow praise received when you know you haven't done your best but you "win" anyway. Esteem is learning through trial and error, success and defeat, setbacks and advances. It is not a smooth one-way street on which there are no potholes or speed bumps.

We need to allow our kids the space and time to struggle and then succeed anyway so that their achievements are real, laudable and their own. Otherwise we are growing generations of people stuck meeting just their basic needs, nevermore. Imagine what we will lose if that happens.

What is Mindset?

2012-02-14T08:51:00.000-05:00

Read these two statements:

"You are so smart!"

"You worked so hard!"

Which one produces higher achievement? Which one is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

If you choose the latter, you are correct (and so smart!). Recent research from the Department of Brains v. Effort has concluded that the former statement produces far less, pound for pound, than the latter. In Carol Dweck's work on "mindsets," the first statement represents a "fixed" mindset, whereby

...people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort.

In the second, a "growth" mindset,

...people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.

What a great way to look at students in education! No, this is not the same school of thought that believes all students are gifted and proceeds accordingly; this theory (expanded upon here) takes all students where they are and looks to help them develop the traits of a growth mindset (remarkably similar to the 16 Habits of Mind, which are qualities that educated people cultivate to help them when they don't know the answer. This is an entire curriculum based on developing these - go, Vermont!), starting with four simple ways to change your mindset. The idea that everyone is capable of greatness, regardless of native intelligence, shouldn't be revolutionary, and if you talk to a school administrator, they will say that they live by that credo. In practice, though, the education machine proceeds quite differently; classes are leveled, kidsa re tracked and divided biologically, individuality is stifled in the name of The Test, and there is little time in the school day to cultivate the growth mindset.

Small changes, though, babysteps. Thinking about how we talk to kids about their work (statement #1 v. statement #2) is a great place to start; if we can look to persistence and hard work as harbingers of success, as opposed to test scores and IQ, imagine how much farther our kids could go! Empowering kids and parents can make a hige difference in this process, too, as noted in Time magazine:

"The message is that everything is within the kids' control, that their intelligence is malleable," says Lisa Blackwell, a research scientist at Columbia University who has worked with [Carol] Dweck to develop and run the [Brainology] program, which has helped increase the students' interest in school and turned around their declining math grades. More than any teacher or workshop, Blackwell says, "parents can play a critical role in conveying this message to their children by praising their effort, strategy and progress rather than emphasizing their 'smartness' or praising high performance alone. Most of all, parents should let their kids know that mistakes are a part of learning."

Revolutionary.

12 Most Compelling Reasons to Homeschool

2012-02-13T08:17:00.000-05:00

The writer of this article is a mental refugee from the public school system, too, except unlike myself, she is still working in the system. Her advice to parents looking for answers to their issues in education is often to leave school and homeschool, and she offers 12 excellent reasons why; I would add that these are the 12 most compelling reasons for coming to HoneyFern, as well. We are a hybrid private/home school, which means you get the accreditation of a private school with the flexibility and individualization of a home school. The list, annotated:

1. Learning is customized, not standardized. Students at HoneyFern follow their own curriculum; we work together for science labs and on special projects, but other subjects are based on what a student wants to study (or what they need for their future goals). This can be a challenging part of the school, as many students who come out of public school are institutionalized and don't know how to direct their own learning. It is a lot of freedom to have.

2. Associate with those you enjoy rather than those who share your birth year. I have always been a proponent of multi-age, looping classrooms. As a small school, we try very hard to have a mix of students who enjoy each other, too, and this summer we are planning several get togethers for new students to relax and get to know them, thereby reducing first-day anxiety.

3. Freedom to learn with their tools. We still have some texting restrictions during the day (please don't disturb your friends in public school!), but otherwise students can bring in and learn with their iPhones, iPads, iWhatevers.

4. Socialize with those who share your passions not your zip code. We are identifying mentors, teachers and learning partners who we can work with, something that would be difficult if not impossible for a traditional classroom.

5. Real life measures are better than bubble tests. We take a standardized test at the end of the year for accreditation, but I am not even sure what is on it. We also test our adopted stream, publish our writing nationally and compete in several national academic competitions every year. Which do you think students get more out of?

6. Don't just read about doing stuff. Do stuff! Building a community garden, designing a future city, going to see plays...check.

7. Travel when you want. Flexibility in our schedule makes this a possibility for all of our families!

8. You are more than a number. This is hard for institutionalized kids who are used to melting into the back row, and when I talk to prosepctive families, I point this out. Not everybody actually wants to be front and center, and it is difficult when your teacher knows exactly what you are capable of and when you are not doing it. Sometimes kids say this is what they want...but it's not really. A big consideration.

9. Do work you value. This is a big one for me. Students need to care AT LEAST as much about their own success as I do, and one way to get there is to let them guide their course of study to things they value. Some students are not interested in figuring this out, though, and I don't blame them; I blame the factory model public education they receive, the one that leads them by the nose from meaningless task to meaningless task. The longer students are in this model, the harder it is for them to even know what it is they want to learn because "learning" has become an onerous task. There is no joy, no fun and, thus, no value.

10. Independence is valued over dependence. I am a facilitator, a gatherer of resources and, at times, a clarifier. Ask me a question, and I will ask you one back or give you the tools to answer the question. Sometimes we sit down and figure it out together, but generally the goal is for independent, self-sufficient learners. Again, see #9. If it is valuable to the student, they will be motivated to learn and be more independent.

11. You don't have to waste time learning with standardized tests. How does one even "learn with" standardized tests? An oxymoron.

12. No more meaningless worksheets and reports. Does this mean that there are no worksheets or reports? Not necessarily. The key word here is "meaningless."

It is s big step to eschew the traditional public education, and some people are not ready for it. Whenever I think of how we learn as adults, though, I don't imagine rows of same-age adults (a class of only 40-year-olds) sitting in rows, plodding mindlessly from one 50-minute class lecture to another. Why should our kids be warehoused in the same way?

Sunday Morning Sweet Treat

2012-02-12T08:39:00.000-05:00

What if education was like an ice cream factory?

Enjoy this article on a blustery (finally) winter day.

Anxiety Dreams?

2012-02-11T08:18:00.000-05:00

Last night I had an anxiety dream that focused on teaching. This is becoming less common for me. When I was teaching in public school, I had these dreams, always the same one, two to four times a month. I am in a classroom full of students, and I cannot get them to listen to me. They are walking around, talking, throwing things: anything but listening to me. I wake up frustrated and miserable.

Since I quit and started HoneyFern, I have had two in two years, and last night was the second one. This one was very different, though, and I don't know if it exactly counts as an anxiety dream anymore.

It started out the same, with me at the front of the class, kids in rows (which is also strange because I was never that kind of teacher and usually never had desks in rows), kids not listening, only this time, one of the kids stood up and told the other kids to be quiet. Then another kid stood up, and he was about seven feet tall, and he proceeded to tell all of the other students, point by point, why it was important to be quiet and pay attention. Then he looked down at me, smiled, and sat down.

This represents some sort of shift in my subconscious, and I like it.

Taking a Break in Education

2012-02-10T08:55:00.000-05:00

In this article, a college student argues (persuasively) for taking a break in education, quoting Sir Ken Robinson: "Life is not linear; it's organic!"

I agree wholeheartedly. I am a big proponent of the gap year, and I think that even in our K-12 schooling we need to have time to pause and reflect (especially if you are in a traditional public school setting, which doesn't leave much space for deep thought or reflection). We are still so concerned with test scores when all research points to their uselessness; we are so concerned with keeping up with other countries that we are fallig behind on creativity and innovation.

If you think about times when you needed to learn something (or you were motivated to learn something) think about how you did it. You may have found someone to work with; you may have completed the task under thier guidance, watched them do it and discussed what you learned. You may have done research on the internet or asked for opinions on Facebook; you may have gone to a class. In the middle of the learning there was certainly practice, failure and refinement (there probably was not a multiple-choice test or one test that let you move on). These breaks for practice and refinement follow a more organic cycle of education, one that we should cultivate in our schools and our students.

A pause for reflection is valuable and helps students stay focused and figure out their own direction, working towards becoming fully actualized adults. What is more important: finishing school in a certain time frame, or actually learning?

No-brainer for me.

Five Qualities in Adults That Matter Most To Teens

2012-02-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

A great article on the five qualities a teen wants in a role model:

1. Passion and the ability to inspire
2. A clear set of values
3. Commitment to community
4. Selflessness and acceptance of others
5. Ability to overcome obstacles

These five qualities should be what we all strive for as human beings, but some are certainly more difficult for others. I think the ability to accept everyone without judgment and to persist to overcome obstacles are the hardest for most people, this writer included, but when kids see that you are reflective and working towards that it helps tremendously. I think it starts with accepting yourself and stopping the negative inner chatter that pops up when something is difficult, and I think it also starts with sending positive messages to the world through your actions and your works.

To this list of important qualities for adults working with teens I would add the following:

1. Genuine interest in working with the teen. This is not the time to worry about padding your resume; this is someone's life, and you need to be genuinely interested in helping them succeed, showing them other paths and offering guidance when needed. If you have ulterior motives, perhaps volunteer somewhere else.

2. Total acceptance of the teen. This means taking them as they are, not as you think they should be. You are not there to remake them in your image; your are there to help them become the best parts of themselves and to show them another way. Many teens who seek out mentors do so because they do not have role models in their daily life. The last thing they need is someone to point out all the bad things; they are aware.

3. An ability to be an honest cheerleader. Teens know when someone is lying or being dishonest; they also know when false (or overblown) praise is being given. Your job is to be supportive but honest. If, for example, a teen asks for help practicing for a job interview or writing a college essay, they are asking for honest feedback to help them get the job and write clearly. Praising their clothes choice for the interview (instead of teaching them to make eye contact and work on a firm handshake) or telling them you like the effort they put into their essay (without pointing out gaping holes or false logic) is not doing them any favors.

4. A willingness to like the teen you are working with. Yes, as a mentor, you have to like the teen you are working with. This may not be a popular opinion; many people assume that mentors/teachers like all of the teens/students, but that just isn't so. If you are working closely with a teen and trying to help them change their life, you need to develop a relationship built on trust, respect and, yes, friendly affection. Teens are notorious for being surly and uncooperative, and liking them helps you get past that. Keep in mind the more they like you, the surlier they are apt to be. They know you will still like them at their grumpiest, so they don't hold back. It's a compliment.

Working with kids is the most rewarding, frustrating, challenging and joyous work on the planet, I believe. It changes you and makes you a better person. It is work worth doing.

Wordless Wednesday

2012-02-08T08:57:00.001-05:00

Big Things Are Coming!

2012-02-07T09:45:00.000-05:00

Spring has sprung (very nearly; it was 66 degrees on Saturday, although night temperatures are still in the thirties), and along with meeting potential students for next year and finalizing a schedule of AP classes for the fall, HoneyFern is working on some pretty cool stuff. Here are just a couple things:

Thing #1: We are starting a community garden with Hollydale United Methodist Church (the church we run the food pantry out of), and one of HoneyFern's students has been asked to write a guest blog for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution website. She has done so, the blog has been accepted, and now we just need to take some pictures. Stay tuned for the blog link.

Thing #2: HoneyFern is getting trained this Saturday for another level of monitoring on our adopted stream, Olley Creek. We currently monitor chemically (pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, etc), and now we are being trained to biologically monitor. Once we learn how to count frogs (!) we will be fully trained on stream monitoring; this is a big responsibility. We are the protectors of this stream, its "first responders" if anything is wrong.

Thing #3: One student has been studying Victorian England and has moved on to westward expansion in America and the pioneers. We are planning to live like the pioneers for several days (possibly up to a week) over the summer; the plan is to spend the spring making suitable pioneer costumes and planning activities and getting a site ready, and then...out go the lights and it is cooking over a fire for us. If all goes well, we may open it up to guests.

These are just a few of the things we have going on; the design/build of the garden is going to be a big move for us, as is sewing Victorian costumes. All in a day's work! Big things ahead!

Face to Face is Better Than a Screen

2012-02-06T08:24:00.000-05:00

This article is almost from the Department of Duh...but not quite. A recent study shows that pre-teen girls have better social and emotional health the more they interact with people face-to-face (as opposed to texting and email) and the less they multi-task.

This makes sense; people learn social cues from being social - reading responses and body language - and it is difficult to do that through a screen; even Skype is imperfect due to delays and fuzzy images (and, as the article points out, the fact that many of us do other things while using Skype, as opposed to directing all of our attention to the screen). The more time spent in front of a screen, the less time we have for personal interaction.

This screen time and multi-tasking is endemic and certainly present at our house. Some evenings will find us with the TV on and all on our own device (laptop, iTouch, etc); a news show called this "alone together," and The Child points it out on occasion. It is not a good feeling when your kid looks around the living room, takes it all in and says with a chuckle, "Alone together again."

In the past couple days my family has spent less time on screens and TV, and I think it coincides with the fact that the weather has been beautiful. Yes, we still have school and work online, and we have been watching a video of an old PBS show called "1900 House" (a family lives as Victorians for three months), but we have alos been walking the dogs, working outside and leafing through catalogs and magazines together. There have also been lovely, leisurely picnics, and two of us spent non-screen time lounging on a boat over the weekend, returning home happy, relaxed and rested.

Our family dynamic is better when we sit at the table for dinner and ask about each other's day; we are kinder to each other when we are not in front of screens first thing in the morning. The Child would like to forgo all technology for a week and live like the Victorians (problematic in many ways; I have asked that we start with a couple days and do it over the summer), but I don't think one needs to give it all up in order to benefit. Setting limits on screens and encouraging face-to-face communication strengthens relationships and bonds all people, not just pre-teen girls, and it is a good priority to have.

Why Is It Wrong To Always Be Right?

2012-02-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

Excellent TEDTalk on this very question.

Using the example of Wile E. Coyote and what he feels when he is wrong.

Think of being wrong...as the new being right.

Have a great weekend!

Happy Groundhog Day!

2012-02-02T08:48:00.000-05:00

A little history here.

Grasping At Straws

2012-02-01T08:02:00.000-05:00

Moments before my father died, I was walking down the hospital hallway and the floor starting rolling up and down like the sea; it felt like the tiles were waves under my feet. I wasn't about to pass out, but I threw my hand out towards the wall. I was in the middle of the hallway, so it made no difference as there was nothing to hold onto, and I continued walking towards my father's room. About an hour later he died.

I have had similar experiences when life is about to take a turn, only recognizing them after the turn happens; the ground under my feet literally wobbles, and I throw my hand out to hold on.

Similar events are happening now, only when I throw my hand out, I am finding some support.

For example, in this article, it turns out that everything we thought we knew about learning is wrong, and I have been deliberately cultivating the correct way to learn without having read this research (more of a gut instinct).

I have been moving away from tests and grades and more towards a collaborative approach that breaks down the steps of thinking, much like this article advises. We are thinking of moving towards a design-based curriculum, planning projects that benefit the community as well as the students.

I am trying to cultivate imagination and wonder, thinking ahead to jobs that may not exist right now but might in ten years.

The disconnect for me is when I am confronted with the standardized thinking of traditional schooling. What are we trying to accomplish here with our kids, and does it really work for all kids?

HoneyFern may not work for everyone; maybe we are too far out in our constructivist view of education. I believe that students are excellent shapers of their own curriculum, and that the role of a teacher is a guide and a resource-gatherer. I think that kids, given time and encouragement, will delve deeper and go farther than traditional eductaion will take them. I believe it is harder to work the way we do, both for me and for the student, but the results are far more rewarding than handing back a bubble sheet; our results go deeper than a simple letter grade or percentage.

I do not believe in testing for the sake of testing, multiple-choice answers or reading and answering the chapter questions. I do not believe in molding all kids to be like their same-age peers, and I do not believe that a beaurocrat is the best person to be deciding what our kids should be learning, when.

We are publishing writing, monitoring the health of a stream and organizing a community garden. We are living as Victorians (well, only The Child and myself, and not until the summer). We ask questions and get involved. We are outside every day, and we take time to watch the clouds go by, to collect eggs from the chickens, to eat lunch together and cook for each other. Yes, we do daily math, we memorize anatomy and we write multiple drafts. But we also dissect and draw and create.

We are still seeking community members committed to the vision of persistence, creativity and hard work that matters. We know that it is not for everybody, and that is okay. If it is for you, get in touch and let's talk.

I agree: this is radical, earth-shaking stuff.

Four Keys to a Successful Online Program

2012-01-31T07:41:00.000-05:00

A follow up to yesterday's blog about increased access to free online education; this article discusses the keys to a successful online program. They are pretty straightforward:

The acquisition of mission-critical tools that foster collaboration and enable effective communication;
The implementation of a flexible, focused curriculum that can be tailored to the individual student;
The relevant, timely, and in-depth training of all stakeholders, including administrators, teachers, and parents; and,
The development of an immediate, effective technical and academic support system.

I am not sure that most online providers have these four systems down; our experience with K12 (one of the providers quoted in the article) was that they were not flexible with regard to curriculum, and the actual instruction was simply regular public school in the sense that the instruction was focused squarely on the middle students. The technical support system was great (K12 will provide a computer and a printer for students who need it, all for free through several public systems across the country), but overall, had I not been a teacher, the year would have been a wash, with The Kid completing grinding hours of work in front of a computer, churning out useless repetitive worksheets and exploring an inch of each subject.

Still, my professional learning network on Twitter (@HoneyFernDotOrg) is doing great things in the classroom, inlcuding mystery Skype sessions with other classes across the country, helping their kids design videogames and "flipping" their classes; Edmodo and Moodle and other online platforms are more conducive to collaboration, and Google+ offers tools, too. I am still not totally convinced that all online is the way to go, but there are inroads.

Free, Quality, Online Education

2012-01-30T07:55:00.001-05:00

Is this an oxymoron? Quality online education?

Many colleges and universities are diving into the fray of free online education, including Stanford, which is offering a slate of 17 free online classes this summer, classes that include actual grades (although not credit; you have to enroll, be accepted and pay $40-50,000 for that).

Access to education is not consistent; many countries in the world have little, if any, local schooling. Online classes could be an answer.

Then again, maybe not. If there are no schools, what is the guarantee that there is technology? There are programs that are trying to get laptops with imbedded satellite internet capabilities to every child on the globe, but this dream will take time and money to fulfill.

Other issues in the push for online education are that the education being pushed is a predominently western one, with western ideals of what being educated means, including the manner in which education is delivered and the content of that education. Perhaps the best candidate for online education at this point is the one who doesn't need it: from a developed country, motivated and with the resources to make best use of the delivery model.

Still, all of these ideas are tools to be incorporated. Now that Sal Khan's methodology has been debunked just a little (the debate skews to the side of no research on its effectiveness and the fact that a teacher is missing), the education establishment is looking a little more closely at the design of online classes and trying to figure out ways to make it more inclusive and accessible to the wide variety of students who could potentially benefit from it.

This is a good thing, and the development of more options for students bears watching.

FRESH: The Movie - Free Online Until February 1st

2012-01-29T09:41:00.000-05:00

FRESH, a movie about sustainable, environmentally conscious growing, is available for free until Wednesday, February 1st.

A synopsis from their website:

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

Happy watching!

What's Wrong With the Teenaged Mind?

2012-01-28T09:42:00.001-05:00

We (the students and I) were discussing this very thing while dissecting sheep brains the other day at HoneyFern School. Yes, you can look at the physical mass of brain as an intricate network of neural connections with specific functions for emotion, senses and actions, but to understand how and why adolescents are the way they are is a whole other ball of wax.

Seems like kids are starting puberty earlier and entering adulthood later. My grandmother was married on Christmas Eve by 20 and was raising a baby and working full-time shortly thereafter. She grew up during the Depression and worked a job as soon as she could to help support her family. My grandfather was off fighting in World War II (can't grow up much faster than fighting a war) and then came back to a job that he worked very nearly until retirement, raising three kids with his wife. My parents were the same way, and I had my first job at 15, the earliest I could get one, craving both spending money and independence.

These days, the biological age at which kids begin their sexual development (puberty) is getting lower and lower while the entrance into the "normal" occupations of adulthood is coming later and later; in 2008, the College Board reported that only 57% of enrolled college students would finish their degree within six years, and young adults are delaying marriage and childbearing at historic rates as well (median age at first marriage chart here).

What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness.

The crucial new idea is that there are two different neural and psychological systems that interact to turn children into adults. Over the past two centuries, and even more over the past generation, the developmental timing of these two systems has changed. That, in turn, has profoundly changed adolescence and produced new kinds of adolescent woe. The big question for anyone who deals with young people today is how we can go about bringing these cogs of the teenage mind into sync once again.

Bringing them "into sync" is crucial, both for their health and happiness. If the first system deals with reward (primarily social rewards from peers for teens) and the second deals with control (learning not to make the same mistakes over and over again), then adolescents need lots of opportunities to be successful and brilliant (ideally in front of an appreciative, supportive peer group) and to fail (ideally in front of a supportive, instructive adult or mentor who can help them work through their mistakes and learn to avoid them in the future).

In the distant (and even the not-so-distant) historical past, these systems of motivation and control were largely in sync. In gatherer-hunter and farming societies, childhood education involves formal and informal apprenticeship. Children have lots of chances to practice the skills that they need to accomplish their goals as adults, and so to become expert planners and actors.

In the past, to become a good gatherer or hunter, cook or caregiver, you would actually practice gathering, hunting, cooking and taking care of children all through middle childhood and early adolescence—tuning up just the prefrontal wiring you'd need as an adult. But you'd do all that under expert adult supervision and in the protected world of childhood, where the impact of your inevitable failures would be blunted. When the motivational juice of puberty arrived, you'd be ready to go after the real rewards, in the world outside, with new intensity and exuberance, but you'd also have the skill and control to do it effectively and reasonably safely.

Our current system of education does not encourage these types of practice in the skills that adolescents need to survive today.

The experience of trying to achieve a real goal in real time in the real world is increasingly delayed, and the growth of the control system depends on just those experiences.

This results in young adults who cannot move out of their parents' basements because they lack the skills and confidence to truly manage their own life and experiences. The article under discussion points out that kids today are not "stupider" and are, in fact, much smarter and more savvy in many ways. Still, without the practice of skills and independence, the accountability and correction of failure and the encouragement of peers and involved adults, we are winding up with young adults who "develop and accelerator long before they develop a brake."

Adolescents need opportunities for practice, for success and failure, for specialization in something they love and for building life skills, starting in pre-adolescence and continuing until they are on their way into the world. This is not how our current system of education is structured, and it is not how it is currently being "reformed." Ask yourself this: what are the chances of success in education if it ignores the way our brains develop?

Women in the Media.

2012-01-27T10:56:00.000-05:00

Take a moment out of your day to watch this, parents of girls AND boys.

Media is not something to take lightly, and it is not something let your kids consume mindlessly. This what your kids see in everything they view.

What will you do to combat this voice and help your kids think for themselves?

Using The Arts to Build Executive Function

2012-01-26T08:25:00.000-05:00

"Executive function" is one of the latest buzzphrases in education; this replaces the more-familiar "oganizational skills" or "time management" descriptors of the past. It is becoming clearer that in our increasingly distracting and multi-tasked world, students need strategies and explicit instruction in developing these skills, but methods of teaching executive function can vary widely and are generally met with groans and blank stares.

Enter The Arts. Apparently, using The Arts (music, dance, song, art) in class relaxes the brain and makes it more receptive, open and organized; teachers can use color, sound, light and patterns, as well as movement, anticipation and "curious objects" to open up a student to organization.

I love art, and I love making art with students. One of my fondest memories with students is taking a lunchtime art class with them; my planning period was during lunch, so I took a couple days a week and sat in on their art class and worked on the same projects they did. This changed the dynamic with my students and me; they got to see me struggle with my own perfectionist tendencies, they got to be better than me at something and we had relaxed conversations about whatever. There was some uncharitable grumbling from other teachers that I was "goofing off" during my planning period, so I must not have had enough to do, but the time with the kids was invaluable. It was a rejuvenating break in the middle of the day, and I found myself relaxed and more focused on the days I did art.

Perhaps this is the key in the research. Art itself takes time and attention, a thoughtful shift in focus. If we can tune out all of the mental chatter (the little voice that tells us we can't draw or dance or sing, the one that wakes up right around 5th grade as we begin to measure our work against others instead of just creating for the sake of creation), perhaps we can also learn how to tune out the distractions of daily life, organizing, prioritizing and vitalizing out daily executive functioning.

At any rate, this is a great excuse to make art daily. As if anyone should need an excuse...

More on Motivation

2012-01-24T08:17:00.000-05:00

I am journeying to Birmingham on January 28th to listen to Alfie Kohn deliver the keynote speech for the Alabama Council of Teachers of English (thanks for the heads-up, Helen Smith!), so I have motivation on the brain these days. It is a complex issue for anyone who teaches anyone (which is everyone, if you include training coworkers or interacting with customers, which I do).

The New York Times hosted a guest article on helping students motivate themselves (the original Golden Ticket - intrinsic motivation), and it made these suggestions:

1. Praise effort, not intelligence (think, "You were very persistent," instead of, "You are so smart!")
2. Help students understand and develop self control (the famous Marshmallow Experiment)
3.Assign a 15-minute, values-based writing assignment (to remind students what is important to them)

These are all research-based suggestions, which means that they carry a lot of weight in the education world (think "best practices" which are generally "research-based"). I see the value in these, and the marshmallow video is just fun to watch, too. I do find it interesting that the age of students is not mentioned in any one of these suggestions (even the Marshmallow Experiment write-up does not indicate that this experiement was done with younger students - just that results happened over time). Are we all motivated by the same things at the same age?

I can say that most adolescents can smell insincerity a mile away; if you are praising their effort and don't mean it, you might as well forget it. They will also not be interested in a values-based writing assignment unless you can tie it to their lives in a meaningful way (as opposed to an afterschool special kind of way). Adolescents and teenagers want to know "why?" constantly, and unless you are prepared with an answer to that question, the research above is meaningless. I realize that I am generalizing about younger kids, and it is important to be authentic with them as well, but for adolescents and teens, relationships that are real, with adults who genuinely care about them, may be the key to helping them become more intrinsically motivated.

The jury is out until early adulthood, though. What a kid does in elementary, middle and high school may have nothing to do with their actions in adult life. Motivation is an ever-shifting paradigm, hard to measure and encapsulate in simple bulleted points. What do you do to develop intrinsically motivated kids?

Should Your Gifted Kid Take All AP Classes?

2012-01-23T08:26:00.000-05:00

Not according to this article, and I have to say I agree.

AP classes are not targeted to gifted students; they are targeted to MOTIVATED students, and this excludes a large number of high-IQ kids. One of the great myths of gifted kids is that they are all super-motivated, enthusiastic learners who dive into every learning task.

Not so, my friend.

Gifted students are a motley bunch, all regular kids (except for the minor issue of the fact that their brains process and integrate facts much more efficiently than their non-gifted peers). I strongly disagree with the quote in this article, and all the burden it lays on these kids:

A gifted student, not atypically, is intrinsically motivated to tackle the hardest, most rigorous option of, well nearly anything!

Not even close, in my experience (thirteen years with the gifted). The only time intrinsic motivation is present for all gifted kids is when the subject is something interesting to the student. Full stop. I find intrisically motivated gifted kids to be very atypical, and I find the most intrinsically motivated kids are on the lower end of the gifted spectrum; they are smart enough to know that hard work and persistence can beat apathetic, procrastinating smarts.

AP classes (of which I teach four) are college-level classes with massive amounts of reading and information. Only the most motivated and self-directed of kids should consider them, and these are generally not students who are identified as gifted (again, in my experience) unless the subject is something they are passionate about (i.e., don't stick a brilliant math student who is apathetic about writing into an AP Language and Comp class.). A motivated gifted kid would be incredible in an AP class, though, especially if it was in their area of interest.

If you are really looking at what is best for your gifted student, drop the notion of appearance, that since they are gifted, they should be gifted in all things. Yes, a "B" in an AP class is the same weight as an "A" in a regular class, but at what price? How much stress can your kid handle before they shut down, and is it in their best interest to make them take these classes in high school?

I don't think so. Let them follow their passions and guide their learning, and watch them grow into the brilliant people they can be. AP classes are not for everyone; evaluate what it best for your kid, regardless of their label. You will all be better off!

Expanding Our Culture!

2012-01-22T15:46:00.000-05:00

This coming Tuesday we will welcome a mid-year student, Monica, to HoneyFern. Monica is an American-born Nicaraguan who was raised in Nicaragua and moved to Atlanta just last week; she greeted me at my door with a kiss on the cheek, and we got to spend several hours today getting to know her family.

I am looking forward to getting to know her better as we work together, learning about her culture as she learns about ours. I am putting myself in her shoes as I plan for her work; she is immersed in a new culture, learning a language that she has very little experience in, with a separate branch of her family. She has to become accustomed to new food, new music, new technology and a suddenly expanded world.

Where would you start? What would you need to know the most in order to not be overwhelmed and discouraged? What essential advice would you give her as she starts her new life?

All You Need is a Library Card...and Some Motivation

2012-01-21T07:20:00.000-05:00

Motivation is a four-letter word.

I have found that one can plan the best lessons, or simply let the kid lead, or crack the whip, or use the laissez-faire approach...and it can potentially yield the same result.

Absolutely nothing.

Motivation is crucial to success, not just in academia but also in life. How does one teach motivation? Excellent question.

The best I can figure it is this: model the behavior you want and then apply the following formula:

Patience + Persistence = Success/Time (TM)

Or, you can simply get your student a library card and send them on their way. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people in the article were motivated to begin with, but what would happen if you just let your kids READ? Self-selected with guidance when asked for and perhaps resource gathering when needed but no other intervention.

I think that would be an awesome Ph.D project - get a large enough sample of parents who are willing to just let their kids read for the whole of their education. Obviously, the kids would need to be able to read, so some type of instruction might be necessary to get the ball rolling, but it wouldn't necessarily need to be formal schooling; kids could be homeschooled or schooled traditionally, and that could be part of the study.

Why yes, as a strong proponent of reading and a gut-level instinct that it would work to produce thoughtful, intelligent and highly educated person, I would love to complete this research! Contact me directly if you'd like to A). fund the research, B) admit me into your Ph.D program, or C) volunteer your kid. I'm going to need an awful lot of them.

Grants

2012-01-20T08:02:00.000-05:00

HoneyFern School is exploring the idea of a community graden with our food pantry partner Hollydale United Methodist Church. To that end, we have been exploring garden-specific grants as well as grants in general, and I thought I'd share a few links for like-minded folks.

Stonyfield Farms Profit for the Planet

These grants focus on four principle areas: family farming, slowing or reversing climate change, organic agriculture/toxin reduction and avoiding adverse health reactions from agricultural practices.

Seed Grants

Free vegetable seeds for non-profits - just pay shipping and handling.

School Grants - general

Some for specific programs, some for general funding. Not all links are up-to-date, but most are functional and current.

Foundation Grants to Individuals

This is a pay-for-use service that finds grants to individuals, including scholarships, fellowships and grants. Grants for individuals are difficult to find, and this is an affordable resource that brings them together in one place. Worth trying out for $19.95.

And to help you get the grant, here is a resource on writing a successful grant proposal. The first rule of thumb in ensuring your success is making sure your project matches the goals of the grant-making organization.

Happy funding!

Ten Signs You Need a Different Education For Your Child

2012-01-19T08:06:00.000-05:00

For me, at this point, the main sign is if your school is public. Although there are some notably fabulous public schools, in the main, our educational philosophies in this country are so far out of whack right now that it is nearly impossible to get a good education at a public institution. I believe in the concept, but not the current iteration. Having been previously incorrectly labeled as someone who hates public school, I feel the need to make that disclaimer every time I criticize it. I was fortunate to teach at one incredible public school in Seattle for my first job, which is probably why I stayed in teaching and in public school for so long.

Now that that is out of the way, here are the ten signs you need a different education for your child:

1. They say they hate school.
2. They find it difficult to interact with children of different ages or adults.
3. They are fixated on trendy/designer clothes.
4. They come home from school cranky.
5. They complain about situations or conflicts that are unfair and ongoing.
6. They have lost interest in creative expression (art, music, dance, etc)
7. They have no interest in reading or pursuing an interest for fun and are doing the bare minimum.
8. They procrastinate in their homework.
9. They don't come home excited about anything from school.
10. The school nurse suggests a behavior-regulating drug.

Obviously, students demonstrate some or all of these characteristcs across their lives; these are not abnormal in and of themselves.

The key is looking for these signs together, over time, exhibited with more severity than might be usual.

From my personal experience, #7 was a huge warning sign for me. I knew The Child was capable of more, bu she was never asked to do her best, just to do the minimum. She spent much of her primary schooling years reading in the corner because she finished first, learning very quickly that she didn't actually have to go above and beyond to get the grade.

You have options now, options that go beyond expensive private schools and straight-up homeschooling. You don't have to remain on the sinking ship - there are life rafts everywhere; you just have to take them.

Google - What is it Good For?

2012-01-18T08:15:00.000-05:00

Quick: when I say Google, what springs to mind?

For me, it is a search engine with cute little doodles on special days.

Sometimes it is Goggle+ hangouts, but rarely, as varying connection speeds among participants make them difficult to navigate and frustrating when they freeze or have a long delay.

But Google is so much more, and I am finding this out. Among the best resources for using Google+, Larry Ferlazzo has written this article, with all cited websites focused on educator uses for Google+ (there is a wealth of information in this article, so allow yourself time to read them, or bookmark for later!).

Additionally, I just discovered Google Lit Trips, a resource that maps out a book's setting using Google Earth (we are currently using this for a lit trip on The Odyssey).

Here are "15 Killer Features" of Google Chrome that you may not know about (which I totally did not, and I am especially interested in syncing bookmarks (the ones that I don't put on Pinterest, at any rate).

There are GoogleDocs, of course, which makes sharing and peer editing documents ridiculously easy, helpful for online classes and group discussions.

Google Scholar offers scholarly research results for your search queries.

There is so much more than a search engine behind Google, as I have been finding out. See it all here, and enjoy!

Chemistry and Biology Team Up

2012-01-17T12:50:00.000-05:00

The idea of living chemistry - integrating the biology of the body and its chemical components and interactions - seems pretty straightforward to me, but apparently this is a new concept for scientists.

Not that body chemistry hasn't been discussed before; commercials advertising for deodorant used to tout how women's body chemistry was so different from men's that they required and entirely separate formula (mostly just a different smell added).

Perhaps it isn't a new fiedl so much as it is an intensified field. With humanity teetering on the precipice of discoveries to end potentially life-threatening diseases, then cooperation between chemists studying the chemical architecture of the body and biologists studying the functions of it, the possibilities are exciting and intriguing.

Plus, it is interesting to visualize the periodic table coursing through your veins...I wonder what my atomic weight is....

Why the United States is Destroying Its Education System

2012-01-17T07:09:00.001-05:00

Copied and pasted, whole-cloth, from an article published earlier in the year. Take time to read and think about the future implications of what we are doing to our educational system in this country. If we do not act to change this course we are on, ever more testing, ever more standardizing....we, and our children, are lost.

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410/

Posted on Apr 11, 2011

By Chris Hedges

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.

“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.”

Teachers, under assault from every direction, are fleeing the profession. Even before the “reform” blitzkrieg we were losing half of all teachers within five years after they started work—and these were people who spent years in school and many thousands of dollars to become teachers. How does the country expect to retain dignified, trained professionals under the hostility of current conditions? I suspect that the hedge fund managers behind our charter schools system—whose primary concern is certainly not with education—are delighted to replace real teachers with nonunionized, poorly trained instructors. To truly teach is to instill the values and knowledge which promote the common good and protect a society from the folly of historical amnesia. The utilitarian, corporate ideology embraced by the system of standardized tests and leadership academies has no time for the nuances and moral ambiguities inherent in a liberal arts education. Corporatism is about the cult of the self. It is about personal enrichment and profit as the sole aim of human existence. And those who do not conform are pushed aside.

“It is extremely dispiriting to realize that you are in effect lying to these kids by insinuating that this diet of corporate reading programs and standardized tests are preparing them for anything,” said this teacher, who feared he would suffer reprisals from school administrators if they knew he was speaking out. “It is even more dispiriting to know that your livelihood depends increasingly on maintaining this lie. You have to ask yourself why are hedge fund managers suddenly so interested in the education of the urban poor? The main purpose of the testing craze is not to grade the students but to grade the teacher.”

“I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we been stripped of autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with 22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”

The demonizing of teachers is another public relations feint, a way for corporations to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers and a landscape where one in six workers is without employment. The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. Treasury. They stymied any kind of regulation. They have avoided criminal charges. They are stripping basic social services. And now they are demanding to run our schools and universities.

“Not only have the reformers removed poverty as a factor, they’ve removed students’ aptitude and motivation as factors,” said this teacher, who is in a teachers union. “They seem to believe that students are something like plants where you just add water and place them in the sun of your teaching and everything blooms. This is a fantasy that insults both student and teacher. The reformers have come up with a variety of insidious schemes pushed as steps to professionalize the profession of teaching. As they are all businessmen who know nothing of the field, it goes without saying that you do not do this by giving teachers autonomy and respect. They use merit pay in which teachers whose students do well on bubble tests will receive more money and teachers whose students do not do so well on bubble tests will receive less money. Of course, the only way this could conceivably be fair is to have an identical group of students in each class—an impossibility. The real purposes of merit pay are to divide teachers against themselves as they scramble for the brighter and more motivated students and to further institutionalize the idiot notion of standardized tests. There is a certain diabolical intelligence at work in both of these.”

“If the Bloomberg administration can be said to have succeeded in anything,” he said, “they have succeeded in turning schools into stress factories where teachers are running around wondering if it’s possible to please their principals and if their school will be open a year from now, if their union will still be there to offer some kind of protection, if they will still have jobs next year. This is not how you run a school system. It’s how you destroy one. The reformers and their friends in the media have created a Manichean world of bad teachers and effective teachers. In this alternative universe there are no other factors. Or, all other factors—poverty, depraved parents, mental illness and malnutrition—are all excuses of the Bad Teacher that can be overcome by hard work and the Effective Teacher.”

The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.

“It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself,” Socrates said.

Those who can ask the right questions are armed with the capacity to make a moral choice, to defend the good in the face of outside pressure. And this is why the philosopher Immanuel Kant puts the duties we have to ourselves before the duties we have to others. The standard for Kant is not the biblical idea of self-love—love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you—but self-respect. What brings us meaning and worth as human beings is our ability to stand up and pit ourselves against injustice and the vast, moral indifference of the universe. Once justice perishes, as Kant knew, life loses all meaning. Those who meekly obey laws and rules imposed from the outside—including religious laws—are not moral human beings. The fulfillment of an imposed law is morally neutral. The truly educated make their own wills serve the higher call of justice, empathy and reason. Socrates made the same argument when he said it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

“The greatest evil perpetrated,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think. Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.

“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing themselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”

Discovery Through Dissection

2012-01-16T08:13:00.000-05:00

The best part of school is when we get hands-on, do things we thought we couldn't do and learn deeply.

Dissecting owl pellets last week did all of those things; this week we move on to the vascular and nervous systems with sheep hearts and brains, and then on to six different phyla dissections.

#LoveMyJob

And a Little Slug Shall Lead Them

2012-01-16T07:42:00.000-05:00

Don't you love it when oddball, seemingly-disparate science has application to students and education?

For years, teachers have exhorted their students not to cram for tests, begging them to instead follow the less flashy practice of reviewing in bits all the way up to the Big Day. Turns out, there is a biological basis for this advice, as demonstrated by sea slugs. Slugs were shocked and then shocked again later, and scientists checked them to see if they remembered who did the shocking.

Seems like an odd way to study brain chemistry (and poor slugs!), but

Better ways to learn based on brain science would have enormous ramifications for educational practices. "It's not going to be an easy direction to follow because it means a lot of painstaking and detailed work to understand the biochemistry of learning," Byrne says. "But I think what it demonstrates is that if you have that information you may be able to make some big advancements in improving learning abilities by being in sync with the underlying molecular dynamics. Rather than taking cognitive enhancement drugs, you could have better training procedures."

I am not sure that a student who routinely crams for tests will be swayed by brain science, but the study itself reaffirms that acquiring knowledge is a slow, steady build not a hasty stacking. Perhaps fitting that a slug would lead the way.

MLK Day - Lessons

2012-01-15T08:24:00.000-05:00

Many schools are out tomorrow, but I came across a great lesson that analyzes the language in MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. The text of the full speech and a video are included in the lesson, and it is an excellent way to not only work with the ideas behind the speech but also the structure of it.

This day has seemed to lose its luster over the years (Arizona still refuses to acknowledge it), with many younger students questioning what all the fuss is bout. They take for granted classes of all races and restaurants where everyone can eat. They assume that racism is a construct and that we have moved past it.

And then a study reveals that African American students, boys especially, are disciplined more and more severely, receive less positive attention and earn lower grades than their white counterparts all the way through college. Anti-Hispanic discrimination is rising with the tide of immigrant law, and this issue is a major part of the presidential campaign.

We are not done; discrimination has become institutionalized and more subtle. It is not gone, and pretending that it is. shoving it underground or only acknowledging extremist groups as racists excuses the sneakier ways we are perpetrating racism daily.

We are different; this is not about homogenizing. Discussing issues of race (and class, so inextricably intertwined these days) helps us to understand others and, in doing that, ourselves.

We are not quite "free at last."

What Can't Good Teachers Do? And Is That What Will Save Schools?

2012-01-14T08:50:00.000-05:00

It is budget discussion time for many schools around the country, and it shows in the educational articles in recent weeks. This is a time when teachers and their work come under scrutiny as districts tighten belts and examine what they can cut; schools are still suffering and will continue to suffer for many more years as property tax rates decline (and thus, school revenues decline).

Last week Slate published a great article on elementary school teachers and their ability to not only increase college attendance rates but also decrease teen pregnancy rates. The article is actually about value-added teacher evaluation systems; simply put, these systems look at a student's test scores with a particular teacher. The more the scores go up, the more value a teacher has added, and the more effective a teacher is deemed to be. Obviously, the converse is also true. Bonuses and base pay are trending this way in education, and some teachers are arguing (rightly so) that basing an evaluation solely on a standardized test score is misleading and will not give a true measure of a teacher's performance. The other argument is that teachers under this system may simply teach to the test.

It is hard to say what the right answer to teacher evaluation is. Teachers deal with living beings, changeable and fractious. They are not crunching numbers or dealing with black and white scenarios, ever. What works brilliantly for one group of students may fail spectacularly the next; which year do you use to evaluate? Is it a straight average? And what are you looking at to decide what has failed and what has succeeded?

Let's look at the larger system of education before we drill down to its smaller bits. I believe we have lost our way in public education, starting with NCLB ten years ago and continuing with Race to the Middle and other standardizing measures. What is our goal in education, and why? Have we set up schools for success by giving them the ability to change what and how they teach based on who they teach? Are our schools student-focused, community-based and success-oriented? Do they empower teachers as trained professionals, or do they view them as babysitters with degrees?

Do our schools have access to meaningful technology? Do they allow for collaboration and problem-solving? Have they allowed time for teachers to build the skills they need to incorporate new technologies, modeling cooperation and collaboration?

Do our schools have high expectations for all students, and do they offer opportunities for useful remediation as well as expansive acceleration? Are they innovative?

Unless we address the larger issues plaguing our schools, we will be unable to move forward, and tecaher evaluation will (continue to) be the least of our worries. All of the reform movements have not looked at larger philosophical underpinnings in public education, and without that close look at what we believe, any reforms we make are simply Band-aids.

2011 Education Year in Review AND Quality Counts 2012!

2012-01-13T07:58:00.000-05:00

You only need one link today to tide you over, and here it is:

2011 Year in Review

Teacher issues, politics and blogs and a general compendium of everything educational.

UPDATE: You also need to peruse the annual Quality Counts Report, released this week. Offers information on state rankings and how the country is doing in education. I take this with a HEAPING boulder of salt. Georgia, for example, ranks 7th in standards (a 79.7%) but falls far short of actual achievement. So Georgia can make the table look pretty, but the food never appears. Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Oh, and to quote Mark Twain: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. So tread cautiously.

Also, you will need something to eat; I made this, and it is DELICIOUS.

Enjoy!

Strengths, Not Deficits, or How Legos Help

2012-01-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

Education is big into deficits. When a kid shows up at school, educators look to see where they are weak and tend to focus on that, ignoring strengths and talents.

Students who are twice-exceptional (2e) get the short end of this stick frequently; a 2e student is one who is gifted but also diagnosed with a learning challenge, anything from clinical ADHD to dyslexia to Asperger's or autism. Most gifted programs are not equipped (in personnel, money or time) to address a significant learning issue, and many 2e students end up being removed from the programs because they cannot keep up with the pace of the program or they need additional help to physically complete the work. The 2e student is then returned to the regular classroom where only their deficit is addressed and their gift remains undeveloped.

That is why I liked this article on a student with Asperger's who is using Legos to help him cope and develop. He is homeschooled, which gives him more flexibility, but the goal is to move into a public high school in the fall. An alternative approach such as this is generally frowned upon in most school settings; would a district evaluator be thrilled to walk into a classroom and see a student building a Lego replica of a movie pirate ship? Probably not, but the student is building spatial awareness and design skills as he does it; he is problem-solving and building mathematical understanding of patterns and repetition. Additionally, this student is building computers from parts cobbled together on craigslist. Does this remind you of anybody? Like maybe the co-founder of one of the most successful computer companies in the world?

Deficit thinking limits success and restrains creativity. Perhaps it's time to think different.

Web 3.0 - The Stupiding of the Universe

2012-01-11T08:02:00.000-05:00

What is this?

Web 2.0 brought the internet user into the conversation; the internet became less like a card catalog of information and resources and more like a book club; users not only used the content, they also created it (a blessing and a curse that has made vetting websites an absolute necessity and has led some educators to ban Wikipedia from students' "works cited" lists).

So now we have Web 3.0. For technophobes (and techno-wary folks), this is another startling development, but for your six-year old it will be a normal part of everyday life. For me, it is a little Big Brother-ish and almost what the Apple "1984" series of commercials was railing against (and what George Orwell so presciently wrote about: "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to you...that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5)

Think Siri - your own personal digital assistant who customizes your navigation on the internet based on previous searches, activity, games, etc.

In other words, Web 3.0 brings a better web experience to the user for less effort (bold mine).

How could we possibly expend less effort in the pursuit on knowledge than we already do?! Not to be alarmist, but the decline in our ability to transform and apply knowledge has (anecdotally in my experience) declined drastically in my 12 years of teaching. Web 3.0 makes it so we don't even need to figure out what is true and what are lies - our avatar in the virtual world will handle that for us.

Thankfully, the internet is nearly universal so everyone in the world will be able to particpate in The Stupiding. Won't it be interesting if the internet-free "deprived" areas of the world end up running things simply because they are not as intellectually lazy as we will have become?

(write that down. I am the Nostradamus of 2012. Double-plus good thinking.)

Risk-taking v. Risk-making

2012-01-10T08:14:00.000-05:00

From James Delisle comes an excellent article on the difference between risk-taking (someone pushes you to take a risk) and risk-making (you push yourself). In the former, the student's success or failure is celebrated/blamed more on the person setting up the risk (e.g., the teacher or parent who encourages a student to enter a competition or take up a new hobby), while in the latter the student feels the brunt of the glory or defeat.

So which is better?

In risk-taking:

*You try what you might not normally;
*You generally have a ready-made mentor (hopefully the person who encouraged you!);
*You don't have full ownership of the result;
*There is a goal in mind so it is easy to set up steps to reach it.

In risk-making:

*You tend to stick with the somewhat familiar;
*You may have to locate your own cheerleaders (i.e., if no one in your circle knits, you need to look for someone with expertise);
*Your success is your own, as is your failure;
*Uncharted territory means a little more work on the front end to figure out what is involved in the activity.

These are simplified lists.

Which do you think is more rewarding in the long run? The goal someone else sets for you, or the goal you set for yourself? It seems very attractive to be able to have a fall guy to blame your failure on, but there is also the risk of "disappointing" the person who is encouraging you. In risk-taking, too, you are at the mercy of someone else's vision, whereas with risk-making you can dream as largely as you wish.

Which one of these is utilized in traditional education? No surprise to note that when it encourages risk at all, traditional schooling is teacher- and adult-centered risk-taking; when comments on a report card note that a student takes risks, it is understood that the risks being taken are school-sanctioned and approved (and thus a bit tame). A student who is seen as impulsive and off-task, or one that falls outside the norm of what is acceptable in a particular school is seen as a troublemaker, not for what they really are (a risk-maker with risks that are not approved). It should go without saying that there are certain behaviors that are in neither category (e.g., violence in any iteration).

I can say that students I have worked with initially don't even know how to begin to risk-make. They can't fathom a place where they can decide what they want to do and then work with guidance on doing it. Their dreams are small, squashed as they are by a system that does not encourage free thinking and innovation for the masses; when they do come up with an idea, they do not know how to structure their work around it, and they are quickly stymied by roadbloacks or failure. They see their first idea as their best one (cannot brainstorm), and they are limited by imaginations stunted by worksheets, videos and television. They submit to someone else's vision and don't create their own.

Education reform has to include our own version of risk-making; we need to ask ourselves this: what would we try if we knew we would succeed?

If you knew that, with persistence, practice and patience, you would ultimately be successful, what would you start today? This minute?

The Benefits of Failure

2012-01-09T07:40:00.000-05:00

Here in America, we don't want our children to suffer. We don't want them to struggle, feel pain or have challenges.

Here in America, we are handicapping our children and setting them up for disaster as adults.

Newsflash: failure IS an option, and it is not always a bad thing.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill

Failure isn't fun. Like the author of this article, I have had my fair share. I diidn't make my varsity soccer team. I dropped out of high school. I declared bankruptcy at 21. I have had articles, stories and poetry rejected. I have lost at love and experienced failure as both a teacher and student. I can say, confidently, that after a long string of what I would consider failures, I wasn't particularly enthusiastic.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. ~Winston Churchill

Somehow along the way I had someone or something model the importance of getting up after failure and trying again. This is not pithy advice, offered lightly. Struggling is no fun. Failing feels really bad. It may make you cry, berate yourself, snap at your kids and be a generally horrible person for a time. You may get weary of starting over, and you may throw up your hands, at times.

If you are watching your kid fail at something, you may be inclined to intercede on their behalf so they do not feel this way. Unless it is a safety situation, DO NOT. Allow them to struggle when the struggle isn't life-threatening.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. ~Confucius

Failing is preparation for something else. Your kid will not work hard without skin in the game. Life is neither easy nor fair, and if you strive to provide a childhood in which it is both, you will instead create an adulthood of constant disappointment and disillusionment.

The majority of [people] meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail. ~Napoleon Hill

If you want to help your kid (and yourself), help them learn to create new plans after they fail. Help them develop an understanding of multiple perspectives and allow them to try them all on for size. One of the benefits of failure (ours and our children's) is that it teaches us more about ourselves and gives us a lifetime of ways to learn and grow. If you constantly buffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, your child will remain a child, never growing into their potential.

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. ~John Dewey

Failing carries benefits that can foster long-term success and happiness. Don't deny your kids the opportunity to be truly incredible.

Resource Friday

2012-01-06T07:27:00.000-05:00

The What Are You Studying? Edition.

The Truth of Troy

A great BBC documentary about whether or not Troy actually existed in history. Broken up into 10 minutes segments and a great way to bring together science, literature and history.

A Glossary of Literary Terms

The best part about this is the fact that it offers examples of each term, either authors or major works.

America's History in the Making

A great resource from the Annenberg Learner Foundation; notes and visuals for the study of American history.

And as the weather in Georgia drops down into the 20s tonight and doesn't rise out of the 30s tomorrow, a recipe that screams "SUMMER!"

Hope your first week of 2012 was a good one!

Benefits of Being Gifted

2012-01-05T07:56:00.000-05:00

There are many, many myths about being gifted. Many parents of non-gifted children have the misconception that raising a gifted child is all hearts and flowers and intellectual conversations at the dinner table; gifted children are naturally curious, intuitive and motivated, right? And they always do their homework, right?

Yeah...no.

Gifted kids can be some of the least motivated and most frustrating group of students EVER. Because these myths about their intrinsic motivation perpetuate, parents of average or just really smart kids don't see the problems that come with attempting to engage a child that is sometimes smarter than you by A LOT (you know more than they do...keep that in mind).

But there are substantial benefits in being gifted, across a lifetime. This article lists the many benefits of giftedness and is worth reading, especially for parents whose gifted kid is failing the subject in which they are gifted (happens way more that one would thing. Seriously.). It is nice to know that if you can get past the perfectionism or laissez-faire approach to homework, the over- or under-achieving and the drive to know EVERYTHING or the desire to play 14 hours of videogames daily, your gifted kid will be, overall, just fine and perhaps even better than just fine.

My gift to you in 2012. :)

Perseverance - Hardwired in Your Brain?

2012-01-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

That's the bad news:

Scientists have identified higher levels of dopamine -- also known as the "reward molecule" -- as being linked to forming lifelong habits, such as perseverance.

The good news is that you can trigger the release of dopamine in your brain, the "reward molecule" that make humans want to repeat whatever it was that triggered the dopamine production (including, in other bad news, drug addiction).

Christopher Bergland offers seven ways to trigger dopamine production, and thus, increase the development of perseverance, the elusive trait linked so closely to success in, well, everything. Many of the suggestions are simply changing your mind, a not-so-simple thing. By re-framing the outcome of an event in a more positive way, or by setting manageable goals, or by picturing yourself being successful, you can trigger dopamine production in your brain, which will encourage you to continue that behavior. Being methodical and breaking larger goals into smaller, achievable steps helps trigger dopamine release, as does tooting your own horn when you do something well.

The reality is that motivation and students can sometimes be like oil and water. It's hard; they don't want to do it. They can't see the end of the task so they don't want to start. In our culture today, you can have whatever you want in 3.7 seconds, so delayed gratification is harder to push as a valuable modus operandi. Scott Hamilton, Olympic gold medal-winning figure skater said, "Adversity, and perseverance and all these things can shape you. They can give you a value and a self-esteem that is priceless." Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, figures it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to be truly great at something.
That's a lot of dopamine, but the rewards can be tremendous. We do the best by our kids when we model perseverance and help them develop and utilize that trait.

Patience + persistence = success/time (TM).

Middle School Model Re-Thought

2012-01-03T07:13:00.000-05:00

Middle schools came about when researchers and psychologists discovered that middle schoolers may be better off with specialized, small learning communities, building relationships with a core of teachers and gradually building content and social knowledge while acknowledging the special emotional challenges of adolescence.

Turns out, some researchers disagree with this assessment.

The Brookings Institute in Washington, DC published a recent study recommending that schools "substantially improve" student achievement by moving to a K-8 model, and many schools are considering a move to either 6-12 or 7-12 model.

The report noted that in New York City and Florida, test scores of students entering a separate middle school declined markedly relative to the scores of students in K-8 schools.

Others argue that it is teaching methods that need to be adjusted, not which grades are housed together.

It is important to note that there are no major studies indicating what is best, one way or another. It is also important to note that "success" in these studies is measured solely by performance on standardized tests which have been proven to be substantially flawed measures of students' actual ability.

There is quite a bit of research indicating that the transition between 5th and 6th grade is very difficult and may be better handled if it is eliminated entirely or put off until 7th grade.

Personally, I feel that grade divisions are arbitrary and silly. I have known too many students who are years "ahead" in one subject or profoundly gifted in all and are held back because of their biological slot into a grade. I also taught in a school that refused to teach kids where they were; students who came in reading lower than their grade level were taught using on-grade materials and thus made no progress, were absent at much higher rates and transferred out of our school (perhaps that was the point). Students who were gifted got limited support in one subject area and were taught along with every other level in heterogeneous classrooms focused on making AYP.

Offer support - academic, emotional and social - along with high expectations (of parents and students) and it should not matter what grades are grouped in which configurations.

Ten More Strokes

2011-12-31T21:26:00.000-05:00

My father died five years ago after a six year fight with cancer. I know - a real conversation starter, right?

As with most of the world tonight, I am feeling reflective, and I have been thinking a lot about a piece of advice my dad gave me once. I can't remember what the problem was; I just remember the advice. It began with a story, as usual, and I am sure I rolled my eyes when he started.

He told me about an older man who had just finished swimming the English Channel. The interviewer asked him if it was difficult (silly question) and how the man made it across. The man replied thusly:

"Whenever I wanted to quit, I told myself to swim just ten more strokes. Anyone can swim ten strokes, right? So I'd swim the ten strokes, and then after I was done I could stop if I still wanted to. I'd say to just swim ten more, and that's how I made it."

The moral of the story (my dad always had a moral) is that anything can be broken down and completed if you just have the courage to swim ten strokes at a time.

So that's what I am attempting to do: just swim ten more strokes at a time, and not think about the vast spread of water in front of me.

Happy New Year to all!

Links to Keep You Up at Night

2011-12-30T09:40:00.001-05:00

Get it? 'Cuz New Year's Eve is coming? Funny, funny...

Today's resources focus on information and perspective on a number of topics. Enjoy, and have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

Rebel Tomato

The name alone is reason enough to click this link, but the site is a wealth of information on starting a garden. HoneyFern School, in partnership with the Hollydale Methodist Church in Marietta, is bouncing around the idea of starting a community garden (to extend our bimonthly efforts with the food pantry and in the same vein as "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach him how to garden and he doesn't need your stinking fish anymore because he has eleventy million quart jars of canned tomatoes, beans and pickles."), and this is the site that is helping us formulate our plan.

100 Cool Classroom Blogs

You could start reading this RIGHT NOW and not finish until well into the next year. These cover all grades, all subjects and range from totally teacher-driven to 100% kid-written. An excellent sample of what a classroom blog can be.

Lucky Foods for the New Year

What are you having on New Year's Day? This site offers a plethora of traditions from around the world, food that promises good luck and prosperity in the new year. Here at HoneyFern, we are having Hoppin' John from Hugh Acheson's new cookbook A New Turn in the South. When in Rome...

5000 Historical Novels Listed by Time and Place

This is an invaluable resource for, well, anybody. You could piece together a reasonable history of the world by choosing several novels from each time period, reading and discussing.

32 Ways for ADHD Adults to Get Organized

This should eliminate any mention of ADHD and just talk about getting organized; if you follow these steps you will be decluttered and organized for the new year. I am also fond of the 27-Fling Boogie, but it is way too much for me to keep up with.

That's all you really need for the weekend. Stay safe, and we will see you next year!

Electric Car High

2011-12-29T07:53:00.000-05:00

A school that teaches students while solving some of our toughest problems? Check.

A school that takes some of a city's ignored kids, makes shop class the center of their world and wins accolades and prizes against engineering students at Yale? Check.

The school's slogan is "Teaching Students to Save the World." What a novel concept! Believing in students and giving them the tools to actually make a difference.

Looking forward to watching good things happen for this school. Read more about the school here.

Libraries Are More Than Books

2011-12-28T08:06:00.000-05:00

I was talking with the parent of a new student (starting next fall - welcome, Lily!!) about libraries. Sarah is studying library science at a time when public library funding is being slashed, closing libraries across the country and slowing the purchase of new materials. People are buying e-readers and downloading free books online - why bother keeping libraries open?

Because they are more than books.

Libraries are communities with resources, printed and human. Recognizing that, one library in Illinois has started teaching kids how to research and write; instead of handing them a list of resources or a stack of books, the Hoopeston Public Library offers afterschool classes on how to research, including online and archival research, and how to put it all together in a well-written paper. Volunteers from the community assist, as do the regular library staff.

This is what I am talking about. Libraries used to be the center of the community before we got online; rooms were (and still are!) available for monthly meetings (free or modest rental fee, usually), story times and summer programs are available for the kids, and parents could access job skills training and resume writing. Now you can register to vote and utilize copy services (cheaper at my library than at the office supply store). Why don't we have more afterschool study programs? Why don't we use the spaces in the library for booktalks with local authors and writing workshops? Why not restore the function of the library - enlightenment and education, exposure to the world through information - and fund them in the manner they deserve?

I have fond memories of growing up in my local library. I also remember walking into the main branch of the New York Public Library and being intimidated. I wrote my Master's thesis in the University of Washington public library. I followed a very old woman into the basement of the Seattle Public Library to see some ancient children's books.

As Henry Ward Beecher said, "A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life," and from Victor Hugo, "A library implies an act of faith." Let's keep the faith, shall we?

No Excuses For Students and Parents

2011-12-27T08:51:00.000-05:00

I found this tough-talking article last week. It is nice to read an article on education that actually asks kids and parents to accept some responsibility for their education.

Don't get me wrong: there are teachers that need to go, immediately and unceremoniously.

But there are also parents who are blinded to their child's flaws and kids who have learned to make excuses and hide behind their label (whatever that may be).

Ultimately, education is a three-legged stool with teacher, parent and student supporting it. If one leg fails to hold up their end, the stool falls over. For too long, teachers have been blamed for the collapse of education, and it is time for parents and students to take responsibility, too.

For parents:

1. Read to and with your kids, all the way to adulthood. The material changes along with the conversation, but reading is the key to success.

2. Recognize that your child will make mistakes. Let them. Help them learn from them, not by covering them up or making excuses, but by helping them recognize how they made the wrong choice and requiring them to fix their mistake. Do this early, and be consistent. Bail them out, and be prepared to do it forever.

3. Get all the facts. Don't immediately blame the school for the failing grade. Be prepared to implement suggestion #2.

4. Give your child responsibility. Instill a work ethic. If you are still making their bed in middle school, you are in big trouble. You are not actually helping them. Kids need chores to contribute to the family and see how they make a difference.

5. Turn off the screens. Monitor their time online and in front of a TV. Minimize or eliminate it entirely during the summer.

6. Allow your child to struggle. You do them no favor by paving their bumpy road. Life is full of potholes. Struggle with support is good.

For kids:

1. Ask questions, and ask for help. If you are embarrassed to do so in class, send an email or note to your teacher. You are not expected to know everything!

2. Read every.single.day. Something printed, for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better). If you are not a fast reader, practice will make you faster. Find subjects that interest you, and a sunny spot in a tree, and go read.

3. Turn off the TV. Trust me. It seems like a good idea to stay up all night watching TV, but it is actually not. At all.

4. Understand that your parents were your age once. They may know a thing or two. They may be infuriating and embarrassing, but they are doing the best they can with what they have and know. Sometimes they will fail, spectacularly. You are teaching them too. Be kind.

5. Take responsibility for your work and yourself. Shoddy work that lacks thought and effort is all on you. If you don't know how to approach a task, ask. If you don't ask for help and then wait until the last minute, do not be shocked or angry when you do poorly. In the end, you are the only one who can live your life. It may seem like a great thing to have your parents constantly swooping in to bail you out, but you will regret your dependence on them one day, and you will not know how to change it. If you own up to your mistakes and try your best to change your habits, you will grow and improve in everything.

This is the only life you have. Don't expect someone else to live it for you. Education may help you along, but only if you make the most of it.

Innovative School = Positive School Culture?

2011-12-26T08:34:00.000-05:00

Seems to be so, at least in one study of Denver schools. In the study report, schools granted official "innovation school status" in Denver have happier teachers and students and a more positive school culture. Specifically,

Innovation led to an increase in both real and perceived control over the schools by principals, teachers, and parents This increased control was viewed as a major positive by these groups, who expressed a sense of greater ownership of their schools. There was a general sense of increased empowerment around decisions including resources, workforce, and instruction. One specific change that was appreciated by many respondents was the enhanced agility to make rapid decisions at the school level, without having to wait for approval of the decision by various central office entities.

Empowered teachers and school dministrators feel better about the changes they make, rather than the changes that are forced upon them. One of the biggest issues with the standards movement has been implementing the same standards and approaches for dramatically different schools; innovation schools get to match their strategies to their needs without a lot of fuss and bother from central office.

The report goes on to talk about some of the challenges of these schools, so the four-page report is valuable reading, but I think my main takeaway here is that empowering teachers to run their own classroom makes them happy. Happy teachers mean happy students; happy students mean happy parents, and happy parents mean happy administrators. Voila! Positive school culture. If we take one step in education, it should be to stop telling teachers how to teach and let them do their job. What a difference that change could make.

Resource Friday

2011-12-23T07:25:00.000-05:00

A collection of notable resources from the week. Happy holidays to all!

"Best of" Booklists

A collection of many different year-end "Best of" booklists for kids (picture books, fiction, etc). A great resource for building a library!

50 Educational Apps for the iPod Touch

Put that expensive toy to good use!

50 Alternatives to Traditional Book Reports

For homeschooling families, or families who have leeway in how they "prove" they read something. Lots of good ideas here that go beyond the standard poster, summary or diorama.

Scripps Spelling Bee

Here's your chance to register for the national spelling bee! Even if you do not formally participate, this is a great place to sign up (free) and get word lists and study guides that will improve spelling (even if you don't find yourself writing the words out on your hand on national TV!).

10 Ways to Use Google Maps/Earth

Everyday project ideas for the flipped classroom or homeschooler!

And finally, just for fun...

Akinator, Web Genius

Think of a famous person, real or invented, dead or alive, and this guy will guess who you are thinking of.

Happy holidays!

The Ultimate in Hands-On Learning

2011-12-21T07:04:00.000-05:00

I'll cut to the chase: I'm in love, and I am inspired.

Studio H, in an effort to engage the poorest citizens of the state and teach real skills while at the same time serving a need in the area and educating the youth (oh, and earning college credit and money over the summer - little things like that), has created a curriculum based on a design/build philosophy. The curriculum is offered to juniors at a public high school, is free, runs three hours a day and culminates in the build of a final, large-scale product for the community (in year 1, a farmer's market pavillion, but also free chicken coops for locals in the fall of the school year).

Brilliant. Absolutely logical and engaging. Real. Relevant. Found out about this program via an article on Edutopia, and I think a summer road trip to the organization is in the plan.

I love it when something so simply wonderful comes to me. It's like a shiny gift from the universe, and I am grateful for it on this grey morning!

Gifted Readers

2011-12-20T13:57:00.000-05:00

Just finished an article about engaging gifted readers, "gifted readers" defined in the article as kids who:

• Read at an early age.
• May have taught themselves to read.
• Require less drill to master the reading process.
• Synthesize multiple reading strategies.
• Possess advanced vocabulary knowledge and usage.
• Read 3 to 4 times more than their same age peers.
• Continue to read voraciously after the peak reading years end (4th -8th grades) and into adulthood.
• May prefer abstract genres like fantasy, read deeply from one genre or topic, or prefer nonfiction text to fiction.

This is a decent definition of something that is hard to pin down and can be complicated by a dual-diagnosis of ADD/HD, dyslexia, etc, and it also includes characteristics that are, at times, attributed only to girls and what they are pushed towards (hence the stereotype that girls are readers and boys are scientists). The article goes on to offer suggestions to continue to engage gifted readers, and my issues are with the first one on the list and one thing that is off the list.

The first suggestions is to "Offer a wide range of literature from reviewed district, state and national lists." This is definitely a suggestion from a teacher who is still working for The Man as she writes, and it is unfortunate. Why? Should you offer only reviewed literature so you can avoid litigation? I say offer a wide range of literature, period, and provide copious amounts of book challenge forms for parents. My favorite book challenge form is six pages long and asks the parent to really articulate why they object to the book, having read it, instead of just offering a knee-jerk reaction to something they have heard about it.

This is not to say that you should offer racy titles and off-color subject matter; there is obviously a need for common sense here. What I am saying is that restricting titles to a handful that some wonks in an office with no knowledge of kids have had time to flip through is short-sighted and ineffective. Does that mean that internet reading is off limits?

And speaking of internet reading, I come to my next point. There is nothing on this list about student-selected text, which can include a wide variety of media, including twitter, blogs, manga and other alternative forms of reading. These are the same forms of media that kids would be inclined to attempt to imitate in their writing, and yet that choice is also restricted. Isn't the point of educating a reader to keep them reading? Yes, offer challenging books to read with them, but also allow them explore and read widely in all kinds of genres, including social media.

If we want to produce readers, we need to let them read, and sometimes this means being flexible in our choices and tolerant of theirs.

The Girl Brain - a Myth?

2011-12-19T09:03:00.000-05:00

Interesting article this morning on the phenomenon of same-sex education and how it is perpetuating myths about the brains of girls v. boys.

I find the article and the premise behind same-sex schools very nearly offensive. Assignments are gender- based (writing assignments like favorite truck for boys or dream wedding for girls), styles of classrooms are stereotypical (boys are rowdy and active and girls are calm and subdued), and claims are made about how girls listen better and are more empathetic while boys have a more "systematic" brains.

This is stereotyping at its scientifically manipulated finest. Schools and institutions are gleaning bits of fact and mixing it in liberally with the same stereotypes that women have been fighting for years, reinforcing them (e.g., all girls dream of their wedding and all boys like to play sports).

"...a major tenant of the segregated classroom is the idea that boys naturally relate to objects and understanding systems and math and science, while girls gravitate towards relationships and caring. Girls are not natural leaders or risk takers, and don’t take naturally to math, it’s argued."

Not that there isn't value to single-sex classrooms and schools, but go ahead and segregate the sexes for real reasons. Maybe some girls have been so shamed about their love for science or math that they are hesitant to excel (evidence: Abercrombie and Fitch's t-shirt for girls that says "Allergic to algebra" and Barbie's famous gaffe in which she was programmed to say, in a super-ditzy voice, "Math is hard!"); maybe some boys are not particularly athletic and would like to be in a school that celebrates their academic achievements not physical prowess (part of a running joke in Meet the Parents is the fact that the main male character is a nurse, while the controlling father-in-law is a much more manly spy, another harmful stereotype for boys.)

The majority of the scientific claims for gender grouping are baseless and not replicated, and we are harming both genders when we use invalid science as an excuse for the way we educate. It seems right because it fits existing stereotypes of both genders, but the flaws in these studies are fatal.

"...assuming gender differences, as same-sex classrooms do, can actually create those differences. Too often, even girls with an early interest in math are discouraged by adults who have bought into the idea that girls don’t have a natural aptitude for math and science... There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students’ academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism."

We are perpetuating damaging myths for both genders and trying to legitimize it by using fake, inaccurate science. School and life is hard enough without this!

For more reading on this subject, please also visit the eye-opening paper published in September which refutes, with science, the "research-based" logic behind single-sex schooling.

Resource Friday - math AND reading

2011-12-16T06:22:00.000-05:00

I have been a bad blogger. Three days have passed without a peep. The week cannot possibly have slipped away so quickly, and I think I blog in my head (and it doesn't make it to the screen).

Hopefully, though, today's resource-gathering will make up for it. I have some good ones!

Visuwords

Our first resource is a visual dictionary, which seems unremarkable until you begin to play around with it and explore the connections in each entry. Then it becomes a great conversation-starter for synonyms, antonyms, word origins and application. This could also be a great way to introduce new vocabulary, or expand on the old.

iLearn Technology Blog

I found this through Twitter, and every time I click on it there is something new to explore. Some of the resources suggested are free, some are not, but all offer another way to look at curriculum and teaching with technology.

Math Pickle

Hold on to your hats. This website offers plenty of free resources and instructional ideas for applying math concepts to every day problems (including $1,000,000 unsolved problems that the author of the site is attempting to get funding for - kids solve the unsolved math problem, and they split a cool million bucks!).

Hands-On Equations

This is a tactile way to introduce algebraic concepts and equation balancing. My only gripe is that it stops at algebra 1. I think this would certainly help upper level students if it got a bit more complex, but for kids who need to see it and touch it to get it, this is a great idea. It is not free, but if it reduces math phobia and makes algebra more accessible, that is priceless!

Have a great weekend!

Gap Year

2011-12-13T11:01:00.000-05:00

I am all for the gap year. This is when your burnt out, stressed out student takes a year off between high school and college to explore the world, volunteer with an organization or otherwise explore a compelling interest they have prior to committing to spending four more years in school. Australia has institutionalized this practice (the academic walkabout), Great Britain is not far behind, and, finally, America is figuring out that this may be a good thing.

This is not, as some students may believe, the totally best time to master your video gaming skills. Or live in your parents' basement while your mom continues to cook all of your meals and do your laundry. If you are one of the parents who does this, please, do yourself and your child a favor, and stop.

The Davidson School in Nevada has published a very handy guide to what a gap year is/not, how to pay for it, how to prepare for it (going in and coming out), and how to select an appropriate project. This school is focused mostly on students who might be finishing high school early and need some time to mature and figure out what they want prior to more formal studies, but a gap year can be a brilliant, enriching, life-changing experience. The guide tells you that you should be able to look back at the end of the year and think, "That changed my life."

Video game high scoring does not qualify.

Hope is a Thing With Feathers

2011-12-12T07:28:00.001-05:00

This week is about looking forward.

Generally as the calendar year ends, all sorts of "top 10" lists come out, analyzing the past year. I have decided that I will make a top 10 list looking forward. I don't like to think of it in terms of resolutions; rather, these are observations and thoughts, in no particular order.

10. Building our community is an exciting and sometimes nerve-wracking thing. We want diversity that can function well as a whole. We are too small for massive conflict, but we are not Borg. We need diverse ideas.

9. Field experiences are fundamental. I woke up with that thought in my head today. Not entirely original, but always good to keep in front of the brain.

8. Publishing work is key - it marks the finish point of a project, whatever it is. In 2012, we will publish more of our work.

7. Google+ may not be the solution to online class issues (where face-to-face interaction is necessary), but that in combination with Edmodo may be.

6. We all function better when there is a plan broken down into concrete steps. It's okay to start with an abstract whole, but having an idea of how to get to the whole makes the process more peaceful. Sometimes just having the list is calming.

5. We need more art in our lives, just for its own sake. HoneyFern tries to tie everything to something tangible, but sometimes just studying an artist for the sake of studying an artist is a good thing.

4. "Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul." Emily Dickinson said that, and she was 100% correct. I feel my soul fluttering these days, and it feels good.

3. Learning for its own sake is valuable. Learning for the sake of a test is not. Repeat until it is burned into your brain.

2. Sometimes, taking the dog for a walk or doing yoga is hard to start, but it always, always feels good in the end. And the dog loves you and will sleep like a dead thing for the rest of the night.

And number 1, although it has no significance at this place in the list (even though it seems a tiny bit like it might):

1. Expressing gratitude is free and painless. Saying "thank you" to a person or to the wind or your god or the dog or whatever puts a beautiful intention in the universe, and that can never hurt. Be filled with gratitude, even for the struggles you face.

And there is my list. What is yours?

Resource Friday

2011-12-09T07:03:00.000-05:00

Today is a little funny, a little sweet and a little serious.

Who Knew PSAs were Funny?

This is a funny, ironic take on a serious subject, done by the same guys who brought us Whole Foods Parking Lot and Yoga Girl. All three worth viewing and sharing today!

The Sweet...How Sweet It Is

Our side project for the holidays. We are Buddhist, set up a Christmas tree and light a mennorrah. This blog with The Child and I is a new tradition that may last just one year, but we are enjoying it as we go. We have made some seriously good cookies here! Suggestions for the next 17 days are welcome, and family recipes encouraged!

The State of the States - Gifted Ed.

On to the Serious. This annual report shows how well (or not) states are doing with gifted education. Not surprisingly, gifted dollars are some of the first to go from the budget. How is your state doing?

Writing Contests

A compendium of writing contests around the interwebs.

And finally, because we love to make stuff, especially from stuff we might otherwise throw out:

CD Spectrometer

Have a great weekend!

Hands-On Biology!

2011-12-07T08:56:00.001-05:00

As part of our biology curriculum, HoneyFern has adopted Olley Creek in Cobb County, Georgia. We are responsible for chemical monitoring (dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature and conductivity), and we will be trained in biological and frog monitoring in the spring. We test once a month, and one of the students will blog our experience, usually with pictures (but not in this case). Today's blogger is Sicily, a 6th grade student.

Today was the second day that we went to Olley Creek for Adopt-A-Stream!

It was raining; not pouring, not sprinkling. The kind of rain that slowly makes you uncomfortably wet. We chose to do lab testing even though it was raining because we went there earlier in the day to see if we should test the water, and the only thing we saw was that the water level had risen, but other than that, there were no mud or muddy parts, and everything seemed as if it was not raining (and when we got to the creek, it was merely sprinkling).

We did not have enough time to do two tests of each lab, but most of our data was almost exactly the same

(dissolved oxygen would be the main thing affected by a downpour, and our levels were nearly the same as last month). No errors occurred during our experiment, and I feel like we achieved our goal about the data we collected because it was almost exactly like the first set of data from November and it went smoothly.

It was our first time not being assisted by a professional. (Next month we plan to pick a sunny day and take more time in our data-gathering. We also need to bring trashbags to clean up what parts of the creek we can. We may also want to sponsor a trashcan at the park because there are no trashcans for some of the soccer fields, so people just throw their trash wherever).

Would Adults Pass THE TEST?

2011-12-06T10:50:00.000-05:00

And does it matter? At HoneyFern, we give a standardized test at the end of the school year as part of our accreditation. We will take the math and English portions only, and our work is in no way geared to this test; I am not quite sure exactly what is on it, and I am fine with that. I didn't teach to a test when I was in public school, and I see no reason to start now (and my public school kids always scored highest in the school, but does it really matter? See below.).

To "prove" the worth of standardized tests (or just to see what they were all about), a school board member in a large school district took the 10th grade standardized state test for math and English and publicized his scores. Below is part of the article:

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.

“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.

“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Here’s the clincher in what he wrote:

“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

The article continues to say that these tests are written, by and large, by people with no skin in the game and no understanding of what they are doing, that they in no way resemble reality with regard to form or function.

And yet our school systems continue to structure and re-structure curriculum around these annual tests. The ones who try to move outside of this system in any way, like Georgia, which is piloting testing around the Common Core Standards (CCS), go way overboarding, setting up 30 formal testing events for 6th graders, and 34 for 8th graders. When do they get to learn? To experience, to explore? When do they get to share and teach others and transform what they know by applying it to other situations?

America needs to open her eyes. I have never seen such blantant disregard for facts, such blindness to evidence, as is currently happening regarding high-stakes testing in this country. Simply designing and administering a test that you have taught to does not constitute an education, and we are failing millions of children who desperately need us.

Hopefully the school board member's bravery and candor will help to push changes through. I wish more adults would sit in on the tests we force our children to take.

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

2011-12-05T10:21:00.000-05:00

I saw this article today and thought I would use the nine points to analyze HoneyFern School. This may or may not be a good idea, but I am a big fan of knowing where I need to improve. Reflection is key!

1. Get specific. Going through accreditation forced the issue on this one, and struggles with a couple students really clarified my vision for the school. I believe that the vision of the school is specific, and now it is a matter of being consistent and sticking to it, not falling back into old patterns. When you leave the public schools, you will have been assimilated into the culture of testing and standardizing students. There is a period of de-institutionalization that occurs, and that can be problematic at times to stay away from. Suffice it to say that HoneyFern is not a waystation for students who want out of public school briefly; we are a safe haven for permanent departure from the lockstep, and we are accredited to be able to offer all of the institutional benefits (a high school diploma and scholarship opportunities) without the institution.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. I am not always as good as I should be on this one. I am great at making contacts and working on behalf of my students, but for personal goals it can be exhausting. One thing I am doing is making them a bit more public; this will force me to work steadily and consistently towards them because there is a lot to lose if I don't! I have found two editors for my non-fiction book and have put a personal blog online to keep track of my Day 0 goals. It is private for now, but I have crossed two off already!

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. I have specific targets for budgeting reasons. I also keep track of academic targets for students, as well as experiential targets.

4. Be a realistic optimist. This one is tough. I am better at doing this for students than I am for myself. I think part of this is built into who I am. I am currently reading Beyond Happiness, a Zen Buddhist guide to examining what happiness is and what it means, and I am gaining some good insight from that book. Part of un/happiness is simply the perspective we bring to any event. I am trying to change my perspective. The Child reminds me of my own mantra, chanting, "First-world problem!" when I get morose.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Another tough one. After 40 years, I am finally able to say it: yes, I DO want to be recognized for being fabulous. There is tremendous reward in teaching when my students are succesful, and, ultimately, that is the best recognition, but it would certainly be nice to be rewarded for being good at what I do in a tangible way (plaques? certificates? my own TV show? whatever works). This is part of being a realistic optimist, though. I am a very reflective practictioner, and it is important to me that students keep growing; as long as I tell them that "practice makes better," isn't that what I should be telling myself? I find this step challenging in a good way. I can see them getting better as they work through the years (the benefit of having them for many years in a row!!), and I can also see myself getting better.

6. Have grit. An online dictionary defines grit as "firmness of character; indomitable spirit; pluck." Getting through it and pushing forward even when the going is tough. HoneyFern has this. HoneyFern also has an incredible support system to help reinforce when the grit runs lows.

7. Build your willpower muscle. This muscle is well-developed in HoneyFern's headmistress. It has to be!

8. Don't tempt fate. I would not quite agree with this. I think to take risks is to tempt fate, but if you don't then how will you know what you can do? The whole enterprise of HoneyFern is one big temptation to fate, but had I not left public school to start it, I would by now have been a quivering mass of misery, and my child an I would not have the relationship we do. I think sometimes fate needs a big, ole "neener-neener" in the face. We will see how this theory works out for me...

9. Focus on what you will do, not on what you won't do. I came to this on my own when I decided to stop publicizing what HoneyFern isn't in order to promote what it is. We don't need to put down other things in order to appear more favorable. The other part of this quote is not making promises you cannot deliver on, and honoring your word in all things. That is called integrity - doing the right thing even if no one is around to see it.

I would add one more thing that successful people do differently - ask for help from experts. I came to this school with a firm grip on curriculum and gifted students; I lacked all of the other parts that make a school run (business administration, marketing, website design - the list is endless). I asked for help, listened to people who knew more than me and took their advice. Bring able to recognize that you don't know it all and to find those who can fill in the gaps is a key piece to success.

What other things do successful people do differently? How do you know?

Homeschoolers in College

2011-12-02T08:48:00.000-05:00

HoneyFern School has built itself around a couple different guiding principles, one of which is that school shoudl be individualized to the student (like a homeschool setting). Because of this, HoneyFern students share some of the characteristics of homeschoolers - including, at times, the nervous worry about whether or not we are preparing them for college.

I came across another blog this morning, highlighting all the ways in which homeschoolers are better prepared for college than traditionally schooled students, and I felt greatly reassured. I will copy and paste here for your edification, and reassurance, this morning.

In recent years, homeschooling has seen a rise in popularity, with more and more parents deciding to educate their children outside of school. Some parents (and their friends/family) who choose this path are concerned about their child's ability to move on to college should they choose that path. Things are easier for homeschooled college students today, then they were in the past as more and more colleges have seen great success with students from non-traditional education backgrounds. Today, homeschool students often enjoy easier admission, better college performance, and even the opportunity to enter college with several credits already earned. Read on, and you'll find out more about what the homeschool college student experience is like today.

Homeschoolers often enter college with more credit
Homeschooled students are able to work at their own pace, and as a result, students have the freedom to move significantly faster than those in a traditional classroom. Michael Cogan, a researcher at the University of St. Thomas, discovered that homeschool students typically earn more college credits before their freshman year than traditional students, with 14.7 credits for homeschoolers, and 6.0 for traditional students. Earning college credit before freshman year can save thousands of dollars and shave time off of a degree. The 14.7 average credits for homeschoolers represent a full semester of freshman year, which is typically 12-15 credit hours.
Homeschool students do better on the SAT and ACT
Perhaps benefiting from personalized test prep, homeschool students typically score higher on standardized college admissions tests. The homeschool average for the ACT was 22.5 in 2003, compared with the national average of 20.8. The SAT was no different, with a homeschool average of 1092 in 2002, and a national average of 1020. ACT and SAT scores are very important for college admissions and even financial aid, so doing well on these tests is vital to a great college experience.
Homeschool GPAs are consistently higher
As a homeschooled student, you work on a flexible schedule. Young children may rely greatly on their parents for scheduling and instruction, but high schoolers typically become more autonomous in their studies, learning key skills for success as independent students in college. Research indicates that this time spent learning how to study independently pays off, as homeschoolers typically have higher GPAs than the rest of their class. Homeschool freshmen have higher GPAs in their first semester at college, with 3.37 GPAs for homeschoolers, and 3.08 for the rest. This trend continues with an overall freshman GPA of 3.41 vs. 3.12, and senior GPAs of 3.46 vs. 3.16, indicating that homeschoolers are better prepared for college.
Homeschooled students are more likely to attend college
Homeschooled students seem to be more likely to participate in college-level education. As reported by the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, more than 74% of home educated adults between 18-24 have taken college level courses. This rate is much higher than the general US population, which comes in at 46% for the same age range.
Homeschoolers are everywhere
Patrick Henry College is one college that specifically caters to the homeschool population, but homeschoolers are increasingly accepted in a wide variety of colleges and universities. In fact, homeschoolers are now in over 900 different colleges and universities, many of them with rigorous admissions. Some of these colleges include Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, and Rice University.
Homeschooled students are more likely to graduate
Making it to college is one thing, but actually sticking around and graduating is another. Students who have homeschooled will typically do better than other students, with a slightly higher retention rate, at 88.6% vs 87.6% for traditional students. Graduation rates show a higher disparity between homeschoolers and the national average, with 66.7% of homeschooled students graduating, compared to 57.5%.
Some colleges actively recruit homeschool students
Homeschool students have proven themselves to be so outstanding that several colleges have begun to actively recruit them. Boston University, Nyack College, and Dartmouth are among them, with a Dartmouth College admissions officer recognizing, "The applications [from homeschoolers] I've come across are outstanding. Homeschoolers have a distinct advantage because of the individualized instruction they have received."
Homeschooled students are very likely to succeed in college
Research and probability indicates that homeschooled students typically do very well in college, not just academically, but socially as well. Skills learned in homeschooling translate very well to the college campus, with strong self-discipline and motivation. Colleges recognize this advantage, including Brown University representative Joyce Reed, who shares, "These kids are the epitome of Brown students." She believes they make a good fit with the university because "they've learned to be self-directed, they take risks, they face challenges with total fervor, and they don't back off."
High school transcripts are often not required for college admissions
Although traditional students will typically be expected to submit their high school transcript, homeschooled students usually do not need one, submitting other information instead. Sixty-eight percent of US universities will accept parent-prepared transcripts. Others will take portfolios, with letters of recommendation, ACT or SAT test scores, essays, and more, allowing homeschooled applicants flexibility in admissions.
Homeschoolers can play college sports
As long as they meet standardized guidelines, homeschooled athletes can be awarded freshman eligibility to participate in college level sports. The number of homeschooled students participating in sports is growing as well, with up to 10 each year in 1988-1993, and as many as 75 students in the late 90s. Homeschool waiver applicants are typically approved, and in the 1998-1999 school year all applicants in Divisions I and II were approved, indicating not only an increased interest in college sports from homeschoolers, but an excellent openness in participation.
Many homeschoolers are National Merit Scholars
The National Merit Scholar program is an academic competition offering prestige and cold hard scholarship cash for high achieving students. The number of homeschool National Merit Scholars is increasing at a high rate: in 1995, there were 21 homeschool finalists, compared with 129 in 2003, a 500% increase. Homeschoolers are clearly doing well in their studies, and as a result, are reaping the rewards in scholarship money to use in school.
Homeschooled students may have higher college acceptance rates
Colleges and universities often recognize that homeschooled students tend to be exceptional in their academic performance, and combined with advanced studies and extracurricular activities, make great candidates for admission. In addition to actively seeking out homeschooled applicants, colleges may also be accepting more of them. In the fall of 1999, Stanford University accepted 27% of homeschooled applicants. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it's an incredible number when you consider that this rate is twice the acceptance rate experienced by public and private school students admitted in the same semester.
Homeschool students are often in honors programs
High achieving homeschool students can benefit from advanced curriculum in college, which is why so many of them end up in honors programs once they go on to study at universities. At Ball State University, most homeschooled freshmen were admitted at a higher level than regular students. Eighty percent of homeschool students were admitted to "upper levels of admission," and 67% were in the Honors College.
Homeschooled students may receive federal financial aid
Due to some confusion in the past, homeschooled students may have had to obtain a GED in order to qualify for financial aid. But the Homeschool Legal Defense Association indicates that laws have changed, and as long as students have completed their education "in a homeschool setting that is treated as a homeschool or a private school under state law," they are eligible for federal financial aid without a GED.
Many scholarships are available to homeschooled students
Traditional scholarships are often open to homeschooled students, but there are also some created specifically for the homeschool crowd. In an effort to attract stellar homeschooled students for admission, colleges are developing homeschool scholarships. Belhaven offers $1,000 per year, College of the Southwest awards up to $3,150 each year, and Nyack College will give up to $12,000. With the high cost of a college education, these scholarships can really pay off for homeschoolers.

This is a guest post brought to you via Online College

Middle School - the Most Important Transition

2011-11-30T08:29:00.000-05:00

A new study out this week indicates that the transition between elementary and middle school may be tougher - and more important - than previously thought.

Seems like kids who transition from 5th to 6th grade (as opposed to a K-8 school structure),

show a “sharp drop” in math and language arts achievement in the transition year that plagues them as far out as 10th grade, even risking thwarting their ability to graduate high school and go on to college. Students who make a school transition in 6th grade are absent more often than those who remain in one school through 8th grade, and they are more likely to drop out of school by 10th grade.

This is an important finding. When I started my Master's program and indicated that I wanted to focus my study on middle grades, I was alone in my cohort of 35. Everyone else thought I was crazy, and more than a few expressed their belief that middle school kids should be set adrift on an island for the three years and then brought back to civilization for high school.

Many parents seem to treat this time in much the same manner. They stop helping with homework, and some get that divorce they have been waiting to get until the kids are older and can better "handle" it.

MISTAKE. Parents think they are off the hook when kids hit middle school, but they need to parent even harder during these years. Kids are biologically wired to begin the process of separation from their parents at this time, but kids also need parents very close, just in case. This can be difficult for parents when they have a sullen, moody, belligerent child who thinks they are a moron, but press on. Kids make the decision to drop out of school during the middle grades, and they start being heavily influenced by their peers into early drug and alcohol use and experimentation with sexual behaviors. Kids may change, seemingly overnight, from the cuddly sweet baby you remember to a surly foreigner who slams doors speaks Sarcasm fluently. Some kids come through adolescence with far less sturm und drang, but there will be at least a little storminess.

Keep your kids talking, stay involved in their lives, stay involved in their school and do not take a powder during these years. You need to reinforce early lessons on consequences for behavior, celebrate success, and encourage your kids to explore who they are and what they like. You may feel like your kids "should" be independent, especially with school, but they are not always ready to juggle the demands of changing classes and keeping trak of assignments, along with extracurricular demands on their time. Check homework and let them know you will help them (do not do their work for them. This seems like advice from the Department of Duh, but you might be surprised by how many parents write their kids' papers in middle school). Do not overschedule your kids; they need time to dream and think and wonder; it is hard to do that if you rush them from lesson to class to activity.

Many children (and parents) have survived adolescence. This study on the struggles with the transition to middle school serve as a reminder to be vigilant and supportive. Your kid is working hard to become an adult. Help them, and enjoy the ride!

The Space Between Holidays, or How to Stay Awake for School

2011-11-29T07:40:00.001-05:00

Along with being "the most wonderful time of the year," this time of the year is also the most difficult to get anything done. After a week off for Thanksgiving, the three weeks before the winter break are beyond challenging for students and teacher alike.

Case in point: this blog. I am finding great articles on education that I don't feel like reading and commenting on; the subject matter is thought-provoking (like the fact that NCLB waivers may cause schools to lose tutoring funding - no such thing as a free lunch!), and there is lots to talk about, but I just don't feel like it.

My goal for the next three weeks, though, is to continue at the very least to provide one useful link or insight daily. Today's link is tied in with our study of biological classification, the system of organization developed by Carrolus Linnaeus as different species were discovered. Some things in science just need to be memorized, and the "Kingdom, Phylum, etc" is one of those things. So here is a lovely list of the top 10 scientific mnemonic devices, good for biological classification and other things, including parts of the periodic table.

Happy memorizing!

Cyber Monday?

2011-11-28T06:38:00.000-05:00

I'd like today to be re-branded as "Sleep In And Do Nothing Day," but I think I am starting my campaign too late.

Instead, I will just say that I am glad to be back, grateful to my housesitter, and thankful for my family and friends. And for those of you who will be shopping online today, here is a link for some cool gifts for smart kids.

Off to get more coffee...

Public Schools Are Failing Gifted Students

2011-11-27T19:26:00.000-05:00

This has been a gifted-heavy blog week, for reasons unknown. It is no secret to those that know me that I happen to love the gifted in all of their messy, misunderstood glory. The general population knows very little about these kids and perpetuates common myths in their daily life: gifted kids are straight-A, super-motivated and chronically well-behaved. The unfancy truth is that some gifted students suffer from crippling perfectionism, emotional sensitivity due to heightened awareness of the world around them, asynchronous development, increased rates of ADD/ADHD (known as twice-exceptional or 2E) and more. They are also some of the funniest, most interesting and intuitive people I have ever met; they are challenging, infuriating and fabulous.

And failing in the public schools.

A recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times pointed this out, specifically highlighting an elementary school in Chicago that announced the closure of its gifted program due to "enrollment pressure," just days after the National Association for Gifted Children released a report detailing the ways in which the gifted have been negatively impacted by No Child Left Behind. The school could not justify the extra, gifted-only classroom.

Apparently, the kids just weren't worth the money.

How about this: let's go ahead and eliminate all funding for teacher's aides for one-on-one assistance for kids who need it (autistic, physically disabled, etc). After all, they are such a small part of the population! Let's just throw them into the regular classroom and hope their needs are met, the same way we are doing with gifted kids.

Offensive, isn't it? So why is it okay to treat gifted kids and their education in this manner?

We need to re-evaluate our priorities and make sure all kids get what they need in school. If not, vote with your feet, parents, and find other options. That's what I did!

Let Your Students Change the World

2011-11-26T07:21:00.001-05:00

In the wake of the now-infamous video of a police officer casually pepper spraying peaceful student demonstrators at UC Davis on November 18th comes a beautiful plea to college presidents: let your students change the world.

I would go even further: encourage your students to change the world. Invite them into dialogue about issues that matter, and empower them to take control of what they can. School at all levels should not occur in a vaccuum; what happens in the classroom should apply to what happens outside of it, and if it doesn't there is something very wrong.

It is easy for cynical adults to forget the protests of the 60s and 70s, the marches and demonstrations that resulted in (more) equal treatment for all citizens. It is easy to be complacent and stick our heads in the stand - easy and dangerous. Don't you remember righteous indignation at a wrong? Haven't you ever been moved to action by something monstrously unfair?

If you stand for something you will fall for anything. Don't you want your kids to stand for something?

Resource Day!

2011-11-25T07:28:00.000-05:00

We have just finished turkey at Nana's, tody to Uncle Sock's, then Redwing Farm, then home. Thought I'd leave a little something for everyone to do over the Thanksgiving holiday, just in case things get a little tedious or your football team isn't on (or winning!) or youa re sick of the commercialization of the holiday.

Google+ Resource

Our first site is a compedium of troubleshooting, suggestions and plain old descriptions about Google+. This may be old hat to some of you, but for others, the idea of moving to Google+ from Facebook is daunting. Perhaps this will help!

Mathematical Art of M.C.Escher

A lovely YouTube video of the master of matehmatical arts. We are starting a tesselation after the holiday, and this is a good jumping-off point, especially for the more artistically inclined student!

Unit Plan Based on TED Talks

An excellent way to integrate critical thinking with traditional research skills. Great for odler students; most of the talks are high school and older. This also allows for tons of student input; indeed, the student selects the topic and tailors the project.

National Book Award Finalists Read

And finally, for those of you in a turkey-induced food coma, how about some National Book Award finalists reading from their nominated books?

Sigh. Don't you just love the holidays?

(Big shout out to our housesitter who is probably snoring on our sofa or zoning out to the big screen. Thank you!)

Things That Aren't On Bubble Tests

2011-11-24T05:46:00.000-05:00

Copy-and-pasting this entire blog today; it is important to remember what is important: keep the most important thing the most important thing.

From Gerald Bracey, here's a great list of things that AREN'T on the bubble tests our kids are taking:

creativity
critical thinking
resilience
motivation
persistence
curiosity
endurance
reliability
enthusiasm
empathy
self-awareness
self-discipline
leadership
civic-mindedness
courage
compassion
resourcefulness
sense of beauty
sense of wonder
honesty
integrity

Anyone want to argue that students who possess these will be less successful in life than those that don't?
Anyone want to argue that these are less important than regurgitating decontextualized fact nuggets on a standardized assessment?

Anyone want to argue that schools shouldn't be teaching these?

Anyone want to argue that these are not being crowded out in favor of increased emphases on fact nugget regurgitation?

No? No? No? No? Then why, again, are we doing what we're doing?

Discuss...

Talent v. IQ

2011-11-23T18:36:00.000-05:00

Practice makes perfect, or does one need to be innately gifted to achieve superior levels of performance in anything? This is the question addressed in a recent New York Times article. Actually, an answer is proposed that would offend proponents of the view that all children are gifted - "strivers" are not capable of the same level of achievement as the gifted.

This idea is directly at odds with recent ideas regarding practice and talent:

...in his book “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell observes that practice isn’t “the thing you do once you’re good” but “the thing you do that makes you good.”

Gladwell believes that it is a mixture of practice and timing (e.g., the month of your birth helps determine whether or not you will have a shot at NHL greatness), and that giftedness, although a real thing, plays very little role in "any measurable real-world advantage."

Similarly,

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, restates this idea in his book “The Social Animal,” while Geoff Colvin, in his book “Talent Is Overrated,” adds that “I.Q. is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once a person has been at a job for a few years, I.Q. predicts little or nothing about performance.”

This is completely at odds with recent scientific research regarding IQ and success. Study after study corroborates the fact that IQ does matter:

Exhibit A is a landmark study of intellectually precocious youths directed by the Vanderbilt University researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow. They and their colleagues tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13. (Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it as a “thinly disguised” intelligence test.) The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage.

Huh.

The authors go on to say that practice does matter, and, anecdotally, I have worked with truly profoundly gifted students who were utter failures in school and for a time after. Because they did not "apply themselves" (ridiculous, archaic way to look at it - who wants to apply themself to a useless task?), their grades and achievement in school landed them in the lowest part of their class while their scores on the SAT and ACT earned invitations to gifted programs across the country. Eventually, I have seen, relying on one's formidable intelligence runs out; as I tell my gifted students: you may be smarter than I am, but I know more than you. It is the work that makes one great, even if the native intelligence is present.

It is a combination of hard work and brains - the first highlights the second, but the second will only take you so far without the first.

Now try telling that to a gifted kid...

No Gifted Child Left Behind

2011-11-22T08:39:00.000-05:00

The debate continues on how best to serve gifted students. These kids are more trouble than you think (see common gifted myths here. Read carefully. Unless you have a gifted kid, I would be willing to bet that you believe the majority of the myths. I'm just sayin'.).

To re-cap, in most schools, gifted kids are offered one of the following choices:

1. Once-weekly pull out classes. Rest of the week is spent in a regular classroom which may or may not differentiate for giftedness (but is federally required to differentiate for lower ability students).

2. Subject-specific gifted instruction based on scores and student need; generally for older students.

3. Subject acceleration where a student will go to a different grade for a specific subject.

4. Grade acceleration - not common. This is when a child skips a grade. Schools remain allergic to this option.

5. In class options: cluster groups, tiered assignments, etc. Success in this depends on the skill level and classroom management of the teacher.

6. Enrichment programs which can be offered whole-school (schoolwide enrichment model, SEM) or to specific kids.

Or schools like HoneyFern which offer individula curriculum wherever the kid happens to be irregardless of biological age. But I digress.

This article discusses a program in Montana specifically for gifted kids; it focuses on enrichment and doing things instead of academic projects, and for that reason it is being questioned by parents in and out of the program. Arguments against highlight the program's lack of rigor, and arguments for stress non-academic skill development (cooperation, creativity, dealing with perfectionism - see above myths - etc).

While I believe that gifted programs should be rigorous, I disagree that "rigor" automatically means "traditional academics." As stated in the article, gifted does not mean "more"; gifted kids do not need an extra worksheet of the same work they finished in five minutes. They need more complex tasks that force them to examine their thinking and revise their work; they need work and activity that engages all parts of their brain. The program in Montana does that, but perhaps not in a manner that people are used to - part of the problem.

Gifted kids, more often than not, get the short end of the stick. The predominate myth - that they will learn regardless of what happens, that they don't need special resources or teacher - is patently false and results in high school dropouts (25% of high school dropouts are gifted - myself and my husband are anecdotal evidence). Fair doesn't always mean "equal." Sometimes gifted kids need more. Would you deny a severely handicapped student in a wheelchair the ramp s/he needs to access the school? In the same way, we need to stop denying our gifted kids access to a wider body of experiences and knowledge that helps them grow and develop at their pace.

Reflecting on what works is important, but keep moving forward and let gifted kids have access to programs that work for them!

How About Better Parents?

2011-11-21T07:47:00.001-05:00

I have been having Twitter conversations lately that revolve around focusing on what we can change (instead of the myriad of things we cannot); these conversations have covered education, parenting, work situations - pretty much every situation in life.

So imagine my delight when I ran across this New York Times article about focusing on what we can change in education: our parenting. A study conducted by the folks who administer the PISA exam (you know, the one the US is falling behind on) found that parents had a large impact on test scores, and that something as simple as getting kids up for school and asking how their day was can have a marked effect on their performance in school.

This is common sense to me, but I guess for some people they need a researcher to tell them so they will believe.

I would add the following to their suggestions of reading and otherwise engaging with your kids:

1. Discipline your angel. They are not perfect, they will make mistakes, but they need boundaries, the first and most basic of which is RESPECT.

2. Similarly, respect your child. The best way to teach it is to model it. You are not better than they are, just older and taller. You have the benefit of experience, so you should remember what oppression as a child felt like.

3. Give your kids chores as soon as they can walk, starting with picking up their toys and graduating to more substantial helping. This builds work ethic and responsibility, two things that play a huge role in persistence as they get older. Parents who do everything for their kids are handicapping them for life. Boys and girls alike should know how to cook, clean, shop and budget. Add to that list checking the oil, jumping a car's battery and changing a tire and your kids will have a more substantial skill set than 90% of kids born in 2000 - a beautiful gift.

4. Say no, but say yes, too. Listen to the request and think about your answer before giving it. Teach your kids to wait for an answer instead of pushing it. It is okay to think about what you want to answer first instead of blurting out a knee-jerk "NO!"

5. Make sure your kids understand that no matter what they do, you will love them, and that they understand it on a cellular level. Live this daily, demonstrate it daily. Even when you have a teen who is grinding down your last nerve, make sure they know they cannot push you away, no matter how obnoxious they are. On the other hand...

6...BACK OFF. Stop swooping in to fix everything, and stop glossing over mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn, and fixing them is how we become better thinkers and problem-solvers. Don't bail your kids out all the time; sometimes they need to muddle through the consequences. Cause and effect: not turning homework in on time? Not a life-threatening issue. Not turning in a timesheet on time, not getting paid and having your lights/water turned off? A big deal. Stop rescuing them when they are young so they learn to A) plan ahead and prioritize, or B) bail themselves out when they get in a fix.

7. Give your kids all the experiences you can find and afford, and stop giving them so much STUFF. The difference between low income and high income parents? Low income parents show love with STUFF, and high income show love with experiences (based on Ruby Payne's ground-breaking work on poverty). Which lasts longer, do you think?

Parenting is difficult, at times ridiculous, work, but it is work worth doing and, thus, worth doing well. Be kind to yourself as you make mistakes, but get in there and make them. Be thankful you have kids to parent and the stamina to do it!

The Hamster Wheel

2011-11-20T08:44:00.000-05:00

There is nothing better than the first day of a vacation week - seven days of emptiness stretching out before me.

Except that we will be driving approximately 2,500 miles to be with family and friends. That's a lot of driving.

But still. Back to the peaceful music.

I love HoneyFern School, and I love what I do. It is challenging, rewarding, fulfilling and intellectually stimulating. I do not love, however, my total inability to relax on the weekends. I am so wound up in my head after a week with kids ages 5-14 (between HoneyFern and tutoring, I have grades K-9) that it is nearly impossible for me to unwind. Sleeping in is a pipe dream, and lounging on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate, daydreaming out the window is laughable. I can't slow down the hamster in the wheel of my brain long enough to just be. Cooking helps some, as does going down to the barn.

So a week-long vacation is about right - two days to slow down, four days to visit, and one day to get ready to go back to work. That's the plan anyway. We'll see what the hamster has to say about it.

Middle Grades Matter

2011-11-19T06:41:00.000-05:00

Yes, that is the title of an article published a couple days ago by the US Department of Education. It is sad to me that we are still trying to convince ourselves that the years of 10-15 are important. As a refresher,

Research shows that many students at the greatest risk of dropping out of high school can be identified in middle school by their grades, attendance, behavior, and test scores. Countless studies have shown that if middle level schools are to meet the diverse needs of young adolescents, schools must be developmentally responsive, socially equitable, and academically rigorous.

This is as true now as it was 20 years ago, and yet our nation's middle grades are still patently ignored or denigrated or simply treated as a holding pattern before high school (call them middle school or junior high; each connotes a different model but covers the same years. Middle school is a specific type of school that is structured around the specific needs of this age group, whereas junior high is seen as an intro to high school and is typically designed to be less nuturing). Although I would normally dismiss an article with a title like this as being generated by the Department of Duh, it makes several good points about the type of atmosphere and curriculum that these students should be exposed to, and, funny thing, not one of the suggestions is, "Flog children with high-stakes test prep."

I actually enjoyed reading the suggestions as an affirmation this morning. Is your school doing it right?

Random Friday

2011-11-18T06:45:00.000-05:00

It is random Friday, in which I have nothing specific on my mind but am posting specifically for the requirements of National Blog Posting Month. So let's have a little fun, shall we? Just a couple paragraphs chock full of stuff to read.

First off, for your musical entertainment, here is a piano lesson for "I'm Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO (and you're welcome; now you will have that in your head for the rest of the day). I am attempting to teach myself piano, which is difficult when you don't practice, but getting ditties like this one in my email makes me want to play.

Today we are going to the Fernbank Museum to see the Darwin exhibit and the Galapagos Island IMAX film. Perhaps heading downtown and then heading out of downtown on the Friday before Thanksgiving is not the best idea I have ever had, but it is better than doing it yesterday when the BET Soul Train Awards shut down parts of Peachtree Street in front of the Fox Theater.

I am personally doing the Day Zero project challenge (doing 101 things in 1001 days) and although I am having difficulty figuring out 101 things to do, I believe that making this might end up being one of the things. One of my goals is actually to finish writing my list of 101 things. I am stuck at 65. Day Zero is not to be confused with Project Zero out of Harvard which is, ironically, what my Master's thesis was on (teaching for understanding).

I am still having issues with one space after a period and the controversy swirling around the Oxford comma. Vampire Weekend has a song called "Oxford Comma," but I am not posting it here due to profanity.

Seems appropriate to begin and end this blog entry with music, so to kill your first earworm, here is another. You may not want ot click the link. Fair warning.

That's it. I hope everyone has a lovely Friday; bundle up here in the south!

Virtual School - Blessing or a Curse?

2011-11-17T09:35:00.000-05:00

HoneyFern is a fan of technology. Computers can do amazing things; they can open the world and show us things we may never see in real life. Based on that premise alone, many people are turning to virtual schooling. Add in the money-saving factor, and many school districts are beginning to implement full-scale online schools.

Blessing, or a curse?

The New York Times offers a blog that believes virtual schooling may be a curse, positing that while virtual school may be a good thing for active students to get the basics (competitive sports participants, actors or any child who is otherwise engaged in an all-encompassing, semi-professional occupation), online schooling for the standard kid may be little more than parking a student in front of a computer and absolving oneself from responsibility. There is very little research on the success of virtual schooling; some of it says kids do better on tests, some say kids do worse. The research seems to skew towards the perspective of the researcher, so the data is unreliable right now.

HoneyFern has tried virtual schooling, both as an entire curriculum (disastrous, and quickly abandoned) and as a pick-and-choose model. Right now we are utilizing Aleks as an artificially intelligent math program with lots of success; each student has their own account and proceeds as quickly or slowly as they want to/need to/can, and we have opportunities for individual instruction when the explanations are not clear.

Of course, we also do lots of real-life math, from figuring compound interest in the Stock Market Game to budgeting for weekly shopping to finding sales tax, along with standard measuring in science using the metric system. So although we are using an online option, there is opportunity for application.

This is how online learning should be - applied. Classes of 40 kids spending all day in front of a computer while a teacher roams around (or surfs online at the back of the class) may save money, but it won't help kids. Will kids in that virtual model learn more than 30 kids in person? Who knows? The data isn't there yet. What I do know is that decision-making in education has been based on money, not kids, for quite a while, and if things don't change, virtual schools will out. If there is no mixture of online and applied knowledge, results could be dismal.

In education, one size never fits all, or even most, and to think that online schools will save education is wishful thinking. It may save a few dollars, but that's all.

The Structure (or Not) of a School

2011-11-16T08:39:00.000-05:00

Reading an article from the Los Angeles Times this morning on a homeschooling family in California that converted a guest room to an actual classroom with a teacher's desk, cubbies and a whiteboard.

"Homeschooling" takes multiple forms. Some (like the above family) school at home with a set curriculum and daily structure; the opposite end of the spectrum is unschool, with no set curriculum and a daily schedule that is dictated by the student (and can include a day's worth of TV viewing, which is what most people think of when they think of unschooling but which is really just a small part of it). Most families do something in between, a mix of structured curriculum, field trips, outside classes and days of just living (errands to the grocery store or volunteer outings).

HoneyFern dabbled in too much structure, and it felt plain wrong, but no structure feels wrong, too. I think we are striking just the right balance these days with daily math, structured biology labs and writing assignment sprinkled generously with field trips, geocaching, running a food pantry, weekly cooking and real-life competitions (like the Stock Market Game, which has taught us more about the economics of our nation in four weeks than any set curriculum possibly could have). Each student has their own academic plan that takes into account their interests and abilities, and we all meet in the middle for science (which is much more fun in a group) and French (which has to be learned as a community).

As always, we will continue to tweak the school to make it work for each student, but our philosophy and mission of educating the whole student through relevant, engaging and personal experiences remains the same. We still have multiple drafts of papers (groan) and academic reading for syntheis and evaluation (double groan), but when what you are reading applies to what you are doing (like chemical and biological monitoring for our adopted stream, Olley Creek in Austell, Georgia!) then it is far less painful.

I do miss the whiteboard sometimes, but we make do. :)

Getting Lost

2011-11-15T11:35:00.003-05:00

I wish this were a metaphor, but, unfortunately, it is what it says: we got lost on the way to Macbeth at The Shakespeare Tavern. Hopefully the nice folks at the box office will be able to reschedule us for tomorrow.

In the meantime, we are doing some math and then going to find a geocache in our neighborhood.

Better luck tomorrow.

Updated: We found the cache.

The word of the day is "bilious," and there was a little of that in this picture.

The cache is in a Civil War cemetary; this is the picture of the tree growing through the fence.

It is customary to take a little trinket and leave one; we did not have a trinket with us, so we took nothing, but we are going to go back in the next couple days and leave this:

Happy hunting!!

Online Ed and Cash Cow, Suckers!

2011-11-14T08:43:00.000-05:00

Two interesting reports out over the weekend.

The first comes to use from PARCC, which stands for something long and deals with assessment for college readiness. They have somehow been tasked with writing the content standards for the Common Core Standards (CCS, or, as I like to say it, "Cash Cow, Suckers!"), and good news! They are done.

I have perused the 98-page document for English, and I can tell you unequivocally that there is absolutely nothing new here. There is no insight into the progression of courses, no earth-shattering revelation about how to motivate learners, nothing. For a brand-new teacher, this document might be helpful in terms of having a baseline idea of skills, but other than that it is just another attempt to wrest dollars for education.

This is disappointing but not unexpected. One of the ways in which education stays "fresh" is the continual re-packaging of the same ideas with new names and acronyms to remember, thus giving the appearance of growth and change. Needless to say, I am not drinking this particular brand of Kool-aid; I find the standards to be simplistic and low and not much changed from the state standards we spent eleventy million dollars writing, assessing and rolling out over six years.

Our second report comes from Evergreen Education Group (EEG) and deals with trends in online learning. Major supporters of EEG include many online learning companies, so the graphics may be a tad biased. Of all the graphics, the thing that strikes most is the continual upward trend in online learning, and the continual underfunding of the programs. This is to be expected, as traditional educational hegemony is threatened by anything smacking vaguely of reform, but the fact is that online ed in its various forms is here to stay, has been proven at least as effective as public school for the majority of participants (but without the bullying, rushing to catch the bus and terrible lunchrooms) and will soon be as ubiquitous as the cell phone (I am thinking of comparing online ed right now to the brick phones in the briefcases of the late 80s with future online ed as a sleeker iPhone). Why not really explore what online ed can be, treating it as a potential solution instead of part of the problem?

Will follow both of these trends as they continue to emerge, one repackaging the old and one attempting to implement the new.

A Curriculum of Toys

2011-11-13T08:11:00.000-05:00

Thank goodness for Make magazine. This is a discovery of mine from a couple years ago, and although it doesn't seem like they have exactly burst onto the scene in a big way, the magazine has been popping up in different places on occasion, places that might actually get them a little more press. I hope they are around for a very long time.

This morning brings us a curriculum of toys, a blog in which the author outlines how kids could use toys to learn everything they need to know (marginalizing traditional school to the role of socialization, which I am not convinced it does all that well anyway, so I would suggest perhaps ridding ourselves of the institution in its current iteration all together).

There might be a hue and cry about dates and facts (history is notably absent in the sense that there are no concrete events "studied" in this curriculum), but all of the skills to be an historian are present.

I am going to save this for awhile. Lots of things to think about in this list.

Writer's Block

2011-11-12T10:39:00.001-05:00

It is National Blog Posting Month. It is also Saturday, I am sleepy and I have no idea what to write about. We just got back from hunter-gathering (doughnuts from Dough in the Box. Best. Doughnuts. Ever.) and saw a hawk eating some type of waterfowl on our front lawn.

NaBloPoMo is for "dedicated bloggers," of which I am only partially one. I enjoy writing, and I enjoy sharing information with people, but sometimes I don't have much to say, or much that I feel is interesting, or I have something to say but it requires more time and effort that I am ready to give at a particular moment (e.g., the PARCC Common Core Standards final content was released yesterday. They merit thoughtful time and attention, but all I want to do right now is eat a blueberry fritter, drink coffee and stare out the window. I will get to them on Monday). This is problematic when your charge is to blog faithfully every day for 30 days in a row.

So here is my effort at faithful blogging today. Tomorrow I hope to be more inspired (and inspiring).

Adopt-A-Stream!

2011-11-11T07:41:00.000-05:00

Today's blog is brought to you by Devin, a homeschooled 5th grade student who will be joining HoneyFern when we monitor our adopted stream.

November 8, 2011 was our first day at Olley Creek. (we are starting our year-long Adopt-a-Stream commitment)

(The day was clear and beautiful, sunny blue skies. The last fall-feeling day before a rainstorm.)

We had two guides to teach us how to test Olley Creek's water - Rachel and Mike.

(That's Mike's shirt. He watched while Rachel did most of the demonstrating!)

We learned how to test the air, water, pollution, conductivity (electricity), dissolved oxygen, and pH.

On Olley there is thick vegetation, and most of it serves as food for birds, deer, etc. Today we saw a hawk and a bunny, and nearby we found deer prints. (We also found wood that had been gnawed by a beaver, and tracks that looked like a river otter.)

There are lots of teeny, tiny fish that are probably tadpoles, so there will be frogs in Olley Creek (which we will learn how to keep track of in the spring when we train for biological monitoring)! Olley has good (varied and dense) vegetation, wildlife, and all of our tests turned out well. (We are establishing a baseline of data so we can monitor changes over the year; when we watch over the creek we are able to see any changes that could indicate trouble occur).

P.S. Adopt-A-Stream rules!!!!!
P.P.S. I think everyone should do this.

You Can't Get There From Here

2011-11-10T10:25:00.001-05:00

I have been saying for a couple years now that educational reform is not really possible with our current educational system; this is why I threw in the towel and left to form HoneyFern. In my last two years in the public schools, every innovative turn was met with opposition and strife; kids were getting used to doing nothing, administrators were only worried about the numbers, and teachers were just trying to get through the day without a confrontation with parents, absentee or helicopter, who felt their child deserved a grade they didn't earn. Death by ditto was common.

I am not shocked this morning to read a blog by Psychology Today that supports my assertions. Specifically,

There is no way that gradual change in our current schooling system can result in the kind of educational reform that I am calling real reform. The small steps in what would seem to be the right direction, urged on by the progressive educators, fail within this system. They fail because they don't work when taken one by one or just a little at a time. A little "freedom" in a system where success is measured by tests doesn't work, because free children don't choose to learn the test answers. "Play" in a setting where children are segregated by age and are constrained in what they can play at is not a particularly effective learning tool.

This is what I was experiencing when I left; the reforms I could make in my classroom were so small as to be ineffective in the long term, and getting kids, parents and administrators to embrace what I was doing - problem-based learning, student-designed projects, portfolio assessment instead of testing, enrichment sessions after school for kids who had mastered the basics and were ready for more or deeper study - became increasingly difficult as they latched on to the mediocrity engendered by such a standardized instituition.

The solution, according to the article? Real reform will occur only when enough people walk away from the conventional school system.

I realized that two years ago, and I left. Rates of homeschooling are rising, with an estimated 2 million kids being homeschooled as of 2010, and blended learning environments - part face-to-face and part online - are gaining traction as a viable educational alternative.

Public schools are failing, and the Band-aids being plastered on the sucking chest wound are not going to work. WALK AWAY. It is time to vote with our feet, not just parents but teachers, too.

People will begin to understand that they have a choice. Which will they choose--conventional schooling, where they must do as they are told, or freedom? What have people always chosen when they truly understand that they have a choice between freedom and dictatorship?

You are not a prisoner of the local school board; there are families in your community who are thinking the same thing. Identify them, form a co-op, and get your kids the education they deserve. I did that for mine, try to do it for others and I don't regret it one bit.

Adopting a Stream - the First Post

2011-11-09T14:34:00.001-05:00

This blog is a sort of placeholder for what I hope is a student-written blog in the next couple days. HoneyFern School has adopted Olley Creek in Austell, Georgia as our very own; for the next year we will be responsible for chemical monitoring, bacterial monitoring and biological monitoring (the last two won't be in place until the spring when we get trained). We spent yesterday morning shin-deep in the creek, checking dissolved oxygen levels and pH, and generally enjoying the fall sunshine.

I will elaborate on our experiences if one of the kids doesn't step forward with a piece of writing in the next couple; pictures will be forthcoming also! Suffice it to say that this one training brought together nearly all of our lab and biology experiences thus far and gave everyone an opportunity to show their smarts and apply their learning in a way that matters, makes sense and is very, very real. What could be better than that?!!