Big learning in miniature

Every Thursday students at the Austin EcoSchool play the Game of Village, a complex, thoughtfully structured, open-ended game in which “children explore the world at large by creating a world in miniature.” Throughout the school year, they establish and run a society, take on individual jobs, and work together to form a government; together they solve problems major and minor— all on a scale of 1:24.

The geographic setting and time period change each school year. This year the game has taken place in ancient Egypt, under the tough scrutiny of Queen Cleopatra and her Roman spies. The Villagers—tiny figures called Peeps that the students create, complete with well-developed personalities, social and economic roles, and personal histories—spend their time building and maintaining homes, businesses, and public institutions. In the process, the students learn heaps of history, economics, physics, math, art, writing, and many practical life skills.

A Peep: three inches of personality and power.

When I visited the school one Thursday morning earlier this semester, it was buzzing with activity. Students were applying for positions as town crier and managers of the trading post, bank, and post office. Outgoing managers were checking references of applicants and preparing to train the new employees in systems they’d developed over the course of the previous semester. Architects and engineers were finalizing construction plans for a mummification temple. An accounting team was processing invoices, issuing paychecks, and auditing the bank.

I asked one young accountant, a twelve-year-old named Holland, what she liked about the game and her (Peep’s) role in it. “Well, I don’t know any other kids my age who know how to balance a checkbook,” she said. With a smile of satisfaction, she added, “I also know how to make a spreadsheet.”

Cheryl Kruckeberg, the school’s director, serves with other faculty members as one of the Village Commissioners who periodically “squeeze the game” by scheming behind the scenes to create new situations or problems to be addressed. For example, in the early spring they nudged the Villagers along in their construction projects with a letter from Cleopatra announcing an imminent visit. “That lit a fire under them!” she said. The students finished most of their buildings before the royal visit in hopes that the queen would look upon their village with favor.

Cheryl said that the Game of Village “fits in with everything else the school is about”: making learning natural, relevant, and lasting through a cross-disciplinary and theme-based curriculum that empowers students to realize their own personal goals. Through extended play, students learn real-life lessons—many of them about themselves. After spending a semester as a bank clerk, one student may gain the skills and confidence to apply for the bank manager position next time. Another student doing the same job may experience that all-too-common sensation of being trapped in a demanding job with little room for creativity. Both lessons are equally valuable. As Cheryl said, “I am not banker material. I am a craftsman.”

Village job postings. Must be a qualified Peep to apply.

This kind of self-understanding is something the school seeks to cultivate every day of the school week, and it can be seen in full blossom on Village days. Reflecting on speeches given by candidates and their nominators about their qualifications for office before the Peep government elections, Cheryl wrote on the Village Blog:

This was just one of the many times that I have wished that you parents could be a “fly on the wall.” To hear these amazing young people acknowledge themselves and each other for such qualities as honesty, compassion, diplomacy, visionary thinking, and all the rest was beyond description. I walked away inspired that these are the ones to whom our future belongs.

You and your family can experience the miniature world of the EcoSchool’s Village at its sixth annual Mini Fair on Thursday, May 24, 5:00 to 7:30 pm. Students sell Mini Fair tickets, much like carnival tickets, up front, and you can use them to make your own Peep and take it on miniature rides or exchange them for snacks and various Peep goods. Tickets can be purchased with cash or traded for gently used books, pet supplies, or canned goods, which will be donated to local nonprofit organizations.

Giveaway: Mini Maker Faire passes

One of the coolest community events of the year, the Austin Mini Maker Faire, is happening this Saturday, and you have a chance to win two free tickets! Read on to find out how.

Kami Wilt, the event’s producer (also known as the genius behind the Austin Tinkering School), describes the Mini Maker Faire as “a one-day, family-friendly event to make, create, learn, invent, craft, recycle, think, play, and be inspired.” It’s not only a showcase for the DIY spirit, as exemplified by the 65 diverse and amazingly creative makers participating, but also a one-day school of sorts, where kids and adults can learn new skills, both useful and purely whimsical.

Full disclosure: I am volunteering at the event, and Alt Ed Austin is one of its official sponsors. Why? Because it’s a natural fit: the schools, camps, and other programs featured on this site embrace hands-on learning, and the AMMF is a celebration of that learning-by-doing model. Truthfully, though, I got involved mostly because it’s going to be tons of fun!

Tickets at the gate are reasonably priced ($10 for kids 18 and under, $15 for adults), and even cheaper in advance ($7 for kids, $10 for adults). But one lucky reader will get two free passes (good for either kids or adults), compliments of Alt Ed Austin. Just leave a comment below, telling me which maker booth, workshop, or special presentation you are most interested in visiting at the Faire. The winner will be selected randomly from all relevant responses submitted by 9:00 pm today. The winner will be announced in an update to this post as well as on the Alt Ed Austin Facebook page.

Good luck, and see you at the Faire!

UPDATE: Randomly selected using a fancy little Excel formula, the winner is Lawrence Manzano (commenter #4). Congratulations, Lawrence, and enjoy the Austin Mini Maker Faire! Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing and visited Alt Ed Austin.

Building meaningful education

Not many schools have wood shops these days, and it’s even rarer to find one populated by elementary school chldren. When I asked Jennifer Hobbs, who directs the Progress School in Central Austin, to explain why the wood shop is an important part of the learning environment there, she responded with this lovely guest post.

This crutch is an example of the Progress School students’ handiwork.

I love our whole school, but one of our most magical spaces is the wood shop. An open-air building, workbenches, shelves, cabinets. Hammers, saws, drills. Sandpaper, nails, glue. Brushes, canvases, paint. Books, paper, wood. The possibilities are as endless as the imagination of a child.  

We’ve made tables, chairs, cars, planes, castles, crutches, boxes, shields, birdhouses, bathouses, dollhouses, sculptures, board games—the list could take up the rest of this post.

Why build? Many skills are developed in wood shop projects: planning, problem solving, measuring, geometry, fine motor, hand-eye coordination, and so on. But one of the most important reasons to build is that the experience of building is so empowering. An idea, just a seed in your mind, taking root in schematics, then blossoming into form—you can touch it and use it and it works! It is more than an idea now, it is something solid and real, and you made it! The satisfaction from such an experience is worth more than gold stars and good grades.

This is meaningful education.

It starts with the student. She is playing a game, pretending her leg is broken, and she needs crutches! Another student learned about gladiators, and he must make a shield! And another loves the birds, so we make birdhouses!

It is nurtured by experiences. We found some pieces of pecan wood while taking a walk—what can we make with it? We visited an art exhibit—what kinds of sculptures can we make?

It inspires new growth. The skills from the last project will most certainly be useful in future projects. Whenever we finish a project, there’s a sense that we are really just beginning, always with the thought, “What’s next?”

So what do you want to build?

Jennifer L. Hobbs

Austin’s first alt school tour!

I am pleased to announce the inaugural Austin Alternative School Tour. In the great Austin tradition of simultaneous, coordinated open houses (like the very hip East Austin Studio Tour, the very green Austin Cool House Tour, and this weekend’s very yummy East Austin Urban Farm Tour), ten of the area’s best small schools will welcome visitors on Saturday, April 28, to learn firsthand about their very innovative and successful programs.

The tour is free! It’s open to both adults and kids, and no reservations are needed. Just grab a schedule and tour map, and stop by as many participating schools as you can. You’ll get to meet some brilliant educators, tour their beautiful and unique learning environments, talk with other parents and school community members, and come away with some new ideas about where your child might best learn and flourish.

The tour is presented and coordinated by the newly formed Austin Alt Ed Partnership, an all-volunteer initiative that’s bringing together Central Texas educators to foster and develop alternative education. You’ll be hearing more about this organization here on the blog in coming months. In the meantime, I’m proud to call Alt Ed Austin a sponsor of this exciting event.

As a lead-up to the tour, many of the participating schools, along with several others, will be celebrating Earth Day by hosting children’s activities at two public events. On Saturday, April 21, they'll have a special presence at the Downtown Farmers’ Market alongside other Earth-friendly organizations. And on Sunday the 22nd, you'll find them in the Kids’ Area of the Austin Earth Day Festival at Mueller. At both events, you and your kids can have fun making seed balls to take home, talk to alternative educators about their programs, and pick up brochures for many different schools. They’ll also be distributing flyers for the April 28 alt school tour, complete with maps and schedules.

If you don’t make it to either of the Earth Day weekend events (or even if you do), you can download and print the tour information right here. Please share it with other parents you know who are looking for the right schools for their kids. I look forward to meeting you on the tour!

Teri

Fall down seven times, get up eight

Deborah Hale, executive director and cofounder of The Inside Outside School, submitted this thoughtful guest post about how her school deals with “the daily drama.”

Fishing and observing wildlife in the creek are some of the calming and centering activities available to children at the Inside Outside School.

At the Inside Outside School we help our students become positive contributors to the world by supporting their growth in seven dimensions of human greatness. We introduce one dimension every week for a special focus when we have our Monday democratic meeting, which we call “The Hive.” For the past two weeks we have been working with the dimension of interaction, which Lynn Stoddard, author of Educating for Human Greatness, defines as “Promoting courtesy, caring, communication, and cooperation. Fostering a sense of community.”

With our younger elementary students, learning to regain composure is an ongoing big issue. We have many things in place to help them with this, like safe places where students can go when they are angry, sad, or overly frustrated. We have a zen garden box where students can rake sand and arrange stones. We have a great big dirt pile with shovels. We teach breathing exercises, calming activities such as squeezing a pillow and tapping shoulders with crossed arms, and conflict resolution scripting for being at “the equator” (an imaginary line either side of which children in conflict can stand to work toward a resolution without having an adult swoop in to fix it for them). We have mediation-trained older students who help out when the equator is not enough. We have acres of calm green woods, a bubbling creek, gardens, chickens, and hands-on classes where kids get to make things like herbal salve to put on fire ant bites, quilts, slit drums, boats, and apple pies. Above all, we have no tests and no homework.

And we still have the daily drama. It's a mystery.

There are myriad circumstances that activate the fight-or-flight response, which seems to fuel the drama. Norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter, is released when the inner alarm system is triggered. Sometimes a child will feel a threat to his or her safety, esteem, or position of power, or maybe perceive a threat where there is none. Once activated, the response can seem violent or inappropriate. Things that seem minor to adults take on major proportions in the life of a child. So working on interaction as a dimension of human greatness requires looking at the children with loving eyes, knowing that each one is complicated and that even when they act out, do hurtful things to their friends, and push every one of our buttons, they are simply trying to get their needs for power, approval, and security met—needs we all have.

A Japanese proverb says, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” This speaks to resilience. Our effort at the Inside Outside School is to help children learn strategies for getting back up again, learn how to help those who have fallen, learn when it is best to give others space to feel what they are feeling about having fallen down, and, ultimately, to care deeply about the well-being of each member of our community.

Deborah Hale

A space for true collaboration

Emily Hurd teaches for the Austin Tinkering School and also runs Creatures Habitat. Adapted from a photo essay she recently published on her own blog, this guest post takes a close look at a pivotal moment of collaborative decision making during a Spring Break camp for three- to seven-year-olds that Emily codirected.

Today the kids destroyed half of Cardboard City

. . . and relocated the other half to the top of the hillside overlooking the house.

The kids were not unified in their desire to destroy the town. They came to this decision during a town hall meeting in which they reached consensus about which direction to go with the project on the second day of its existence.

This is what Cardboard City looked like when we assembled and painted it yesterday morning:

This morning, a couple of kids began to destroy the city—excitedly so, with “evil” voices and heh-heh-heh laughter. They wanted to see how quickly the cardboard would biodegrade. Needless to say, those who were not ready to be finished with the project were fuming.

I called a town meeting to try to reach resolution before people got really angry. I pointed out that some people wanted to destroy the town and others did not think that was OK. They were then free to discuss. I moderated the discussion, made sure every voice was heard, and kept us moving along in a timely manner. My partner, James, and I wanted to honor the authenticity of this learning experience that had bubbled up naturally.

The kids really seemed to enjoy it. Almost everyone spoke up about how he or she felt about the issue. After a long, long while, we urged the group to come to an agreement. We asked them how long they needed to reach a decision. Three minutes. James and I left them to discuss and argue, and shortly returned to inquire about their decision. They would count the number of houses and divide that in half. One half would be relocated to the hillside as the remaining town; the other half would be destroyed. The group had reached consensus. They were thrilled! It was one of those electric moments when you can hear the energy buzzing about.

The destroyers even helped the preservationists relocate their homes.

The new town was relocated to the top of the hillside by the chicken coop.

The old town was destroyed with water and might.

A rebel in the group started salvaging houses that weren’t yet destroyed and moving them up to the new town.

A preservationist returned to the destroyed town to mark its existence with a green plant.

The beauty of this process for me was that the kids were able to work through so many issues together, and with a minimal amount of interference from adults. It was a collaborative project. The kids created the town, and then, when they began to disagree about what direction to go with the project, we worked together in a playful way to come up with a resolution—on their terms.

The project grew into something that clearly illuminated that we can have different feelings and desires, we can express them to one another, and we can reach agreement on how to move forward together. It was true collaboration!!!! So beautiful!

Emily Hurd