tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70945766645002405912024-02-20T09:31:10.083-08:00Starry PlowLeohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.comBlogger87125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-21688522173816222672020-08-05T13:58:00.013-07:002020-08-16T10:44:38.476-07:00THUMB NAIL SKETCH OF A DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION SCHOOL EXEMPLAR <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Here suggested in general description is an exemplar of</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> a Democratic Education school of four separate, sequential micro-programs,
an Early Childhood, a Primary Education and a Secondary Education and an Early
College. <span style="color: #141823; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Internal Built Environment<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Physical space is
perhaps one of the strongest transmitters of collective expectations in
beliefs, attitudes, personal and interpersonal behaviors, and among the most
consequential in either obstructing or assisting learning to the individuals
occupying the space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, for those
with heightened sensitivity to light and sound, such as in Autism Spectrum
Disorder, the very acoustic and illuminating properties within school spaces
can greatly interfere with or encourage healthy activity and development.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thus, an exemplar
would construct its internal learning spaces specifically to convey a home </span><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">hearth sense of caring, security and
relaxation as well as conveying an artisanal, imaginative, inventive and
productive impulse: such would be as a warm, artist’s-studio <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loft</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #141823; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loft </i>environment
would provide subdued general lighting, except in such as wood or metal working
shop <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lofts</i> and other spaces where
safety requires brightness; both subdued and high intensity spot lighting would
be employed over specific work stations, again with the exception of shop and
other spaces requiring brightness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sound-reducing walls would be found in all <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lofts</i>. Each <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loft</i> would
provide its students a sheltered quite space with subdued and spot lighting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Common areas and offices would be as
subduedly lighted as safety permits with work stations and desks spot lighted
and as sound-reduced as possible. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Exemplar School Governance<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
Democratic school would have a “Board of Trustees” securing the full funding of
the institution and overseeing the global arrangements of management systems
and policy formation and implementation, even in a public system. While the
Board would be comprised of adults willing and able to proactively support the
Communitarian-Libertarian, democratic nature of the institution and thus
enthusiastically fulfill their obligations to the institution, it would of
necessity have a sizable plurality of students assuring student body decision
making at this level of the organization,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
Democratic school would employ administrators to accomplish the executive
functions of the institution as a whole under specific, democratic guidance of
the sole school-wide policy determining body, the</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> “All School Council”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Council organizes the common elements
across the institution into a coherent educational establishment. And, among
other duties, the Council </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">oversees and
coordinates program determined policies and management decisions, supervises
and evaluates learning and psychological wellness systems, operates the school’s
Restorative Justice Systems, oversees budget and business management
structures, and sets, monitors and evaluates physical space and learning
material needs against the school’s Mission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Voting
m</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">embership in the Council is to comprise an
even balance between Secondary Education and Early College program students on
the one hand (Early Childhood students are relieved of this self-governing
obligation) and administrators and instructional staff on the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Council would meet bi-monthly-more often
when needed-forms committees to set meeting agendas and do its background
work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It operates by consensus where
consensus means that all who vote can live with decisions not that all
necessarily favor any. Meetings are always open to any member of the school
community.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Each program, a kind of micro-school
itself, organizes and maintains its functioning through weekly gatherings
called Program Meetings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Program
Meetings assure coherent, successive progression of social, emotional and
cognitive growth in students in each area of schooling responsibility by, among
other obligations, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">setting, evaluating and supervising learning
and psychological support systems against Mission goals and recommending to All
School Council alterations needed to better meet goals, s</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica-Bold;">etting advancement criteria and benchmarks for passing from one
level to another and out of school, identifying and setting rules and expectant
behaviors consistent and inconsistent with<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>norms of the school, operates its Restorative Justice System, as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">well as working
to resolve any and all immediate learning and behavioral issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">
program’s Meeting forms committees to set agendas and to accomplish its
background work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Votes taken in each
Program Meeting are by consensus where consensus is defined as all who vote can
live with the decision not that all are necessarily for any.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">Only
the Early Childhood exemplar excludes its students from its Program Meetings
while all instructional staff would attend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 23.25pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Earl Childhood Program Exemplar<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Early Childhood exemplar would heterogeneously group students
within several self-contained ungraded, mixed aged prepared <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lofts</i>. These prepared environments </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">would provide
exposure and access to the widest concrete-kinesthetic knowledge in practical
life materials, activities and play sets, sensorial keys and experiences of
nature, of people, of art, of music, of language, of math and measurement, also
in toys, such as building blocks</span>, <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">dolls, cars, trucks, planes, rail roads,
as well as in other items such as sand and water tables.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There would be provided areas intended to
stimulate and accommodate free, imaginative play as well as free individual and
group physical play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specific engagement
with the materials and the activities of the prepared environment would be
wholly up to each child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The program </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">focuses
attention on individual child psychological and physiological development:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>especially on autonomous self-regulation
keyed to social-emotional, executive functioning and interpersonal behaviors,
and on appropriate growth in gross and fine motor movement and in overall body
capacities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Staff <span style="color: black;">would uncover individual student psycho-dynamic,
psycho-social and neurocognitive baselines enabling mentor counseling and
situational assistance points of departure and continued directed support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Direct
instruction of subject content is not intended, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loft</i> staff would be free to cooperatively aid a child or children
to gain understanding when either requested by a student or students or when
staff initiated intervention is granted agreement by a student or
students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loft</i> staff member or a student may offer to lead small group
activities for voluntary participation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A permeable border between Early Childhood and Primary Education
would be set moving students who have gained program self-governance-determined
advancement benchmarks regardless of age into the Primary Education program.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Primary Education Program Exemplar</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
exemplar of Primary Education</span></span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">would heterogeneously group students </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">within several self-contained ungraded, mixed aged prepared
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lofts</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These prepared environments would</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
provide exposure and access to the widest subject knowledge available in a
school up the ladder of abstraction from the concrete-kinesthetic to an
appropriate abstract in learning stations centered on the general </span>areas<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> of
Literacy, Language, and Measurement and in specific areas of Earth, Space and Life
Sciences, History and Geography, Music, Preforming and Visual Arts, Digital Sciences,
Wood Working, Agricultural Science, Home Arts, and Athletics.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It would provide for free play with materials
such as puzzles and games, costumes and theatrical makeup, paints and crayons,
newsprint and paper, and in performance spaces, and indoor and outdoor
playgrounds.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Specific engagement with
the materials and the activities of the prepared Primary Education environment
would be wholly up to each child.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Direct
instruction of subject content is not intended, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loft</i> staff would be free to cooperatively aid a child or children
to gain understanding when either requested by a student or students or when
staff initiated intervention is granted agreement by a student or
students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loft</i> staff member or a student may offer to lead small group
activities for voluntary participation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Student
subject knowledge acquisition of an exemplar Primary Education would be
individual and emergent rather than being uniform and mandated:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the course of topic learning over an entire
residency would emerge unique to every child as they engage the vast subject prepared
environments through distinctive neurology, abilities, interests and
communication styles. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">However,
a goal of Primary Education common to all children would be the development in each
in their own way of competencies in receiving, processing and communicating
written, oral and graphic information, including mathematical information,
allowing each to comfortably accept secondary education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These objectives would emerge over time from
student-mentor negotiated agreements, situational student-staff cooperative
assistance and individual student effort and would be based on felt student
need to gain additional tools to explore more of the subject filled prepared
environments than through mandated mastery on or before a time or an age
certain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The program would </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">focus attention on strengthening autonomous
self-regulation, executive functioning, social-emotional management, and in
developing behavioral habits of cooperation, Primary Education mentors would
counsel for personal psycho-dynamic, psycho-social and neurocognitive
development and subject seeking, selecting and learning issues while
situational assistance would focus on individual student self-regulation,
interpersonal behavior and neurocognitive functioning issues<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A permeable border between Primary Education and Secondary
Education would be set moving students who have gained program
self-governance-determined advancement benchmarks regardless of age into the
Secondary Education program.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">The Secondary Education Program Exemplar</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Secondary Education exemplar<i> </i>would have students <span style="color: black;">within an ungraded, mixed aged single setting </span>developing high
quality deliberative concrete through high abstract thinking, manual skills, oral
and written language competency, habits of cooperation and subject topics<span style="color: black;"> of interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mentoring and situational assistance would </span>help individual
students to retain and to further build autonomous self-regulation, Ego
strength and psychological well-being, as well as aiding in subject seeking,
selecting and learning issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Inquiry
Project Based Learning would be a preferred learning structure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Students would engage the vast knowledge
world open to them through individual or cooperative small group inquiry
projects. Projects would be developed, implemented, presented and feedback
given through participation in <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Subject
Lofts, i.e., richly resourced subject-area prepared environments,</span> where
members act together to achieve individual or common project objectives and
where Loft members through demonstrations and presentations share the knowledge
gained by their projects. There would be a number of Subject Lofts inhabiting
their own spaces and facilitated each by at least two Learning Specialists:
They would cover areas such as Outdoor Education, Physical Science, Mathematics,
Social Science, History, Geography, Letters, Fine Arts, Music, Performing Arts,
Foreign Language Arts, Electric, Electronic and Digital Sciences, Carpentry/Woodworking,
Metal Working, Agricultural Science, Home Arts, and Athletics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Secondary
Education students would initiate all inquiry projects rather than rely on
staff directed assignments. Prior to the start of each and every inquiry
project, students would consult with their staff mentor, the learning
specialist most appropriate to the possible project and fellow students in the
Subject Loft most relevant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having
decided on an inquiry topic, students would outline the project stating an
inquiry question, the methods to be used to answer the question, the product
the inquiry intends to generate and the criteria for project success in the
form of performance assessment rubrics, i.e., qualitative statements describing
specific standards against which students can self-assess and others when
requested by a student can employ to evaluate a student’s work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In completed form, students would present the
project plan to both the student’s mentor and appropriate Loft learning
specialist and then begin the project. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A student may request the Loft group
within which he/she is working to evaluate a project at any stage of its
undertaking using the student’s own criteria for success rubrics. Mandated formal
evaluation of completed projects by staff is not intended: however, individual
students may request a formal assessment from any staff, especially from the student’s
mentor or the learning specialist of the Loft in which the project was
undertaken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Students and their mentors
would be obliged to save project proposals, project products and any
evaluations for portfolio construction demonstrating student work and
satisfaction of advancement criteria.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Occasionally
there may be a need felt by students or observed by the learning specialist for
direct instruction of project skills or of assessment methods or of common
subject content or of other information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In these cases, a student, a group of students or the learning
specialist would call a narrowly targeted, short duration Loft seminar for
student voluntary participation to fill the need.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, a learning specialist may work
singularly with a student on specific skills or subject content when requested
by the student.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a learning specialist
sees the need to work singularly with a student, he/she may offer, but it is
ultimately the student’s prerogative to accept or reject the offer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There may be felt a need by students, especially,
or by the learning specialist in a Subject Loft to gather students together for
facilitated conversations on topics of interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here a student, a group of students or the
learning specialist would offer for student voluntary participation a narrowly
targeted, short duration special seminar. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A permeable border between Secondary Education and the Early
College would be set moving students who have gained program
self-governance-determined advancement benchmarks regardless of age into the
Early College.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Early
College Program Exemplar</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
exemplar of an Early College would have students within an ungraded single
setting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Young
program scholars would have opportunities for deep, cooperative, scholarly
inquiry into questions of curiosity, interest and passion within the customary
semester terms September to June, as well as great many occasions to enhance
oral and written language competencies, and to if chosen, work through physical
materials to explore learned concepts in the Secondary Education’s Loft shops. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The program’s mentoring focus would
provide sensitive feedback on self-actualizing young scholar decisions and to
counsel when self-regulation conflicts arise. While immediate situational
assistance is not formally included at this level, Early College instructors
are free to offer assistance, but it is ultimately a student’s prerogative to
accept or reject the offer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Development of inquiry course offerings
would be an immediate and a vital obligation of the Early College’s
self-governance structure; however, a “Great Question” Liberal Arts approach
might be preferred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An example of a
Great Question might be:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How did the
eighteenth century European belief against Superstition and Fanaticism affect
the construction of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First
Amendment?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This Great Question would
describe and analyze the development, meaning and effects of the European
Enlightenment belief in Rational Religion and in the dangers of Superstition
and Fanaticism on the framing of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Other Great Questions might be:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How does Dark Matter Matter?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How can one render unto Caesar when
Caesar is wrong?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Why is the child mother to the woman?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Is reality really real?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Can Spacetime truly bend?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Completion
of program self-governance-determined graduation requirements would grant
students a high school diploma, an Associate of Arts degree, and, if desired,
an opportunity into a four year college as an upper matiiculant to complete a
Bachelor’s degree..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The course of
inquiry in the Early College would be wholly the choice of individual
students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, if students choose to
continue with formal study and to transfer to a Bacheloriate program after
graduating from the Early College, they would work with their mentor to
structure their study to satisfy general university core requirements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
is intended to be no formal assessment of Early College student subject content
learning either during or at completion of courses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the program’s self-governance
structure might consider the expectations of the world beyond the exemplar’s
walls requiring some demonstration of accumulated knowledge when it considers
requirements for advancement and for graduation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With such decisions in hand, Early College
student-staff mentor conversations must, as much as possible, unfold in
students a clear understanding of program self-governance-determined criteria
and satisfaction of criteria for advancement and for graduation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, these conversations should unfold
agreements between student and mentor on the progress of satisfying criteria and
an agreement on the constitution of complete satisfaction of criteria allowing
the student to graduate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the ideal world, a Senior College into which Early College graduates would
enter along with young adults from other institutions would be established
moving students onward within The Communitarian-Libertarian Hybrid frame to
complete their undergraduate education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, this outline provides education only through an Early College.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Students
in each program would live and work well together proceeding at their own pace
and cooperatively working with their staff mentors, immediate instructional
staff and schoolmates to satisfy community determined criteria for advancement
to the next program level and, ultimately, to graduation from the school having
taken from the store of human knowledge through a school that which is of
interest, of passion, of felt need fulfilling the promise of a Democratic Education.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></p><br /><p></p>Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-18853392901182132802020-07-25T15:13:00.049-07:002020-08-16T10:13:05.584-07:00FOUNDATIONS OF A DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION SCHOOL MODEL<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(As of this writing, early August, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic
continues to play high havoc with “in-person” schooling in the United
States. Education authorities are adjusting their plans for this
school year and years to come accordingly with many continuing remote
instruction either full time or as blended learning. However, the
face-to-face school is wholly anticipated to continue as<i> the</i> expression
of the social institution of Education as the too entrenched current social
organization of labor demands the custodial function of the in-person school to
endure in excellent health well into the future. This paper firmly
assumes the need and thus the further existence of the in-person school.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Democratic
Education may be characterized as a Communitarian-Libertarian Hybrid. The hybrid structures a Communitarian,
interdependent culture, governance and member support and a Libertarian student
subject seeking, acquisition and use.
Personal success in living and working well within the organization is
contingent on adult-youth egalitarian management of institutional
administration, policy and social control accomplished through equality of
rights, negotiation and mutual agreement between and among </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">adults and children </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">while individual
student subject success is contingent on a high degree of personal
self-determination supported by the mutual aid of other students and community
staff. Contemporary examples of The
Communitarian-Libertarian Hybrid center mostly on the Sudbury Valley School in
Framingham, MA, (<a href="http://www.sudval.org/">www.sudval.org/</a>) and its
modeled schools, on Summerhill School in Leiston, England, (<a href="http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/">www.summerhillschool.co.uk/</a>) and to
a lesser extent on Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, (</span><a href="https://antiochcollege.edu/)">https://antiochcollege.edu/<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">)</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">.. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">To assure the communitarian-libertarian habits of mind, behavior
and expectation promised by the model, students ought to grow through schooling
intentionally constructed to engender and express these
traits. Herein stated are the foundations of such an endeavor,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">History</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The antecedents of today’s Democratic Education schools go back to
the early twentieth century with the Modern School Movement and Progressive
Education and Francisco Ferrer, Mildred Johnson, Gertrude Ayer<span class="MsoHyperlink">, Maria Montessori, and Alexander Sutherland Neill. </span>Ferrer
in Spain looked to develop children’s knowledge and skills according to each
student’s abilities rather than through drilled instruction and uniform
lessons. (Avrich) The Spanish educator's ideas in the United States combined
with Progressive Education’s emphasis on self-directed student learning and
learning by doing sparked the Modern School Movement establishing schools
beginning in 1910, one of which was Mildred Johnson’s Modern School in the
Harlem of 1934. (Perlstein) Additionally, as a direct consequence of the
Progressive Education of the moment, Gertrude Ayer’s New York City’s PS 24 in
the Harlem of 1935 featured experiential learning, self-directed projects and
democratic classroom living among other Progressive pedagogy. (Perlstein) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Contemporaneously with Progressive Education, Ferrer and the
Modern School Movement, Maria Montessori in Italy saw children striving to
satisfy their immediate needs as motivating individual learning behavior. She
noticed what she called “sensitive periods”, those times when a child’s mind is
more in need of acquiring a specific knowledge set than at other
moments. Further, she observed how powerful and energetic natural
curiosity was for learning, to the point where no adult need force a child to
learn, especially during the sensitive periods. From these observations, she
developed her “Method”. (Montessori)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Method centers itself in adults preparing a learning
environment for children filled with material and activity calculated to
resonate with each sensitive period. In the Method adults do not tell children
what to do beyond an initial explanation on how to use the prepared
environment. As children engage the elements of the prepared environment, the
Method’s teachers consciously observe how each child interacts with the
materials and the activities ascertaining each child’s needs and if required
altering the environment-the material, the activity, even the spatial
arrangements within a classroom-to put in the way of the child the elements to
satisfy the child’s needs. (Montessori) The Method became the driver
of schools called Montessori.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In 1923, a psychologist, A.S. Neill, having twice moved a school
he founded in Germany two years earlier, relocated again into a house in Lyme
Regis, England, called Summerhill. In 1927, Neill and Summerhill
School moved once more finding their permanent and present home in Leiston,
England. (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/history.php">http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/history.php</a>) In Summerhill, children were/are freed from
psychic barriers to self-actualization: they were/are allowed to be
themselves. Neill’s school is a setting where formal learning is
driven by innate ability, desire and interest, where imaginative play is of
greatest importance, lessons are optional and social control ordered by the
school community through a democratic process of adult and child having one
vote on issues open to community decision. (Neill, 1960.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">However, the psychologist’s and Summerhill’s influence would
flower only after the release of Neill’s </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7094576664500240591/1885339290118213280"><span style="color: windowtext;">Summerhill: A
radical approach to child-rearing</span></a></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> in
1960. Mary Leue, founder of The Free School in Albany, NY, Daniel
Greenburg, founder of Sudbury Valley School in Framingham MA, and many other
Americans in the 1960’s, including the founders of the public Lehman
Alternative Community School in Ithaca, NY, latched on tightly to
Neill’s notion that the freedom from adult coercion to choose that subject
engagement which affects the child individually, that which is of interest, of
passion, of felt need, must drive learning for only under such freedom can the
child grow to be the well-adjusted adult the child was meant to
be. They also fully appreciated and accepted Neill’s belief in and
Summerhill’s practice of the democratic form of school community
self-governance as necessary to securing that freedom. These “free” or
“open” schools, then as now, gave youngsters both the responsibility to define
what it means individually to be formally educated and to collectively govern
the community in which they were free to learn and grow in their own way and in
their own time to their own ends.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In the early1980’s, Yaacov Hecht in Israel like many before came
across Neill and Summerhill. (Hecht, p. 31, and pp. 32-35). The psychologist,
his 1960 book and his school made clear to Hecht the main components of his
vision of a democratic school:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “<b>.</b> A choice in the areas of
learning; the students choose what they want to learn</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">and how.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <b>. </b> Democratic self-management.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <b>. </b> Evaluation focusing on the
individual-without comparison with others and without</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">tests and grades.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <b> .</b> A school where children grow from age four
until adulthood (eighteen or over).”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (Hecht, p. 34)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hecht took his main components from Summerhill extended them to day
schools, as Neill suggested only residential schools could provide the
conditions for a democratic education, embraced access to the widest and the
deepest of human knowledge available through a school, as Summerhill tended to
circumscribe a good deal of instruction to state endorsed curricula, and
founded The Democratic School of Hadera.. From Hadera, Hecht popularized his
ideas, founded and helped to established schools throughout the globe under the
collective label of Democratic Education. (Hecht, pp. 243-322, and 323-357.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Keystone:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
keystone of Democratic Education is in the cultivation of as well-balanced a
developing psychology in each youngster as possible within a highly supportive egalitarian
community. As Neill points out, “</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">If a
child is free to approve of himself, he will not usually be
hateful. He will not see any fun in trying to make an adult lose his
temper…” or to make another child unhappy, for that matter. (Neill, 1960,
p l9)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">T</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">he
principal means taken by the model to cultivate a well-balanced </span>psychology<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> is
through an ever strengthening individual Ego consequent of a student’s
self-determined learning aided by the mutual assistance of fellow community
members, youth and adult. A strong individual Ego builds confidence
in youth's abilities to move through the world in his and her own way, to deal
well with challenges the world throws up, to recognize the needs of others and
to support others in whichever way they will accept without reproach if support
is declined, to recognize the needs of self and to seek and accept support in
meeting these needs, to construct and work through independent and
interdependent relationships and to know which is necessary and appropriate in
situations. Also, such a strengthening cultivates high levels
of </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7094576664500240591/1885339290118213280"><span style="color: windowtext;">emotional
intelligence</span></a> enabling a youngster to
regulate feelings, even in tough circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ego strength lives in the cultivation and use of an individual’s
Autonomous Self-Regulation, a system of conscious personal management guided by
the feeling that the behavior, the emotion, or the cognition being regulated is
affected for reasons a person values, finds meaningful, and wholly endorses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And healthy development of Autonomous Self-Regulation capacities
unfolds within formal school settings as a direct response to a supportive
learning community’s ability to satisfy the basic psychological needs for Relatedness,
Competence and Autonomy. Relatedness should be understood as close,
affectionate relationships with others built on the reciprocity of factors like
trust, empathy and personal habits of cooperation. The Communitarian interdependence structured
by and fully anticipated in individual self-endorsed cooperative habits of mind
and behavior secures Relatedness in each of a community’s members, child and
adult. Competence is to be understood as
the conscious awareness of doing well in applying and efficiently<b> </b>executing a
range of or a specific skill or ability. Here, the Relatedness fully
fixed within members of a supportive learning community encourages risk so
individuals can explore, experiment and test without negative sanctions until
an inner assurance is built that one feels competent. Autonomy is to be
understood as the development of the Self as an independent identity from
others, as the deep inner sense of empowerment, as the ability to function independently
without <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7094576664500240591/1885339290118213280"><span style="color: black;">control</span></a> by
others. The very nature of the Libertarian aspects of Democratic
Education, the right to choose that which affects the individual, the
searching for personal interest, the following of subject passion, along with
the cultivation of Competence makes fast the sense of an empowered Self. (See Deci, et al, 2008, for discussion
related to the Self-Determination Theory grounding the above.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Democratic Education unfolds Relatedness, Competency and Autonomy
sustaining a well-adjusted Autonomous Self-Regulation, leading to a strong Ego
and, ultimately, to a balanced psychology in students through the twin
schooling processes of Supported Self-Directed, Negotiated, Cooperative Learning
and School Communit<i>y</i> Self-Governance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Supported Self-Directed,
Negotiated, Cooperative Learning <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And School Community Self-Governance</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">As the title indicates, the scholarship process in Democratic
Education of Supported Self-Directed, Negotiated, Cooperative Learning is
broken down into four elements integrated in practice, separated for
explanation <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Supported” is the provision of</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> two
formal counseling structures, a long term mentoring and an immediate
situational assistance, to help youngsters become aware of and place into
reasonable perspective internal and external behavioral and performance
expectations and how to manage and channel anxieties, frustrations and anger
when undertaking to fulfill expectations: Here, s</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">tudents
engage in a close mentoring relationship of adult to youth where a trained
instructional staff mentor and a youngster enter a process mutually respectful
of the wisdom of each to cooperatively work on student social-emotional,
psycho-dynamic, neurocognitive and behavioral issues, on subject
seeking, selecting and learning issues, and on common understandings of and
agreements on specific learning and developmental goals and the action steps
required to reach those goals. The
immediate assistance structures a trained instructional staff member and a
student cooperatively working together on present
situational self-regulation, interpersonal behavior, neurocognitive
functioning and specific topic learning issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Self-Directed Learning” places the locus of all subject decisions
squarely within the individual student where each accepts responsibility for
taking from the vast store of human knowledge available through a school what
is wished to be known, the scope of knowing, when and how knowing is to be
undertaken as well as determining the duration, outcome and success of any
learning activity and the course of learning for a school quarter, term and
entire residency.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Negotiated Learning” leads students to navigate among
intrinsically motivated inclinations, internal school community requirements
and external social community obligations of achievement so students can
determine their own course of advancement within the school, for graduation
from the school and for life after graduation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Cooperative Learning” is the process of students working well together
with other students and community adults through internalized habits of
cooperation to achieve both individual and common learning and personal
development goals. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thus, the Democratic learning structure develops mental wellness
supporting the readiness and the actualization to choose the immediate and long
term objects of study and the means of one’s own scholarship, to ask for and
receive as well as to offer and have accepted assistance in study selection and
acquisition, and to find one’s interest, passion, purpose and acceptance within
community.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now, Democratic Education students cannot assure themselves the close
support, the self-direction, the cooperation and the collegiality, or the
exposure and the access to the widest of human knowledge through a school from
which to choose promised by the model unless they can safely anticipate these
conditions as routine and as fundamental to the very existence of the school in
which they are enrolled. Such guarantees are to be found in the
processes of School Community Self-Governance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">School Community Self-Governance is where learning community
adults and students come together in meetings of the whole using a Democratic
Process to decide on issues open to community resolution: where
adults and youth have equal rights to speak and to persuade within community
forums and where a one person-one vote process settles issues in areas such as
curriculum and instruction, achievement and assessment, projects and
assignments, benchmarks in learning and developmental progress, graduation
criteria and demonstrations satisfying the criteria, rules and behaviors
consistent with and in violation of norms of the school as well as the means by
which violating rules and norms are resolved, and in management issues as in
some community self-governing schools, hiring staff, budgetary and fund raising
issues, facilities maintenance and record keeping.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(While many in Democratic Education argue to include all ages in
the entirety of school community self-governing processes, this paper maintains
that ordinarily children up to the age of about eleven years given proper conditions
will develop well in self-direction, negotiation and cooperativeness but will
not have yet sufficiently developed the reflective faculties enabling the
distancing of self from immediate experience necessary to objectify and to consequently
analyze their own and other’s global and particular interactions within and
around school environments against the needs of the community and the
individuals in it and then provide means and methods of better satisfying those
needs through organizational construction. Consequently, these ages,
the paper holds, are unable to meet the totality of self-governance
duties. Thus, full student participation in self-governing processes
begins at Secondary Education age. However, Primary Education ages
should be capable of participation in their social control rule and norm making
and in adjudicating rule and norm violations in an appropriately structured
Restorative Justice system as well as democratically governing a range of
immediate learning issues.)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Democratic School Design</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Good examples of Democratic Education schools here in the U.S. tend
to be very small micro-schools, a single ungraded setting of say thirty or
fifty or even seventy-five students with an age spread from as young as four to
as old as nineteen covering early childhood through secondary
education. Learning communities of this size can easily
support development of individual autonomous self-regulation and Ego strength
while employing direct democracy governance, the vehicle of community
self-governance. Indeed, in a micro-school, staff and students have
immediate and ready access to each other during all parts of the school day enabling
comfortable long term mentoring and immediate situational behavioral and
subject knowledge assistance while the school itself can effortlessly come
together in regular meetings of the whole institution to resolve issues open
for community decision. Additionally, these tiny communities can
effectively unfold in both students and staff the greatest sense of common
ownership of the school and what goes on within it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">These micro-environments are socially and educationally viable
regardless of setting and they are fiscally sustainable as program offerings in
public or private school settings adjunct to a general education, especially in
low population density school districts. However, they, as a rule,
tend to be too small in student enrollment for comfortable medium to long term
fiscal sustainability as stand-alone private or public schools, especially in
low density districts. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In the view of New York City’s Department of Education, especially
during the Mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013) small schools are
preferred for the best educational service to children. A viable small
school according to the NYC DOE has an enrollment of four hundred
students. But, setting aside the lack of youngsters in low
population density areas for a four hundred student alternative to conventional
setting, student bodies of that size, especially, intended as a single
self-contained ungraded Democratic Education setting would confound effective
self-direction, thwart negotiated, cooperative learning, overwhelm
psychological and behavior support systems, make direct democracy self-governance
unattainable, and destroy community controlled behavior systems.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Timely ease of initial resource access and ready availability to
resources from which one has been working are at the heart of self-directed
learning. Student bodies the size of New York City’s defined four
hundred or more in a single ungraded setting would create resource scarcity
greatly frustrating the capacity, the desire and the movement of self-direction
in learning engagement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Additionally, just by the force of numbers, the type and the depth
of connection among students themselves and with staff, building and
maintaining the reciprocal trusting, empathetic and deeply respectful
relationships necessary to fulfill the Democratic Education promise
cannot happen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">More, a weekly All School Meeting, the Democratic
Education governance structure, of four hundred students plus all staff is too
large of a body to maintain an attentive orderliness and too differentiated in
self-determination and cooperative capacities, not to say in interest and
attention spans, to unfold a thorough individual participation in the
democratic formation of school policy and management issues, no less to
cultivate the ownership feelings in each and every member of the school
community necessary for highly effective community self-governance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Finally, the self-governance systems of social control of
community members, from direct democratic rule-making to the adjudication of
rule breaking and misconduct, forthrightly assume the permanent presence of
congenial order which will be broken at times, but restored once inappropriate
behavior has been adjudicated. Now, the chaos causing
interaction of a micro-school’s say fifty youngsters, especially, when
energetic all at once, ripples the assumptions, but the intimate nature of the
relations within a micro-school finds ready peer pressure either to allay the
bad behavior or to feel comfortable in supporting a formal complaint to the
judicial system, thus, keeping the assumptions and their systems
whole. On the other hand, the </span>freneticism<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> engendered by the
energetic exertions of four hundred, especially when all at once, would in
itself, notwithstanding the presence of a democratic judicial system, cause a
host of bad behaviors far more supported than impeded by peer pressure
nullifying the assumptions, collapsing the effects of democratic community
social control and, by force, transforming the basis of social control to a
top-down, authoritarian model, negating nearly the entire structure of a
Democratic Education school.. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thus, a conundrum sets itself between a questionably unsustainable
tiny micro-school and a disastrous large small school within the population density necessary
for a fiscally sustainable stand-alone private or public Democratic Education
school as assumed by New York City’s Department of Education. The solution appears to be to reduce the
NYC DOE enrollment some, still assuring enrollment producing economies of scale
for the institution as a whole, and to divide the single ungraded, mixed age
setting into micro-program enrollments in Early Childhood, Primary and
Secondary Education and Early College. Not so incidentally, breaking
a sizable student body into ungraded mixed aged micro-programs keeps the
benefits of older children modeling and helping younger, keys to successful
single setting micro-schools, while creating a far more focused individual
student assistance according to the particulars of developmental stages than is
usual with a single mixed age setting of four to nineteen year olds.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Therefore, a Democratic Education, i.e., Communitarian-Libertarian
Hybrid, exemplar for population dense areas would be a single school of four
separate, sequential micro-programs: an ungraded, mixed age Early
Childhood program of say fifty students from approximately four to six
years of age; an ungraded, mixed age Primary Education program of around
seventy-five students from approximately seven to eleven years of age; an ungraded,
mixed age Secondary Education program of about seventy-five students from
approximately twelve to sixteen years of age, and an ungraded Early College
program of roughly one hundred-twenty five .students from approximately sixteen
years of age.. A Democratic Education exemplar for low population
density areas would still break the student body into schooling levels of
Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary and Early College but would, obviously,
enroll many fewer in each level and consequently might combine levels, such as
Early Childhood and Primary, and Secondary and Early College, resulting in a
program resembling more of a single ungraded mixed-aged micro-setting than its high
density sibling. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">SOURCES<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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Century:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Skills for the Future”. The
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cadwell,
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Deci, Edward L, Jang, Hyungshim,
Reeve, Johnmarshall, and Ryan, Richard. “Understanding and Promoting Autonomous
Self-Regulation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Self-Determination
Theory Perspective”, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Motivation and
Self-Regulated Learning:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Theory,
Research and Applications</i>, Eds., Dale H/ Schunk and Barry J.
Zimmerman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dewey,
J.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <a href="http://www.edrev.org/experience.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Experience
and Education</span></a></i>. New York: Collier MacMillan Publishers. 1938.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Edwards,
C., Gandini, L. and Forman, G., Eds., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach-Advanced Reflections
(Second Edition). </i>Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp. 1998.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Eisler,
R. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.edrev.org/tomorrows.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Tomorrow’s
children: A blueprint for partnership education in the 21st century</span></a></i>.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 2000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">English,
M. C. , & Kitsantas, A.. “Supporting Student Self-Regulated Learning in
Problem-and Project-Based Learning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based
Learning, 7:2, 128-150. 2013.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Available
at: <a href="https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1339">https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1339</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Graubard,
A., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Free the children: Radical reform and
the free school movement.</i> New York: Vintage Books. 1972.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Greenberg,
D., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.edrev.org/freeatlast.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Free at last:
The Sudbury Valley School</span></a></i>. Framingham, MA: Sudbury Valley School
Press. 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">----------<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A clearer view: New insights into the
Sudbury School model.</i> Framingham, MA: Sudbury Valley School Press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hecht,
Yaacov., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Democratic Education: A
Beginning of a Story</i>. New York: Alternative Resource Education
Organization. . 2012..<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Holt,
John Caldwell, <i>How Children Fail</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>New York:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Delacorte Press/Seymour
Lawrence. 1982..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">--------------------------<i>How
Children Learn</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Revised
Edition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reading, MA:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perseus Books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1984.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">--------------------------<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">earning
All The Time</span></i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Inc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.1989.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Johnson, David W. and Johnson, Roger T.<i>
Learning Together and Alone: Cooperative, Competitive, and Individualistic
Learning, 2<sup>nd</sup> edition</i>. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
1987.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">---------------------------------------------------
<i>Cooperative Learning</i>. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Co. 1991.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Johnson, David W., Johnson, Roger T. and
Holubec, E. <i>Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom</i>. Rev. Ed.
Edina, MN: Interaction Book Co. 1986.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mercogliano,
C., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.edrev.org/teacres.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Teaching the
restless: One school’s remarkable no-ritalin approach to helping children learn
and succeed</span></a>.</i> Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 2004.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Miller,
R/, W<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hat are schools for?: Holistic
education in American culture</i>. Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">1997..</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">----------<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Creating learning communities: Models,
resources, and new ways of thinking about teaching and learning</i>. Brandon.
VT: The Foundation for Educational Renewal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>2000.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">----------<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.edrev.org/freschoolfre.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Free schools,
free people: Education and democracy after the 1960s</span></a></i>. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>2002.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Montessori, Maria. <i>The Secret of
Childhood</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Translated by M. Joseph
Costelloe. New York:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ballantine
Books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1966.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Morrison,
K., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.edrev.org/freeschool.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Free school
teaching: A journey into radical progressive education</span></a></i>. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press. 2007.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Neill,
A. S., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.edrev.org/sumradaptoch.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Summerhill: A
radical approach to child-rearing</span></a></i>. New York: Hart Pub. Co.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1960.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">-----------<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.edrev.org/freedomlicense.html" target="_blank"><span color="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Freedom – not
license</span></a></i>. New York, NY: Hart Publishing Company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1966.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nyquist, Ewald B. and Hawes, Gene R.,
Eds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Open Education:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Sourcebook for Parents and Teachers</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bantam Books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1972.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Pecore, John L, “From Kilpatrick’s
Project Method to Project Based Learning” Accessed at </span><a href="https://ir.uwf.edu/islandora/object/uwf%3A22741/datastream/PDF/view">https://ir.uwf.edu/islandora/object/uwf%3A22741/datastream/PDF/view</a><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Seldin,
Tim and Epstein, Paul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Montessori
Way:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An Education for Life</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sarasota, Fla.:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Montessori Foundation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2003.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span face="" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Wien,
C.A., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emergent Curriculum in the Primary
Classroom</i>. New York NY: Teachers College Press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-62064622620167121682020-07-20T11:22:00.001-07:002020-07-20T11:22:56.693-07:00REFRAMING THE ACADEMY FROM INSIDE THE QUADRANGLE <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">PROJECT
THE MASTERLY VOICE was the direction in a dog training pamphlet my high school
English teacher father read out loud to me well over sixty years ago when he
brought home a new puppy..</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And it </span>wasn't<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> only the amateur dog trainer to which this advice obtained,</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Indeed, it was and remains as well applied to
the School Master and Mistress in the form of, “On the first day, you, the
teacher, must set the tone.”</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">From
the first I entered the teaching profession to the last course I taught, I
heard colleagues claim that the Masterly Voice is needed to successfully
accomplish the job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, also from the
first, not only did the Masterly Voice sit poorly in me, and perhaps because of
this, whatever the age of students in my charge, it appears they did their best
to ignore my commands choosing to do their own thing, with too many showing
annoyance when I intentionally asserted my authority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the good order of my classes, students’
own things tended more often than not to coincide with many a lesson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Reflection
on the dynamics over time finally dented the thickness of received wisdom to
awaken in me the realization of a naturally arrived at Constructivism, the view
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“…that individuals create their own
new understandings on the basis of an interaction between what they already
know and believe and ideas and knowledge with which they come into contact.
“<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Richardson, pp 1623-1624)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thus, the results of my instruction
would always be unique to each individual whether I wished it or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet,
the convention, especially in the higher education settings in which I sought
and was given employment, was and remains to fix common course standards and
then measure each student’s achievement of them on assignments, exams and even
in class participation culminating in a single score for the course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, if each takes from instruction that
which is unique to the individual, then the common standards and their measures
of achievement become mightily invalid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
the first change I made in deliberately employing Constructivism was to alter
my grading policy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the first day of
classes I facilitated conversations among the assembled undergraduates on the
purposes of grading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they had never
thought about it before, they could not find voice to my probes and the
exercises morphed quickly into brief lectures on my grading philosophy and
design of practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the second class
day I implemented the huge leap in asking each student to write the grade for
the course they wanted and a reason for me to accept that grade on a large
index card.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the statement was well
argued, I said, I would accept the grade and then they could take from our
considerations of the material in question that which they found compelling
without worry the effect on course grade..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In reality, unless the space was blank I accepted any reason. All complied
and off we went.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Except…I got called on
the carpet by administrations consequent of student complaints over my grading
system and had to return to convention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Further contemplation told me that I
needed to reframe the situation of students in my courses so they might
understand and find congenial my employ of Constructivism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“To reframe”, Watzlawck states,</span> “<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">…means to change
the conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a
situation is experienced and to place it in another frame which fits the
‘facts’ of the same concrete situation equally well or better, and thereby
changes its entire meaning.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Watzlawick,
p. 95)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
arrive at the new frame for my Constructivism I needed to make the old fame
plain to myself. I discovered the old frame could be characterized as The
Authoritarian.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Authoritarian is the overwhelmingly dominant form of schooling at every level
and in which I have done all my teaching.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is hierarchically structured with individual adult and youth success
within it contingent on personal integration with caste roles and satisfaction
of authority expectations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Authoritarian’s Universe of Discourse is to be found in control, dominance-subservience,
compliance, order, punishment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its Voice
can be portrayed as The Domineering Parent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Its Forms of Address are as in You must/must not, You should/shouldn’t,
You need to, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The new frame I found could be characterized as The
Libertarian-Communitarian Hybrid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Libertarian-Communitarian Hybrid structures an interdependent culture and
governance for a school as a whole and an independent subject knowledge
seeking, acquisition and use for each student.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Personal success in living and working well within the organization is
contingent on adult-youth egalitarian, cooperative management of institutional
administration, policy, and social control, and of individual self and
interpersonal regulation while each student’s subject knowledge success is
contingent on a high degree of self-determination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Examples of The Libertarian-Communitarian
Hybrid center mostly on the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, MA, <span style="color: #050505;">(</span><a href="https://sudburyvalley.org/">https://sudburyvalley.org/</a><span style="color: #050505;">), </span>and its modeled schools, on Summerhill School
in Leiston, England <span style="color: #050505;">(</span><a href="http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/">http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/</a><span style="color: #050505;">),</span> and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio (</span><a href="https://antiochcollege.edu/">https://antiochcollege.edu/</a> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">).
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Libertarian-Communitarian Universe
of Discourse tends to be situational with community, group, interpersonal and
self-regulation concerns found in negotiation, mutual agreement and consensus
while individual student subject concerns are to be found in personal autonomy
and individuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Hybrid’s Voice
for community can be portrayed as The Arbitrator with Forms of Address as in
Are you willing to, Would you agree to, as in The condition, situation, goal
warrants, indicates, suggests, recommends, as in I hear you, I think I
understand, I can only imagine, I can’t imagine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Hybrid’s Voice for personal subject
decisions can be styled as The Solo Sailor with Forms of Address from youth as
in I’m going to/not going to, I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>want/don’t
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>want, I have/don’t have, and forms of
adult address to youth as in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are
options, It’s up to you, The choice is yours, If you wish/want.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
could now see that my Constructivism veered heavily to The Libertarian when it
came to course content:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I remarked to
more than one undergraduate without a drop of sarcasm, “I place ideas, concepts
and propositions before you for your pleasure to take or leave as you like.“ I
could also see that I adopted The Libertarian Universe of Discourse, Voice and
Forms of Address when it came to subject content but projected The
Communitarian when it came to student self-regulation, interpersonal and group
dynamics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In essence, I was trying to
create within my courses an Interconnected Community of Solo Sailors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then
like the anvil dropping in a cartoon, it hit me that this definition of the
classroom situation was grossly inconsistent with The Authoritarian
expectations of the institutions within which I had been employed and the
students enrolled. Still, I thought to give reframing the good old college try.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
employed Experiential Cooperative Learning activities focused on concepts found
in the course syllabi and the assigned texts to reframe self-regulation, interpersonal
and group dynamics to the Communitarian. I strongly encouraged the use of The
Arbitrator Forms of Address when students were negotiating on group agreements.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I promoted
youth Solo Sailor Forms of Address for students to use during topic class
discussions while I used the adult forms owning my own specific topic
information to reframe perception of common course content to the Libertarian. I
reinforced The Libertarian perception by not assessing the degree of retention
of either student or instructor derived content information<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, I did not directly instruct on or assess
retention of material from the assigned readings, but left the decision to
engage and the content to take from readings to each student; I provided the
beginning of each class session for discussion of readings if a student or a
group of students wished to do so always using the adult Solo Sailor Forms of Address
when eliciting student interest for discussion. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, I surrendered to The Authoritarian
accountability expectation of institutions and students by using The
Domineering Parent Forms of Address to steer methods by which students arrived
at their own content knowledge from class activities, guided pivotal
questioning, lectures and readings and, then, by assessing the degree to which
each student achieved an instructed technique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
reframing efforts kept on failing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consistently having to justify myself to administrations which
constantly declined to agree with my reasoning certainly demonstrated the
failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My reframing methods may have
been insufficient to the task and my implementation of them may have been less
the stellar, but the global Authoritarian environment of the institutions in
the end had the most substantial effect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">An explanation can be found in Ludwik
Fleck’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genesis and Development of a
Scientific Fact</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First comes the
adoption of a single all-encompassing paradigm, which Fleck defines as “… a
structurally complete and closed system of opinions consisting of many details
and relations…[offering] enduring resistance to anything that contradicts it.”
(Fleck, p. 27)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>the paradigm belongs to a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas
or maintaining intellectual interaction<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i>
he maintains, perception wholly directed by that paradigm undergoes social
reinforcement constraining the individual by determining what can be thought in
no other way:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Whole eras”, Fleck
states, “will then be ruled by this thought constraint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heretics who do not share this collective
mood…are rated as criminals by the collective [and] will be burned at the stake
until a different mood creates a different [perception] and different
valuation.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Fleck, p. 99) </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What we are faced with here”, he suggests, “is
not so much simple passivity or mistrust of new ideas as an active approach
which can be divided into several stages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(1) A contradiction to the system appears unthinkable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(2) What does not fit into the system remains
unseen; (3) alternatively, if it is noticed, either it is kept secret, or (4)
laborious efforts are made to explain an exception in terms that do not
contradict the system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(5) Despite the
legitimate claims of contradictory views, one tends to see, describe, or even
illustrate those circumstances which corroborate current views and thereby give
them substance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Fleck, p 27)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I will add:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or the individual holding contrary views is
ignored by and eventually expelled from the thought collective.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Put
simply: the institutions of higher education in which I taught and students acculturated
exclusively held the thought constraint, the paradigm, of The Authoritarian; I
held an opposing thought system, The Constructivist Libertarian-Communitarian
Hybrid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The different thought system I
employed presented a contradiction to The Authoritarian, especially, in student
expectations of instructional attitudes and professorial behaviors and in
individual student learning and class group-dynamic behaviors creating a
cognitive dissonance within each student in each course I structured through my
form of Constructivist Libertarian-Communitarian Hybrid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They partially resolved the conundrum
through responding well to Authoritarian expectations inherent in the need to
comply with my directions in class session activities and in successfully
acquiring instructed methods, but confusion reigned. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
switch in situational expectation, Watzlawck contends, causes confusion and the
need to resolve confusion causes a readiness and eagerness “…to hold on firmly
to the next piece of concrete information that is given…[thus] setting the
stage for reframing.” (Watzlawck, p. 101)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unfortunately, I experienced a complete absence of readiness and
eagerness in students to anticipate any next unfolding of my form of
Constructivist Libertarian-Communitarian Hybrid pedagogy, so the next piece and
the next after that and the next after that of the form continued an unresolved
confusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most students lived with the
bewilderment while continuing to act according to their Authoritarian
expectations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, those few more
severely disturbed by being in the middle of the reframing process complained
to institutional administrations and I continued to be called to account and
compelled to abandon the Constructivist Libertarian-Communitarian Hybrid for
The Authoritarian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I was not
burned at the stake, my heresy was rewarded by constantly being discontinued in
employment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Being
true to the strong innate inclination toward independent thought within an
egalitarian community, insisting on instruction through a paradigm reflective
of this inclination but alien to the one structuring the organization in which
I was employed and students integrated, and working to change the conceptual
setting of the classroom for students so they experienced it through that
different paradigm, I, in the end, led my students into a logical paradox:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Watzlawick
would say, I ordered them to Be Spontaneous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(See Watzlawick, p. 64) </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Change: Principles of Problem Formation
and Problem Resolution</i> Watslawick, et al, use reframing as a tool for
change at the level of a single person. But, the manner of its use here
centered on change of collected groups of individuals bound tightly within a
given paradigmatic system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I may
have wished reframing precipitated a second order change, “…whose occurrence
changes the system itself” (Watzlawck, pp 10-11), the social reinforcing
thought constraints of the system in which we labored could only allow first
order change, “one that occurs within a given system which itself remains
unchanged”. (Watzlawck, pp 10-11)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
confusion I engendered in classes of students suggested first order change was
possible and underway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, as
repeatedly displayed, the integrative power of the system, in this case The
Authoritarian, and its fourteen to fifteen year hold on these groups of
students eventually precluded even first order change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, only in my courses were students
being asked to substantively change in this manner, the overwhelming majority
architecture of their studies deepening integration into the system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, the fifteen week semester turned out
to be an unrealistic period within which to successfully reframe even to a
first order change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ultimately,
reconceptualization to a Constructivist Libertarian-Communitarian Hybrid college
classroom just could not be had within The Authoritarian system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a Constructivist Libertarian-Communitarian
Hybrid conceptualization is to be had within groups of students, then, they will
have to have grown to higher education and be attending a college wholly
constructed by that paradigm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Indeed, to assure the constructivist,
libertarian-communitarian habits of mind, behavior and expectation, students
ought to growth through schooling intentionally constructed to engender and
express them/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">References:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Fleck, Ludwik. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eds. Thaddeus J. Trenn and Robert K.
Merton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trans. Fed Bradely and Thaddeus
J. Trenn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chicago:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The University of Chicago Press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1979.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Richardson,
Virginia. “Constructivist Pedagogy”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Teachers College Record<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>105:9,
1623-1640, 2005.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Watzlawck, Paul, Weakland, John H., and
Fisch, Richard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Change: Principles of
Problem Formation and Problem Resolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>New York:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc. 1974.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-2160165755678630682020-05-13T12:27:00.000-07:002020-05-13T12:27:15.309-07:00Mainstream Inclusion and Separate, Self-Contained Educational Service in Public Education from a New York City Perspective<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">When it comes to
public education, parents, especially, as well as community advocates and a good
many educators hold tightly the belief that every student must be treated equally. The application of Equality within school is given
assumption that all children and adolescents possess personal characteristics of
mind and behavior within a narrow range of sameness for the same chronological
age and given structure in the concept and substance of grade levels
kindergarten through twelfth and in common grade curriculum and curriculum
outcomes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Equality, while a
truly noble sentiment emanating, especially during and subsequent to the 1950’s,
as a fierce reaction to the American brand of slavery, segregation, and
institutional and popular discrimination, unfortunately in my view, gave rise
to the assumption that nearly all enrolled can “fit” equally well into the same
organization of school and keep the process from bogging down with too many
special cases of ill fit. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, there
are those who ill fit the common school finding themselves removed from the
equality of personal attributes and at odds with the common structure and
demanded habits. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These youngsters are
offered modifications, accommodations and other “supports” to help them fit-in.
For those perceived as radically deviating from sameness, public education
separates then from mainstream schooling and places then in self-contained
instruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, there is a nagging
sense, especially on the part of these parents, that those separated from
mainstream classes are being treated less than equally from their peers in the
mainstream. Thus, an acute tension has developed in parents, educators and
public education governors between the notions in practice of treating all the
same because all need to be roughly the same, Equality, and treating those who
are different differently with educational service based in and on being that
different. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">1954 </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Supreme Court's Brown v Board of Education, Topeka, KS, declared
“separate but equal” public education unconstitutional, but the custom of
separate especially for children of color and from poverty continued and those
who were separated understandably and correctly demonstrated the separation as
inherently unequal and offensive to the basic notions of fairness and equal
opportunity. So </span><span style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">much so was</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> the offense taken that even in the
original disability education law, “Education for Handicapped Children (1975)”
mainstream inclusion, seen as the epitome of fairness and equality, was to be
sought as the best of policy and </span><span style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">such</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> was confirmed in the first and renewals
of the Individuals with Disability Education Act as the definition of “the
least restrictive environment”, Consequently, equality was established
to the universal view and policy that all
children and adolescents publicly educated are to be schooled in the same type of physical
spaces, in the same foundational courses of study which must produce the same
outcomes at the same time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet, even Federal
Education Law acknowledged significant child differences from mainstream
cognition and behavior require different means to accomplish the same
outcomes. However, separate, self-contained instruction under
IDEA is only granted to those whose “disabling” conditions are too severe for
inclusion with supports. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">As it is turning out, under
the combination of parents of children different from easy mainstream assimilation
looking for their children to be mainstream normal and normally treated, of
established Federal and State Law, Rule and Regulation of mainstream as the
definition of equality and of fiscal pressure on school districts consequent of
federal, state and local governments’ retreat from their obligation to fully
fund public education, the mainstream classroom has become the place where
everyone is dumped, even those with diagnosed “disabling” conditions, creating
classrooms with the widest array of child conditions, with which the system
was/is not constructed to manage well at all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are exceptions
made for some who are the best at mainstream instruction.
They are granted separate but equal schooling as being Gifted where they are segregated
from mainstream but undertake more of the same courses of study as mainstream and
in the same instructional manner as mainstream, but paced faster than regular
education classes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But, in some quarters,
as in New York City, a good many folks, including public school governors, have
detected in Gifted separate but equal an Animal Farm application of Some Being
More Equal Than Others as it has been observed that it is to social and
economic circumstances which predispose those found to excel in conventional
instruction rather than the genuine merit of biologically inherent personal
attributes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently, these unfair,
unequal, exceptions are to be eliminated and students who would otherwise be
segregated will be folded into mainstream classes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">At this point, only
those who most disrupt the order to the mainstream classroom, especially the
emotionally disturbed, are offered separate, self-contained instruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And since Federal Law and State Law following
the Federal sanction separate from mainstream for the severe, separate,
self-contained will be retained for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But, the number of those found that severe may lessen as the pressure
for equal treatment in an inclusive, mainstream classroom and the further lack
of separate, self-contained funding are felt in public schooling. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-89243499675092993542017-02-03T03:19:00.000-08:002017-02-03T03:19:00.283-08:00Collective Self-Governance in Whole Child Education
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Whole
Child Education cannot guarantee the thorough presence of </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Individual
Self-Governance</span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
unless youngsters feel completely empowered to genuinely participate
in the governance of </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
learning community within which their individual decisions unfold.
Such assurance is found in </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Whole
Child Education's </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Collective
Self-Governance</span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
which brings learning community adults and students together in
either direct or representative democratic structures to discuss and
agree on community rules, regulations, policies, procedures, social
control and, in some cases, on the execution of management
responsibilities. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Here
discusses general school structures founded in Collective
Self-Governance. (A source list from which this post, the post on
</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Individual
Self-Governance in Whole Child Education</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
and the summary post, </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Self-Governance
Within the Individual and the School as The Foundation of Whole Child
Education</span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
are based is included at the conclusion of this discussion.)</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">School
organizations possess three interconnected governance functions:
Institutional Oversight, Administration and Policy Formation.
Oversight and Evaluation. Institutional Oversight cares for the full
funding of the school and the effective coordination of
Administration and Policy creating a coherent, unified and viable
formal education organization. Administration cares for the
regulation of the school's formally constituted elements seeing to
their efficient management. Policy cares for the customs, practices,
procedures, protocols, conduct necessary and appropriate to
the fulfillment of a school's mission and sets the direction of the
Administration to achieve policy aims. Whole Child Education's
Collective Self-Governance fixes Institutional Oversight,
Administration and Policy governance within the individual school
community where both youth and adults share decision-making through
direct or representative democratic structures.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Whole
Child's Collective Self-Governance for Institutional Oversight sets a
</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Board
of Governors </span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(or
</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Trustees</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
<em>Board </em>or <em>Site Based Board</em>)<em> </em>as a representative democracy structure to include </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
Principal, a representative number of staff, a representative number
of parents/caregivers of enrolled students, </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">student
representatives in plurality</span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
and notable members from the greater community where the school is
located. The main responsibilities of the Board</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><b>
</b></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">would
be to regulate and approve budgets, secure full funding for the
school, undertake </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">l</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">ong-term
strategic planning, regulate school policies set by the school
community, set and regulate management systems as well as the
school's psychological development systems, hiring and dismissal of
staff, secure, maintain and oversee school facilities, and assure
compliance with federal, state and local law regarding formal
education organizations.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Whole
Child's Collective Self-Governance for Policy is through the direct
democracy of the </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">All
School Meeting</span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
which is, as would be expected, composed of all staff and students in
a school. The All School Meeting's prime duties are such as setting
curricula, </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">benchmarks
for advancement in social, emotional and cognitive development as
well as in satisfaction toward graduation, graduation criteria and
what specifically satisfies graduation criteria, </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">student
admissions, dismissal and attendance policy to recommend to the Board
for approval and implementation by Administration, recommendations to
the Board on b</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">udget,
learning material and facilities needs and priorities for approval
and implementation by Administration, identification of expectant
behaviors consistent and inconsistent with the norms of the school as
well creating and overseeing the means by which inconsistent
behaviors are resolved. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Administration</span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
is the exception to the cooperative governance of youth and adult as
it remains a community adult prerogative, closed to direct community
decision-making processes but nonetheless regulated by the policy
instituted by the All School Meeting. Administration responsibilities
center on planning, organizing and controlling such as office, business,
records, recording, and information systems, human resource systems,
facility systems, learning and psychological development systems.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Now,
the ability to optimal establishment and operation of Whole Child's
Collective Self-Governance as just outlined depends on the size of
the school. </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Micro-Schools</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
enrollment of between fifty to seventy-five students within
an ungraded, mixed age setting, tend very much toward optimal. On
the other hand, </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">low
enrollment small schools</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of around one hundred fifty or so students within ungraded, mixed age
settings and </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">high
enrollment small schools</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of up to four hundred students within ungraded, mixed age settings
tend toward gradations of less optimal. </span></span></span></span></span></span>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Indeed, the
intimate nature of micro-schools creates close relationships among
community members where the sense of ownership and individual and
collective empowerment for decision-making would be well engrained and, thus, micro-schools provide the optimal setting for Collective Self-Governance. A school of such size </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">can easily facilitate Policy governance in an All School Meeting where community adults and
youngsters come together in regular meetings of the whole school to
decide issues open for community action. Every person of the
learning community can speak to the whole school persuading everyone
in it to decide one way or another on issues before the institution.
Each has a single vote on questions up for community decision. The
entire community can readily decide policies on such as benchmarks of
student progress, curriculum, assessment, assignments,
graduation requirements and ceremonies, expectant behaviors
consistent and inconsistent with the norms of the learning community
as well as the means by which inconsistent behaviors are resolved,
and more. In micro-schools, </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
representative democracy of a Board is nearer to the direct democracy
of the All School Meeting as the Board</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
discusses and resolves oversight concerns such as on budget, fund
raising, enrollment, knowing full well the collective mind of
the entire learning community. Further, at this school size the
range of administrative responsibilities, remaining a collective
community adult prerogative to discharge, becomes readily responsive
to the direct guidance of the All School Meeting. Altogether,
micro-schools unfold in both learning community students and adults
the greatest sense of ownership of the school and what goes on within
it producing optimal conditions for Collective Self-Governance.</span></span></span></div>
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However, the requirements for any
learning community to be financially, socially, educationally and
self-administratively viable need a critical mass of students which
micro-schools marginally possess. Thus, while Whole Child Education
strongly recommends micro-school construction, school viability could
be argued to be of small schools with enrollment on the order of
approximately one hundred fifty students for the lowest enrollment
small schools to four hundred students, as maintained by the New York
City Department of Education as its definition of a viable small
school, for the highest enrollment settings.
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Admittedly school community
self-governance within a low enrollment small school has its
challenges, but it is entirely possible. However, larger size small
schools, especially at the highest end of the scale, complicate
governance. Indeed, an All School Meeting<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
up to four hundred students plus all staff is too large of a body to
maintain an attentive orderliness and too differentiated in
self-determination and cooperative capacities, not to say in interest
and attention spans, to unfold a thorough individual participation in
the democratic formation on school policy issues, no less to
cultivate the community ownership feeling in each and every member of
the school community necessary for highly effective Collective
Self-Governance.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Thus,
high enrollment small schools while retaining the representative
democracy Institutional Oversight of a Board and the collective
community adult Administration prerogative, would. instead of a
direct democracy All School Meeting, establish a representative
democracy </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">School
Council</span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
Indeed, </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">what might be
surrendered in the universality of felt ownership and shared
decision-making moving from a direct democratic to a representative
structure is compensated for in a more harmonious governance.
Composed to a majority student representation and to include a
plurality of staff representation and the Principal, the School
Council would have the same policy governance responsibilities as an
All School Meeting. Now, as long as student representation on both
the School Council and the Board of Governors demonstrates to the
student body that their collective sentiments find facilitation
consistently during the school day and over time through their
residency in the school and as long as the community justice system
instituted, operated and evaluated by the Board and the Council
demonstrates fairness, respect and the capacity to repair relations
between and among members of the community, affection for decisions
made in the name of community members not directly involved with
governance should be assured. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
ought to be noted at this point that early childhood ages have yet to
unfold the inner, reflective voice required for Collective
Self-Governance. Thus, student participation in school community
governance for this bracket of youth would be unavailable. However,
a school community governance structure of equal shared
decision-making among all school community adults ought to be fully
in place and cooperatively operating in exemplars of Whole Child
Early Childhood settings, especially at the micro-school level.
Institutional Oversight would remain in a representative democracy
Board</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-weight: normal;">composed
of the Principal, a representative number of parents/caregivers of
enrolled students, a representative number of staff and notable
members from the greater community where the school is located. B</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">ut
Policy and Administration functions would combine within a direct
democracy </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">School
Based Counci</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">l
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-weight: normal;">composed
of the Principal, a representative number of parents/caregivers of
enrolled students, and all staff. </span></span></span></span></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the end, the
institutionalization of self-governance into the operation of school
communities in the manner presented here has the best chance of
providing youth and those working with youth in the school community
the opportunity for continual and consistent healthy social,
emotional and cognitive development, ultimately, setting the
conditions for mental wellness, the First Principle of formal
education, and schooling success for students and personal growth and work satisfaction for adult staff.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sources: </span></span>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Bennis,
Dana, </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">What
is Democratic Education? </span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">An
Introduction</span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">,
Institute of Democratic Education in America: </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><u><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
<a href="http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/features/what-is-democratic-education/"><span style="color: blue;">http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/features/what-is-democratic-education/</span></a></span></span></u></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Cherry,
Kendra, </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">What
is Ego Strength?</span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">,
VeryWell.com, <a href="https://www.verywell.com/ego-strength-2795169"><span style="color: blue;">https://www.verywell.com/ego-strength-2795169</span></a>,
2016</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Gray,
Peter, </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">Free
to Learn</span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">,
New York: Basic Books, 2013.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Hecht,
Yaacov. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Democratic
Education: A Beginning of a Story,</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
New York: Alternative Resource Education Organization.
2011.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Holt,
John Caldwell. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>How
Children Fail</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. 1982.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">--------------------------</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>How
Children Learn</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Revised Edition. Reading, MA: Perseus Books. 1984.</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
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<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">--------------------------</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Learning
All The Time</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">.
New York: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Inc. 1989.</span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Johnson,
David W. and Johnson, Roger T.</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>
Learning Together and Alone: Cooperative, Competitive, and
Individualistic Learning, 2</i></span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>nd</i></span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>
edition</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1987.</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">---------------------------------------------------
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Cooperative
Learning</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Edina, MN: Interaction Book Co. 1991.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Johnson,
David W., Johnson, Roger T. and Holubec, E. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Circles
of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Rev. Ed. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Co. 1986.</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kohn,
Alfie. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>No
Contest: The Case Against Competition</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Rev. Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1992.</span></span></div>
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</div>
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<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">--------------
Punished by Rewards: </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The
Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and other
Bribes</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1993.</span></span></span></div>
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<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Manning,
Maryann, Manning, Gary, and Long, Roberta. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Theme
Immersion: Inquiry-Based Curriculum in Elementary and Middle
Schools</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994.</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Meier,
Deborah. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>In
Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of
Testing and Standardization</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Boston: Beacon Press. 2002.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mercogliano,
Chris. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Teaching
the Restless: One School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to
Helping Children Learn and Succeed</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Boston: Beacon Press. 2003.</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Miller,
Ron. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>What
are schools for? Holistic Education in American Culture. 3</i></span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>rd</i></span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>
Ed</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press. 1997.</span></span></div>
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</div>
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<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">---------------
</span></span></span><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Free
Schools, Free People: Education and Democracy After the 1960s</span></i></span></span></strong><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
</span></span></span></span></strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Albany:
State University of New York Press. 2002.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Montessori,
Maria. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The
Secret of Childhood,</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Translated by M. Joseph Costelloe. New York: Ballantine Books. 1966.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Neill,
Alexander Sutherland, </span></span><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Summerhill:
A Radical Approach to Child Rearing</span></i></span></span></strong><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">New
York: Hart Pub. Co. 1960.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">-----------------------------------
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Summerhill
School: A New View of Childhood</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">.
Edited by Albert Lamb. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1992. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.19in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Reeve,
Johnmarshal; Ryan, Richard; Deci, Edward L; and Jang, Hyungshi,
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Understanding and Promoting Autonomous
Self-Regulation: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
in Dale H. Schunk and Barry J. Zimmerman, Eds., </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Motivation
and Self-Regulated Learning: Theory, Research and Applications</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008, pp. 223-245.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Richards,
Akilah S., </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>How
We See Self-Directed Education</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
Alliance for Self-Directed Education, YouTube video,
</span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbKQGNE1nUo"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbKQGNE1nUo</span></span></span></a></u></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">,
2016.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Seldin,
Tim and Epstein, Paul, </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The
Montessori Way: An Education for Life</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">.
Sarasota, Fla.: The Montessori Foundation. 2003.</span></span></span></div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-48410030697311709992017-01-31T08:36:00.000-08:002017-01-31T08:36:26.454-08:00Individual Self-Governance in Whole Child Education
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Educating
the Whole Child grows mind, body and spirit healthy simultaneously,
but the developing psychological state of growing children, through
an ever strengthening individual Ego and continuous consistent
mentoring, finds favor over other constituent parts of formal
schooling. Ego strength is founded on and in the individual’s
increasing Autonomous Self-Regulation capacities which are premised
in student satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for
Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Schools
unfolding student Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness structure
themselves through the characteristic of </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Individual
</span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Self-Governance.
</span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Individual
Self-Governance places the locus of all knowledge decisions squarely
within the individual student rather then being placed on the student
from a power external to the individual. Schooling in this way
</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">requires
formal learning to fully allow intrinsic draw to compatible
knowledge seeking, acquisition and use at each level, early
childhood, primary and secondary education. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Here
discusses general school structures founded in this characteristic.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
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</div>
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<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">An
Early Childhood Whole Child Individual Self-Governance exemplar would
position students within an ungraded, mixed age setting developing an
early autonomous self-regulation of social-emotional dispositions and
executive functioning, cultivating natural learning instincts,
appropriate language competency and growth in gross and fine motor
movement and in overall body capacities while school staff uncover
individual student psycho-dynamic, psycho-social and psycho-cognitive
baselines enabling counseling a point of departure. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Such
early childhood settings would be a prepared play world filled with
practical life materials and activities, sensorial materials,
wooden blocks and puzzles, sensorial
keys and experiences of nature, of people, of art, of music, of
language, of math and measurement; it would also be filled with age
appropriate toys, like dolls, cars, trucks, planes, rail roads, as
well as items such as sand and water tables. There would be provided
areas intended to stimulate and accommodate free, imaginative play as
well as free individual and group physical play. Specific engagement
with the materials and the activities of the prepared environment
would be wholly up to each child rather than be directed by a
teacher. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
an exemplar of Early Childhood Whole Child Education, students would
process through and graduate into Primary Education at their own
pace. <span style="font-size: small;"> Criteria and demonstration of criteria for
advancement through and out from such an Early Childhood program
would be community decisions undertaken through school Collective
Self-Governance.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">An
exemplar</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">
Whole Child Individual Self-Governance </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Primary
Education</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">
</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;">would position students </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">within
an ungraded, mixed age setting </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">strengthening
or beginning to develop autonomous self-regulation of executive
functioning and social-emotional management promoting behavioral
habits of both independence and cooperation, competencies in book
literacy, language, numeracy and self-selected subject topics</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">
while</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> Primary Education
staff develop psycho-dynamic, psycho-social and psycho-cognitive
profiles of enrolled students whether new to or continuing with Whole
Child Education enabling counseling to proceed in proper directions</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">.</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Such Primary Education
spaces would provide for free play and for developing intentional
learning skills and subject topics of interest. Thus, it would be
filled with materials like Lincoln Logs and building blocks, toys,
puzzles and games, costumes and theatrical makeup, paints and
crayons, newsprint and paper, performance spaces, indoor and outdoor
playground equipment, and readers, charts, time lines, lab manuals,
models and arts materials. Academic learning would be set in Learning
Stations centered on Literacy, Language, and Measurement and in
discipline areas of Earth, Space and Life Sciences, History and
Geography. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Subject content learning
of a Whole Child Individual Self-Governance exemplar Primary
Education would be individual and emergent rather than being uniform
and mandated: the course of topic content acquisition over an entire
residency would emerge unique to every child as they engage the
prepared learning environment through distinctive neurology,
interests, abilities and communication styles. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">However, a goal of the
Primary Education common to all children would be the development in
each child of competency in receiving, processing and communicating
written, oral and graphic information, including mathematical
information, allowing each to comfortably accept Secondary Education.
These objectives would emerge over time as student-mentor negotiated
agreements and would be based on felt student need to gain additional
tools to explore more of the prepared environment than through
mandated mastery on or before a time or an age certain.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
an exemplar of Whole Child Primary Education, students would process
through and graduate into S</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">econdary
Education</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
at their own pace. Criteria and demonstration of criteria for
advancement through and out from Primary Education would be community
decisions undertaken through school Collective Self Governance. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Primary Education classes
in the usual sense of mandatory, age and grade grouped,
teacher-directed, whole group instruction are not intended to be part
of the best examples of a Whole Child Individual Self-Governance
structured Early Childhood or Primary Education. Rather, in-school
learning engagement during the school day of Early Childhood
Education would be through self-organized individual or group
involvement with elements of the prepared environment; in-class
learning engagement during the school day of Primary Education would
be mostly through self-directed independent or self-organized small
group involvement with the materials and activities of the prepared
environment, but also, if students desired, through small group
teacher initiated and student voluntarily accepted cooperative topic
study and/or through self-initiated one-to-one
instruction. Outside-school learning engagement during the
school day of both formal learning levels would be through the
student choice of varied field trips. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In both Whole Child
Education levels the role of the teacher is to facilitate student
learning, growth and maturation, rather than directing it. It would
be incumbent on teachers to closely observe each child to determine
his and her needs and to change the prepared environment as much as
feasible putting in the way of the child elements able to meet the
observed needs. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A Whole Child Individual
Self-Governance exemplar </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Secondary
Education</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;">would have students </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">within
an ungraded, mixed age setting</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">
developing high quality deliberative concrete through high abstract
thinking, manual skills, language competency, and habits of
cooperation, and to cultivate self-selected subject topics</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">
while</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> secondary education
staff work with individual students to retain and to further build
autonomous self-regulation as adolescent drives conflict decision
making.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Inquiry Project Based
Learning, for instance, would be a</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
preferred</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> content learning structure
utilized by students</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">to
process through a Whole Child Individual Self-Governance Secondary
Education. </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Students
would engage the knowledge world through individual or cooperative
small group inquiry projects. Projects would be developed,
implemented, presented and feedback given through participation in
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Cooperative
Learning Labs</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
where Lab members act together to achieve individual or cooperative
small group project objectives and where Lab members through
demonstrations and presentations share the knowledge gained by their
projects. There could be a number of Cooperative Learning Labs
inhabiting their own spaces and facilitated each by at least one
Learning Specialist: They could cover areas such as Outdoor
Education, Physical Science, Mathematics, Social Science, Social
Studies, Letters, Fine Arts, Performance Arts, Foreign Language Arts,
Digital Sciences, Carpentry, Metal Working, Home Arts and Athletics.
</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For
the purposes of easy explanation, Cooperative Learning Lab areas of
knowledge responsibility detailed immediately below are divided
according to customary discipline breakdowns, but are not to be taken
as necessarily conventional Secondary Education subject division and
content. For instance: in the usual Social Studies Secondary
Education curriculum questions into leather tanning are unaddressed,
but if a student were interested in knowing about leather tanning
either as an exercise in actual tanning or as an academic inquiry,
say, as it happened in New York City in the third quarter of the
nineteenth century, then the student would find such knowledge within
the American History domain of the Social Studies Learning Lab or the
Agriculture domain of the Outdoor Education Learning Lab or both..
The student, then, would proceed within these spaces to execute the
project in leather tanning. </span></span>
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><u>Suggested
Cooperative Learning Lab areas of knowledge responsibility</u>:</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Outdoor
Education Cooperative Learning Lab includes adventure leadership and
experiences, and studies in student selected aspects of <span style="font-size: small;">Botany,
Geology, Forestry, Zoology, Environmental Science, Agriculture,
Oceanography, Cartography and Surveying.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Physical
Science Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, Chemistry, Physics.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mathematics
Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected aspects
of Numbers Theory, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Social
Science Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of Health and Wellness, Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Social
Studies Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of: Geography; General World History; Specific Regional or
Nation State History; Specific Regional or Nation State Contemporary
Culture, Government, Politics and Economics; New York State History;
Contemporary New York State Government, Politics and Economics;
American History, Government, and Politics; Contemporary American
Government, Politics and Economics; Political Economic Theory and
History.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Letters
Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected aspects
of Written Communication, World Literature, English and American
Literature, Mythology.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Fine
Arts Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of Drawing, Painting, Sculpting, Photography, Film.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Performance
Arts Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of Dance, Music, Theater, Interpersonal Communication, Public
Communication.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Foreign
Language Arts Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student
selected aspects of the acquisition of Latin, French, Spanish,
Mandarin, Russian and English as a Second Language.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Digital
Sciences Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of Information Technology Construction, Operation, Repair,
Networking, Programming, Computer Aided Design, Graphic and Fine
Arts.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Carpentry
Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected aspects
of Building Construction, Cabinetry, Furniture, Crafts, Fine Arts.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Metal
Working Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of Construction, Fabrication, Civil Engineering, Crafts, Fine
Arts.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Home
Arts Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected
aspects of Fashion, Culinary Arts, Community Planning, Residential
Design, Interior Design, Home Repair, Clothing Repair.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Athletics
Cooperative Learning Lab supports study in student selected aspects
of Individual Sports, such as Tennis, Golf, Aquatics, Hand and
Racquet Ball, of Team Sports, such as Baseball/Softball, Basketball,
Soccer, of Coaching and Team Management; of Fitness Training and
Exercise Physiology, of Sports Medicine.</span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Whole Child Secondary
Education students would initiate selection for all inquiry projects
rather than rely on mentor or learning specialist directed selection.
Although topic lists would be made available by learning specialists
for students it would be preferred for students to create their own
topics, but it is sufficient to satisfy Individual Self-Governance
that students form their inquiry questions from pre-listed topics. </span>
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Prior to the start of each
and every inquiry project, students would state their Criteria for
Project Success based on performance assessment methods. Performance
assessment rubrics would consist of qualitative statements describing
specific standards against which student's can self-assess and/or
measure other students' project work, especially as the final project
product is being developed. Criteria for Project Success would be
self-generated but they should have the approval of both the
student's mentor and appropriate lab learning specialist wherein the
project would be completed. A student may request the Learning Lab
group within which he/she is working to evaluate a project at any
stage of its undertaking using the students own criteria for success
rubrics. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Beyond the feedback
opportunities, Whole Child Education Individual Self-Governance would
relieve the student and his/her project from formal assessment unless
the community as a whole sanctions it through its Collective
Self-Governance. However, while mandated formal evaluation of
completed projects is not intended, individual students presenting
their completed projects may request a formal assessment from the
Learning Lab members and/or the learning specialist wherein the
project is being presented. Whole Child Education recommends that
under the conditions of formal assessment, the student develop an
assessment instrument based on the project's Criteria for Success
through which Lab members and/or a learning specialist can evaluate
the student's presented work. Students and their mentors would be
obliged to retain a portfolio of projects demonstrating work done,
its quality and its fulfillment of Criteria of Success.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Occasionally there may be
a need felt by students or observed by the learning specialist for
direct instruction of project skills or of assessment methods or of
common subject content. In these cases, a student, a group of
students or the learning specialist would call a learning lab non-compulsory seminar
to fill the need. All learning lab seminars having these objectives
would be conducted using Cooperative Learning. methods. Also, on
occasion, there may be felt a need by students, especially, or by the
Learning Specialist in a Learning Lab to gather students together for
facilitated conversations on topics of interest. Here a student, a
group of students or the learning specialist would call a special
non-compulsory seminar using a Socratic Pivotal Questioning method, or a similar
method, to lead the conversation.</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Students when not
acquiring additional project skills or common subject content or
evaluating project efforts or working with mentors would work on
their projects independently or cooperatively depending on the
youngsters’ inclinations and the kinds of tasks to be done.
However, an expectant behavior of the cooperative norm of Whole Child
Education is that each youngster is to look for opportunities to help
fellow students as well as to be open to help when needed. </span>
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
the best examples of Whole Child Individual Self-Governance Secondary
Education, students would work with their mentors to plan the course
of their progress in satisfying the requisite benchmarks toward
graduation, the criteria for graduation and life after graduation.
They would process through and graduate at their own pace . Criteria
and demonstration of criteria for advancement through and out from
Secondary Education are community decisions undertaken through the
school's Collective Self-Governance. </span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Leveraging
the properties intrinsic to individuals under a close mentoring
relationship of community adult and student to impel learning
engagement, to live well with each other within the learning
environment and to cooperatively assure the smooth management of the
school community would unfold Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness in
youngsters at each schooling level and would have the best chance of
developing a healthy mental state and schooling success of growing children.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-71007222217936756372017-01-27T06:49:00.000-08:002017-01-27T06:49:14.205-08:00Self-Governance Within the Individual and the School as The Foundation of Whole Child Education
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(The
concept of Self-Governance in formal education sparked the interest
of a friend and colleague. He asked if I would provide him a capsule
version and an extended explanation of my understanding of the
concept in its application to Whole Child Education. The following
is the short version. A rewritten introductory paragraph is added
for this post. The extended version will be posted within the next
few days.)</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
Although
trendy now, educating the Whole Child has been around for decades.
It started in earnest, in my view, with accepting Howard Gardner's
concept of Multiple Intelligences and then folding its particulars
into the way schooling does its thing with the result that both the
concept and its application changed noting of note. And that's the
problem here: schooling done the way it is remains the way it is
regardless of trend. Currently, educating the whole child near
exclusively has taken the form of added curriculum stressing the
direct instruction of social-emotional aspects of behavior, such as
classes in anti-bias behavior or in cooperation or in mindfulness.
Also, for some, increasing emphasis on Humanities subjects has been
suggested. Regardless of the curriculum recommended and implemented,
the foundation Myth of schooling continues: Direct instruction will
always achieve its objectives in every student and
when its objectives are within the domain of human psychology and
behavior based in it, then, direct instruction is both necessary and
sufficient and will definitely do the job. Of course, the Myth and
its practice conveniently leave unattended the social context of
instruction, which is largely constructed to induce externally
regulated compliance behaviors, certainly substantially below
conditions for healthy social-emotional and overall psychological
development, and it could be argued that such is immensely
destructive to immediate and future child mental health. Indeed, if
the whole child is to be consciously served in formal education,
then, the whole child needs a social context inducing <span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">the
continuous maturation of mental wellness.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
principal path leading to a healthy mental state is through an ever
strengthening individual Ego. A strong individual Ego builds
confidence in youth's ability to deal with challenges. Also, it
cultivates high levels of </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.verywell.com/what-is-emotional-intelligence-2795423"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">emotional
intelligence</span></span></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
enabling youth to successfully regulate their emotions, even in tough
situations. </span></span>
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Ego strength is founded on and in the individual’s
increasing Autonomous Self-Regulation capacities. Autonomous
Self-Regulation is a system of conscious personal management guided
by the feeling that the behavior, the emotion, or the cognition being
regulated is affected for reasons a person values, finds meaningful,
and wholly endorses. </span>
</div>
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<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.02in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
development of Autonomous Self-Regulation within formal schooling
unfolds as a direct response to social contexts supporting student
satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for Autonomy,
Competence, and Relatedness. Autonomy is to be understood here as
the development of the self as an independent identity from others,
as the deep inner sense of empowerment, as the </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">ability</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
to </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">function</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
independently without </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">control</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
by others, as the capacity to make </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">decisions</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
independently, as the feeling of comfort acknowledging the need of
and requesting help from others, and as the capacity to fully
understand and freely accept interdependent relationships. Competence
is to be understood as the ability to do something well or
efficiently,</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>
</b></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">a
range of skill or ability, a specific ability or skill. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Relatedness
should be understood as close, affectionate relationships with others
built on the </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">reciprocity
</span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">of
factors like trust and </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">empathy.</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.19in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">School
organizations having the best chance at developing student Autonomy,
Competence and Relatedness, thus, learner Autonomous Self-Regulation,
and, therefore, personal psychological well-being, and, ultimately,
successfully educating the whole child, share the twin
characteristics of:</span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">Individual
Self-Governance</span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">
operationalized as self-</span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">directed,
negotiated and cooperative learning, and of </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Collective
Self-Governance</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
operationalized as school community governance.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.19in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Self-</span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">directed,
negotiated and cooperative learning is </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">where
students take individual responsibility for deciding what is to be
known, the scope of knowing, when knowing is to occur, how knowing is
to be undertaken, the duration, outcome and success of any learning
activity and the course of learning for a school term and for an
entire school residency, where students work together to achieve both
individual and common learning and personal development goals, where
students and teachers work cooperatively within an ecology of
Constructivist learning, where students negotiate between
intrinsically motivated natural inclinations and school community
generated and larger community requirements for progress toward
graduation, for graduation and for life after graduation, where
students access the widest world of knowledge-manual concrete up the
ladder of abstraction to the highest-from which to choose, and where
students engage in a mentoring relationship of adult to youth where
an adult school staff member and a youngster enter a process mutually
respectful of the wisdom of each to work on student social-emotional,
psycho-dynamic and psycho-cognitive issues and to attain a common
understanding of and an agreement on knowledge goals and the action
steps required to reach those goals.</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.19in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">School
community governance is </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">where
learning community adults and students come together in meetings of
the whole using a Democratic Process-adults and youth having equal
rights to speak and to persuade within community forums and of one
person-one vote-to manage the whole school community, where in the
collective feeling of ownership, the community decides on issues such
as curriculum, instruction, learning and assessment of learning,
student projects and assignments, benchmarks in learning and
developmental progress, graduation criteria and demonstrations
satisfying the criteria, behaviors consistent with and in violation
of the norms of the school as well as the means by which violating
behaviors are resolved, and in management issues as in some community
self-governing schools such as hiring staff, budgetary and fund
raising issues, facilities maintenance and record keeping.</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0.19in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Schools constituted to the
characteristics of Individual and Collective Self-Governance place
sound psychological development within social contexts of healthy
social, emotional and cognitive growth educating the Whole Child. </span></span>
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-1916264376289254672017-01-24T13:52:00.000-08:002017-01-24T13:52:54.884-08:00Educators are Psychologists After All
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I posted the following on
Facebook, but I thought to give it a substantial edit and to place it on the
blog as a preface to a little something I recently wrote on self-governance in
formal education for a friend and colleague interested in the concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The piece on self-governance will be posted
here in a few days. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This reflection was
penned and displayed on Facebook in a teacher’s group page and on my timeline over
the 2017 Presidential Inaugural weekend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So, it was not an ordinary weekend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yet, I thought that maybe someone might say something in response, but
no one did suggesting that what I had to say had no resonance within those
caring to read it. It is carless to draw conclusions from this situation;
still, it goes along with thinking already established:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the disturbing factors of the
education profession, to me, is that while an overwhelming majority in it are hardworking,
selfless and deeply caring, the narrow focus on instruction and detailed requirements
of what folks in education have to do daily crowds out any deep systems' level self-examination
of structure and process and their affects on student and professional mental
health, although there is an acknowledgement of the great stress teaching
occurs. Further complicating all is a great self-powerlessness to effect change
in personal professional thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed,
educators are captured by what a long time education researcher calls the Myths
foundational to professional routines and obligations. Nevertheless, I try to
suggest other ways of thinking with this as one example:</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As a pre-service high
school Social Studies teacher back in the olden days of the very early 1990's,
I was told that I was not a psychologist, rather I was a teacher responsible
for moving content from my lesson plans into the minds of my students with its
measure of success being the degree of ready recall students achieved on the
tests I administered in class and the school administered as required by the
State of New York. However, I learned on the job that at heart teaching is the
art and science of Psychology, individual and group. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was taught to and did
as routine to begin each lesson with a "Do Now", a very short reading/writing
assignment with the purpose of "settling down" the class, of
preparing the group to accept instruction-certainly a psych thing-while I took
attendance and concentrated on other immediate clerical tasks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I was taught to place the
"Motivation" on the board, usually in the form of a question which
would prompt a class discussion getting students interested in the lesson topic
and in the process eliciting from them the focus or “Aim” of the day’s
lesson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again something very much tied
to the psyche of both teacher and students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unfortunately, both the individual and group dynamics of the students
assigned to me wholly resisted this mind technique to the point that I had for
then and forever to reverse the position of Motivation and Aim, placing Aim on
the top of the board and Motivation underneath as two of the other immediate
clerical tasks during the Do Now and drop any class discussion of Motivation
for a swift monologue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, a mental
Jujitsu move by the collective class on the teacher..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However, the largest part
of the teaching experience for me was in the minute to minute ordering of
student interpersonal and group behavior. I mean, I was told by nearly
everyone, pre-service professors, in-service administrators/supervisors and
other teachers that effective instruction cannot happen unless the classroom has
order. And order is, frankly, the application of various discipline rubrics and
practices. And they are definitely founded in a certain view of human
psychology. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What all of this is about
is to point to the plain but intentionally obscured fact that formal education
is tightly bound within the practice of Psychology and that educators are
psychologists but are neither trained as such or do they, as a rule, understand
the psychology of what they do or how, especially, the structures within which
they and their students must live and grow affect the mental health of all
involved! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, it is not to how
children learn or to the operational definition of a well-rounded education or to
college/career readiness or to the best understanding of cultural literacy or
to the most efficient and effective instructional and classroom management
techniques which should be of greatest import for the profession or for those
who order it in the public and private realm, but how youth and adults,
students and educators mentally develop within the multiple social contexts including
the learning within which they must live and grow and how to provide the
immediate school environment developing mental wellness of adult and child
together.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yes, there are required
courses in Ed Psych or Child Development, etc., but like the rest of schooling,
the integration of information into practice is somehow magically assumed by
having scored sufficiently on the tests necessary to pass the courses. And, of
course, student and regular teaching, even with professional development, near
universally focus on defining subject content to be taught and the
instructional techniques necessary for the most efficient immediate transfer of
content and on the techniques of classroom management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The process of it all removes from the human endeavor
the first need of all students and of all professionals, their mental states of
wellbeing, </span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Therefore, since formal
education is the practice of Psychology and educators are psychologists, then
formal education’s First Principle ought to be the development of mental
wellness in students and in educators, not the transfer of content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that means a massive re-ordering of the ethos
of the profession and of the organization of teaching and learning as well as
the preparation and continued professional development of those within the
field. </span></div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-44618063954853364902016-09-26T08:10:00.000-07:002016-09-26T08:10:05.114-07:00Searching for student autonomous self-regulated schooling: I am definitely not a disciplinarian!
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First I would like
to define self-regulation as a system of conscious personal
management guiding thoughts, behaviors and feelings to reach goals.
Second. I wish to stipulate to there being two types of
self-regulation: autonomous self-regulation and controlled
self-regulation. Autonomous self-regulation is the feeling that the
behavior, the emotion, or the cognition being regulated is being
affected for reasons a person values, finds meaningful, and wholly
endorses. Controlled self-regulation, by contrast, is the feeling of
internal or external pressure conflicting with what one would
otherwise choose (e.g., avoiding shame or guilt, interpersonal
rejection, or physical or verbal punishment). Conventional
schooling and a good deal of unconventional schooling, I'd argue,
relies almost exclusively on controlled self-regulation in students.
As an educator I have had trouble being the controller, the
disciplinarian who pressures students for behaviors convenient to the
order of the customary classroom.
</div>
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I was born to teach.
Well, I was born to teachers, a father who taught high school
English and a mother who taught high school Home Nursing, Nutrition
and Biology after a career as a nurse. Both were in the New York
City public school system. From them I inherited the deep seated
impulse to help others to learn. However, while my parents somehow
managed the deportment of their students so their classes were
orderly. I, having no truck with ordering anyone around, found
myself at odds with this part of classroom management: Discipline,
as we use to say in the Sixties, was just not my bag.
</div>
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Indeed, I can
remember from sixth grade and all through high school really hating
“playing sheriff”, that is making sure a balance was struck
between every one of my friends having a good time in my family’s
finished basement while it, they and me remained in an all-together
fine condition. I would plead, beg, cajole but it was only the
anticipated and sure visits from my mother which actually kept the
friends in check and the basement in good repair. Still, I felt an
obligation to monitor and manage my friends behavior. I carried the
dreaded sheriff into the classroom.</div>
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However, I found a congenial
environment in college classrooms as I started my teaching life in
the fall of 1980. Here, I could concentrate on “real teaching and
learning” as student conduct toward each other, the school
property, the material under consideration and the learning goals I
set was well self-regulated. However, as I discovered as I learned
more about teaching and learning, these students as well as the
others to come, mostly were controlled self-regulating. But in the
early stage of my career I was happy enough not to have to be a
sheriff.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Adjunct work wasn't
paying bills. So, in mid-decade I looked to parochial school
teaching and was appointed to instruct seventh grade science and
social studies in a parish school close to where I was then living.
These youngsters were well mannered, but holee, they just kept on
talking! I would ask them for quiet and they would be silent, but
for only a brief moment, then whispers followed by louder whispers
followed by and followed by and followed by my getting angry. At one
point I felt I needed to discipline the whole class and I piled on
the homework thinking homework as a good punishment (which to each
and every student it is so thought even at the best of times). But
that didn’t dissuade them from talking so I gave them even more
homework. That didn't work either. Now, it became clear to me that
I had lost control of the class and having lost control I yelled at
them using the most learned language a college professor could
muster. Needless to say the principal wasn’t pleased and suggested
I go back to college teaching, which I did. And I was happy to
return to the college classroom even though it was still adjunct and
student self-regulation was still from the internalization of external
expectations.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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However, adjunct
still wasn’t paying bills. So, eventually in the very early
1990's, I followed my parents into the City public high schools first
as a substitute teacher than as a fully appointed high school teacher
of Social Studies. I mean, talking about playing sheriff! Still,
my sub classes turned out just fine as I struck bargains with
students: They didn’t bother each other or the school property and
I wouldn’t insist they do any school work. I said they could talk
at a loud whisper but if the volume of the talk got beyond a certain
point I would ask them to lower their voices and I would expect that
they would, which they did every time. I also said they could get up
from their seats to visit friends but when visiting they needed to be
seated. Additionally, I suggested they read, write, or even draw, if
they wished. The bargain held strong with only a few minor
exceptions.</div>
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<br />
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Everything
changed when I was appointed to a Brooklyn high school in 1992 and
tasked to instruct! At the time behavioral contracts were a thing.
These were behavioral stipulations students had, I repeat, had to agree to
follow during all class periods. It included a graduated list of
“consequences” for violations. No one, including this teacher,
took it seriously. Still, I referred to it several times, but it
didn’t matter a single bit. It took me three weeks of insistence
to get my four ninth grader classes in an order acceptable for direct instruction. My fifth class was of super seniors and they fell in line from the first day. But then in
one of the ninth grade classes was dropped a young man with definite
emotional challenges, more than the rest. He so disrupted the class
he destroyed the order I so deftly built. It took me another three
weeks to get this class to an acceptable order. Then on the heels of
this came report cards where all in the ninth grade classes were
shown they were failing three or more of their subject classes and
not a few were failing all of them! To say there was pandemonium in
each class is an understatement. Somehow I had to calm them down to
get on with instructing the syllabus I was given by my supervisor
who, by the way, said I had to follow it to the letter. Obviously,
the disruptions, eruptions and out-right verbal abuse coming close to
blows among students and between students and this teacher continued
until I just could not stand it. I resigned and began a search for a
school where self-regulation was autonomous.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Actually, I had been
in one since 1985, although it was not exactly a school but it was a
learning organization: Scouting. When Scouting is done right it
requires both youth and adults to engage an individual autonomous
self-regulation. You see, a foundation of autonomous self-regulation
is the compatible resonance in an individual among innate
predispositions of nature and socialization, self-selected goals,
available means of goal achievement and pleasing participation in the
means of goal achievement. And Scouting from the youngest to the
oldest when done right is premised on the presence of these elements
and its compatible resonance in individuals. However, too often
Scouting is not done right and when not done right it tends to
replicate the environment comparable to conventional schooling
inducing a controlled self-regulation. But it was my experience with
the cub pack and the scout troop through which both my son and I
coursed in our Brooklyn neighborhood, him as a scout and me as a
scouter, as well as some of the other troops of my acquaintance and
participation later in Queens that while the match between scout or
adult and Scouting was not always compatible, those who voluntarily
stayed the longest with a program as close to being done right as possible
demonstrated the necessary compatible resonance among the present
elements comprising an autonomous self-regulation setting and,
indeed, at least within the context of the Scouting experience both
youth and adults demonstrated what I could interpret as autonomous
self-regulated behavior. It occurred to me on more than a few
occasions that a school based on Scouting done right may just be the
type of school for which I was searching. (The next blog post will
explore characteristics of Scouting done right marking it a learning
organization encouraging autonomous self-regulation and a possible
template for the type of school for which I continue to search.)
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Towards the end of
my Scouting experience I joined another learning organization: scuba
schools. I worked out of two shops one in Brooklyn and the other in
Staten Island, both of which have been out of business for quite some
time, as I too have hung up my fins for some time. The adults I was
finding first as a student instructor and then as a full open water
instructor had mellowed their regular education controlled
self-regulation into a deeply internalized cooperation and voluntary
agreement with the instructor on the goals and the paths toward skill
development and eventual Open Water Certification. It is unclear to
me, even in retrospect, that these adults were exhibiting an
autonomous self-regulation. I lectured, explained, tested in class;
they listened, read and studied the required material and passed the
tests in class. I explained, demonstrated, guided, and supervised in
the water; they listened, observed, tried, and practiced in the
water. They accepted the conditions of instruction knowing what
they were. They accepted the conditions of in class and open water
testing/demonstration knowing what they were. They followed
instruction increasing knowledge, acquiring skills, demonstrating
both, becoming certified. The mere acceptance of direct instruction
is not of itself an indicator of one type of self-regulation, I'd
argue. But, the acceptance of the need for changed behavior and of
its actual change might be. And, believe me, one needs to change all
sorts of behavior to live without harm underwater. Just overcoming
the survival impulse to hold ones breath underwater and to breath on
scuba is one heck of a change. So, on balance in retrospect I am
somewhat inclined to think the mellowing of the conventional
schooling induced controlled self-regulation is toward an autonomous
self-regulation with these adults. If my surmise is accurate to any
degree, then it would follow that to move toward an autonomous
self-regulation from a position of conventional school induced
controlled self-regulation, if movement is possible, requires a
certain maturity even undergraduates have yet to achieve. And it
appears to require an honest voluntary, freely chosen acceptance of
the conditions of instruction and with instruction some very basic
behavioral change, a second order change in fact, which is largely
unavailable to students within conventional schooling, possibly all
the way through to professional graduation. Which ever way
self-regulation breaks in scuba schools, though, it is Scouting done right
which appears to me the better template for autonomous self-regulated
schooling.</div>
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Eventually I
returned to college teaching. It was adjunct, but that was all there
was in the mid-oughts. The students I found in my courses were very
well behaved and compliant in class as, they, I discovered, were
soundly controlled self-regulated. But it would appear that
thoroughly controlled self-regulated students become mightily
confused when the external pressure is taken off and the internal
pressure of external expectations is unconfirmed. Indeed, I found
the students before me consistently incapable of adapting to my
switching the locus of control for their self-regulation from me, the
teacher, to them, the students, as to spark student complaints to
others. Since this was the way of course after course and since I
did not see this condition abating, I resumed my search for
autonomous self-regulated schooling wondering if I had to actually
start a school developing autonomous self-regulated students for me
to find such a school.</div>
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<br />
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-74615987056557080922016-09-21T09:08:00.000-07:002016-09-21T09:08:26.517-07:00Searching for Conversation/Part 2
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In a very recent
Facebook response came the word “institutionalized” describing
the behavior of undergraduate college students about whom I was
complaining. I had reported that in my most recent college course,
the desk chairs I had arranged in a horse-shoe to promote
conversation among the students were being constantly re-arranged
back into rows. More, I charged, even with the horse-shoe, what I
got from the students were eyes on me and mouths firmly shut. I am a
firm believer in the power of the environment to structure behavior
and one classroom environmental cue to expectant conduct is desk
arrangement. However, here and in other colleges, the horse-shoe
arranged desks couldn’t overcome the institutionalized roles of the
passive, compliant student and lecturing teacher. And the kicker of
it all is that for the umpteenth time over the last ten years when I
violated the role expectations of student and teacher, especially in
initiating experiential and cooperative means of unfolding course
content, the young adults while compliant in class with my pedagogy
complained loudly to other faculty including the Deans of the
universities in which I was temporarily employed! Institutionalized,
indeed!</div>
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<br />
</div>
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So, okay, when I was
instructing audio control techniques, I can understand a certain
sharp curtailment of conversation. But, even here there was more
than ample opportunity for students to interact with each other in
assuring the uptake in proper performance, not to mention off handed
remarks over any number of immediate undergraduate concerns. Indeed,
once, twice, perhaps three times demonstrated, I, then, would let
them on their own working to their own mind images of my techniques.
However, each looked for me and at me for assurance. More, doubts
were directed to me rather than querying fellow students. Further,
conversation of immediate social dramas was entirely absent.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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In such courses as
audio documentary where I wished students to have conversations on
their and each other's work, they completely deferred to me and my
critiques, no conversation. Yet again and again when examining
radio/tv law, television and print advertising, human communication
between two people or within groups, political speech, and every
other aspect of the Communication Arts and Media Studies courses I
fielded, every student fixed his/her eyes on me keeping his mouth
quiet and her thoughts to herself.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Now, pre-service
college teachers are taught how to research, not to teach. To teach
they rely on how they were taught, essentially following the same
technique as my chopping wood, i.e., duplicating as much as possible
the mind-image of their student experience of being taught. My
student experience, for sure, was for many years one of “teacher
says...I do”. However, with graduate school being so congenial to
my penchant for conversation, I began following the grad school
method of “teacher asks questions and students discuss”.
However, I found that asking questions regardless of my intention
never provoked discussion, rather it was taken by students as yet
another unidirectional process of teacher asking a student for the
correct answer. What was so frustrating to me beyond the
institutionalized behavior was that in many cases there was either no
“right” answer or there were many “right” answers; but,
students were always wanting to give the single “right” answer,
and not a few were crushed when I redirected questions back to them.
I had several young women come up to me recently nearly in tears
because I did not say that their answers to my inquiries were always
correct!</div>
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<br />
</div>
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As it turns out, I
saw from where all this collegiate institutionalized behavior
emanated as in between college course appointments in the early
1990's I taught in a Brooklyn public high school. Although I had
been a teacher for ten years, I had to return to undergraduate school
to complete my methods requirements for to assure teachers in public
schools possess a minimum competency, public authorities required a
number of college courses in the teaching arts which I did not have.
I completed the courses and was duly State certified and City
licensed as a high school Social Studies teacher. (How it was I
became a Social Studies teacher is a long story for another day.)</div>
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<br />
</div>
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The fellow who was
my principle teaching instructor was then the Social Studies Chair of
Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School. Chairs of departments are
able to assign themselves their own classes and this fellow loved
teaching honors classes. He was so taken by his methods of honors
teaching he taught us to instruct in the same manner. He called the
method “Developmental Lesson Planning” which relied on, of all
things, a series of pivotal questions students would answer in a
manner to induce in class discussions. Each class, in essence, was
to be structured as a collective investigation of a topic question
exploring why something important happened. To say I took to this as
the proverbial duck to water is a gross understatement.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
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But when as a
student teacher I put Developmental Lessons into practice with the
group of seniors in a Principles of Government class, I found it
didn't work as advertised. First off, students were to have read the
assigned pages in the text so they could have the information readily at hand for discussing the material covered
the next day. They didn't; so they had no prior information from
which to engage in conversation no less answer a question. Second,
you know that classroom scene in <i>Ferris Bueller's Day Off </i><span style="font-style: normal;">when
the teacher asks a question and gets silent stares, well, that was
what was happening in these classes. Finally my cooperating teacher
said that I was working way too hard in a dismal attempt at moving these students to discussion and for me to change my
instructional approach. I kept asking pivotal questions, but in a
fashion enabling me to answer them for the class rather than having
to rely on the students. </span>
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
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And
then I was let loose on four Global Studies classes of ninth graders
and one Principles of Government class of seniors at Erasmus Hall
High School. The conduct of the ninth graders was typical of the
age, which meant they had to be disciplined sternly (more on that in
an upcoming blog) so they could stay silent, in their seats and
attentive to my instruction. The instruction the school's principal
told me was to consist of solely my transferring the material in the syllabus I
was given directly into the brains of all the students of my classes.
No conversation, no discussions, just here are the facts, read them
in the text, copy them from the board and give them back on the
tests. The seniors were well institutionalized by the time they came
to me, so their conduct was quite orderly. In fact, they were so
orderly in the entire process they did as told without a peep.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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I
quickly tried to break away from the oppressive routine in which I
was engaged. I attempted an experiential activity with the ninth
graders to instruct on the Animist religion in ancient Africa. They
were very compliant and they appreciated the break in the routine.
But, it put me so far behind the other Global Studies classes in the
syllabus that I felt I needed to quickly repair “the damage”.
So, I did a marathon of board notation which ruined whatever had been
gained by the experiential exercise. I should also report I tried
doing Development Lessons with the Seniors. But, it generated the
same results as the student teaching experience.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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So,
here it was, the institutionalization. Boiling it down it comes to
that teachers have a curriculum syllabus whose content they are
required to transfer into the minds of their students through
techniques which require students to be seated, silent and attentive.
Students are to talk only when given permission to talk and,
largely, the student talk must be in direct answer to teacher
questions. Any other talk, either extraneous to school topics or on
school topics which is not a direct consequence of teacher demands is
not allowed and must be actively discouraged or punished. For one
who has a near compulsion for conversation this is just intolerable!
More, for the sociable creatures us humans are especially in
adolescence, having to be disciplined into silence is as equally
intolerable. Yet, a good number of children, adolescents and young
adults have so internalized the required behavior as to have come to
expect it as the way it all should be. On the other hand, there are
quite a few, like me, who refuse to go against their biological
imperatives to be social, to converse on all matters of interest,
school and non-school related, that they are made crazy, or drop out
or in some other way become injured. It is we of this bent to whom I
search for a congenial means of formal education. And it is we of
this bent I've conceived this learning institution.</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-33066262213879733752016-09-18T06:27:00.000-07:002016-09-18T06:27:31.858-07:00Searching for Conversation/Part 1
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People find
different ways of acquiring what they want or need to learn. But, it
strikes me the notion of learning by doing is universal. Doing up
the information ladder of abstraction takes on forms from mostly
physical to totally conceptual. Learning concrete action such as
chopping fire wood, for instance, required me to first create
mind-images of the procedure I observed over years of adults
accomplishing the task and then to replicate the mind-images as
accurately as possible as I took my turn to chop fire wood. Or,
learning to manipulate a car's manual transmission, again, required
me to first observe for some time, to form mind-images and then to
closely replicate the mind-images in action. On the other hand, the
concept of ironic conflict in a black hearted, maimed Capt. Ahab
against a white whale in Melville's <i>Moby Dick </i><span style="font-style: normal;">required
first solitary reading, interpretation and reflection AND THEN
extensive conversation. The same process unfolded when encountering
much later the massive conflict between technological determinism and
free will. In this realm of high abstraction I found externalizing
my inner conversation to colleagues captured by the same question
not only clarifying concepts, but intensifying the understanding of
them, in other words, deepening learning. Over the decades engaged
in professional education pursuits, I have concluded that my manner
of doing up the information latter of abstraction is mostly like
everyone else. And I also discovered the universal need for
conversation in completing the learning process, especially, in areas
of high abstraction. However, as a both a student and a professional
practitioner in the structures of formal learning, I have found the
procedural instruction of say learning to chop fire wood applied to
nearly every aspect up the ladder of abstraction, leaving totally
aside the need for extended conversations. Indeed, one should find
in such as English Language Arts the perfect conditions for
conversation, but the procedural process of deconstructing text
ecumenically employed throughout contemporary schooling precludes
the conversational arts exploring concepts inherent in literature
under review.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I come to
conversation through my mother's attention. On more than a few
occasions as a boy, my father struggling from his bedroom to the
kitchen in search of some wake-up juice and silence would discover my
mother and me in rapt conversation. Ugh, he would say, how can you
two be so awake and talking and talking about so heavy a subjects as
you constantly do? We would apologize, shrug shoulders, allow him to
pour his coffee in silence, and then as he sat down at the table we
continued with whatever “heavy” conversation we were having.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The subjects were
not all that “heavy”, but to my father, that early in the morning
was not the time to consider questions of such as “Why can’t an
egg stand on its ends?”, or “How come I can get Chicago radio
stations at night (we lived in Brooklyn, NY) when I can’t get them
during the day?”, and stories the like of how my grandfather and my
mother fixed pancakes on a favorite griddle when my grandmother was
away from the house, or the several about her and her friends having
a real special treat of a tiny serving of ice cream from the candy
store when they were children during the Depression. This was not
the typical kid question and parent answer as my mother would ask of
me my experiences of, for instance, trying to stand an egg on its
end, or about what it was like listening to Chicago radio. I mean,
we listened intently to each other and responded to what we heard:
it truly was that perfect exchange of ideas between two people
wanting to know.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But then I went to
school and had to be quiet. In both elementary schools through which
I traveled (St. Angela Hall Academy through fifth grade and Our Lady
of Angles parish school through eighth) teachers occasionally asked
questions of me which I answered, but they were not the kind
provoking conversation, nor did the teachers desire conversation with
us kids. Largely they demanded we copy notes from the black board
into our composition books from which we drilled answers to teacher
questions, read prescribed books from which work book answers were
derived, mimicked solutions to math problems, and so on.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Definitely looking
for conversation, I started up with classmates before and after
classes and during recess but they just looked at me as if I had two
heads. That was the way it was until I met Brother Joseph, my high
school English teacher at LaSalle Academy, Manhattan. He was
thrilled to have a student as interested in conversation about the
topics of his instruction as he. Indeed, while I did not read all he
assigned, I had developed a question/dialogue style which enabled on
topic conversation at a drop of a hat and the hat dropped frequently. I discovered over time that
teachers, most especially Brother Joseph, considered me “well
read”. Being actually well read or not, my other high school
classes were just the repeat of elementary school. And my high
school classmates were as unresponsive to conversation as were my
elementary schoolmates, that is beyond the mutual boasting of their
great feats of sportsmanship or dating, or dishing the gossip about
other classmates and our teachers. And the group of neighborhood
friends, well, they had not a single interest in any conversation
outside of dickering over which sand lot sport to play, later which
bar to go into, and always who was doing what with whom.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And then came
college, well, I should say colleges as I attended three different
undergraduate schools (State University of New York, Maritime
College; Long Island University, Brooklyn; and New York Institute of
Technology, Old Westbury, from which I received my Bachelor’s
degree). The professors I had in all three schools remained as
uninterested in conversation with us as all earlier, but I was able
to find small pockets of schoolmates who were as thirsty for
conversation as I. And on topics of great and little significance,
on the meaning of life, on the planes of existence, on war and peace,
on sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. We talked Smith, Locke, Rousseau;
we talked Freud and Jung; we talked Kierkegaad, Kant, Schopenhauer;
we talked Civil Rights, the Draft and The War; we talked Dylan,
Joplin and Cream. Deeper conversations over beer were had as
faculty joined in at The New School where I took my Masters in Media
Studies as we discussed the concepts of such as Diane Arbus,
Marshall McLuhan and Lewis Mumford and the films of such as Truffaut,
Cassavetes and Barbara Kopple. They widened further through New York
University’s now defunct Doctorate in Media Ecology as we
considered in class and out such as technological determinism vs free
will, the impacts of the transition to a new orality, and the fact
that our society is Amusing Itself to Death. The near daily
conversations during these times and at the conferences I attended
then were as mother’s milk to me. And then I went to teach!</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-45527379092096109402016-09-07T10:30:00.000-07:002016-09-07T10:30:07.683-07:00School Project Summary(Up until March, 2016, I was working with the Queen's Borough President's Education Director on a brief presentation of my school concept to the Borough President. The Education Director thought it was necessary for me to prepare a bullet-point paper from which to present and to leave for the BP's recall of the meeting. The Project Summary posted here is the paper's final draft...It was anticipated that once the preparation reached its conclusion, the presentation would happen and it would be in such good order that the BP would recommend it and me to the Department of Education's office of new school development. There, I would work closely with folks who would shape the proposal for acceptance by the powers that be in the City's DOE. Also, I thought I could leverage the recommendation as a recruitment vehicle as folks I would approach would know that the concept was being taken seriously by the powers in the DOE. With the eight or so people on a proposal committee, the project stood a good chance of actually happening. It is hoped that with the start of '16-'17 school year, the BP's Education Director and I will continue where we left off in March.)<br />
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><i>Project
Summary for</i></b> </div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><i>A
New, Small Demonstration School</i></b></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><i> for </i></b><b><i>The Bright Neurologically Diverse</i></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b>Formulated
by Leo J. Fahey, BFA, MA, (ABD) PHD</b></div>
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b> </b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>For Whom: </b>The Bright
Neurologically Diverse: They are children, adolescents and young adults of
above average cognitive capacity having neurological, social-emotional and/or
developmental differences than what are expected of youngsters of the same age.
This population is characterized by a broad asynchronous growth in social,
emotional and cognitive aspects of personality making schooling success and
psychological wellness within contemporary, cohort school settings difficult,
at best, extremely problematic, at worst.</div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>Proposed: </b>a small-500
student-early childhood through early college learning institution constituted
in five sequential programs housed in two administrative units: Early Childhood
and Primary Education Programs are in one unit; Intake for Secondary Education,
Secondary Education and Early College Programs are in the second. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>Location:</b> Queens. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>Rationale for this institution:</b>
Direct public education service according to this population's asynchronously
developing social-emotional, cognitive and talent characteristics continues to
be absent in spite of New York City School’s Response to Intervention and
Queen’s District 30’s positive contributions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently, emotional disturbance,
underachievement and denial of equal opportunity for college, career and life readiness
remain in almost all of this population. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>Mission:</b> to cultivate in all
its students a solid psychological foundation for future growth, a cognitive
deftness for adaptability to life’s challenges and a full capacity to work both
independently and interdependently by providing highly supportive, whole-child,
learner-responsibility-based, cooperative learning programs.</div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>Means: </b>By the effective
synthesis of authentic Montessori, Democratic Education and Talent Development
principles.</div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The major principles born of the
synthesis are: 1) whole-child<b> </b>education integrating Head, Heart and Hand<b>,
</b>that is, students growing through developmentally appropriate abstract
(Head), intrinsically motivated (Heart), and manual skill (Hand) learning
engagement; 2) mentoring, a close student psycho-cognitive, psycho-dynamic,
emotional and learning objective support; <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3) student intrinsically motivated,
talent driven, self-directed and mentor negotiated learning-negotiating,
especially, between strong intrinsic inclinations and necessary
advancement/credentialing decisions; 4) individual continuous progress, that
is, developmental and learning goals accomplished at one's own pace; 5) learner
responsibility for the course of one's education; 6) school site community
governance, a structured equal collaboration among students, staff and parents/caregivers.
</div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>School Site Community Governance:</b>
Shared Decision Making through Consensus Process. There are proposed to be
three interconnected levels of governance where staff, faculty, students and
parents/caregivers come together in a consensus decision making process to
organize, supervise and operate this institution: The Institutional Level, The
Unit Level and The Program Level. The Institutional Level organizes the common
elements unifying the two separate administrative unites into a coherent
education establishment. The Unit Level organizes the particulars of each unit.
The Program Level organizes the specific elements of these components.</div>
<br /><br />
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>The Programs fulfilling the
Mission:</b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<u>Early Childhood</u>: Students
develop early self-regulation of social-emotional dispositions and executive
functioning and cultivate talent based learning instincts, self-efficacy,
advocacy for others and appropriate language competency. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<u>Primary Education</u>: Students
develop competency in talent compatible book literacy, language competency,
numeracy and subject topics while strengthening self-regulation, executive
functioning, social-emotional management, self-efficacy, advocacy for others,
and behavioral habits of independence and cooperation. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<u>Intake for Secondary Education</u>:
Students adapt to the secondary education program’s cooperative self-directed,
talent development and school site community self-governance culture while developing/strengthening
social-emotional and cognitive awareness driving self-regulation, self-efficacy,
advocacy for others and behavioral habits of independence and cooperation. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<u>Secondary Education</u>:
Students develop high quality academic and manual skills, deepen language
competency and habits of independence and cooperation, and cultivate talent
driven subject topics. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<u>Early College</u>: Young
scholars engage in deep, cooperative study into questions of curiosity,
interest and passion, greatly enhance language competency, and, as fully as
possible, satisfy general core university requirements enabling graduates to
receive a high school diploma, an Associate of Arts degree and, if desired,
entrance into a college or a university to complete a Bachelor’s degree. </div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b>Establishment Timing:</b> Early
Childhood is started first with Primary Education available for Early Childhood
students in time for when they are ready. The Intake Program for Secondary
Education is established in time for Primary Education students to enter when
ready. The Secondary Education Program should be available for students to
enter when they are ready and, likewise, the Early College.</div>
<br />Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-24769210847716665962016-09-02T09:02:00.000-07:002016-09-02T09:02:40.884-07:00Well, I'm at it again!
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yep, I’m at it again…trying to get somebody(bodies) to work
with me to put together “my school”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
last I posted on the blog was in great despair for it ever being realized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, it keeps on happening:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I get a couple of folks to listen; they say encouraging
words but nothing comes of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I give up, place the project in a deep dark
drawer and retreat into myself, blaming myself for being such a gigantically
imperfect salesperson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, having
recovered some sense of “reality”, I open the drawer take out the concept,
rework it and, again, reach out to whoever would agree to listen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, the pattern repeats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has been the way for over ten
years!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe it’s time to accept it will
never fly!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naaa!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
I should report that through a good deal of last year and
into this I thought I was making progress in building allies in the NYC Queens
Borough President’s Office. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I was
looking for the school to be sited in my home borough of Queens and since I was
working for it to be a new, small public demonstration school, I had thought
the Queen’s Borough President’s advocacy for it would greatly move others to
come on-board eventually collecting enough political clout with which to finally
open the Office of the Mayor and his folks in Education to sanction the effort.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the prospect of approval of
concept and recommendation to the office of new school development in the
Department of Education was held out to me as almost certain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with starting to work with the folks in
the office of new school development, I was anticipating, I could far better recruit folks wiling
to team to get the project translated from black marks on white screens into
brick and mortar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you might have
surmised, the pattern is holding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still,
folks in the Borough President’s office have yet to say no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, until then, I remain in hope and in hope
I am reaching out to others in the BP’s office and to others with whom I’ve
connected these last couple of years to see what can be done on getting the
project underway.</div>
</span><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the past I have used this blog as a repository for my
concept writing so to steer folks to it instead of handing them reams of paper.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow small book length manuscripts
scare people to the point they will decline to read and take seriously anything
contained within, although I do gift them a short synopses which seem s to be
acceptable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, I will continue to do
so now with the current iteration of the concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Over the course of the next few weeks, then, this blog will
fill with the “new, improved” vision of the school concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it is said, “Watch this space!”</span></div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-35795804291537727032015-06-04T09:36:00.000-07:002015-06-04T09:36:17.657-07:00Explaining Democratic Education
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A term unfamiliar to others demands an
explanation. And, that is so with “Democratic Education” as it is
a model of formal learning known to only a few, unfortunately in my
opinion. This blog entry re-writes, edits and re-posts much earlier
ones to provide a general explanation of the concept in one post.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<u>Defining Democratic Education:</u></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Democratic Education rests on its
conviction of children as owners of their own course of learning and
as full participants in their school governance.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Democratic Education sees children's
native curiosity as a powerful learning driver making unnecessary any
adult coercion to engage learning activities. It also fully
acknowledges the draw of childern's different talents to pursue
different aspects of knowledge. Through their native inclinations,
then, children within a Democratic Education school self-select what
is learned, when what is chosen is learned and the depth, scope and
duration of leaning. This intrinsic motivated self-directed
engagement in the accumulation of knowledge ultimately leads
Democratic Education to an individualized and emergent rather than a
uniform and mandated course of study over a term and over a school
residency.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Additionally, Democratic Education
views children as principal stake holders in school governance. It
places its school governance in the immediate learning community
where adults and children have equal voices and equal community
decision-making powers on all issues open to community decision.
Through democratic participatory practices the learning community
self-governs its school.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yaacov Hecht
(<span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://www.yaacovhecht.com/">http://www.yaacovhecht.com/</a></u></span>)
developed the principles of Democratic Education in the mid-1980’s
and in 1987, in Hadera, Israel, he founded the first Democratic
Education school. To spread the word and to advocate for this model
of formal learning he founded the Institute for Democratic Education
(<span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://www.democratic.co.il/en/">http://www.democratic.co.il/en/</a></u></span>).</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A brief history of Democratic Education
in the U.S. starts with <span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Ferrer"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Francisco
Ferrer</span></span></a></span>, as my friend and colleague, Cooper
Zale, maintains: “The ideas of ‘non-coercive’ and ‘learner-led’
schools have roots in the educational philosophy of Spanish educator<b>
</b><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Ferrer"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue;">Francisco
Ferrer</span></span></a></strong> (1859-1909)…” (if still available see
“What is a Democratic-Free School?”,
<a href="http://www.leftyparent.com/" target="_blank"><u><span style="color: blue;">http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/category/our-ongoing-strategy-for-learning/</span></u></a>)
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ferrer looked to develop children’s
knowledge and skills according to each student’s abilities rather
than through drilled instruction and uniform lessons. He opposed
religious and nationalistic indoctrination, but frequently
instructors in Ferrer schools would instill values of liberty,
equality, and social justice into students, and Ferrer’s textbooks
had a general anti-statist, anti-capitalist, and anti-militarist
line. He was a firm believer in what today is called life long
learning which impelled him to institute adult classes at his
schools.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ferrer’s ideas in the U.S. sparked
the Modern School Movement which established a handful of schools
beginning in 1910. The small number of Modern Schools shrunk as the
founders either died or moved on with most closing during the 1920’s.
The Ferrer Modern School in Piscataway, NJ, was the longest lasting,
not closing until 1953. (<span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://themodernschools.wordpress.com/">http://themodernschools.wordpress.com/</a></u></span>)</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Modern School Movement was a
reaction in education to the moves by the American industrialists of
the Guided Age to concentrate power, to be authoritarian bosses in
their factory fiefdoms. But, as history rolled on, the Modern School
Movement dissipated and disappeared leaving reaction to authoritarian
social and economic structures for another time. Then in the
fullness of another time there came to the surface another group of
folks reacting in the same vein to a similar creeping
authoritarianism. And in the arena of formal learning they
discovered their own path to rebellion, to restructuring the
education process: They found A.S. Neill and his Summerhill school.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
From Mary Leue, founder of The Free
School in Albany, NY, to Daniel Greenburg, founder of Sudbury Valley
School in Massachusetts and to many other Americans in the 1960’s,
there was a flat out rebellion against the authoritarian,
conventional school. Like the progressive educators of John Dewey’s
time, the rebels were looking to structure schooling as a mirror
opposite. Thus, the confluence of vectors in time and in culture
landed Alexander Sutherland Neill and his book,<i><span style="text-decoration: none;">
</span></i><strong><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Summerhill:
A Radical Approach to Child Rearing</span></span></i></strong> on an
American shore prepared to take from it everything fitting their
rebellion. And so, regardless of Neill’s insistence that day
schools could not be free schools at all, the Americans of the 1960’s
founded free day schools.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
These “free schoolers” latched
tightly to the freedom in Neill’s notion that<span style="color: maroon;"><b>
</b></span>freedom to choose means doing what you want to do, so long
as it doesn’t interfere with the freedom of others. They as well
focused on Neill’s idea that freedom to choose that which affects
the child individually, that which is of interest, of passion, of
felt need, is essential for only under this kind of freedom can the
child grow in his/her natural way.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Under their rebellious zeal to
construct a mirror opposite of the authoritarian, conventional
school, free schoolers fixated on elevating child impulse over
self-regulation, in my view, and, thus, confused and excused license
for freedom. Free Schooling includes self-selected learning and
community self-governance, of course, but it extends far greater
sufferance to child impulse than the preponderance of other
Democratic Education schools ever have to date.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Hecht, not a free schooler, but like
many before credits Neill and Summerhill with opening his mind to
children’s intrinsic motivated self-selection of learning. What
Hecht saw when he visited Summerhill school during the 1980’s were the
youngsters’ ability to choose what to learn and when to learn what
was chosen to be learned and the school’s policy of non-compulsory
instructional attendance. He saw that even
conventional learning happens well when children decide for
themselves to, in my words, freely accept the conditions of inclusion
in such instruction.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What Hecht also found was the control
over the relationship life of the school being vested in a school
community governance structure using a democratic process. Neill’s
contention was that only in a residential school, where there is a
social life, can there be a self-governance of relationships applied.
Day schools, Neill insists in his book, have no equivalent to
residential life and therefore have nothing over which to govern.
Neill did not consider what in this country is called “student
life”-clubs, intramural sports, school socials, etc.- embodying the
spectrum of living necessary for community self-governance and thus,
student governments, which are everywhere here tasked with governing
student life incapable of governing interpersonal relationships
within a school. Yet, Hecht took away an appreciation of the power
of a school community to regulate relations within it.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Thus was formed the foundations of
Democratic Education where the unique biology, unique gifts, of each
child act as fundamental drivers of individual education without
adult coercion visited upon youngsters, where students decide the
course of their learning, and where all in the learning community
fully participate in the governance of the relationships within the
community.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There are different ways by which to be
a Democratic Education school. Sudbury Valley School in Framingham,
MA, (<span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://www.sudval.org/"><span style="color: blue;">www.sudval.org/</span></a></u></span>)
represents the “free school” end of the spectrum where what
students want to know is totally up to the them and where school
policy and administrative governance is largely controlled by
students. Summerhill School in Leiston, England,
(<span style="color: blue;"><u>www.summerhillschool.co.uk/</u></span>)
holds a middle ground with a conventional curriculum and
administrative governance retained by the community adults, but with
its social life governed by the learning community as a whole and
with non-compulsory class attendance. Lehman Alternative Community
School in Ithaca, NY, a public school, (<span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://www.icsd.k12.ny.us/lacs"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-weight: normal;">www.icsd.k12.ny.us/lacs</span></span></span></span></a></u></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">)
offers a mos</span></span></span></span></span></span></span>tly
traditional discipline curriculum but with a community shared policy
and administrative governance.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<u>The Democratic Education Learning
System:</u></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Regardless of where on the spectrum of
Democratic Education a specific learning community is, there are
common qualities marking the learning system as Democratic.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Democratic Education learning
system is driven by the individual social, emotional and cognitive
needs of the students as manifested and understood by them, not by an
interpretation of them by the adults in the school. Indeed, in
Democratic Education schools the child is <i>th</i><span style="color: black;"><i>e
</i></span><span style="color: black;">definer of his and her own need and
</span><span style="color: black;"><i>the</i></span><span style="color: black;">
decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need. This</span> goes
counter to the traditional school adult over child relation where the<span style="color: black;">
adult is the one to define child need and is </span><span style="color: black;"><i>the</i></span><span style="color: black;"> decision
maker on how to meet the interpreted need</span> with the result that
a Democratic Education school would look quite different in four critical ways from what
people have come to expect in schools.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
First, Democratic Education
individualizes knowledge acquisition and use, that is, learning would
be intrinsically self-directed. Children possess different
neurological constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments,
learning and communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive
and social development. These natural inclinations and individual
differences drive differentiated information seeking, acquisition and
use yielding quality differentiated outcomes over the course of a
term and over a school residency. An authentic intrinsic
self-directed system would put in the way of children the widest
possible range of subject matter and let the children’s natural
inclinations and differences drive what is learned, when it is
learned and the depth, scope and duration of leaning. The course of
study over an entire residency, then, emerges unique to every child
as each engages learning through his and her talents, passions and
interests.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
However, unlike the Sudbury Valley free
school model of intrinsic self-directed learning which removes the
adult from almost all of the child’s decisions, the more prevalent
Democratic Education intrinsic self-directed learning fully
acknowledges the need for a mentoring relationship of adult to child.<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US">
All students need the support of deep mentoring relationships with
those thoroughly versed in the social-emotional and cognitive styles
of the school’s population, and in the negotiation among student
native inclinations, intrinsically motivated self-direction and
credentialing decisions to assist students in maneuvering through the
channels of the academy and to help them help themselves to work
through their natural inclinations, individual differences and
intrinsic motivation to achieve healthy personal growth and schooling
success. Here, </span></span>an adult mentor and a youngster enter a
process mutually respectful of the wisdom of each to attain a common
understanding of and an agreement on learning goals and the action
steps required to reach those goals. The agreements on what is
undertaken to be learned and when and how learning is to happen is
known as a “negotiated curriculum”. Mentoring also includes a
mentor working with children on social-emotional, psycho-dynamic and
learning deficit issues.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Second, in-school engagement within a
negotiated and an intrinsic self-selected curriculum during a
Democratic Education school day would be through the student choice
of one or more of three ways: through independent, individual or
small group engagement with the materials and activities open to
students; through self-selected small, whole group adult facilitated
topic study or activity; and/or through self-initiated one-to-one
instruction either with another student or with an adult. However,
since the community as a whole has the responsibility of structuring
learning, it can, as in Lehman Alternative Community School, agree on
conventional whole group classrooms and a more conventional looking
class schedule. Still, in the authentically child-decision-centered
learning environment of a Democratic Education school the initiation
of learning engagement, including instruction, is up to the child's
felt need to connect with the knowledge, the materials, the
activities, the adults and the classmates, rather than the fully
adult initiated whole group classroom process of the traditional
taking all decisions away from the youngster.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Third, the adults in the room of a
child-decision-centered environment of a Democratic Education school
have an additional role beyond being facilitators and mentors in
intrinsic self-directed study: They are to model passionate life
long learning and the meanings of collaborative work, goal setting,
task acceptance and completion by undertaking learning activities of
interest to the adult, inviting youngsters as helpers, as
apprentices, in what is being done rather than as “students”
being told what to do, and to in equal measure with the children of
the learning community maintain behavioral norms according to both
individual child and whole community needs through The Democratic
Process, peer mediation, Non-Violent Communication
(<span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://www.cnvc.org/">http://www.cnvc.org/</a></u></span>) and
LEAP pocess(<span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="http://leapinstitute.org/">http://leapinstitute.org/</a></u></span>).</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And fourth, Democratic Education
schools are self-governing, like Summerhill. As A.S. Neill states:
“Summerhill is a self-governing school, democratic in form.
Everything connected with social, or group life…is settled by vote
at the Saturday General School Meeting. Each member of the teaching
staff and each child, regardless of his age, has one vote…Our
democracy makes laws…The function of Summerhill self-government is
not only to make laws but to discuss social features of the community
as well. (Alexander Sutherland Neill, <strong><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Summerhill:
A Radical Approach to Child Rearing</span></span></i></strong><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">,</span></strong><strong>
</strong>New York: Hart Pub. Co., 1960, pp 45-47.)
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In Democratic schools the community
comes together in regular meetings of the whole to decide all issues.
Adults and children have equal rights to speak and to persuade within
community forums. Each has a single vote on questions up for
community decision. The community can decide policies on such as
curriculum and assessment, projects and assignments, advancement and
graduation requirements, ceremonies, expectant behaviors consistent
and inconsistent with the norms of the school as well as the means by
which inconsistent behaviors are resolved.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<u>Democratic Education Curriculum and
Assessment:</u></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Democratic Education resets the
conventional schooling structure and the relationships of adult to
curriculum, child to curriculum and adult to child. Democratic
Education insists on students taking responsibility for their
education choices by self-selecting what is learned, when learning
happens and the depth, scope and duration of leaning.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the conventional structure what is
learned, the curriculum, is broken down into compartmentalized
disciplines which are further broken down into subjects which
themselves are divided into units which again are divided into
smaller accumulations of specific facts and concepts available for
the learner to take up into ready recall memory.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A basic outline of disciplines is as
follows:</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in;">
-English Language
Arts</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in;">
-Mathematics</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in;">
-Social Studies</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in;">
-Sciences</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in;">
-Arts (a sort of
catch all for everything not included above)</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The sociology of knowledge as
discipline division is an inheritance of the expansion in knowledge
from the late Middle Age European Classical grammar school trivium
and the university quadrivium. Indeed, the growth in the complexity
of the sociology of knowledge under the agency of print dramatically
increased information circulation, popular understanding and
intellectual discovery requiring ever more differentiation of
knowledge into distinct disciplines which were taken by generations
of school folks as the basis for general study, preparing the young
for a world where such knowledge was supposedly required.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The more conventional academic end of
the Democratic Education spectrum honors this history by providing
standard discipline study. But the more free school parts of the
spectrum act on their understanding of the contemporary knowledge
society.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Indeed, with the growth and societal
saturation of electronic information technologies, three distinct
effects are recognized: 1) that the pace of information production
exploded to the point where it is no longer possible, even if it were
in times past, to hold the resulting amounts of information in
memory; 2) that the need to hold vast amounts of information in human
memory has been eliminated as information is now stored in immediate
access, digital memory; and 3) that the connectivity of digital media
has broken down discipline barriers to recombine specialized
knowledge at intersecting points.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Thus, it makes far more sense today for
school folks, especially at the free school end of the Democratic
Education spectrum, to make available learning experiences whereby
children can master learning rather than to master content, and what
content is offered can take full notice of the recombination of
specialized knowledge.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Leaning to learn in a
child-decision-centered environment of a Democratic Education school
is to provide a wide range of opportunities for children to engage
using their native instincts and individual differences, their
intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, to slowly gain skills as they
test hunches/hypotheses, as they explore, discover and unfold, as
they bring to consciousness through meta-cognitive development the
mindfulness necessary for intentional learning decision making.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Such a process would begin with the
readiness to acquire learning skills as the objective of an early
childhood program while the acquisition of learning skills would be
the focus of the elementary. The mastery of learning would be the
province of a secondary education.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Taking full notice of the recombination
of specialized knowledge is to provide an integrated,
interdisciplinary thematic curriculum which at the macro-level can be
ordered through Curriculum Strands, such as:</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The Life Cycle in the Natural
World</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Communication Between Individuals
and Within Groups</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Identity Within Groups and
Institutions</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The Nature of Time and Space</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Our Response to the Aesthetic</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Our Relationship to Nature</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Our Role as Producers and
Consumers</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Our Efforts to Live with Purpose.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Broken down into theme categories the
curriculum strand of The Life Cycle in the Natural World, for
instance, might include Ecology. And the category Ecology itself can
be broken down into themes such as: Geography-life’s web of place
and climate, and their affects on the development of plants, animals
and people; Change-evolution and extinction, natural and man-made;
Conservation-soil, air, water, energy; Micro and Macro
Environments-explorations of the smallest and the largest ecosystems.
The curriculum strands and their theme categories and individual
themes constitute the structural framework of the intentional
learning community’s curriculum which the school constructors and
governors are obliged to populate richly with resources and
activities in order to provide the knowledge sets open to intrinsic
self-directed and negotiated learning.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The curriculum strands, as suggested
above, would supply the knowledge categories youngsters engage in the
abstract and in the experiential. So, as a further example, within
the curriculum strand of Our Relationship to Nature might be the
theme category of Bugs and Other Creepy Crawly Creatures-explorations
into insects and the role they play in ecosystems-whereby
those exploring the theme could select a few square feet of
property, describe the micro-ecosystem there, observe and note over a
certain period all insects in the air column over the property, the
creepy crawlers on and around the ground and under the surface to
approximately 18 inches. Then they would investigate to uncover the
roles within that micro-ecosystem the creepy crawlers and flying
insects have. Having noted the findings, a report in a medium of
choice would be produced and presented. And on to the next theme,
the next inquiry and on the education in this manner goes.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Democratic Education leans heavily on
what is generally called “authentic assessment” of student
learning progress: Thus, Descriptive Process evaluates behavior (see
<a href="http://cdi.uvm.edu/resources/ProspectDescriptiveProcessesRevEd.pdf"><span style="color: blue;">http://cdi.uvm.edu/resources/ProspectDescriptiveProcessesRevEd.pdf</span></a>);
Performance Assessment evaluates academics (see
<span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.performanceassessment.org/"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="text-decoration: none;">http://www.performanceassessment.org/</span></span></span></span></a></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="text-decoration: none;">)</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="text-decoration: none;">.
Ultimately, the methods of assessing student progress in behavioral
and academic growth are a school community decision. However, the
individualized nature of Democratic Education so heavily favors
evaluation such as Descriptive Process and Performance Assessment as
to nearly eliminate conventional testing regimes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<u>Summary:</u></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Democratic Education:</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"> -has </span>the
mission to cultivate in all its youngsters a solid psychological
foundation for future growth and a cognitive dexterity for life long
adaptability to life’s challenges;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-by its twin pillars of
Mindfulness and Empowerment supports a consistent personal
responsibility response to the learning environment rather than
through compliance demanded of children by the adults in the class
rooms;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-develops the healthy, happy
growth in self-awareness, self-regulation and self-actualization so
in this century and beyond citizens can leverage these qualities in
which ever way they discern is in their best interest and in the best
interest of family, community, country and civilization;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-realigns relationship of adult to
child from adult over child to an adult and child in partnership
respecting the wisdom each possesses;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
- recognizes individual social,
emotional and cognitive needs of youngsters as manifested and
self-identified by them, not by an interpretation of them by the
adults in the class rooms, indeed, where the child is <i>th</i><span style="color: black;"><i>e
</i></span><span style="color: black;">definer of his and her own need and
</span><span style="color: black;"><i>the</i></span><span style="color: black;">
decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need, and where, through
a deep mentoring relationship, the child will be helped to help
him-herself to satisfy the full range of need;</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-alters the relationship of adult
to curriculum and child to curriculum where what is learned, when
learning happens and the depth, scope and duration of leaning is both
child intrinsically self-directed and adult-child negotiated;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-fully acknowledges learning as
being a child decision driven through an individual’s neurological
constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments, learning and
communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive and social
development individualizing curricula and yielding quality
differentiated outcomes;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-greatly elevates the mastery of
learning over the mastery of content, and what content is offered
takes full notice of the recombining of specialized knowledge through
an integrated, interdisciplinary, thematic curriculum;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-uses authentic assessment such as
Descriptive Process and Performance Assessment evaluating student
progress in behavioral and academic growth;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-institutes school community
self-governance.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-19161203207647431722015-05-18T11:36:00.000-07:002015-05-18T11:36:01.387-07:00Consequences of Misjudging a Life
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Papers, books, hand tools, thumb tacks,
screws, plant hankers, drinking classes, sewing notions, clothes,
shoes and other stuff here and here and here, all over the
house, in fact...There are times when the stuff around our small
house gets so high and scattered that it drives me to actually do a
bit of straightening up. Neatly stacked piles, my mother used to say,
is the perfect definition of straightening up; and I was always-well,
almost always-an obedient son. So, I made a bunch of neatly stacked
piles out of the chaos last week. In gathering a bunch of papers
together I came across a couple of them I remember composing in
early 2007 (yes, they were hanging around that long!).
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had just come off another episode of
sticking to my well honed teaching principles. The professional
acumen developed over the preceding twenty-six years got me in
trouble with several students who complained to some folks in
administration who called me on the carpet for using the principles I
favored. For behaving as a professional educator, for being so
calmly articulate in the defense of my practice and for having the
audacity of pointing to the defects in the pedagogy and course design
they were demanding I use, I was refused further teaching at this
college. This was not the first and if I were ever to continue in
higher education I doubt it would be the last. So, I was thinking
about forever leaving The Academy for something else. A career
counselor I consulted suggested I write down what I considered the
most congenial working conditions and what kind of life I thought I
was leading and wanted to live as conversation starters leading to
the types of employment I could expect would best work for me.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I placed the most congenial working conditions in seven points (which I will list without comment):</div>
<br />
<ol>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The work must intrinsically hold
elevated levels of intellectual stimulation.</div>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There must be high frequency of
professional and social conversation.</div>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The job should allow for creative
communication through a single medium or through many media.</div>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The position must have sufficient
autonomy for me to do what I think is professionally correct.</div>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The employer must highly value
shared commitments where my commitment to the firm is shared equally
with commitment to family and to community.</div>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The employer must highly value
reciprocal commitments where a firm reciprocates my commitment to
its mission by its commitment to my professional development,
advancement, compensation and longevity.</div>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My job performance must be
evaluated on how and what I am doing and the results produced rather
than on mere compliance to a supervisor or a manager.</div>
</li>
</li>
</li>
</li>
</li>
</li>
</li>
</ol>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.35in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
However, it is the life statement which
is of far greater importance for it sums-up a dilemma enormously
affecting my entire now forty-eight year adult existence.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I wrote:</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I've wanted to live a principled
life. From a child's eye, I saw both my mother and my father as
principled people. I have been formed and informed by my consistent
perception of their principled actions founded in Forgiveness,
Courage, Honesty, Integrity, Joyfulness, Compassion, Kindness,
Commitment, Consideration, Creativity, Respect, Dignity, Enthusiasm,
Morality, Justice, Fairness, Generosity, Gentleness, Patience,
Graciousness, Helpfulness, Hopefulness, Humility , Idealism, Love,
Purposefulness, Responsibility, Gratitude, Tolerance, Trust,
Understanding, Wonder and Wisdom. As a consequence, I have
developed a keen sense of right and wrong, of ways of being and ways
of working best situated to help others help themselves. I have
also cultivated insight into the fitness of structures within which
people live, work, and play having the best opportunity to gain
peace, love and understanding within themselves and with others and to acquire
virtuous lives they themselves wish to cultivate and virtuous lives
organizations say participation should develop.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And the reality of life since high
school, some forty-one years [at the time of writing this statement]
is that I have lived the principled life I wanted. However, keeping
the faith of principle has put me at odds with 'the real world'
where people, organizations and structures force decisions counter
with the consequence that when given conventional parameters of
living a successful live, I must say I am a definite failure.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Indeed, the parameters of life I've
taken as the goals and measures of success, and, thus, of self-worth,
are not those of a principled life but exclusively
monetary/employment based, i.e., sustained professional employment
and advancement with an upward slopping compensation and a
substantial retirement nest egg. They have been given me by the
communities within which I have lived, the society at large, and yes,
my father-insisting out of deep love that I must be solidly on a
permanent career path by age twenty-three else I will be a failure
the rest of my life. But, with a deep rooted inability to reject or
modify principle in favor of having to make a living subservient to
wrong headed supervisors, adversely working organizations and
destructive structures and with having the freedom to do so provided
by a supportive family, I have a record of sporadic employment,
barely any income and no contributions to a nest egg. In other
words, by these standards, I am a failure as a human being and as
long as I live failure will be a constant companion. No wonder I
have always had a sense of being worthless!</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But, I want to embrace the way I am,
committing fully to a principled life, releasing the power to act
accordingly without self-censure. To do so I need to somehow
re-frame emotional anchors allowing me to switch from my community's
imprint, the society's expectations and my father's demands to a
self-acceptance, a self-love, of a who I am. Simultaneously, I need
to develop and interiorize the goals and measures appropriate for my
principled life. ”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Indeed, the crushing shame of
worthlessness brought about by my own misjudging of my life through
the years has resulted in a pattern of depression compelling me to withdraw
within the four walls of whatever house I am in. More, I
self-medicate with food over-eating so much that at one point decades
ago I blew up to three hundred pounds. I once described the pattern
as: feeling so worthless I hide in the house overeating, gaining a
good deal of body weight which re-enforces being
worthless...eventually after months have passed, I get up off the
floor working through the self-hatred eating less and losing
weight...after dropping a bunch of weight I feel capable enough to go
out of the house...the more I go out, the more I am propelled to look
for work, mostly teaching work...eventually I land an appointment...I
do what I know to be professionally right, proper and necessary for
the mental well being and the intellectual and the academic growth
of the students I am given regardless of organizational imperatives,
supervisory dictates or falling in line with what other teachers are
doing...by standing on professional and personal principle I upset
the expectations of a few students who complain to
supervision...supervision is upset at me for being uncompliant with
their wrongheaded methods and for upsetting the paying customers
...supervision, then, does not renew my appointment sending me out
onto the street...I feel a failure, retreat to the four walls of
whatever house I am in, self-medicate, gain weight, eat more, gain
more, fell more useless...then months later I get off the floor
working through the feelings of worthlessness, lose weight, feel
capable enough to go out of the house, and so on.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I wrote the life statement I had
retreated into the house, began to overeat, started to gain back
weight lost in the last round. However, writing the summary brought
to the fore hazy thoughts on the matter I had been having. Indeed,
writing it down clarified the dilemma under which I had been working
all my adult life: a deep desire to live a principled life yet
measuring life success and self-worth with grossly inappropriate
criteria, ultimately misjudging my life entirely. Having gained the
insight, I began to work through the bad feelings, ate less, went out
of the house, engaged the community and gained teaching
opportunities, which, I'm afraid ended the same as others.
Unfortunately, I had yet to translate insight into a re-framed
emotional predisposition, an altered psycho-dynamic, putting myself
back into depressions with all its attending pathologies.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Intellectually I have placed my
life in the proper perspective as a principled person. But, l
continue to struggle greatly to re-set the emotional predispositions, my
psycho-dynamic, to feel the power of a life so lived, to be not
disturbed by irrelevant criteria of success, to fear no longer any
judgment of others, or myself, of a failed life based on
monetary/employment criteria. It has become quite obvious
to me that this struggle will continue the rest of my life.</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-18309577101862305062015-05-05T10:59:00.000-07:002015-05-05T10:59:22.544-07:00Here we go having come out of the dark tunnel againWell, here we go again after nearly a year's absence. I had a schedule of publishing twice a week thinking that would offer me a sufficient frequency to sustain a diet of blogging while allowing suitable reflective time for me to figure out what to say and how to say it. Yes, twice a week did allow suitable reflective time, but the depression under which way too many things become impossible weighed too heavily on me for me to develop even the occasional diarist's habit.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And while I would like to thing that the unfortunate experience of my semester teaching at Fordham University was no big deal, I must acknowledge it plunged me into a psychological paralysis. The fact that I was able to continue to listen to my favorite music radio station, Fordham's public radio WFUV-FM, largely ree from anger and self-loathing says a little something about the paralysis being not rock-bottom deep. Still...It has seemed to me that other college professors get to have sufficient leeway in how they conduct their courses, but not me. <br />
<br /><br />
I posted an open letter to my colleagues in the Media Ecology Association on the association's listserve on December 19, 2013 , being it was through connections there I landed the course at Fordham and to whom I thought to complain. I enter it here to let others know.<br />
<br /><br />
"It happened yet again: As usual, the instructional order, learning objectives, pedagogy and assessment of the course I was given to teach this concluding semester were premised on judgment developed from nearly forty years cultivating the deepest understanding of Human and Hard Tech Communication processes and affects on individuals, cultures and societies through time from both a “George Gerbner-U of Penn Annenberg-ICA” and a “Nystrom-Postman-Moran-NYU Media Ecology-MEA” perspective and of learning theory, pedagogy, practice and experience in Experiential Learning, Cooperative Learning, Socratic Method and Developmental Lesson Planning across levels of schooling from junior high to college, especially the collegiate. Well, as happens, the exercise of professional judgment upset a small number of young adults who had difficulty adjusting to my course construction and who complained up the chain of command to the effect that I was called on the carpet for exercising this acumen and required to implement a “course correction” in the methods and the substance of the course I was given to instruct. <br />
<br /><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
(This is a farewell message. For those who think it improper to be posted on the list, then, please, stop reading, now. All others I encourage to continue.)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
David Linton, when working for him at Marymount Manhattan, said I possessed an articulate rebelliousness. While that, indeed, flattered my profound desire to see and to project myself aligned with the great Irish rebels and the equally great European and American tradition of free thinkers and non-conformists, the reality is that all I am about is putting in the service of good learning the pedagogical practices of Experiential Learning, Cooperative Learning, Socratic Method and Developmental Lesson Planning. More, I import the personal responsibility component from Democratic Education starting the movement in students away from the learned helplessness of the elementary-high school years to a self-actualization of the collegiate, from the infantilization of conventional primary and secondary teaching/learning toward the empowered adult of whole cognitive developed higher education. So, yes, David, I have ends in mind other than the specific content mastery of the course. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If there is anything authentically different from conventional exercise in these education strategies is that I employ them within the same course and, frequently, within the same class period giving students an array of means by which to acquire the content of the course and providing students an authentic responsibility to accept or reject the conditions of inclusion in each class and in the course along with the consequences of their decisions. I take as given that this is the first exposure to these methods and to these conditions for students and I fully recognize the adjustment difficulty visited upon them, especially on those holding expectations that they will be doing the same thing they have been doing from almost all of their schooling lives; thus, I incorporate personal support into each course prominently among which is individual one on one instructional/counseling sessions during and outside office hours. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
David, this time around, I did not get the chance to be articulate. In fact, what was student complaint was given validation by all supervision without even a cursory chat with me to ascertain its authenticity. It is clear that there may be academic freedom for others but not for me. So, that’s it: stick a fork in me and pop me out of the oven, I’m done. I have always done the best for each young adult I was given the privilege of teaching, even those who complain. But, the conditions of employment whereby I am forbidden to use my professional judgment, and where I am being forced to employ pedagogical methods which even the schools in which I’ve taught hold workshops and seminars to get faculty to greatly move away from, have become intolerable. If being rebellious means I will not accept having to implement the least effective pedagogy just to stay employed as an adjunct, just to not upset, not to differently cognitively challenge, any student then, I am a rebel. Unfortunately, the consequence of being a rebel is to be marginalized and equally to marginalize oneself. So, on the margins of education I am to return. However, I can no longer afford to be there.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am stepping away from the field of education completely as there truly is nowhere for me to be. I am also leaving the MEA, although I take with me the deepest knowing of how the world works. I want to thank all in the MEA who continue to believe I have an insightful thing or two to say and who in one way or another have acknowledged that over the years, especially those convention conveners who accepted my panels and those who graciously accepted inclusion. I wish everyone all the best. From now on if anyone wishes to reply to this or to keep in touch, please use <span style="color: #1155cc;"><u><a href="mailto:ljfayhee@gmail.com" target="_blank">ljfayhee@gmail.com</a></u></span>. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As “an old friend use to say”, Good Night and Good Luck."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm still not done with education as the many successive blog posts here will attest. But, unless something of a miracle happens I doubt very much that I will see the inside of a college teaching opportunity again.</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-67720617865358280772014-05-26T18:03:00.000-07:002014-05-26T18:03:37.683-07:00Doing the Politics
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
University of Texas football team hosted the Texas A & M squad
the same weekend in the mid-1990's the Association for Experiential
Education was in Austin making my first visit to the State capital a
real blast. Yep, Austin is a college town, and holy longhorn, I felt
at home with all the young adults parading along Congress, ambling up
Guadalupe and careening 6th Street side to side. (A & M won, by
the way.) There was a lot to experience that weekend: the history
of Texas, the night-life of our host city, challenge courses in
schools and experiential pedagogy in academic classes. But, the
single most salient happening resonating the deepest in me then was
the consistent chorus from the alternative school folks there: Do
the Politics.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Collectively
it was said: new private schools always need friends in public
places; however, the need of friends in public places is far greater
for new alternative private schools than for conventional schools;
further, new alternative private schools serving special needs
children require an even greater representation. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">First
off, as I recall the alternative school folks saying, friends are
truly needed in Municipal, and even County and State, government to
reduce opposition to the project by convincing other public officials
that the need for the education service outweighs any prior tax
revenue from the property on which the school is to occupy and from
the sales the school undertakes-remember, schools are non-profit, tax
exempt organizations and, especially, a school purchased property
will remove it from the tax rolls. Additionally, friends could
assure an intended school siting meets local land-use and zoning
requirements, especially if variances are necessary.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Friends
could intercede with the various commercial and residential community
interests to ease any potential friction siting may create. Further,
as most folks tend to be afraid of anything “alternative” and
anyone labeled “special needs”, friends accepting the
unconventional education philosophy and practice and the efficacy of
the alternative in helping special needs children could do a great
deal to demystify the school, its students and the education
processes the school uses significantly lowering barriers to
community acceptance. And, of course, if there is a spot of bother,
friends can mediate, restoring good feelings between the community
and the school. Implied in the advice of making friends in public
places-at least I was hearing it-was the strong suggestion that
friends would connect the school to the money folks who donate to
various local charities and, of course, to the political friends. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So,
with the onset of summer 2004, in anticipation of initial community
outreach in the very near future, I journeyed through the
representative politics of my communities to find some friends for
the concept, such as it was then, and me. I ended up with Lew M.
Simon, Queens County Democratic</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Party Leader for Part B of the 23</span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">rd</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Assembly District which encompassed my Breezy Point. In Queens,
District Leaders have several important duties, such as selecting
County candidates for local elected offices and endorsing candidates
for City & State-Wide and National offices. But, in actuality,
these vote outcomes are preordained in that the County Executive Committee
selects and the County Leaders do what is expected of them. The real
work of District Leaders is to assure the required signatures on
election petitions placing the County selected candidates on the
election day ballot and fully help support County operations by
attending all County fund-raisers. Lew Simon does his Leadership
duties and has consistently collected the highest number of petition signatures
in the County. However, he looks to be the old ward healer,
interceding with City powers to help resolve individual constituent
problems in exchange for their votes and other favors. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
good here is that over the years he has actually helped many,
including us, to resolve as much as possible City government
connected problems, but the bad is that the situations on which he
cares to work are calculated to garner the obligations of those he
helps. He puts the favors in his pocket redeeming them at his
leisure for free goods and services and for votes when he runs to
maintain his Leadership and when he has sought election to the City
Council. But, if he sees a situation holding no prospect of
obligation, he will ignore the constituent's plea for help. If this
cynicism wasn't enough, he has what I call a learned ignorance being
bothered never to know anything about municipal operations other than
who to call with what City government problem, which is to my mind
okay as far as it goes but it rarely goes far enough, especially when
dealing with community-wide problems, such as local school district
issues, mass transportation, road repair, land use issues and the
like. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Indeed, he never engages in finding solutions to
community-wide issues because he has no personal interest in any;
rather, he favors stoking constituent grievance as much because it
relieves him of any responsibility to know anything substantive as
much because he believes it brings him votes when he runs for elected
office. There are many other really not-too-good aspects of Mr.
Simon's personality, including verbally abusing-and I mean really
debasing-those working with him, those he feels are against him-which
are legion in number-and everyone in City agency leadership
positions. He is foul-mouthed, selfish to the extreme and immensely
self-absorbed. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
was willing to put up with all of this-until November, 2013-for the
access to folks in City government and in local party politics he
provided who might befriend my school project and me. From the very
beginning he said for me to forget about the school; and over the
years he did not lift a finger to be a friend of the school project
keeping to his uncaring sentiment to forget the project entirely.
However, working with him allowed me enormous access to the Queens
Borough President's office and the City's Department of Education,
especially when I was looking to go the State Charter School route
with Rockaway College. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">However, the most
beneficial introduction was to our then City Councilman, Joseph P.
Addabbo, Jr. The more Mr. Simon took me around to the many community
meetings, the more the City Councilman and I talked with each other;
over time the many conversations became a base for a friendship good
enough for me to begin a quiet approach to Twice-Exceptionality and
the total lack of education service for these children. The
piecemeal approach of mini-conversations at meetings became
insufficient for him, so very early in 2008 the City Councilman asked
me to write a paper outlining the issues and recommending solutions.
This I delivered to him May 8</span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
While I mentioned that neither Federal or New York State Education
Law excluded direct education service to twice-exceptional children
if a school district wishes to identify these youngsters and provide
appropriate service to them, the complete absence of it throughout
the State, including New York City, and the absence of any indication
of a single thought to even say these children exist strongly made
the point that only changes in State law could remedy the situation.
I called for State legislation recognizing the existence of
Twice-Exceptional pupils and for ordering the State Department of
Education to insist each local district devise identification schemes
and appropriate programs. He accepted the paper, understood the
issues and agreed with the recommendations. But as City Councilman he
said he could do little more than pass it on to our local State
representatives. He did.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And then he ran to
unseat the incumbent State Senator later that year. He won and in
early 2009, he said for me to write the legislation working with his
Legislative Director to polish the language. The new State Senator
did not have a definite time-line; so I took my time. Indeed, I
wanted to get it right. I put together a kind of advisory writing
committee which would steer me in getting it right. The folks
responding to my requests could not have been more expert and more
generous in sharing their expertise, time and advice. On the ad hoc
group were Melissa Sornik, Lois Baldwin, Kris Berman, Wendy Eisner,
Susan Baum, Christy Folsom and </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Miriam
Cherkes-Julkowski. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Working
with Frank Scaduto, Senator Addabbo's Legislative Director, the bill
was finished. It does what we wanted to do: recognizes
Twice-Exceptional children as a distinct category of pupil requiring
teaching/learning different from the mainstream and according to
Twice-Exceptional characteristics, instructs the State Department of
Education to insist local school districts and to help local school
districts to establish identification procedures and appropriate
education programs, and establishes a State-Wide advisory council
supervising it all. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Senate bill and
its Assembly companion were originally introduced into the State
Legislature in 2010, re-introduced in 2011, and reintroduced in 2013
as S1875 and A1522. Unfortunately, the economic state of New York
placed barriers in the way of the accomplishing State mandates in
mainstream education no less than those of special education. As
Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee,
has said to me on more than one occasion: there isn't enough money
to fund regular education...And you want me to create a mandate and funding for
yet another special group?! Late last year, 2013, State Senator
Addabbo modified the language of these bills to include funding for
regular education. Frankly, I went a little crazy as I saw the
changes as yet another way to screw the Twice-Exceptional while
seeming to be doing right by them. But, Sen. Addabbo calmed me down
by saying the inclusion of regular education funding in the bills was
an inducement for Assemblywoman Nolan to look favorably on the bill.
Having been told by the Education Committee Chair that she was very
disinclined to agree with the sentiments in the bill, I have to
wonder if even these inducements will work. But, our good State
Senator and his legislative colleagues co-sponsoring the bills
continue to work to get them considered and passed into Law.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the end, Doing
the Politics accomplished little on the ground. Yes, there is the
legislation, but it remains stuck...going no where fast. And, yes,
the access to the powers that be in the Queens Borough President's
office and, more especially, in the City's Department of Education ultimately
enabled me to intimately understand the processes, procedures and
personalities in the City's drive to re-structure its schooling. And
the access to local civic leaders and elected officials provided me
insights into the issues, politics and governance of municipalities,
and, particularly, of our local area. But, the expected
connections, especially, with the money folks, to facilitate
organizing and fund-raising my Rockaway College just did not happen.
</span></span>
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-1044890871818278952014-05-19T15:58:00.001-07:002014-05-19T15:58:47.543-07:00Square Pegs, Solutions, Part 5
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Hi, I’m Leo Fahey and I’m looking
to start a school serving our square pegs. I've named it Sands
College. Its Mission is to cultivate the intellectual gifts of the
bright Learning Disabled youth from Breezy Point to Belle Harbor by
providing them education environments dedicated to re-setting
emotional and academic readiness to take responsibility for their own
learning and to the exercise of that responsibility. These
environments are to provide all youngsters individual and collective
empowerment, mutual assistance and respect for individual interests,
abilities and rates of social, cognitive and emotional growth. As I
have pointed out, a<span lang="en"> sizable number of our bright
children struggle daily. They possess ways of knowing at great odds
with whom their present schools say they ought to be; their instinct
to take responsibility for their studies, to learn in their own way,
in their own time, is constantly surpressed. The cost of going
against their instincts and trying to academically succeed using ways
of knowing alien to who they are produce plummeting self-esteem,
depression and learned helplessness leading to academic failure.
Sands College would return to these bright youngsters the trust in
their unique ways of knowing and the impulse to take responsibility
for their course of study creating the conditions for academic
success within each youngster. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div lang="en" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en">Sands College would
empower responsibility and academic success in four integrated levels
representing a sequential growth from elementary education through
junior college study. The levels are: The Primary School, The
Venture Challenge, The Lower School and The Upper School. The
Primary School uses an Open Classroom setting to establish a prepared
environment. Children take responsibility for their learning as they
engage the prepared environment through their unique interests,
abilities and learning styles and collaborate with teachers in
setting readiness and academic goals. The Venture Challenge, an
intake personal growth program for the secondary education of The
Lower School, creates community led outdoor adventure teams where
youngsters take responsibility for trek organization and for the many
outdoor chores necessary such as cooking and clean-up as well as land
navigation and first-aid. The Lower School requires a high degree of
personal responsibility as youngsters engage an intergrated
curriculum through self-selected inquiry projects exploring Science,
History, Arts, Letters, Performance and Foreign Language Arts and as
each help others achieve individual learning goals. The Upper School
enlists collective responsibility to create, maintain and facilitate
Great Question explorations into the received knowledge coming from
written tradition, Western and Eastern. Taking responsibility
remains incomplete unless youngsters are empowered to manage their
learning spaces. Sands College would employ a community governance
model where youngsters and staff together make policy decisions at
each developmental level and at the school-wide level. This is quite
an abitious project, but all our children deserve all our best.</span></div>
<br />
<div lang="en" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en">Feedback: 1) I want to
thank Chris Stokes, President, Point Breeze Association, Donna
Trotter, President, Roxbury Association, and Terry Cassidy,
President, Rockaway Point Association, for allowing me to talk with
their members at recent meetings. 2) I’m in the process of getting
a meeting place for the first of a series of information/organization
meetings to put Sands College together. The meeting will be in the
evening on either September 20 or 27. Look for the announcement
within the next week. </span>
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-30728301318834284272014-05-19T15:55:00.000-07:002014-05-19T15:55:06.307-07:00Square Pegs, Solutions, Part 4
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“…it is the integrity and
‘gathering power’ of the pine tree that draws together language,
science, mathematics, social studies, art, history, mythology, and on
and on…This pine tree possesses…question[s]…It draws our
attention…It evokes…It stands before us as a sign…From the pine
tree, learn of the pine tree. But, also from the pine tree, learn of
ourselves...this pine tree comes forward as the nesting point of a
vast interconnecting network of relationships and it is the integrity
of such a network which bestows integrity on the integrated
curriculum.” (David W. Jardine, “On the Integrity of Things:
Ecopedagogical Reflections on the Integrated Curriculum”, in
“Current Concepts of Core Curriculum” from the National
Association for Core Curriculum, p. 34) As the pine tree stands as a
nesting point so also do things like tidal pools, cities, or spider
webs and concepts like luminescence, alienation, or metaphor. These
“themes” framing the curriculum stand as the immediate causes for
secondary education inquiry: students would select from a community
generated list one theme at any one time from which to develop a
research question to concentrate inquiry. Early college students
would also use a thematic curriculum but unlike the individuality of
secondary education project study, early college study would be
collective in seminars within a course structure equivalent to the
rest of higher education and meant to satisfy common core university
requirements.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The themes subject to seminar study are
to be called “Great Questions”. An example of a Great Question
might be, “What is the Eleventh Dimension?” This Great Question
would examine the concepts of space from Euclidean to the mutliverse
of String Theory. A second could be, “What is Nature?” This
traces the changes in understanding from Aristotle to Einstein to
present Gaian ecology. Taken together, Great Questions, emerging as
a direct expression of the propriety, interest and necessity of the
early college community itself, would launch <span lang="en">explorations
into the history, science, literature, sociology, political economies
and philosophies of periods from Classical to Modern</span>. Not to
worry! Our older adolescent Square Pegs can do well with such heavy
intellectual lifting. Leon Botstein, President of Bard College,
argues in <u>Jefferson’s Children</u> that youngsters between the
ages of sixteen and eighteen have reached a maturity where they need
this kind of stimulation and challenge. Indeed, one witnesses such
successful adolescent academic engagement in Simons Rock College of
Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and in Bard High School
Early College here in New York.
</div>
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Feedback: 1) I’ve said to some that
Fort Tilden could host these programs. I’ve since learned Gateway
will only agree to a public school open to all NYC children. It
becomes clear a venture meant to be a private not-for-profit, non-BPC
affiliated endeavor, serving the children of the three communities of
the Breezy Point Cooperative with the possibility of enrolling
additional children from Neponsit and Belle Harbor cannot be at Fort
Tilden. 2) There is a powerful resistance in the Coop to having any
school here, I’ve learned. To those folks I plead: the youngsters
in need in our three communities ought not to be denied their lives
because there are no alternatives for them. And the plain, simple
fact is that there are no suitable, alternative schools on the
Peninsula, or in the rest of NYC for that matter! We pride ourselves
as a community caring for its children, as most families are here to
raise their children within the safety provided here. Then I say,
let us demonstrate that commitment to their safety by dissolving the
resistance in favor of the proactive support our children need.
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-42126252420818546362014-05-19T15:52:00.002-07:002014-05-19T15:52:34.641-07:00Square Pegs, Solutions, Part 3
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“The recovery time is proportionate
to the hatred their last school gave them.”, A.S. Neil said on page
5 in his 1960 seminal book, <u>Summerhill</u>. This is true enough
for our youngest square pegs, but it hits the center of the bull’s
eye for our adolescents. Indeed, angry teenagers forced to accept
academic work behave through their madness, as we have seen. Even
placed in a special education class or transferred into another
school, they continue to sabotage their own success. Thus, placing
these angry youngsters directly into the academics of the scholastic
program to be highlighted in this and the next article, which means
to take bright, troubled adolescents through a combined high school
and junior college experience with a diploma and an Associate‘s
degree earned at the same time, without providing a time for healing,
of taking off the pressure, would set these youngsters and the
scholastic program itself for sure failure. These older children,
like their younger brothers and sisters, need a time to reset their
emotional and academic readiness. A mixed age, responsibility based
outdoor education cooperative community program for age’s 12 and up
would through team, trust and community building in outdoor
activities such as camping, hiking and backpacking, greatly resolve
feelings of failure and self-loathing, replacing them with growing
feelings of success and self-worth, and would replace the
internalized, oppressive norms of the uniform school with those of an
empowering, responsibility based cooperative community culture
preparing them for successful secondary academic study. More,
working closely with each youngster would offer staff opportunities
to understand the unique emotional and learning characteristics of
each student and would enable them to assist in any remedial work
necessary.</div>
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Youngsters when feeling confident and
empowered would, then, move themselves into an ungraded,
responsibility based, cooperative community secondary education
academic program. This program would integrate the received
knowledge coming from written tradition, Western and Eastern, into
six general studies areas, Science, History, Letters, Arts,
Performance and Foreign Language Arts, and place each branch of
knowledge into a cooperative learning lab setting for concentrated
study in the desired area. Intellectual curiosity and the natural
differences in abilities, interests and communication style would
drive student engagement with the learned world and participation in
the learning labs rather than that of uniform, mandated curriculum
and subject class assignments. Inquiry Project Based Learning and
Performance Assessment would be used exclusively by students to
acquire interdisciplinary skills and content knowledge. Projects
would be developed, implemented and evaluated in the learning labs
where group members act together to achieve individual project
objectives. All students would have instructional staff mentors
thoroughly versed in the cooperative, responsibility based academics
of the secondary education program and in the unique cognitive styles
of the school’s population to assist in setting and achieving
personal and academic goals. And like their younger colleagues these
youngsters would in community with staff take governance
responsibility deciding such policy as project performance standards,
or requirements for graduating secondary education students into the
early college, or community norms and methods dealing with their
violation. Indeed, this healing and empowering secondary education
academic community is desperately needed for our bright teenage
square pegs. Look for an
Information/Organization Meeting date coming soon to establish here
the primary program and the secondary education early college as real
brick and mortar.</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-46779594126894924962014-05-19T15:50:00.000-07:002014-05-19T15:50:12.655-07:00Square Pegs, Solutions, Part 2
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No parent is sure if their child will
be turned into a square peg when kindergarten begins, although
pre-school might give indications. But, if the uniform elementary
school does its damage, then an immediate need arises for the child
to be transferred into a learning environment re-setting emotional
and academic foundations, restoring to the child his natural
instincts to take responsibility for learning and his trust in his
own way of knowing.<b> </b>An ungraded, open classroom,
responsibility based learning community for children age’s five to
eleven is well suited to do all that for our square pegs. And it
fully satisfies the learning environment criteria set down last week.
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First, it must be acknowledged that
emotional readiness to accept a learning task comes well before the
task. Forcing a task when a child feels angry, powerless or stupid,
as do our square pegs, just frightens, discourages and deepens
helplessness and failure. Formal learning re-setting emotional
readiness to learn must provide a time for healing, a time of taking
off the pressure, of reassurance, as in time our children will gain
the energy and the courage to accept any task. As sustained,
self-selected imaginative play is the best means of taking off the
pressure, of providing a healing time, the open classroom,
accordingly, would provide suitable spaces with lots of materials
like Lincoln Logs and blocks, games and puzzles, sand and water
tables, costumes and theatrical makeup, paints and crayons,
newsprint and paper, books and magazines, etc. There would be
performance spaces and kitchens, store/home props and appliances.
There would also be indoor/outdoor playgrounds. Children would engage
in imaginative activity, individual or group, organized or ad hoc,
self or staff initiated, for as long as they wish. Although
principally intended to re-set emotional readiness these activities
re-set academic readiness as well in that such activities as block
building, cooking/baking, exchanging play currency, drawing/painting,
acting, even shooting baskets, tap applications in Geometry,
Arithmetic Functions, Measurement, Chemistry, Physics, Language,
among others, providing children an experiential base from which to
build their academics. Children feeling ready would, then, engage
the resources of the Academic Stations which would center on the
learning skills of Literacy, Language and Calculation and in subjects
of Earth, Space and Life Sciences, History and Geography. Teachers
working closely with each child would help each develop readiness and
academic goals.
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Although the course of elementary study
would be individualized to each child, as each engages the open
classroom through his distinctive interests, abilities and learning
styles, a common goal for all would be the development of competency
in receiving, processing and communicating written, oral, graphic and
numerical information re-setting academic readiness for secondary
education. These competencies would emerge through a need to gain
additional tools to explore more of the academic resource rich open
classroom than through mandated mastery on or before a time or an age
certain. And, finally, children have the capacity to fully
participate in school governance and along with staff make policy for
their community. Community norms as well as methods dealing with
their violation, or graduation requirements allowing youngsters to
pass out from the primary program are examples of policy items
determined by staff and students together. Indeed, this healing and
empowering primary school environment is desperately needed for our
youngest square pegs.
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-69297675550020754042014-05-19T15:47:00.001-07:002014-05-19T15:47:15.390-07:00Square Pegs: Searching for Solutions, Part 1
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Valuing our square pegs in who they
are, looking to them in how they engage the school world, gives us
the criteria for evaluating any learning environment meant for them
to grow healthy and successful. Remember, the square pegs profiled,
Charlie, David, Christopher and Jonathan, were all angry to the point
of madness, very bright and willing to take responsibility for their
own learning and the methods to learn and in possession of different
ways of learning-otherwise called Learning Disabilities. Therefore,
any appropriate environment should place the highest priority on
emotional healing and wellness, fully allow for the differences among
children and permit them to grow in their own way and in their own
time, provide the greatest exercise of personal responsibility for
what they learn and how it is learned, make available abundant
intellectual resources and widest possibilities of companionship
sparking creative engagement of the academic world, and offer the
guidance, the understanding and the help to see to each child’s
ability to achieve in his and her own way.</div>
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The purpose of this five part series,
Searching for Solutions, is to look across the education field
uncovering and reporting on learning environments meeting the
criteria. The odd thing about this search is to have discovered that
every one of the solutions to the challenges of our square pegs is in
use in one school or another. So, I’ve taught in the kindergarten
Open Classrooms and the mixed grade elementary classes of the
Berkshire Hills Regional School District in southwest Massachusetts.
I’ve seen enhanced student achievement in project based learning
and in performance assessment through the advocacy and the practice
of the schools of the New York Performance Standards Consortium and
of the Big Picture Company. I’ve found effective integrative
curriculum organization from the National Association for Core
Curriculum. I’ve witnessed first hand the power of Simons Rock
College of Bard to successfully challenge the minds of adolescents in
their middle teens. I’ve observed play therapy’s ability to
restore mental health to young children and Aspen Education Group’s
Wilderness Programs to transform at risk teens.
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The fly in the ointment, sort to speak,
is that the solutions the series will spotlight are spread over many
different schools in places other than Rockaway. Actually there are
no schools taking whole any of these empowering environments on the
Peninsula, in Southern Queens or in the rest of New York City. The
schools closest to creating like learning environments are the
private Brooklyn Free School, which is responsibility based, and the
public Bard High School Early College in Manhattan which combines
high school and junior college study. But even these schools
implement only aspects as well, as the Brooklyn Free School accords
light attention to intellectual development and Bard High School
Early College, quite uniform, severely limits responsibility. So, in
the end the solutions the series outlines at present exist out of
reach of our children and do not a bit of good for our square pegs.
But I’d like you to wonder what if all these solutions were in one
place, in one school, right here for our children. Just imagine the
lives made whole, the happiness and the eventual success in life
brought to our children now being made mad by the uniform school.</div>
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As usual, comments are encouraged and
can be e-mailed to me at <a href="mailto:ljfayhee@gmail.com">ljfayhee@gmail.com</a>.</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-68182406022338889012014-05-19T15:44:00.000-07:002014-05-19T15:44:41.596-07:00Square Pegs, Part 6
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(Author’s note: This is the final
part in the series, Square Pegs: Education’s Canaries in the Coal
Mine. Next week begins a new series, Square Pegs: Searching for
Solutions.)</div>
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Fierce anger turned inward is one of
many characteristics our square pegs Charlie, David, Christopher and
Jonathan share. The astonishing thing about these youngsters, whose
stories I’ve told these last four weeks and who I’ve taken to
represent a whole class of square pegs, is that they are really good
kids. It is nearly impossible for them to physically hurt other
people, yet they need to strike out, to vent their anger. So, they
turn the anger on themselves. But the uniform school cares not a bit
for their mental health as it continually forces them to comply with
the same demands making them mad in the first place. These very
bright children are highly capable of focusing their great
intelligence when given the opportunity do so. But, they must abide
by the needs of the uniform school which obliges them to dumb
themselves down, to go along with content beneath their native
insight and with the pace of instruction slowed to a crawl. I mean,
in how many ways and how many times can a child be called stupid
before he believes it and hates himself for being defective. And
this self-hate leads, as always, to self-destruction.
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Self-motivation is another common
characteristic of these youngsters. They possess a powerful
instinctive desire to know about every thing around them and to take
responsibility for what they need and want to learn and for the means
by which to learn. But the uniform school dictates outcomes and
methods, denying these youngsters have any innate passion to know or
any ability to make good learning decisions and to acquire the skills
necessary to follow through to achieve learning goals without
constant coercion from teachers, principals and family. Again, the
denial of having value in who they are is taken personally as a
positive judgment of their worthlessness.</div>
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Not all but most square pegs have
“Learning Disabilities”, “disorders” labeled Dyslexia,
Disgraphia, Discalculia, Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention
Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder. These are not learning disorders, I
say, as these bright youngsters do in fact learn and learn well, but
the way they learn is at odds with the uniform school’s way of
needing youngsters to be. These afflictions should be refocused onto
schooling placing the emphasis where it belongs and relabeled as
“Uniform Schooling Disabilities”.</div>
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In the end, these square pegs are at
biological odds with the school’s one way of demanding them to be.
And if you think these angry, self-destructive children are only from
Arverne or Far Rockaway, I urge you to think again. They are here;
they are our sons and daughters, our kith and kin. Or if you think
all these kids need is “discipline”, or the moxy to suck it up, I
urge you to also think again. In fact these children are given all
the discipline adults can put on them and yet they return to the
classroom every day-if they are not courageous than no one is. The
uniformity of schooling and the enormous force exerted by teachers,
principals and family on children to comply are destroying young
lives, not the lack of discipline or fortitude. There is a desperate
need for change, for formal learning allowing these children to
develop in their own way.</div>
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</div>
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Next series of Square Pegs will explore
how our bright, angry children can find healing and schooling
success. Comments encouraged; e-mail at <span style="color: blue;"><u><a href="mailto:ljfayhee@gmail.com">ljfayhee@gmail.com</a></u></span>.
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-58168379924861753002014-05-19T15:41:00.004-07:002014-05-19T15:41:33.882-07:00Square Pegs, Part 5
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Jonathan is the hardest square peg
about whom I will write as his tragic story strikes very close to
home. He was placed in a special education class because the
administrators of his high school couldn’t figure out what to do
with him. Everyone agreed he was very bright. But his long purple
hair, his black, Johnny Cash wardrobe, and his penchant for being
non-compliant and disruptive demonstrated to these folks an outright
defiance of the uniform school and an adolescent in need of
discipline. I caught up with Jonathan when he was in the tenth
grade. Over our time together he told me of his grade school
experiences which were horribly familiar.</div>
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Printing and scripting were very
painful, he said. Homework, almost all writing, took an average of
six hours nightly. He said he continually had poor grades as all
tests demanded hand writing. Teachers continually scolded him, and
complained to his parents, about his “laziness”. He also said
teachers kept on telling him he was dumb for being unable to read
aloud. He read silently with excellent comprehension but was always
placed in the slowest readers’ groups. Even middle school teachers
considered him a slow reader because he stumbled through reading
aloud, in spite of the fact, as he pointed out, that many of his
seventh and eighth grade classmates had him to thank for passing
their English tests without having read the books: he said he read
the books at home passing along over the phone a daily in-depth
synopsis to each classmate calling.
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He complained about the boredom of
elementary school and the trouble he got into. He said he would
complete enough of in-class assignments to let him know he knew the
lessons. Then, he would want to do other things. Teachers would
refuse him additional things to do until he “finished” his
assigned work. He would roam the room or drum on his desk or talk
with classmates instead of returning to the assignments. Teachers
scolded him into returning to his seat or ceasing drumming or being
quiet, but no matter the volume of voice he refused to return to his
work hearing from teachers an implicit judgment of being stupid and
in need of relearning lessons. One day in first grade, he said
angrily, he became so bored he immediately switched from the spelling
drill and practice the teacher required the class to be doing to
working in his math workbook. He said at the time he liked Math. He
finished the remaining pages, well over half the book! The teacher
finally discovered the project. <b>She had him erase all he had done
from the end of the book to the place where the class had left off.
She scolded him loudly in front of the class saying she had not given
him permission to go beyond the class nor had she given him
permission to do something other than what the rest of the class was
doing! </b>This same teacher, he bitterly reported, couldn’t
abide by his way of using his fingers to get correct math answers:
she kept on calling it “baby” and scolded him for it. Thus, he
said, by the middle of first grade his pleasure in Math was destroyed
and he had begun a long resistance to doing math correctly. He had
many more such stories.
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Jonathan arrived at high school broken
and beaten. He blamed himself, after all the uniform school
demonstrated to him how stupid he was for all his years in school.
Yet, he knew deep down he was very bright and capable and the way he
was treated since the first grade was very hurtful and wrong. He
turned to alcohol, marijuana and cocaine to cope with the inner
conflict and its awful pain, and they eventually destroyed his brain
turning him psychotic, a state within which he must live for the rest
of his life.</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094576664500240591.post-79834770740250348062014-05-19T15:39:00.002-07:002014-05-19T15:39:33.436-07:00Square Pegs, Part 4
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Charlie, our square peg from last week,
used non-compliance to demonstrate how he felt being out of place.
His grades suffered dramatically. Unresolved grievances led him in a
downward grade spiral. He certainly was bright enough but his
growing madness compelled him to stop trying. David, on the other
hand, was growing as mad but as an authentic genius he always came
away with good grades. Actually, he drove his middle school teachers
nuts as his intelligence, grades, charm and good looks made it
difficult for them to punish him for his antics.
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David and I started our friendship at
the start of his seventh grade. Conversations on the finer points
of history, or politics, or media, with the young collegiate adults I
taught were fully energizing and enjoyable. However, as you might
expect, it is very difficult to have that level of conversation with
seventh graders. But, David brought that kind of energy and
enjoyment to our talks. The disturbing fact was that most of time
when he was talking I was instructing the whole class. Shortly after
the period started, he would rise from his seat and slowly tour the
classroom making his way in a grand circular fashion. He would stop
to stare out a window but for only a moment, then he was on the move,
again. He would engage me in conversation during these sojourns. We
had many chats outside the classroom, but unfortunately his favorite
moment for conversation was about ten minutes into a lesson.</div>
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When he saw he couldn’t stop
instruction he would quietly leave the classroom, always without
permission. He roamed the halls landing in either the computer lab
or the library-in this school they were located one next to the
other. There he would make himself busy with whatever he chose. He
was quiet and well behaved disturbing no one. He would return a
minute before the bell rang to collect his belongings.</div>
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David had disgraphia, an inability to
write by hand. His hand writing was painfully slow. He had
developed an aural compensation so all he had to do was listen for a
minute to know the intent of instruction for the day, and his genius
allowed him to quickly learn the content of that lesson. As it
turned out no one took seriously his troubled hand writing because
there is this crazy notion in some of the education profession which
believes that if you’re intelligent you have no problems as
problems come only to those less gifted. In the end David’s antics
were an avoidance technique to cover his hand writing deficit. For
me, anytime I needed him to write I excused him to the computer lab,
where he was going anyway, to do his composing on the computer.
More, exams I gave which required writing were given orally and, of
course, he “Aced” them all.
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David continued his antics in the
eighth grade but his genius did little to protect him when it came to
the eighth grade state tests which he passed, barely, and protected
him no longer as he moved into the uniform high school where daily
full period attendance and serious pen and paper testing trumped all
need for computer lab time and oral examination. I moved on from
the school as David was in the middle of ninth grade. I saw he was
on the verge of either dropping out or of being severely punished for
his continued avoidance of being in the classroom and for his
continued inability to write by hand.
</div>
Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263821284911296161noreply@blogger.com0