Blog Archive
This blog began as a series of Facebook posts in a group I called “Envisioning Education Chicago”. (Feel free to join if you’re interested.) These are some of those first blog entries, just to get us caught up.
Blog post #1: What is your expertise?
17 Aug 2021
Over the years, I have asked many adults about their experiences with school. Most memories are not especially positive. If we were lucky, we had good experiences playing on a team, or on a stage, we enjoyed our friendships, and maybe even had a favorite teacher who inspired a love of their subject. But many of us also experienced immense social pressures, a complete lack of autonomy, and years of sitting through classes we didn’t see as relevant, flash-cramming content that we promptly forgot after the exams. And now, as some of us have become parents, we see those stories repeating with our children. We know that a lot of the practices in conventional schooling were never great, and with the dizzying rate of change in the world, we sense that our kids will need something very different to succeed in a rapidly shifting landscape.
I have been teaching for 17 years, across the grade levels. I spent eight years in a Chicago public elementary school and nine in Nairobi, Kenya at an international private school. I have been a classroom teacher in grades 1 and 5, and an English teacher in grades 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12. Both of my schools have been excellent – places that genuinely cared about children, that did not over-emphasize standardized testing (to the degree they had power over that), that had high-quality, committed teachers and administration. I believe they are excellent schools – within the realm of conventional education. What I am proposing is that conventional education is not the model that serves most children best. It is an industrial revolution model that is becoming increasingly less useful for young people as they race toward a future none of us can quite imagine.
Envisioning – or RE-envisioning – education is difficult. All of our reference points are so firmly rooted in our experience that it can be hard to even conceive of anything else. So as we brainstorm what could be, we often find ourselves nibbling at the edges, tweaking what we already know, making cosmetic changes when something bolder is required.
* * * * *
But what if we began from another place? Stepping back from schooling, think about what you know now. What are the conditions that have brought you the knowledge you possess? What do you currently know a LOT about? …the nuances of baseball, the topography of western National Parks, money management and investing, triathlon racing, baking impressive desserts, Spanish wine, your favorite Netflix series, large dog breeds?
Do any of these areas of content knowledge relate to things you learned in school? (It is certainly possible, and if so, you are fortunate.) How did you learn what you know? What motivated you to learn it? Did anyone need to coerce you into learning it when THEY determined it was the right time? Did you take a series of multiple-choice tests to prove to an authority figure that you mastered the subject? Did someone teach you how to do it firsthand? Where did your passion for this subject come from? And how important is passion and natural curiosity to deep, real, human learning?
Tell us about something you know a lot about. (Don’t be shy – I have a fantastic group of friends and family and the subset of those willing to join this group will not laugh at you, I promise.) We are all experts in a few areas, so don’t be bashful about owning your expertise. This doesn’t mean you know it all. Most of the time, as we gain real knowledge about something, we inevitably realize how much more there is to learn. Which is exciting when you are an enthusiast. Describe something you know a good deal about, or something you can do pretty well with your hands or voice or whole body… and more importantly, talk about how you came to that knowledge. Perhaps we will begin to see some patterns that will help shape our vision for a new way of doing school.
Blog post #2: Man, I Want to Go to That School
27 Aug, 2021
On a recent sweltering Sunday afternoon, I found myself working to keep up with a group of young people out on the soccer pitch at Chase Park. The group was varied, from middle-schoolers to a couple guys who looked about thirtyish. And me – a good twenty years older than any of them. During a water break, I chatted with a 13-year-old I’ll call James, who attends a CPS magnet school.
“So… looking forward to the start of eighth grade?” I asked, with a not excessively snarky tone.
“Mmmm…I don’t know. We’ll see,” he answered with a raised eyebrow and a half-smile.
We began the chat about his school. He said that at least they let kids work at their own pace.
“Well, that’s cool, right?”
“Yeah… except that last year when I was in seventh, I finished the work pretty fast. So they gave me some of the eighth-grade work. But then they stopped that, because… I guess, what would I work on in eighth grade?”
“So after you had finished all of that, did they let you work on something that you wanted to do?”
“Um – no.” Flat, droll expression. “What I really like to do is take stuff apart. I’m working with my grandpa on a minibike. I love that.”
* * * * *
This lead to telling James about a project I launched about seven years ago while teaching eighth grade. I had been watching Sir Ken Robinson’s legendary TED Talks and reading Daniel Pink and learning about experiments at companies in which engineers were given time to work on ideas that THEY thought were worthwhile. I discovered that teachers had begun experimenting with this practice, too. And so, my social studies colleague and I carved out a day a week (20% of our teaching time) to devote to the ‘Twenty Percent Project.’ It ran for the entire second semester.
Each student chose an ambitious project that they would be challenged to complete. It did not have to relate to our subject areas. Kids wrote novels, started small businesses, built computers, launched philanthropic initiatives, joined the costume crew for the high school musical, made a documentary film, learned to play instruments, composed their own music, became Youtubers, did a deep dive into sports physiology, designed clothing and learned to sew, etc etc. Tons of interesting projects. They made master calendars to set deadlines and, each week, they blogged their progress, noting (if they were behind) how they would catch up. All were encouraged to find a mentor. Many had to scale back or expand their project over the semester. While their learning was hugely varied, most came to realize that accomplishing something big almost always involves working through a long string of obstacles. In addition to the content specific to their project, all engaged in authentic research, writing, and reading.
I told James about the kid who built a motorcycle for his project – recalling that this particular boy HATED reading class novels but enthusiastically read technical manuals because that reading mattered to him, and was essential to the eminently practical goal of getting that bike running.
“Man, I want to go to that school,” James said.
“I want to build that school,” I told him.
* * * * *
To conclude the Twenty Percent Project, each student presented to the class what they had done, how it had gone, things they learned, and what might come next for them. Then we did a showcase of a dozen presentations – a formal TEDTalk-style assembly to inspire the younger middle schoolers and to showcase a bit of this great work for parents and faculty. After the last presentation, the principal stepped up to the mic.
“I was skeptical about this whole idea when it was pitched,” he said. “But when you look at what these kids have done –“ (here, he got a little choked up; he’s a wonderful, emotionally real fellow) – “When you see all of the real learning these kids have done this semester, it is just amazing. I’m convinced.” Since that first trial run, the Twenty Percent Project has continued each year, and each new group of students continue to show us wonderful, diverse, rich learning through these absorbing personalized experiences.
As Dan Pink explains in his book, ‘Drive’, he found that three elements – Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose – seem to be our core motivators… stronger than other, extrinsic carrot-and-stick factors that are commonly used. (If you’ve never seen it, check out his Ted Talk, or the 10-minute illustrated version.) Most of us can relate to this. Once we move beyond subsistence, we want work that we feel matters (Purpose). We want the opportunity to get really good at something (Mastery). And for it to feel at all meaningful, we want some say in what it is that we are spending our time doing (Autonomy).
Now… step back into a typical school setting. Which of those conditions are present? Precious few in most schools. Children generally have very little Autonomy, even when they become teenagers and young adults. (We’ll discuss the lack of trust undergirding this reality in an upcoming post.) The cram-it-in-for-the-test strategy of learning does not encourage a lot of Mastery. And Purpose?…most kids will tell you they don’t usually know why what they are doing is important. And sometimes we teachers and parents can’t really explain it with much confidence either. In contrast, something like the Twenty Percent Project ticks all of those boxes. Kids have been energized while working on it. Many spend huge amounts of time working outside of school – not to chase a good grade or avoid a bad one, but because they WANT to reach their goal. They want to become excellent at something. They care about this learning.
Over the years, many students have thanked me for the Twenty Percent Project. “Nobody in school has ever asked me what I want to learn,” more than one has said. A few years after launching it, I switched to high school, grades 11 and 12 English. Last September, my twelfth graders began the year writing their college entrance essays. Several, I was pleased to read, cited the project they had worked on in eighth grade as important for their lives. This project, they wrote, set them on the course they now wanted to pursue into college and beyond. Imagine that – something they did in middle school ignited a passion for their future.
* * * * * “
Man, I want to go to that school,” James said.
“I want to build that school,” I told him.
But not just a place where kids do one project during one semester of one grade level. If this is the way humans learn best, the way we stoke up what motivates us most powerfully – and I am persuaded it absolutely is – then shouldn’t we be spending MOST of our time doing this kind of work? That is the kind of learning I want to be a part of.
Blog #3: Control
by Steven Slaughter / 9 September, 2021
Discuss. Agree, disagree? Any examples from your own life? I have a lot to say on this, but I want to hear from you first.
Blog post #4: Northeast Trek Dispatch
22 Sept, 2021
I write from a coffee shop in Albany, NY. Today, I’ll be interviewing a colleague from Another Way and her boys who have been unschooling for the past year, then I’ll head south into MA to see Ken Danford from Northstar. But first, I want to tell you about yesterday…
I had the great pleasure of meeting Rusty Keeler at the Ithaca Children’s Garden. Rusty is a ‘playscape’ designer. Sort of like a playground designer, Rusty’s work takes us into the realm of what are sometimes called ‘Adventure’ or ‘Junk’ playgrounds. (Look him up on YouTube. His backyard tours are charming, and that is how I discovered him.) At the children’s garden, we met at the site of an area called The Anarchy Zone that Rusty helped design. You can get more details and see some photos at the linked story below.
Rusty was my first interview in the new podcast I am recording, and it was such a pleasure to talk with him. Playspaces like The Anarchy Zone are few and far between in the US, sadly. In a hyper-litigious culture prone to also making snap judgements, this kind of space seems prone for injury and lawsuits. And yes, the name they chose doesn’t really help dissuade that assumption. 
But, as Rusty explained, they are really no more dangerous than conventional playgrounds, often less, with the injuries being less serious. (I can offer those reasons in the comments if you like, but will skip that for the moment.)
How many times have we seen small children opening a present and someone has quipped “she’s more interested in the box, bubble wrap, and ribbons than the gift itself”? This is akin to how The Anarchy Zone works. Kids often find more interest in things that can be mainipulated, taken apart and reassembled, made into a fort or a boat or a spaceship. AZ is this sort of environment on steroids. The place is filled with tires (some very large), long pieces of 3’ diameter plastic tubing (a construction material, by the look of it), boards, pallets, wooden stumps, short ladder sections, a 6’ piece of rope bridge, sections of curved plastic slides. Nothing is bolted down.
The result, not surprisingly, is immersive, engaged, active play. I watched about a dozen kids from an after-school program working on expanding an assembly started earlier that day. When I arrived in the morning, Jason, the playground manager, was working with a couple of 3 or 4 year olds. The adults’ role in these spaces are: to help move objects too heavy for the child, to protect kids against anything seriously dangerous, and to play with the kids…if they ask. They are not there to lead or direct. This is important. While Jason was helping the little kids with the heavy lifting, later in the day, he was completely off the side as the elementary kids didn’t need him.
So this group of a dozen kids between 6-10 years old were fully into the process of building out this thing. It was built of several large tires as a base, with some tubing secured with rope snaking from the top down to the ground, a sort of tube slide they were trying to rig up. A rope ladder was added, extending across to a couple more tires about 6 feet away.
All of this work being done reminded me of my own kids when they were little. In our tiny city backyard, they ignored our prefab plastic playhouse (except as a means of climbing up onto our garage roof) and instead, built an area under our arbor they called “Orphans”. Much of the work was setting up the space, then reconfiguring it endlessly. Up in Wisconsin at my parent’s woodsy summer place, my dad had a carpenter build an impressive (and no doubt expensive) treehouse for the grandkids. They never used it; it just collected cobwebs. When the cousins would get together, they would instead spend their time building teepees and clubhouses out of things they found in the woods and the garage.
There are a host of compelling reasons why this kind of play is far superior to conventional playgrounds. Rusty told me about a PHD project studying kids playing at the AZ and a normal playground. The quality of play, their focus, the longevity of their play — all was far higher at the AZ. Are any of us surprised by this?
I’ve been thinking about the clear parallels between adventure playgrounds and self-directed learning. One of the biggies is what each offers children internally. The act of testing oneself, of taking measured risks, of learning as you go — all of this builds qualities in a child (and an adult) that serve them far beyond that setting. In the morning, as I watched Jason helping those tiny kids build, this little boy, perhaps 3 years old, dragged over a long piece of wood. He wanted a ramp to climb up about 3 feet to the (then) top of the tires. The board was thin, very thin, and only about 8” wide. He put it in place and began crawling up. It bent under his weight. “You think it’s gonna hold?” Jason asked, smiling. As the boy tested the board, all sorts of things were going on. He was cautiously learning the properties of this material, and of his own body — his balance, what sort of movement was required to not flip the board. His body was being exercised through moving and placing the board, and then climbing on it. He would hop off and make small adjustments. ‘But what if the board had broken?’ a concerned adult might ask. Nothing especially bad would have occurred. He might have gotten a splinter or conked his head. But he was only a couple felt off the ground. He could just as easily fallen from a jungle gym. And the truth is that humans WILL test their limits. It is hardwired into us, as Rusty pointed out. If we don’t give them flexible spaces like this, they will do it on regular playgrounds, which can be far more dangerous. (I recall my young self abandoning the swings themselves in favor of climbing up to the top of a very high swing set crossbar.)
I suspect that kids who play regularly at places like The Anarchy Zone gain a strong sense of confidence in their abilities, as well as a learned sense of humility, of understanding their limitations. How do we learn the difference between risk and hazard? How do gain confidence that we can take some measured bold steps in life if not by practicing those skills in smaller scale, low stakes contexts? And how does developing these qualities serve us more broadly in life?
(Note: the playscapes link, below, is opening to a lot of ads at the top. You might have to scroll down for the story.)
PLAYSCAPES: THE HAND-ON-NATURE ANARCHY ZONE, ITHACA NY
Blog post #5: the Seven Survival Skills
8 Oct 2021
I am home from my east coast trek and can’t wait to share more about my many experiences along the way! Next week, I’ll be editing my new podcast as well and I’ll let you know when that is released. But first, I need to attend to some practical matters… cleaning out the camper car for one. For today, I’ll share something I saw posted to a bulletin board at Princeton Learning Cooperative. (Check them out at princetonlearningcooperative.org)
The Seven Survival Skills, attributed to Tony Wagner, education specialist and all-around highly-credentialed fella, point to what he sees as core competencies we should be nurturing in kids. A few big questions immediately emerge from this, and I want your thoughts on whatever you feel like addressing…
1. To what extent are these skills addressed in conventional education?
2. If so, what activities and courses that you have seen in your kids, that you teach yourself, etc, develop these skills?
3. If you DON’T see these core competencies given much attention, what kinds of learning experiences might be effective to that end?
That’s enough to get us started. Please share your thoughts. I am really eager to hear what you think and talk more about this.
(Note: the playscapes link, below, is opening to a lot of ads at the top. You might have to scroll down for the story.)
Blog post #6: A Crisis in the Making
13 Oct 2021
This morning, I saw a post on another FB group of thousands of HS English teachers. It is not uncommon for complaints to arise on various novels taught in middle and high school, and English teachers are often asked to swap the class novel for an alternative. Swapping novels can be quite time-consuming for the teacher because it involves far more than just a text switch. There may be a host of accompanying materials, quizzes, supplemental readings, etc that would also have to be created. And, of course, one of the most valuable aspects of a class novel — group discussions — would be impossible.
Today’s post was preemptive. A teacher was looking for a potential swap for Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”, a classic text that has been printed in textbooks for decades. She was worried that parents would grumble, since recently, anything expressing criticism of the dominant white culture is being opposed as teaching Critical Race Theory (a red herring and misunderstanding of CRT), and King doesn’t mince words about why civil disobedience is necessary.
A number of teachers (myself included) encouraged her to hold to the text and not swap it out if requested. We need to hold the line on this sort of bullying that is happening around the country. Teachers and schools are being pressured to avoid any meaningful discussions of issues of race and inequity in America’s history or present day. It troubles me that teachers are being put into the position of potentially losing their jobs, but that is where we are, and I hope teachers will take courage from the writings of visionary leaders like MLK and take principled stands.
(Note: the playscapes link, below, is opening to a lot of ads at the top. You might have to scroll down for the story.)
Blog post #7: Apples to Apples: Comparing SDE Learning to What Actually Happens in School
21 Oct, 2021
I’ve been busy editing my new podcast and can’t wait to share it with you soon. Listening through the interviews conducted on my northeast trek to visit alternative learning centers, I’ve been enjoying spending time with those people again and thinking about the many things we discussed.
One thing that comes up quite a lot when describing this type of learning center to folks who are unfamiliar is their skepticism in giving kids free rein over their time, letting them choose what they want to learn and how they want to go about learning it. Though all adults know from experience that WE learn best under these conditions, we find it to be a real leap to believe that kids could also do this successfully. Things that are beyond our experience can be hard to believe, and in most cases, children have had very little autonomy. As far as free time goes, we lament this and nostalgically look back to the days when we were free to roam and have a lot of independence. Yet, we’ve just gotten so used to managing all aspects of young people’s lives that we are afraid to give them anything like the very things we experienced as kids. As far as school goes, most of us had no autonomy ourselves, and so it is hard to imagine how that could work.
One dimension of this that often comes up in my conversations is comparisons to IDEALIZATIONS of conventional education, not the reality. For example, if we fear that a teenager will be unprepared if they don’t take a certain course in a certain school year, we need to first step back and ask an important question: “How effective is the learning that happens in that course when done the conventional way?” If we are going to be skeptical about a teen NOT taking a year-long course in the normal way, we need to be clear about what that normal way is, so we can fairly compare the two.
I have asked many of my high school students what they remember even a couple of weeks after a big exam (in pretty much any subject). Routinely, they laugh and bluntly say they would fail if they had to take it again. This is the norm for many kids in most of their subjects all year long, year after year. Think about this: our teens are sitting in one classroom after another, all day long, year after year, and walking away with a pretty small amount of content in the end.
Compare this with a teenager focusing on the subjects they are genuinely interested in. I interviewed a 15-year-old who said that they were obsessed with history. In the local school, the pace was too slow and they found it boring. As a self-directed learner, they are absorbing it and can’t get enough and plan to take some community college courses soon to find deeper learning and challenge.
And can’t we adults relate to both sides of this scenario? As students, didn’t we ALSO cram facts into flash memory countless times, only to forget the content almost immediately? Didn’t we also game the system whenever we could by reading the Cliffs Notes instead of the novel if we found the novel boring or too long? And like that self-directed learner, don’t we learn best today when we are doing it for love of the subject… and can take it at our own pace? Aren’t we learning more deeply?
I like to imagine what would happen if a conventional school approach were suddenly imposed on me today about a subject I love to dive into for fun. What if an authority figure came along and forced me to work at their pace, using their prescribed materials, and taking regular exams where I had to cram in and spit out the facts? What if the teacher veered away from the subject I love to cover a whole bunch of related things that I don’t? How would my relationship to learning change? Master English teacher Nancie Atwell expresses this well when she asks us to picture going to the movies. There we are in the dark theater and the film begins. We’re just getting into it when, 10 minutes in, the film pauses, the lights come up, and we are given some comprehension questions to discuss with our neighbor, or maybe a pop quiz to check if we were paying attention, or some review of vocabulary words. And this pattern would continue through the whole film, and every film we watched. The result of this approach is obvious: We would all hate movies. This is exactly how most kids and teens experience reading novels in school, and we wonder why so many of them hate reading.
So, as we think through this whole paradigm shift, yes, we should definitely keep asking hard questions about any radical changes we are considering. But as we are doing this, weighing a new approach to the existing ones, let’s be honest about what those existing approaches really are and how well, or poorly, they serve real kids in the real world.
Blog post #8: More flex time, not less is what we all need
21 Oct, 2021
As I’ve been trying to explain to friends and family the place where I find myself as a teacher today, I’m not sure I can explain it better than THIS ARTICLE. If you have that disquieting voice inside telling you that what we are (still) doing is not all that it needs to be — or, like me, you’d go a few steps further and say we need to seriously rethink this now and take bold action — read this excellent piece.
If you are a hard-headed pragmatist, dive right on past the article’s title and get into the meat of the argument. It is in no way touchy-feely. The core argument is not only about taking off the pressure or making kids happier — which are perfectly legitimate goals — but are grounded in the realization that what we are doing now is not nearly enough to help our kids meet the future, or find fulfillment in their lives.
And it isn’t just about the kids. We can all be challenged by this message. This article is pretty long, but it is well worth your time. Certainly worth the equivalent of the time it takes to watch 1 Netflix show. Share this with someone who needs it. Especially a young person.