Good intentions

When I began this gap year I had high hopes of maintaining a daily blog of progressive learning.  I attended two national education conferences and have read many books related to learning.  I have also expanded my Twitter network and read many, many posts related to progressive education.  I have been absorbing and thinking and grappling and researching.  But I have not created the amount of content I had thought I would.  I hesitate to interject in conversations or repeat ideas of others.  I have retweeted a few things, but on whole I am not part of the conversation. 

I wonder why?

I have strong opinions about schools and learning, but they are not popular opinions.  My idea of "school" is more like a community center.  Democratic schools like Sudbury and Summerhill seem idyllic to me.  If I had children of my own, I would be "unschooling" them.  Children need other people of all ages to answer their questions and provide resources for their own exploration.  They don't need a prescribed curriculum, constant assessment, and rankings that traditional schools focus on.

I believe as a society we could create more citizens who are happy, self-confident, self-aware, empathetic, wise, emotionally intelligent, and well-adjusted than our current PreK-12 system produces. 

But what do I do with that?  There are plenty of other advocates online.  Plenty of other people have written books about it.  Who am I?

I do have 30 years of experience in schools as a teacher and administrator.  I have worked in six different school. Public and independent. Overseas and in the U.S.. Large and small. Grades K-12.  I have implemented all sorts of "progressive" practices in the classroom.  Perhaps I can start by summarizing my own experience to help explain how I got here. The next step might be to describe the kind of school I would like to work at.

Learning Walks

Learning walks have become popular over the years.  Many protocols exist to help administrative teams gather observations of learning around the school.  Fieldwork Education's Looking for Learning is one of those (affectionately known to some as "Lurking for Learning").  The idea is for administrators to conduct classroom walk throughs, make observations, gather data, then provide timely, relevant feedback to teachers.

I've recently taken a more literal interpretation of learning walks.  I go on a walk and I wonder about the things I see, hear, smell, feel and taste.  While I do that I imagine what a 5 year old, 12 year old or 17 year old might wonder about.  Then I imagine how I, as a learning mentor, might help that child pursue those wonderings.  What resources might I provide for additional information?  What experiences might I create to help them build their understanding?  What kinds of projects and outcomes might I help the students to accomplish as they apply their knowledge?  Which dispositions and skills might I need to be explicit with them?

The inspiration for the walks is a set of touristy cards we purchased years ago titled City Walks Chicago.  There are 50 cards, each describing a short (1 to 2 miles) walk in a different part of the city.  I've really been enjoying the autumn whether and getting to know our home city. As
Here's one such example based on a walk I took in Lincoln Park of Chicago. (You can see all of my walks here. https://citywalkschicago.blogspot.com/2019/09/20-lincoln-park-south.html