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.
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