Looking back, looking ahead

Today is the first anniversary of Alt Ed Austin’s official launch, and with a memorable date like 12/12/12, it’s an auspicious start to another promising year of support for authentic education in all its forms. It’s also a good time to pause and reflect on what this growing community (both online and off-) has accomplished over the course of the past year, acknowledge our partners who’ve made it all possible, and look ahead to what’s in the works for our second year.

When I created this website and blog last fall, I had modest hopes that it would help connect the handful of small independent schools I happened to know about with local parents who were searching for different kinds of learning communities for their kids who, for a variety of reasons, were not thriving in public, charter, or traditional private schools. Since then, I’ve discovered that there are many more of these unusual schools and innovative educators in the Austin area—and many more parents looking for them—than I’d imagined. When it launched, the Alternative School Directory comprised eight programs serving K–12 students; it currently lists twenty-one. The Map of Alternative Schools now stretches from Leander and Round Rock in the north to Oak Hill and Dripping Springs in the south. Likewise, Alt Ed Austin’s readership has steadily increased, with more than ten thousand unique visitors and a growing and active Facebook community. Likewise, the Calendar has become a busy place, with open houses, information sessions, and workshops posted every month.

Almost immediately upon launch, I began receiving requests to add a directory of preschools that could be described as “alternative” in approach. That page has proven to be one of the most visited on the site. Soon I began hearing from both educators and parents who were looking for a way to get the word out about camps, after-school programs, and other, less easily classified educational programs; in response, I created the More Alt Ed Programs list, which is our most frequently updated page. Watch for the return of our popular directories of off-the-beaten-path summer camps in early 2013.

The most exciting and enjoyable aspect of managing Alt Ed Austin has been working with and providing a forum for the many brilliant educators who’ve contributed guest posts for the blog. They’ve generously shared their experiences, insights, struggles, and triumphs large and small. In twenty-one posts to date, they’ve written about both theory and practice in ways that are relevant and accessible to parents, education professionals, and anyone with an interest in alternative approaches to education. I’d like to thank all of them for not only helping provide a steady supply of excellent content for this blog but also adding their clear voices to the important ongoing community conversations about what education can be. I invite you to add your own voice by commenting on any blog post that interests, troubles, or inspires you.

I’m particularly pleased to report that these conversations are not limited to the blogosphere. Over the course of this year, I’ve become aware of and had the privilege of participating in a movement that has great potential for positive social change. Independent educators are coming together, exchanging ideas and best practices, collaborating and supporting one another, joining with esteemed colleagues working within the public school systems, creating ways to make these alternative models of learning accessible to all children, and changing the educational landscape in ways that I believe will ultimately benefit everyone. You can expect to hear a lot more about the Education Transformation Alliance in the coming year.

You’ll also hear about more public events like the independent school tours and fairs that Alt Ed Austin sponsored this year. In addition, we’re planning some brand-new ventures, including film screenings, panel discussions, and workshops on topics of concern to parents and educators. Stay tuned for details about the first of these, which will deal with a very timely subject: talking to kids about climate change. What other topics or types of events would you like to see Alt Ed Austin delve into? Please speak your mind! The comments section below is all yours.

Creating, maintaining, and promoting Alt Ed Austin truly has been a labor of love, but I haven’t done it alone. Many thanks go to my family, who have been unwaveringly enthusiastic about the project, even when it has meant long hours at the computer or away at meetings. I am also deeply grateful to those who stepped forward recently when I opened the sidebar for sponsorship to help offset the costs and time required to maintain the site: AHB Community School, Austin Creative Art Center, Edible Austin, Joyful Garden, Kairos Learning, Progress School, and Soleil School. Most of all, right from the beginning, it’s been the audience making this thing work. Without all of you reader-collaborators participating, supporting, and spreading the word, Alt Ed Austin could not have become the useful resource and thriving community it is today. Thank you!

I look forward to working together in the coming year to support diverse, wonderful ways of learning in Austin and beyond.

Teri

Get out of the way!

Our latest guest post, which describes an “aha moment” that took place at Terra Luz Co-op, is a collaborative effort by Michelle Foreman, the parent-assistant on rotation during that time, and Andrea Gaudin Triche, the program’s cofounder and teaching guide. An earlier version of this article first appeared on the Terra Luz blog.

Michelle begins:

My time at the schoolhouse has always been inspiring. Who wouldn’t be inspired in that creative environment, immersed in love? However, today things happened on a whole new level, and I caught a glimpse of how wonderfully amazing learning can be.

After spending too much time last night researching uninspired, tired old Thanksgiving crafts, I narrowed it down to a couple of options. I presented my “exciting” idea to the first group, who were apathetic at best but compliant nonetheless. And I am pretty certain that a few “important” things were learned as we talked about the cornucopia and made collages of the different foods served at Thanksgiving meals past and present. The next go-around, I offered this project and was met with the same unenthusiastic response from the second group of kids. I said “OK, then what do you want to do?” Almost immediately, the kids started throwing out ideas. Here is my perspective on what transpired.

Alaira invented a new crocheting technique using toothpicks and yarn, which she taught to Sophia and Lola, who then used it to make clothes like the pilgrims wore. I took that opportunity to introduce the book A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl, showing and reading to them a few pages about the work the pilgrims had to do, clothes they wore, etc. We chatted about how many clothes were in our girls’ closets at home today and the quantity of clothes they thought the Pilgrim girls had. We talked about having to make each piece of clothing by hand with limited materials vs. going to the store to choose from among hundreds of options.

Lola, who had discovered the sewing boxes the day before, quickly chose to work with those materials again. She threaded the needles, and I showed her how to double the thread and tie a knot. Then we pulled out the buttons and she began to sew them on. She kept building on her idea with more excitement as each new thought popped up in her head: making a gingerbread girl out of felt, then sewing it onto another felt piece that she decorated with buttons. She could not find the brown felt she wanted, so she decided to color the gray piece brown (very resourceful).

Sophia was soon engaged in the minute details of making a ballerina doll with felt and markers, feathers and pipe cleaners. Liam, pretty much uninterested in the clothes and doll making, was watching Alaira with the toothpicks and started tinkering with them. I offered a few suggestions of items he could make that related to the Thanksgiving story, and his eyes showed a glint of interest when I suggested a boat. So a boat it was; the Mayflower was what I called it, after the one on which the first pilgrims came over from England. He then got out the corks and I watched him become completely engaged in building, using toothpicks, corks, and tape—and more tape.

Then everyone thought tape was a good tool for all of the various projects. So I bit my tongue and let the roll dwindle down, though I did try to suggest glue a couple of times. Gavin saw Liam’s design and decided to begin building his own creation with corks and toothpicks.

Damon came over and watched for a couple of minutes; then he turned around and pulled out the popsicle sticks and started toying with them. “Hey!” I said, “That reminds me of the houses the Pilgrims had to build.” “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking!” he said excitedly, with a big smile and bright eyes— nothing at all like the glazed-over look in the eyes of the kids (my own included) who were following my chosen project of the Thanksgiving collage a little while earlier. So I got out a few other books, including A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy, and turned to pages that showed the houses that were built out of planks they brought from England and rough wood from chopped trees and topped with thatched roofs.

All of this took place in the Atelier, around the light table. While I sat on a stool casually mentioning things about the first Thanksgiving and how it related to what they were each working on, five girls and three boys stood around the table—completely, effortlessly, and passionately engaged in their chosen work. The table was stocked full of felt, pipe cleaners, markers, feathers, corks, toothpicks, construction paper, sewing kits, glue, scissors, yarn, popsicle sticks, and tape. The Zen of learning unfolded before my eyes.

Creative thinking, problem solving, geometry, measurement, math, art, cooperation, sharing, turn taking, community, support, fine motor coordination, history, listening, pride, and accomplishment were all at that table. There was no fighting or resistance, even with only one roll of tape! They were working individually and simultaneously—yet together on a higher level of creative energy flowing easily around the room. One idea would pop up and inspire another, then another. The children took short breaks to look up from their work, just long enough to see a friend’s project, make a contribution to the Thanksgiving conversation, or show me or their friends how awesome what they were doing was.

And it was.


Andrea adds:

Yes. Give them what they need to thrive, and then get out of their way. Our role as parents and educators is to be there to offer support, but not to do it for them.

Whether your children are learning in a traditional school setting, at home, or in a co-op or hybrid program, I strongly encourage you to get your hands on the book Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners by Lori Pickert, read it, and try implementing some of these things at home. Project-based learning doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be your entire curriculum (although it could be), so if you’re a structured Latin-loving Classicist or a relaxed unschooler, project-based learning can still be brought in. It should be. Carve out time for your children to do self-chosen project time. Your children will thank you!

Michelle Foreman and Andrea Gaudin Triche

Farming with young children

It is a pleasure to welcome Katherine Patton as Alt Ed Austin’s newest guest writer. Katherine not only directs and teaches at The Joyful Garden preschool but also is an accomplished urban farmer who conducts Urban Farm Camps for both kids and adults. Here she shares the rationale behind her agricultural work with the very young as well as some tried-and-true tips for parents and others who want to grow things with kids.

The Why

I’ll be honest: I started integrating farming activities into my preschool program because of my own passion for being outdoors and growing things. To me, it has always made sense to structure my work with young children (aged eighteen months to three years) around what interests me most. Being outside, growing and tending plants and animals, and turning the end results (fruits, vegetables, honey, eggs) into delicious food on the table are hobbies that have become integral to my life and livelihood. Sharing them with the children I teach and care for was just a natural for me, in terms of interest (mine and theirs), setting (outdoors), and results (beautiful feasts for the senses; the hands, eyes, ears, nose, and taste buds can all enjoy the process of raising our plants & animals).

It’s only recently, about a year after actively integrating farming activities into our daily routines, that I have researched and weighed all the benefits of doing so. It turns out that farming (or growing and caring, as I think of it) is beneficial for children from the youngest ages, for so many reasons! Gardening and caring for our chickens support early childhood development by:

• providing a setting for active/experiential learning—sensorial work, in the Montessori lexicon
• giving children opportunities to practice social skills, such as verbal communication and cooperation—social/emotional work
• supporting healthy eating and food choices—self-care
• introducing principles of science, such as botany and biology
• reinforcing preliteracy and prenumeracy by providing endless opportunities for naming and counting

All that is wonderful, but to me, it’s all about the daily experiences with the children. No moment is more positive, more filled with potential, than the moment each morning when I push open the farm gate and walk through it with my young charges. Pip the dog runs ahead to check around the chicken pens. The children and I straggle behind, taking in the berry and herb beds, sometimes finding flowers, leaves, and fruit to pick, smell, and taste. A rooster’s crow or the approach of one of the cats, purring and begging to be petted, might stop us in our tracks. One is an occasion to clap our hands over our ears, the other to stop and gently touch soft feline fur.

We eventually reach the shed, from which I can extract the huge chicken feed container and several small sand pails. Children grab scoops and fill the pails with chicken feed. They practice their social skills and conflict resolution, working out who should use which scoop. Fine and gross motor skills are strengthened. Resilience gets a workout when someone is disappointed by the scoop that he or she ends up with. I might count the number of scoops going into the pail. Soon pails are full and scoops go back into the container. Children observe while I dump the feed into the feeders and the chickens chow down.

When we tire of observing—sometimes quite a while later—we check for eggs. Many times there are some that we can count and carry, sometimes none are waiting for us. Our next stop is the garden, where we check for ripe vegetables for our brunch table. Very often, undersized/underripe fruits and vegetables are picked prematurely. It’s all a part of learning in the garden. Over time, the children learn that tomatoes and berries are not ready until they are richly, darkly colored. The proof is in the tasting! Cucumbers and summer squash can be either too small and hard or too large and seedy. They experience the range over time during our indoor work time, when we wash and slice the garden’s bounty for brunch-time consumption. Sometimes the garden’s offerings make it onto the table; sometimes not.

When we sit to eat our mid-morning meal, not every child likes, or will even taste, our harvest. But I know that each exposure to a new food increases the chance that a child will try and enjoy it at some point. If it takes, as some experts say, ten exposures to a new food before a young child will actually taste it (some say fifteen exposures), I know that each child with me that day has seen that food twice—once in the garden, and once at the table. They see me tasting and enjoying it, and with any luck, at least one of their peers will be enjoying it also. In this simple way, we are laying the foundation for healthy eating habits.

The How

Here are a few of my tips for growing and caring with the very young:

Focus on the process, rather than the product. A toddler might focus on scooping soil, to the exclusion of getting to the next steps of planting seeds to sprout, and then watering, and so on. Provide the materials and tools that are capturing the child’s focus right now. You can always seed separate starting trays while he or she is occupied with all that scooping.

Start small. One to three pots filled with dirt alone might be enough for a young child to experience (touch, smell, even taste) as a start. Start some seeds in other pots, set up and out of the way; your kiddo will likely be delighted to help you harvest when they bear fruit.

Keep it safe. Examine the environment for sharp edges, biting insects and spiders, and other hazards before offering it to a young child. Practice organic cultivation rather than using chemical pest deterrents and fertilizers. Research livestock-borne disease risk before allowing your child to interact with animals, and keep a close eye on all child-animal interactions. Chickens and other farmyard animals can frighten or injure a young child through just their natural behaviors (pecking, quickly taking flight, crowing). Teach your child to eat only those plants and fruits that you have approved for consumption. A good mechanism for enforcing this, which has nothing to do with asking permission, is to make a habit of washing everything before tasting. This gives the grownup a chance to review what will be consumed in advance of dining.

Grow plants that are easy and that you like. If you hate tomatoes, don’t grow them! Grow food that you will enjoy sharing with your child. If there is a vegetable that you know she or he loves, plant some seeds. Once your kid enjoys picking that favorite from the garden and eating it, it’s a short stroll to the next pot, where a soon-to-be-favorite is growing.

Katherine Patton

Book Review. Playborhood: Turn your neighborhood into a place for play

I was delighted a few months ago to receive a review copy of Mike Lanza’s recent book, Playborhood: Turn Your Neighborhood Into a Place for Play. Now that I’ve read, reread, and fully digested it, I am even more delighted to recommend it to parents and others who care about the happiness and health of children and the vitality of neighborhoods. It’s a great read, certainly, but why review it here, on this blog? What do play-filled neighborhoods have to do with authentic education? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Because we believe in the importance of free play here at Alt Ed Austin, and because place-based approaches to education are some of the most promising and necessary for a sustainable future, I found Playborhood to be highly relevant to the conversations that take place among parents and other educators with whom I work in the alt ed community. In fact, to make sure more of you have the opportunity to read and share this book, I’m giving away three copies! Read on to the end of this review to find out how you can win one.

Lanza begins by outlining what he calls the “free play problem.” In contrast to his own experiences growing up in the 1960s and ’70s surrounded by kids ready and willing to do stuff together—running, biking, climbing, exploring, tinkering, building things, making art, and playing games of their own invention, largely under their own direction—U.S. children today spend the majority of their “free” time isolated in their own homes, enduring ever-increasing homework loads, becoming overly dependent on electronic forms of entertainment and communication, and being driven to and from highly structured activities outside of their own immediate neighborhoods. In his view, they are missing out on opportunities to develop valuable relationships with neighbors of all ages, interact with local businesses and institutions, understand and feel part of the natural world, learn self-reliance, hone specific social skills, exercise their creativity in multiple ways, and simply have fun.

But Playborhood is not a work of nostalgia, nor is it a diatribe on what’s wrong with kids these days. It is primarily a practical, solutions-oriented book. Lanza outlines a complex web of causes and effects of the changes in children’s lives over the last several generations. He cites research and analysis by Peter Gray, Madeline Levine, Richard Louv, and other social scientists and journalists on the critical importance of free play—not just for healthy childhoods, but for fulfilling adulthoods as well. He writes that free play helps children discover their intrinsic motivation, which is “the most likely path toward a successful, happy life.” Most importantly, he shows and tells what steps we can take to encourage free play to happen in our own neighborhoods.

Making time and space for free play is not about simply limiting screen time or cutting back on structured activities and test tutoring in favor of making your kids go out and play. What if there are no playmates to be found? Lanza explains that “the neighborhood play problem is more a social problem than an aggregation of individual problems.” It thus requires that parents take bold, collective action to change neighborhood culture and priorities.

Lanza himself, the father of three young boys, has taken a fairly radical approach, converting his conventional suburban front yard into an irresistible neighborhood playground and opening his family’s back yard (which features an in-ground trampoline much safer than the more common kind) to any neighbor kid who wants to come and play (by the rules, of course, for safety and consideration of others). One of the most popular and visible play spaces he has created on his property is a giant map of his neighborhood painted on the driveway (as shown on the book cover), where kids play with toy vehicles and legos and create all sorts of games related to their own immediate surroundings.

While Lanza acknowledges that he is more fortunate than most of us to have been able to spend a considerable sum of money on his front and back yards for the benefit of his own kids and their entire (affluent) neighborhood, he devotes several chapters to showcasing other kinds of communities that have successfully created playborhoods, some of them on little to no budget. One impressive case study is that of Lyman Place in the Bronx, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States, where the irrepressible Hetty Fox presides over the Play Street she and other neighborhood activists have created every summer for more than thirty years.

Another inspiring example for me is Share-It Square in Portland, Oregon, where neighbors gradually “occupied” a neighborhood intersection in creative ways, establishing intriguing spaces and structures for kids and adults on each corner, a beautiful work of art on the pavement to mark the intersection as a special place, and regular community gatherings right in the street. One of the corners includes an informal book exchange, an early example of the “little free library” concept that has been taking hold in communities around the country, including Austin.

Lanza posts regularly on the blog that shares his book’s title (and where you can buy the book as well as Playborhood signs). Not every post is entirely in line with my own views, but it’s always thought-provoking, and I wholeheartedly endorse the book. Mike Lanza is an original and persuasive voice for the fundamental values of neighborhood, “real life,” and childhood. The playfully subversive cultural movement he has instigated is right in step with the work of Austin’s most transformative educators.

If you would like a free copy of Playborhood, you can do one or more of the following (for up to three chances to win) by 8:00 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20:

• Leave a comment below about your own neighborhood. Do you consider it a Playborhood? Why or why not?
• “Like” Alt Ed Austin on Facebook if you haven’t already—and while you’re at it, add us to your interests list to make sure you get all our updates.
• Share this blog post on your Facebook timeline (there's a handy little link below).

Check back here after Wednesday night, when winners of the random drawing will be announced as an update to this post. In the meantime, go out and play!

Update on 2012-11-22 03:14 by Teri

Congratulations to our randomly selected winners, Tiffany Craven, Stew Magnuson, and Kami Wilt! Each will receive a free copy of Playborhood early next week.

Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing; I appreciate your excellent comments on this blog post as well as the many new likes and shares on Facebook. Welcome to the Alt•Ed Austin community! You can order your own copies of the book through author Mike Lanza's Playborhood.com. I look forward to learning how all of your neighborhoods become better habitats for free-playing kids.

Becoming established

Caitlin Macklin, 9th Street Schoolhouse mentor and founder, recently visited the famed Free School in Albany, New York. In this guest post she shares some images and insights she gained there about building a democratic school community and culture over time.

“Wow. I’m really here. The place of my inspiration.”

This summer I made a pilgrimage to Albany, New York, to visit the Free School. This decades-old institution has long been a guiding light for me. It was my first introduction to the concepts of non-mandatory classes, democratic participation by students in conflict resolution and school governance, and putting children truly at the center of education.

As a new teacher (of four years) and a new school (into our third here at 9th Street), the thing that sank in most for me is the sense of being established that the Free School exudes. The feeling of rootedness settled in as I climbed up narrow stairways and stood on wood floors with lived-in scuff marks—I mean, even the disaster area of the summertime kitchen made my heart ache to have a SPACE to CREATE.

I currently teach out of my home on East 9th Street. This year, Laura Ruiz joined the Schoolhouse, and collaborating feels great! We intend to grow slowly but surely into a larger community of families more the size of the Free School, about sixty kids with a staff of five or six. During the visit to Albany, I was just soaking it in—in awe of what people have built together, just “making it up as [they] go along,” doing what makes sense, not what a bureaucrat tells them to do. Working with families, giving kids opportunities and mentoring, so they may discover and grow while staying whole, messy, in touch with their inner selves.

YouthFX program participants rehearse scenes for their summer narrative film project in the great room at the Albany Free School.

I have put so much thought into how to implement in my teaching and in the Schoolhouse structure the lessons AFS has learned that to see it and know it as a place with a particular community and history helped me understand their context and refocus my efforts in recognizing and building on what our community’s strengths are. Getting to ask Bhawin, a longtime teacher, some of my burning questions about the how of their lives together, talking with him about their process of becoming the school they are now, gave me an infusion of patience with our process.

Bhawin stepped out of the frame as we discussed the community-created Rules on the wall behind us.

I left feeling encouraged to give time to developing the particularities of our program, staying true to who we are as teachers, youth, parents—as people—and to respond from those real relationships to create better and better opportunities for living and learning together. Part of that is my commitment to making democratic, learner-centered education accessible to people in Austin who might not be able to afford it. In addition to an affordable tuition and part-trade options, I’ve also been working with the Education Transformation Alliance to collaborate on creating a scholarship fund.

Making meaningful education available to more folks in Austin is what our work with the ETA is guided by. And I think finding meaning is what this shift in education in Austin is all about: this is a growing movement of people who want more than cookie-cutter experiences for their kids and their lives. People in Austin are more than ever feeling acutely that the current system is just not fulfilling their dreams for their kids. We all want our youth to live lives that are prosperous and flourishing, and I want the young people in my program to identify and define that success for themselves within a strong web of community, where they are known and where they know what resources are available to them.

We are seeking meaning in our learning and in our relationships, and we are creating institutions that respond, that put down roots, that take time to get established, that work together. I invite you to find out more about the many alternatives available across the city on the ETA School Tour this Saturday, Oct. 20!

For further reading on the Albany Free School, pick up any of Chris Mercogliano’s works, watch Free to Learn by Bhawin Suchak and Jeff Root, and check out the school’s website or this blog post from an intern.

Caitlin Macklin

Hop on the Education Transformation Tour!

Building on the success of last spring’s alt school tour, the Education Transformation Alliance presents a free day of open houses at some of Austin’s most creative and effective independent schools. Mark your calendar for Saturday, October 20, download the printable guide and map, and design your own itinerary for the day. Morning and afternoon sessions are divided roughly by geographical region for your convenience.

As a proud sponsor of the event, Alt Ed Austin invites you to spend some time with the Alternative School Directory before the tour. This will help you narrow down which ones might work for your family in terms of ages served, philosophy, size, and other factors. You'll also find a couple of special tour sites in the More Alt Ed Programs directory.

By far the best way to get a feel for a school and its fit for your kid is to visit it in person and talk to the staff and community members you meet there. Ask all the questions you can think of; these educators love to discuss the work they love. You’re welcome to bring the whole family for a day of exploration.

Hop on the tour and see how education is being transformed—right here in Austin, right now.