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Work At Bene Kids Space

Who we are….

The Bene Kids Space is a small free school which provides 14 children aged 3 to 8 with a safe and supportive environment to play and learn together. The space was created for low income families who want affordable alternative education for their kids. We are located in a beautiful valley with many natural resources in the mountains of South Spain.

 

At our core is the following

A commitment to equality between all members of the project, no matter what age.

A belief in the power of play and freedom to guide children’s learning.

The  interplay between the freedom of the individual and the needs of the community

 

Who we are looking for….

…energetic people with a passion for working with kids. Ideally, you would be…

  • Experienced working with kids, in free school, forest school, other progressive approaches, or play contexts.
  • Someone who understands and believes in free approaches to education.
  • A bilingual English and Spanish speaker.
  • Happy to work up to 24 hours a week in exchange for food and accommodation.
  • Ready to commit to the project for 1 or 2 terms (3 / 6 months)
  • Unafraid of living rustically in an off the grid anarchistic community!
  • Ready to start in January 2015.

 

If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact us at kidsspacebene@gmail.com with your thoughts on the education of children, any relevant experience, and anything else you think would help us to consider if you would be the right person for the job.

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Mountain Sun Community School in Brevard, NC is seeking an Executive Director

Mountain Sun  Community School in Brevard, NC is seeking an Executive Director to represent

its mission through leadership of the organization in administrative, business, and educational

processes.

 

Executive Director responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Faculty and staff management and supervision, program and curricular support, professional development and training.
  • Working closely with an active Board of Trustees in developing the annual budget, long range planning, and management of finances.
  • Student recruitment, admissions, and retention.
  • Collaboration with parents to assure the school is doing everything possible to meet the needs of the Whole Child.
  • Development and implementation of a fundraising strategy, cultivation of a donor support base, development and maintenance of public relations, outreach and marketing.
  • Oversight of the relocation of Mountain Sun from our current leased campus to a new leased location.

 

Mountain Sun Community School is a non-profit, independent, private school serving 60-70

children from pre-K through 8th grade.  We opened our doors to students in August 2008 in the

beautiful Blue Ridge mountain town of Brevard, NC.  (www.cityofbrevard.com)  The school was

formed as a parent-driven effort to create a holistic community school integrating the best in

educational pedagogies, with a strong emphasis on Montessori, Waldorf, and Howard

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theories.  Mountain Sun Community School’s mission is to

cultivate each student’s natural curiosity and love of learning through a challenging academic

curriculum grounded in mutual respect and a sense of belonging. We recognize each student’s

unique potential and nurture their passions and abilities through a balance of direct instruction,

collaborative and independent study, hands-on experiences in and out of the classroom, and

service learning.  (www.mountainsunschool.org)

Ideal candidates will have a Masters degree and administrative experience in non-profits

and/or independent schools.  We are seeking candidates with extremely strong leadership,

interpersonal and organizational skills, as well as a rooted belief and understanding of our

educational principals.

Interested parties should send a cover letter and resume to

employment@mountainsunschool.org  by January 15, 2015.

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Op-Ed: Are Kids Naturally Lazy or Natural Learners?

It wouldn’t be so bad if the current education debate just involved different ways to achieve the same goals for children. But the reality is much more dangerous.

We are talking about two completely different paradigms: One, the traditional one that is failing, assumes that children are naturally lazy and need to be forced to learn. If you believe that then you need competition for grades, passing and failing, tons of homework, long school days, long school years, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

But modern brain research doesn’t confirm that assumption. Rather, it confirms a second paradigm, that children are natural learners, that the brain is naturally inquisitive. If you operate on that paradigm, as many progressive educators and homeschoolers do, almost none of the approaches mentioned above should be used. The teacher’s role is to actively help the student find resources to explore and learn about everything they are interested in.

In fact, forcing students to be in traditional schools operating on the first assumption creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: After about six or seven years of forcing students to learn things that they aren’t interested in and are often irrelevant to their lives, they do appear to lose interest in learning. That natural ability to learn is gradually extinguished. Anyone who has ever administered standardized tests to that group can see clearly that the rate of improvement on the whole decreases to a crawl, even on those flawed standardized tests. But beyond that, you see the light go out of their eyes. They retreat to watching television and playing video games. Even worse, they retreat to drugs, or in some notorious cases, decide to try to kill people in their schools or themselves.

The latter cases may be rare, but they do reflect that culturally we simply accept as fact that children hate school. Why do we accept that? If children are natural learners and they say they hate school, something is wrong with their school. Something is wrong with many, many schools.

There are schools that children love, and love to go to. These are under the general heading of alternative and progressive. They are learner-centered in their approach. I know of one democratic school in which the children voted to ban all snow days. They didn’t want to miss anything.

Did you wonder why the government never gives statistics comparing home-educated children to publicly educated ones? In many states homeschoolers are required to take standardized tests. The answer might be because in at least one study homeschooled students scored in the 86th percentile nationally.

We need to end No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Education is not a race. Nobody tests you in order to allow you to leave the public library. You are assumed to be a natural learner. All people are. All children are. We need to understand the new educational paradigm before it is too late.

Originally published in June, 2010 in Education Revolution Newsletter