Join us for Ruckus Parade!Club and Honk!TX in March

Caitlin Macklin is back on the blog with a cool invitation for your kids. Caitlin plays many roles in the Austin community, including those of founder and teacher at Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse, trombone player in marching bands, parade enthusiast, and, most recently, new mom!

Here at Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse, we’re gearing up for Parade!Club 2015, and you’re invited! This will be our third year to put out the call for families with children of all ages to be part of the Honk!TX excitement. Come march in the parade with us!

Honk!TX is one of our favorite Austin festivals. Twenty-some community brass bands descend on the neighborhoods around town to play for free! Come out and participate in the transformation of our public places into joyous celebrations of community and music.

This year we are the Ruckus Parade!Club. Since we moved off 9th Street last June, we have become the Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse, aka RRCS, which we pronounce “Ruckus”! See below for more about the Schoolhouse name.)

To join the Ruckus Parade!Club, follow our Vimeo channel and like us on facebook so you will not miss any of our video installments or Club announcements. Your family prepares for the big day at home by making cool costumes and parade crafts (our colors are RAINBOW, so be as colorful as you can!), and learning the parade songs we will sing and dance to.

Another way to participate is the Parade!Club Open Shop. The illustrious Austin Tinkering School will be hosting this crafternoon on Sunday, March 8, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Bring raw materials to make your own costume, musical instrument, flag, or ribbon dancer. Participate in the creation of giant street puppets. Play games and get to know other families. RSVP here. It will be a blast!

Then join the Club for PARADE DAY on Sunday, March 29, 2015, at Pan Am Park! Line up at 11:00 a.m. sharp; parade rolls at 12 noon. Show up in your hand-crafted finery ready for a jaunt through East Austin led by the combined forces of the Yes Ma’am Brass Band and the Hey Lolly Brass Band. So fun!

WHO:  Parents with kids of all ages
WHAT:  Ruckus Parade!Club: make costumes / crafts to be in the Honk!TX Parade
WHERE:  Pan Am Park
WHEN:  Sunday March 29th, 2015 line up at 11am sharp, parade leaves at 12noon
WHY:  Reclaim public space for joy and music!

This call is open to one and all, so pass the word along to anyone you want to dance in the streets with. YOUR KIDS are the main source of creativity for this spectacle, so go all out! Get together with friends for a Vimeo watching party, host a costume crafternoon for your school, or come up with dance routines to the songs with some neighborhood kids.

Parents need to accompany their children during this family event; strollers and wagons are welcome to assist little legs. The parade is a mile and a half long or so—that’s about two hours.

More about the Schoolhouse

Last June, we said goodbye to our original East Austin home on 9th Street and loaded up bikes, trikes, and trailers to relocate the Schoolhouse. In our new spot at 3310 Red River, we’ve become Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse! We are sharing the space with the incredible and creative after-school and summer camp program Spilled Milk Social Club. That means we are better able meet the needs of working families by offering on-site after care. We already strive to keep tuition as low and accessible as possible. We are excited to have plenty of room to grow in this beautiful building, and we look forward to this new chapter in the life of our learning community.

You may have noticed the spelling of our new name. We do embrace methods that are a departure from the traditional schooling model, though we wish that learning through direct experience, participating in community democracy, and being led by the innate curiosity of children were not radical ideas. However, we’ve adopted the biology term for our appellation:

rad·i·cle noun \ˈra-di-kəl\
1: the smallest part of the seed that becomes the root.

One of the things this means to us is that we guide our students to seek within to discover their passions, talents, gifts, and interests during Self-directed Learning. If you’d like to find out more, we’d love to show you around during a parent tour, happening every Wednesday until March and alternate Wednesdays after.

See you in the streets!

Caitlin Macklin

Connecting Texas children with nature

Johnnie Smith, Conservation Education Manager at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, joins us on the blog to let you know about three great programs that help students, educators, and families learn about nature firsthand.

Texas Children in Nature

Texas Children in Nature is a network of more than 300 partners from around the state who are dedicated to connecting all Texas children and their families with nature to be healthier, happier, and smarter. TCiN reaches the many diverse Texas communities through regional collaboratives that bring together nonprofits, government agencies, businesses, and individuals to focus on the issues and solutions that are relevant to them.

Through our unified messaging, our partners help raise awareness about why kids need nature and how everyone benefits when children and families spend more time outside. No one agency or organization can get every single child outside—but together we can! In 2013 we conducted a survey of our partners; the 28 percent who responded reported serving almost 4 million youth with their outdoor programs and events. 

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children and teens today spend between 7 and 11 waking hours per day indoors, isolated, and with media. You can help stem the tide of nature deficit disorder and create real solutions to get kids plugged into nature. Find your regional leaders at TCiN! 

Project WILD

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department sponsors a suite of Project WILD programs, each offering a special iteration of this outstanding, hands-on approach to learning. Project WILD is a kindergarten through 12th grade environmental and conservation education program emphasizing awareness, appreciation, and understanding of wildlife and natural resources. It is interdisciplinary and supplementary and can be used to teach basic skills in science, social studies, language arts, math, art, music, and physical education.

TPWD offers Project WILD through hands-on workshops for educators. With an unbiased approach to basic wildlife management practices, Project WILD

• teaches young people how to think about wildlife, not what to think;
• provides a set of fun, hands-on, easy-to-use educational activities;
• trains teachers and youth group leaders in an outstanding six-hour, hands-on workshop;
• includes helpful, scientific background information with all activities;
• incorporates powerful techniques and methods for teaching problem-solving and decision-making skills; and
• is kid-tested and teacher-approved!

Saving Water for Wildlife

Texans know about drought. What they may not know is that, due to global weather patterns, the chances are high for another 10 to 15 years of persistent dry weather. Our water habits must change.

Wildlife needs clean, fresh water in the habitat, in seasonally appropriate amounts. Whether that habitat be upland, forest, riparian, subterranean, wetland, or estuarine, wildlife will not survive without it. While terrestrial species require water for sustenance and for the vegetation that supports the food web, aquatic species rely on water not only for these needs but for completion of their life cycle as well.

Everything we do on public and private lands affects our natural environment, directly or indirectly. Unlike plants and animals, however, we can choose a role that determines our impact. Texas Parks and Wildlife has put together a special website with resources to help prepare both children and adults for informed, effective action in saving water for wildlife. Every positive step you take helps us all.

Johnnie E. Smith

A new home for Austin Tinkering School!

Kami Wilt runs both the annual Austin Mini Maker Faire and the year-round Austin Tinkering School, where there are big changes afoot. Kami joins us on the blog today to share the good news.

Kami Wilt at Austin Tinkering School

As some of you may know, Austin Tinkering School recently ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to create a kid-friendly, community-oriented, centrally located Makerspace. A space like this doesn't exist in Austin yet, and it seems necessary (and awesome!) for a growing, vibrant, Maker city like Austin.

Lucky for us, the Kickstarter was a success, and we were able to raise $23,000! After months of looking and, truthfully, feeling a little worried that even with that handsome chunk of change we might not find a place that met our needs, we managed to secure a fantastic spot that is going to allow us to bring many more great tinkering experiences and adventures to kids and adults than we have before.

Introducing the new Austin Tinkering School:

1122 Airport Blvd.

This place is ideally located in East Austin and is just two minutes away from Hausbar Urban Farm, Canopy, Blue Genie, Splinter Group, a playground at Govalle Elementary, and scads of awesome East Side artists and artisans we can go visit whenever we want. It has a HUGE backyard! It also has AIR CONDITIONING! I'll tell you, $23,000 sounds like a lot and it definitely is, but when you start looking at places, you realize you might have to give up on some things, like temperature control or an easy-to-get-to location.

And since we didn't know how long it was going to take us to find a new place, we decided to build a nice new outdoor workshop at Austin EcoSchool, so now we have a South Austin hub as well! We offer a Friday program there for homeschoolers and alterna-schoolers, and will be running summer camps all summer long at both locations, along with lots of great classes and workshops for kids and adults.

​2015 is a brand spankin’ new year with so many tinkering adventures ahead! Can’t wait to have you all over to the new digs. Check us out at austintinkeringschool.com.

Kami Wilt

Celebrating informal science education in Texas

Emily Weerts has been an educator and program manager for museums, preschools, special education classrooms, and afterschool classes. She has been a member of the Informal Science Education Association of Texas (ISEA) since 2011 and currently serves on its board of directors. Emily is passionate about connecting with fellow educators and believes that great learning opportunities can happen anywhere.

Frank Oppenheimer, the visionary founder of San Francisco’s Exploratorium, once noted that “no one ever flunked a museum.” As a lifelong learner, I find the sentiment resonates with me—there are countless venues rich with educational opportunities, many that celebrate a learner-driven, informal approach to attaining new knowledge.

The field of science is particularly rich with informal venues; from museums to zoos, from state parks to aquariums, there are many science-rich institutions welcoming individuals, families, and classes interested in self-directed learning experiences. The Informal Science Education Association of Texas (ISEA) was founded in 1997 to support partnerships among informal and formal science educators to improve science education in Texas.

ISEA Texas defines informal science education as providing unique learning environments that increase appreciation and understanding of science, mathematics, and technology and their applications through voluntary and often self-directed experiences for individuals of all ages and backgrounds. Those interested in alternative schooling and inspiring learning experiences will relate deeply to the educators and professionals brought together by ISEA.

The firepit at Sky Ranch, venue for this year’s ISEA Texas conference

ISEA's annual conference will be held February 18–20 at Sky Ranch in Van, Texas. This year's conference theme is “Creating Connections: Building the Future,” and Dr. Gerald Liberman, PhD, will be delivering a keynote address focused on designing and implementing successful environmental education programs. As a museum educator I've had the pleasure of attending three previous conferences, and I always gain a great deal from the experience. As the name might suggest, the ISEA conference experience is informal and friendly; topics are accessible and participants are extremely welcoming. Through ISEA, I've connected with other educators, learned new skills, and talked late into the night about new approaches to education.

This year’s ISEA conference features a number of sessions that will be of interest to members of the alternative education community. Several focus on creating successful partnerships between educational groups and their communities. Gina Higby from UT will teach workshop participants how to engage diverse audiences in STEM activities through a parachute design class. Dr. Finkelstein and Dr. Silverman from the McDonald Observatory will overview activities about stars and galaxies and advise on how to successfully incorporate astronomy content into science curricula. There's even a session for fearful grant writers; in “It Was a Dark and Stormy Grant Application,” author and educator Christina Soontornvat will apply tools from fiction to write more successful grants.

Informal science educators delving into hands-on activities at a past ISEA conference

The ISEA conference always features an incredible silent auction, with participating museums, zoos, aquariums, parks, and educators donating great swag to support scholarships for the conference. This year’s attendees can opt in to participate in a pre-conference workshop focused on crafting engaging social media or attend a post-conference field trip to the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center. More information about the conference, including registration and a scholarship application, can be found here. Hope to see some of you there!

Emily Weerts

How do children as young as three learn in three languages?

Sharon Munroe serves as outreach coordinator at Austin International School, where her own children happily learn in three languages. In this guest post she explains how the school’s unusual model works.

It is possible for young children to be educated in three languages, even if they have only spoken their native language prior to starting school. In fact, this is both the philosophy and the practice at a unique preschool and primary school called Austin International School located in Northwest Austin. I have seen it myself, both as a parent of young children and now working at the school on the outreach team.

AIS began like many international schools around the world. Founded in 2001 by French nationals seeking to keep their own children immersed in French language and culture during their time in Austin, the school has evolved into one serving both local families and those from as many as 20 different countries, making a very diverse community of learners. Students from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds learn in French, English, and Spanish through immersion with native speakers who are experienced teachers. There is no language prerequisite for entering pre-kindergarten or kindergarten at Austin International School.

What makes the school unique is less readily apparent in the published curriculum than in the way it is delivered and in classroom interactions. Looking around on any given school day, I can see that it is happening:

• I walk into a Petite Section classroom designed for three-year-olds, and they are singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” in English.
• Four-year-olds down the hall are painting outlines of bodies, drawing in the heart and lungs using Spanish vocabulary.
• Kindergartners are dancing with their native French-speaking teacher in the multipurpose room.
• Fourth graders in the Science Lab are having a lesson in French about organs and how the heart and lungs work in humans.

The curriculum is not the juxtaposition of three curricula (one French, one English, and one Spanish); instead, it is one unified curriculum in three languages that includes all subjects. It builds on the core learning from year to year, based on the French Baccalaureate curriculum.

In the unit of inquiry on the human body, all students in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten learn vocabulary and the science behind their bodies, incorporating art and music in their classroom as well as physical education instruction. Over three weeks, they learn all of the age-appropriate information from three teachers who come to their classroom on a rotating basis throughout the week. The seamless delivery of the unit allows a dialogue among cultures and languages and develops critical thinking skills. Yes, it happens in children as young as three.

The international faculty leads by example by always working collaboratively. For a typical kindergarten class, a team with a teacher from the United States, France, and Mexico are a classroom team. Each teacher brings his or her personal background, culture, and professional expertise to deliver the best learning experience possible.

Each week when school is in session, they spend at least three hours as a teaching team, planning the units of inquiry and daily lessons and discussing both the needs of the class overall and of individual students. Where one child may need extra support in one language that is new to him, the same child may need to challenge his vocabulary in his native language.

“Fundamental language skills develop in all three languages simultaneously; however, some skills are language specific. Communication between teachers is critical to ensure that students are successful and that we meet their needs in each language,” according to Carol Shay, who joined the first grade teaching team in 2012 after many years in Austin’s public schools.

An assistant teacher helps and nurtures the children alongside each team of three classroom teachers. These vital staff members support the children’s needs both in the classroom and on the playground. Teacher-student ratios are intentionally low to provide support to all learners from preschool through fifth grade.

Many young children are ready to learn at age three in a full-day school environment. They are able to learn a great deal from their classmates and teachers; they see and hear the differences among their schoolmates, who come from many different countries but all now live in Austin, a microcosm of the world. This is the start to their global citizenship.

Austin International School graduates go on to many of the area’s top middle schools—public, charter, and private—and thrive in all settings. One recent graduate, David, who began in kindergarten with no prior background in language or culture beyond his own (as an English-speaking American), has been recognized as a “connector” and won a sixth grade leadership award at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School. Other students are learning a fourth language and excelling in advanced math and science. They are well-rounded young people. Most come back weekly for the Alumni Club activities held on campus.

I have seen the progress of the school, the students in general, and my own children over the past four years. Austin International School develops global citizens and critical thinkers.

For more information, please visit austininternationalschool.org or contact me at outreach@austininternationalschool.org.

Sharon V. Munroe

Tips for outdoor exploration with young children

Michelle Carbone is the youth programs coordinator and an instructor at Earth Native Wilderness School. She also contributes to the Kids in Nature Blog, where an earlier version of this post originally appeared. Thanks for sharing your expertise with Alt Ed Austin’s readers, Michelle!

It’s taken time for me to get used to some aspects of outdoor education. Teaching children to use knives and make fire, as well as hiking with preschoolers (we really are hiking, not just walking), have been some sources of apprehension. But each day, each moment I’m with these children, I not only realize anew how capable they are but also discover more ways to help ensure their safety.

Before the first tools, butter knives, were even handed out in a recent class, we discussed knife safety. We explained how knives are tools, not toys; that using knives is a privilege, not a right. We then spent a whole day practicing carving soap and apples with butter knives.

They all had to earn knife certification, where they proved to an instructor that not only could they regurgitate the information, but they could also explain what it meant to them in their own words, while demonstrating with a butter knife and a stick. Then they were able to use the fixed-blade steel knives. We gave them specific tasks, like carve the tip into a square, or remove all the bark. Soon they were ready to learn different skills, such as how to get rid of knots on the sides of sticks, or how to make a “flower” out of a stick.

I was with that same group of students in a later class, and they were carving pumpkins with knives—not the typical carving knife set you buy for $3.99 at Target, but real, stainless steel knives with a fixed blade. One of the children was celebrating his sixth birthday. It. Was. Amazing. The level of focus, care, and observance of safety rules was astounding.

We have a few basic rules at Earth Native; we call them the ABCs of carving, and the children follow them to a T. They even help one another, telling fellow students if they are too close to them while they are carving, or reminding others to carve away from themselves.

A couple of weeks ago, at the preschool program I teach, we went on a hike. It was probably half a mile—some uphill, some climbing over rocks, some down rocks. Before we came to a hill, I would warn them and suggest some options for safe travel. As they climbed, I commented on how they did, using positive reinforcement. I would say, “I like how (name) is using both their feet AND hands to get down the rocks,” or “Way to sit on your bottom and scoot down this slope!” And they did great. I also said that whenever we see poison ivy, we should turn to the person behind us, point to it, and say “Poison ivy, pass it on!” I’ve also called it “P.I.” in other classes, and the kids just love to point it out because it has a cool nickname.

To sum up, I recommend trying these ideas to help create safer and more positive outdoor explorations for you and your child:

• clear guidelines (especially with knives)
• options for success (different ways to climb up and down rocks)
• positive reinforcement (try to be specific with your comments)
• nature games (for example, Who can spot the most P.I.?)

Best of luck, and happy exploring!

Michelle Carbone