Category: Uncategorized

Don Berg – Schools of Conscience

We Are NOT Robots! A Respectful Paradigm for Learning

The dominant paradigm of learning as content delivery has been thoroughly critiqued and discredited, but an equally compelling alternative paradigm based in both the behavioral and cognitive sciences has not arisen. Workshop presenter Don Berg, an education psychologist and author, will share with you a new synthesis of the current science on learning and motivation that can better guide both educational policy and practice. Let’s discuss whether or not it is sufficiently compelling to become a new paradigm.

Josette Luvmour, PhD – Summa Institute

Working with our students families: What every Holistic Educator needs to know

All children come with parents—all parents are part of their child’s education. The future of teacher training for Holistic Educators must include preparation about how to work with parents. We will discuss the importance of collaboration with our students’ families that is mutually respectful. Our students are continually adapting to the relationships and communications among primary caregivers. When educators, parents, and students are on the same page, a synergy emerges that allows for an explosion of learning. These key relationships have a large effect on children’s educational experiences. Moreover, parent and child grow together. With knowledge attention to attuned relationships with the child’s family, Holistic Educators can create educational environments that match our student’s needs Academic excellence results. We will at look rejuvenating experiences in teacher/family interactions because this partnership is the crucible of our student’s well-being and happiness.

Lindie Keaton – Antioch School

A Year in the Life of a Forest Kindergarten

Come hear about the adventures and misadventures of the first year of a Forest Kindergarten. Share your own ideas and get new ideas from others about how children benefit from spending time with nature and how adults can help increase children's opportunities to be outside.

Samantha Matalone Cook – Curiosity Hacked

Hacking the Future: Creating a Learner Centered Education

Join Samantha Cook, Founder and ED of Curiosity Hacked, learning about creating/supporting a more learner-centered educational environment through mentorship, hands-on making, and hacking to integrate skill building into new or existing schools. Dive into how a hackerspace became a catalyst for self-determining and self-directed learning through a variety of programs designed to meet different needs. See concrete examples of how hard and soft skills, low tech and high tech projects, and leveraging local and global community can create an environment of possibility. Participants will be gaining new skills, work with a variety of materials, and discuss relevant ideas and examples to enhance their own visions as well as those of their students. Time will be given for personal and site specific ideas.

Barbarah Nicoll – Ubuntu Learning

This Body of Knowledge

In this workshop we will explore our self knowledge through body mapping, responding to guided activities to discover and map on our own body outline what we know of ourselves and what is important to us. Participants will be guided through an interactive and artistic experience that will include somatic awareness, working with the wisdom of the 4 directions (which includes life phases, seasons and inclinations) body mapping and group poetry writing. These activities are suited for youth (14 to 19), and of course adults of all ages. These activities invite participants to employ their “soft will”, a way of looking inward with courage to see oneself, in contrast to the “hard will” that is often engaged when one is given a task to fulfill, often with an overt or hidden requirement to please an authority figure. This holistic and artistic engagement includes improvisation, somatic awareness (coming to know our own bodies as a source of knowledge), expressive arts, biography questions, journaling and group poetry. This workshop is fully interactive and invitational.

During World War II, several branches of the U.S. military used a variation on the

following slogan: "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer."

Some may say that what I am asking is impossible, but given the collective wisdom, 

passion, and experience of this group, I refuse to believe that. So here’s the story.

The Challenge

AERO's mission is to help create an education revolution to make learner-centered education available to everyone.

A little background: I have a client who is interested in advancing the cause of learner-centered education. I reported back to him after the AERO conference in May, and he has asked me to take on a larger task—traveling around the country visiting various types of learner-centered facilities. To that end, I’ve been reviewing the information on AERO member schools, as well as other progressive/democratic/alt-ed efforts. One thing has become painfully clear.

AERO’s mission will not be fully realized until learner-centered education is made available to low-income/poverty-level families at scale. (Scale refers to many small centers, not larger enrollments.) 

I realize that many existing centers go to great lengths to include these students though scholarships and sliding tuition, but that doesn’t address the core issue. I have come across only one or two learning centers with significant numbers of students whose only present option is tuition-free public schools. This is not a “minority” problem. Recent research found that low-income students now represent more than half of all U.S. public school students! 

Yes, I understand that this is an economic issue. But as Chris Mercogliano states in How to Grow a School, one way to make these centers economically viable is to couple them with a business or other income producer of some type. That’s just one idea. 

So here’s the challenge. How do we create grass roots, community-based learning centers that incorporate the best practices of learner-centered, democratic schools…without charging tuition?

The floor is open for ideas! Let’s keep this in the brainstorming stage at this point, so there are no “crazy” ideas. Throw out whatever pops into your mind, even if you can’t see all the details of how it might work. Many of you have extensive experience, so you may think you know what does and doesn’t work…but what if it did?

One caveat—buying a building in urban New York (for example) is unlikely! The immediate goal would be to create a model CLC (community learning center) to work the bugs out and act as proof of concept. The ultimate goal is to lay the groundwork for a network of CLCs that community members can adapt to their own needs. 

If you’re interested and up for the challenge, please send me your ideas at judy.yero@teachinginmind.com. I’ll compile ideas and post them to the AERO Forum. If enough people are interested, we’ll shoot for a Forum on just this topic to keep the discussion going. Together, we can make this happen!

Thanks so much!