Category: News

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Please Read This Note To You From AERO

AERO supports educational alternatives around the world. There are a lot of dramatic stories about transformation that AERO has been a part of. For example, we came back from the International Democratic Education Conference that we cosponsored in 2003 and worked with people to create the first democratic school in the NYC area in decades, Brooklyn Free School, which led to several others in the NYC area. Subsequently, we worked with people to start Manhattan Free School from the waiting list for Brooklyn Free School. When that nearly folded several years later I was invited to what was supposed to be their final meeting. At that meeting, I encouraged the parents, students and staff members there to use the resources they had, a nonprofit status and a building in which to operate and get volunteer parents to keep going. One parent, from a software background, volunteered to be the interim director. Because of his IT background, he applied the agile learning approach to the school and thus Manhattan Free School morphed into the first Agile Learning Center. The idea has now been spreading around the world.

One of the most dramatic alternatives we work with is the Sri Aurobindo Ashram/orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal. It was started by Ramchandra who ran away from Nepal to India at 12 years old. Educating himself there, he returned 20 years later and saw the great poverty in Nepal with many homeless children on the street. He then started the Ashram, an orphanage that now takes care of over 200 children with nothing paid for the children and no government subsidies. They raise 100% of their food at the Katmandu location and at another one in southern Nepal. They also started a retreat center in the mountains, staffed with graduates, to help support the Ashram.

The children there are raised almost like middle-class children. They now have a school that goes through 10th grade, but they send their graduates on to high school and university. One, who came as a 4-year-old now has a masters’ degree in math and physics from Germany and has returned to be principal of their school. Another also came back to teach and is now teaching at a gap year program. He recently visited us after bringing 22 American students back from Nepal after visiting the Ashram and other adventures. Another graduate became a world-class dancer.

The Ashram was preparing to host the 2018 IDEC when the deadly earthquake hit Nepal. As fortune would have it, all the students were outside unloading hay when it hit, and nobody was injured. But it did tremendous damage to their buildings. AERO members raised $10,000 to help them with repairs and found other resources, such as an architect to help them design the repairs. We also arranged a $5000 donation from a famous actress to help them buy a new milk truck to help them deliver excess milk from their dairy to sell in Kathmandu. They now plan to host the IDEC in 2020 in the new school building they are erecting brick by brick. You can see a video we made of the ashram here.

This is an example of the work that AERO continues to do. We do not receive any government funds and foundation grants only cover about 20% of our costs. This is why it is important that our new membership initiative to get 100 more sustaining donors is so important. We are just a small nonprofit that depends on the niche of readers and supporters who understand that children are natural learners and believe in learner-centered education.

Nevertheless, we put out a newsletter every week of the year, have an annual conference, have published more than 10 books , and have an annual school starters course. We also have the #1 alternative education website, according to Google, with a half million accessing it every year. We don’t know how many schools and programs have been inspired by AERO but we do know of more than 100 we have directly helped to start. This year’s school starters online course begins September 24th.

So, if you see we have gone to the effort of putting out yet another e-newsletter, even if we seem to be selling something that helps us keep going, please open it, and if you have time, give us some feedback. If we ask you to become a sustainer or AERO member, please consider it.

Thanks!
Jerry and The AERO Team
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Two Dramatic Workshops

I am usually so busy at conferences that I don’t usually get to go to many workshops. But there were two that I had to participate it, and aspects of both of them amazed and stunned me.

The first was the workshop that nutritionist Dr. Joel Fuhrman did on the first day. He was speaking about the best foods to eat and what not to eat for optimum health. Sometimes he got into fairly detailed analysis.

Two students from a Sudbury school were in the workshop. One of them raised his hand and asked a very high level bio-chemical question. Dr. Furman began to answer it and realized that he had lost almost everyone in the audience. He stopped and asked the student, “How do you know about all these things?”

I responded, “He’s a democratic school student!”

“How old are you? The student was asked. He replied that he was 15 and was studying this on his own because he had great interest in nutrition.

Later Dr. Fuhrman told me he thought the students must be a very young- looking college student. “He should go to medical school!” he said.

In another remarkable workshop, Michael Landers spoke about how he homeschooled in 11th and 12th grade to pursue his dream of making it on the USA Olympic table tennis team. He was already the youngest person to win the national men’s championship. While homeschooling he was able to train in such places as California, Europe, and China. He was even on a cereal box! Eventually, he won the Olympic tryouts.

But the most dramatic part of this workshop came later. At one point Michael said he was also relieved to be homeschooling because he had been verbally bullied in school. Students there made fun of him, calling him “ping pong boy” and even made fun of his classical bassoon playing. His orchestra had even played at Carnegie Hall.

But then a student at a democratic school, also a competitive athlete, said, “If you were in a democratic school you could have called a meeting.”

When Michael asked what that was, the democratic school student said that when you call a meeting in a democratic school the bully had to come to the meeting and would be confronted about it. The person who was bullied could explain what happened and the meeting had to listen. If the meeting agreed there had been bullying, the bully would often have to write an apology and that usually ended the bullying right then and there.

Michael was floored! But that was not all. Then a homeschooled brother and sister pointed out that usually homeschool was with a non-authoritarian approach, “and we also learn a lot of compassion. So we don’t often see bullying in homeschooling.”

It was an amazing sequence., What is also interesting is that Michael was on track to work on Wall street and has already successfully interned there. But then he decided he didn’t want to do that and wanted to become a social worker. “Homeschooling taught me I could get off the track if I wanted to!”

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How Do You Function in a Crisis?

A long time ago I knew a consultant who was invited to evaluate a school. At first, when visited, everything looked like it was running very well. He kept visiting. Suddenly a crisis arose at the school, and very rapidly everything fell into chaos. From that experience, he developed a rule of thumb to use in the future, one that has stuck with me: “You never know anything about a school until you see how it does in a crisis.

At the AERO conference this year everything was going well: People managed to get to the school visits, to the campus, and into the dorms with minimal problem. The mini-talks went off as planned. The live stream was working. Almost every presenter arrived for their workshops, but one presenter, Carol Nash, was stranded by bad weather in Canada and no other flight was offered! AERO participants sprang into action. They arranged for Carol to do her presentation in the original room by ZOOM. They also set her up to participate in other workshop discussions. And AERO gave her access to the live stream. As she said, “I truly appreciated the amount I could participate while still at home.”

We had arranged for attendees to eat in the cafeteria to save them some money. Catered meals are many times more expensive. It was a little touch and go, getting them to keep the cafeteria open through our meal times but we managed to do it. But on Saturday I was doing the school starters workshop and couldn’t check up on it. As we were just finishing at about 4:30 I get a text from Peter: The cafeteria was closed and locked! There was no place for the 160 attendees to have supper!

We bolted down to the main building. All food service people had left the grounds! We called a meeting in the theater. Everybody came in, and we discussed the situation. We also had time constraints. The children from Pono had their documentary and presentation planned for just after meal time and their train was coming at 8 PM!.

In the meeting, we decided to get enough food for everyone as quickly as we could. We asked people what they wanted to eat. One participant ordered enough mixed vegetable for 25 people from a Chinese restaurant, to be delivered. We ordered a dozen large pizzas that we picked up after we shopped for lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers peppers and other vegetables for a huge salad. We bought biodegradable plates, 2-gallon containers of spring water, etc. We used some of the university serving equipment that had been left in the room. Within an hour we had everyone served and fed, in time for the wonderful Pono presentation. We decided to take them to the train afterward, so they would have time for their presentation, which received a standing ovation. Crisis averted.