I’ve been thinking a lot about how we talk about education.  How we prove that learning has taken place.  Inevitably we talk about standards, measures, awards, grades, success.  Anastasis has given me the freedom to completely redefine education.  There are no limits, except of my own making.  I get to decide how to talk about education.  This would be easy if I was doing all of this in a vacuum, but I’m not.  There are stakeholders who care about how I talk about education.  Parents, teachers, students, higher education.

The problem, I’m discovering, is that when we talk about education, we talk about it too narrowly.  It is possible to be very committed, data driven, tech savvy, “21st century,” and yet be working against the kind of learning that is transformative.  We can have all the right tools, the measures, the awards and test score evidence and still not really see.  We can miss the thing we care most about, because we are so focused on trying to define it.

I’ve been learning about embodied energy, this is the sum of all energy required to produce goods or services.  It is the energy that can’t be seen because it isn’t obvious.  The measures, the awards and test score evidence…they aren’t really the learning.  They are poor representations of learning.  I’m more interested in the embodied learning.  I want to know about all of the little moments, the prior learning, the assumptions that led up to the light bulb moment for a student.

Because novels are more than just words.

Songs are more than just notes

Paintings are more than just color.

When you separate out the words, notes or colors they don’t do anything.  They cease to tell a story. They cease to move us.  It is when the words come together, in very specific orders, that a story is told.  When the notes are intentionally strung together that we get music that resonates with us.  When the colors dance on a canvas that we are moved to emotion.

So, when we talk about education and we look at data points and test scores and numbers, we lose something. The number can’t tell a story.  It can’t show the incredible little moments that led up to learning.  Because there IS embodied learning.  The part that really matters.  The embodied story that tells us that learning was more than just the shallow memorization of surface facts.  That there was a journey that led to the light bulb moment.  The tricky part comes in the stakeholders.  They want the learning to be defined.  But a lot of that embodied learning doesn’t have a name.  It can’t be measured in any scientific, rational, conventional way.

We end up talking about education as if it can fit inside a 20 second sound bite.  We boil it all down to one sheet of paper that tells kids if they measure up or not.  When we reduce everything down to the soundbite, we strip away something vital to who students really are, the journey and learning that takes place.  Students can become completely enslaved to expectations, good grades and accolades and lose their true selves in the process.  Lose the curiosity and wonder of learning.  This isn’t what the world needs.  The world needs people who are fully alive.  Who have passion.  It’s one thing to memorize and have the right answer (and right number on the report card), it is another to be so passionately engaged with learning that curiosities lead you to new learning.

Our job as educators is more than just standards we teach.  We are in the business of helping students know they are more than just a number.  More than just data points.  They are the story, the song, the art that moves and matters.  They are the embodied learning.

Our challenge is to help stakeholders care more about the embodied learning, the things that don’t have names.  The journey that collectively leads to things that matter.  Our challenge is to care most about students that are fully alive in their learning.

It is up to us to make the things that matter, the most important.

(Along this line of thinking, I’m attempting a redesign of the “report card” we need a way to better capture the things that can’t be named.)

This morning, as I was getting dressed, I was reminded again about just how much everything matters.  The way that I dress each day may seem superficial and unimportant to the education conversation.  In my little corner of the world it matters.  In my second year of teaching I started having parents stop by my classroom and tell me that they felt like they knew me because every day their kids came home and mentioned what I was wearing.  I had no idea that my students were even paying attention.  They rarely mentioned anything to me.  I worked in an environment that had a loose dress code that had to be followed.  Essentially it was: black pants and a dressy shirt, long skirt, or dress.  I didn’t always feel comfortable in my dress code garb, to add my own style to the dress code, I went all out in my shoes.  I love shoes and color. When they are paired together I am in.

Now that I get to determine the dress code, I can really let my style shine.  I work to keep it dressy, but in my own way.  Why does this matter?  Kids are still watching and commenting on what I wear.  The older girls will especially comment on each facet of my outfit.  They are paying attention.  What can I teach through my personal style?  I can teach that NO one can define who you are except you.  I can teach that clothes can act as an extension or reflection of who you are, but they aren’t who you are.  I can help girls see that it is okay to subscribe to multiple styles…that you don’t have to wear what your friends wear to be their friend.  In my closet you will find a lot of preppy, some hipster flare, some New York chic, some beach bum sprinkled with a little of everything in between.  I like to mix it up and pair the unexpected. At the end of the day, I want what I wear to teach something every day.  I want it to say something about the superficial boxes that we put people in. I want to be able to have the conversation with girls about dressing appropriately for age and body type in a way that is respectful to them and others.  I want these kids to realize that it is okay to be who they were created to be.  I want them to be fully alive because they aren’t being limited by what someone else tells them they have to be.

I want to be intentional because it matters.  Kids are picking up on what is said and also what isn’t.

This year our student body grew.  It grew so much that we needed to find a new building.  This was a hard transition because we went from really large, open rooms to more traditional classrooms.  The kids picked up that something felt different this year.  They weren’t able to see the other classes work throughout the day, it wasn’t as easy to flow from one class to another and work with different age students.  When we asked the kids what felt different, they couldn’t always put their finger on it. Something felt different.  Environment matters.  It matters for kids and teachers.  While our teachers liked having their own space again (everything last year was temporary and had to be moved out of the classroom each week), there is something missing.  The natural conversations that happen throughout the day with other teachers when you share space, the camaraderie you feel with other staff members changes because you don’t see them quite so often.  The ability to learn from each other all the time because you share space.  It reminded me of where most of you are.  In very traditional spaces trying to do something different.

We had to “break” the classrooms we are in this year and start over.  This isn’t nearly as easy to do as it was last year!   This year that breaking means letting kids own the classroom.  It means letting them bring in their own chairs and bean bags. It means building tree houses in the classroom that can be used as learning space.  It means making the giant windows in the classrooms into writing space using dry erase markers.  It means painting murals of our learning about Rwanda on the walls.  It means being intentional about using shared space for “all-in” time where multiple classes gather and work together.  It isn’t our ideal, but it is intentionally student space.

Environment matters.  Kids pick up on these subtleties.  Is the space mine, or yours?

Last Friday we had an inservice day for our teaching staff.  We take a little bit different approach to our professional development.  We could bring in educational consultants, speakers, etc to hold a workshop day with us where we sit and listen to an “expert” tell us what we could be doing better.  Instead, we took our teachers on a cultural journey around Denver.  This is the same field trip that Jr. High students took a few weeks back.  We take field trips with students every week because we believe that there is something to learn from everyone.  We believe that learning can (and should) take place outside of a classroom just as often as it does inside a classroom.  So, we loaded up a van with all of us, made a quick stop off at Starbucks for some fuel and headed off to learn.  Anastasis is a Christian school with Christian staff members.  On our journey around Denver we stopped at a Mosque, a Hindu Temple and a Baha’i center.  Our goal: to see the world through different eyes.   To ask questions.  To learn something new together.  This was an incredible experience.  I would venture to say that I learned more on Friday about the teaching/learning process (from non-educators) than I have at any other professional development day I’ve had.  We stepped into other cultures and let ourselves be curious.  We were comfortably uncomfortable in new situations where what we knew came from a paragraph in a textbook we read in high school.  We learned. It was beautiful!  We had deep conversations, asked questions and reflected together.  At lunch, the Anastasis staff had the opportunity to reflect and discuss what we had heard.

It may not sound like much, but these shared experiences, these moments of camaraderie matter.  The staff at Anastasis comes from all backgrounds and life experiences.  We are very different and yet we truly enjoy each other’s company.  We spend time together outside of school.  We run together, see movies together, laugh together, have dinner.  A staff that is connected in this way operates better.  We values each other’s opinions.  We look for opportunities to learn from each other.  We work together.  Students pick up on this camaraderie.  They see what healthy relationships and friendships look like.  They see that you don’t have to be the same age, gender, personality to get along and enjoy others.

As it turns out everything matters.  Even the seemingly insignificant pieces of your day make an impact on the way that learning happens.  I often get asked how a teacher in a traditional setting can “break everything and start over.”  Be intentional.  Pay attention to the insignificant. Think about how environment, dress, body language, friendships are teaching students something.  Start there.  Break those.  Those small nuances teach something whether you want them to or not.  It can teach kids that they have to fit in, that there is something wrong with them if they don’t fit, that the classroom doesn’t belong to them, that the adults in their lives don’t really believe what they say about relationship.  Or, you can decide that it does matter and in doing so help them begin to see that they matter.  That they are wonderfully unique.  That the learning space belongs to them.  That they can be fully alive.

Everything matters.

I come from a family of entrepreneurs.  If it doesn’t exist or it can be done better, that is what you do.  This mind-set can be a bit of a curse…once I get an idea in my head, it is like a broken record that plays over and over until I do something about it.  My dad is prime example of this, he started Koostik with a styrofoam cup and an iPhone. Once the idea was there, it stayed until he saw it realized…in this case that means a growing company and product in Restoration Hardware and Red Envelope.  He is awesome.

For me this process started as I dug through curriculum and worked to supplement it with technology tools.  The idea was to “fill” the gaps with technology tools that would make the curriculum work better for students.  As I went through publisher after publisher, I started realizing that the problem wasn’t a lack of technology (if you have read this blog for any amount of time, you know that is a BIG realization for me). The real problem was that we were trying to address the needs of an incredibly diverse population of kids with a one-size-fits-all curriculum.  The troubling thing for me was that I sat on the committees that made the curriculum decisions.  I was sold (just like everyone else) on the premise that these curricula had “differentiated” instruction.  I have come to hate that term.  You know what it means?  It means that curriculum companies can sell more curriculum because they add in a highlighted section that says “differentiation!” and gives a one-size bigger or one-size smaller approach to the exact same problem.  As I went through all of this curriculum, I couldn’t shake the feeling that adding in a bit of technology wasn’t going to solve the problem.

As a computer teacher, I taught 435 students every week.  I taught the same 435 kids for 6 years.  I saw them grow up, learned what made them tick, watched the frustration grow when they didn’t understand a learning objective.  These kids were amazing. They were brilliant. They all had strengths and weaknesses that made them special. They all have a different understanding and approach to the world.  We were stripping all of that uniqueness away and making them learn everything the same. We were expecting that they would learn the same things, the same way, and at the same time.  Ludicrous! Nothing in life or growth and development happens this way, and yet that is what our education system is built on?  This was really troubling for me.  I couldn’t shake that it shouldn’t be that way.

In 2010 I took a year away from teaching for health reasons.  During that year, I acted as an educational consultant for many area schools.  This period of time re-emphasized those stirrings that I was having about education. This curriculum wasn’t working because it assumed too much sameness. I saw brilliant, gifted kids losing their passions because it wouldn’t get them into the swanky private high school (that looked just like every other school). How sad that we ask kids to give up their areas of gifting to get to the next level of learning.  Something is wrong!  One day I was working my way through curriculum, supplementing the holes with technology tools.  I was listening to Pandora Internet radio.  A song came on that I had never heard before, by an artist that was also new to me.  I frantically searched for something to write on so that I could remember this new find.  I remember thinking, “how amazing that we have come to a place in history where we can use technology to predict something as personal as music.”  I was truly amazed that I could put in one piece of information and through a series of algorithms, Pandora could predict other music I would like.  If it can work with music, surely it could work with curriculum.

This was the birth of that niggling thought that wouldn’t go away.  This was the beginning of the Learning Genome Project.  I had recently been introduced to a programmer (@ianchia) through@Doremigirl on Twitter.  Ian and I had shared many conversations about what education apps could look like.  This time it was my turn to ask a question.  I wanted to know if it was possible to program what was in my head.  ”Well of course.”  Ian introduced me to some wireframing tools and I was off and running.  Over the next months, I dreamed up how the Learning Genome would work.  I thought about the students that I wanted something better for. I thought about the frustrations I had as a teacher. I dreamed about a tool that would make the whole process easier.

Teachers share something in common: we all want the very best for our students.  There are a few problems with this.  First, we don’t always get to choose what we will teach. Many times our school or district hands us the curriculum and says, “go.”  This is not conducive to doing the best we know how for every child.  Second, we don’t always know that there is a tool/lesson/resource out there that could make all the difference for each student.  Third, we have a limited time to search for that perfect tool/lesson/resource.  A lot of system problems to overcome.  If Pandora can do this for music, I can do it for education.

I started researching how Pandora works, what happens in the background that makes my experience possible?  Pandora is called the Music Genome Project because it used the Human Genome Project as its inspiration.  In the Human Genome Project, genes are mapped out.  In the Music Genome Project, the “genes” of music are mapped out.  I called my version the Learning Genome Project.  Together, we will map the genes of education, those attributes that help us find commonalities that match the right content to each student at the right time.

First, we need to collect information about the learner. If we don’t know the learner, we can’t know what content best fits their needs.  This is, in short, the best student information system ever.

Next, we have to know enough about the school and the classroom to make recommendations. It does us no good to recommend an iDevice app if the school has no access to that device.

We also have to know something about the lead learner (the teacher).

After we have the profile information, it is critical to know where students are in their learning. What needs to be learned?  This is the individualized learning plan…each student has one.

From within the ILP, teachers, students and parents can create and have input on the learning goals.  These learning goals inform what happens in the hub of the genome.

When the learning goal has been identified, the genome “hub” comes into play. This is where resources (lessons, videos, apps, experiments, activities, etc.) are matched and recommended for the student.  Much like Pandora, a learning channel is created.

Teachers (and students) can expand the results to view more information about the recommendation.  From here it can be added to teacher and student planners, and materials for the curriculum can be selected.

Teachers can see all student assignments within their planner. Here they can create groups for overlaps of student learning.  They can also create whole-class events.

After a student completes an activity, they record it within their ePortfolio.  This is all completely integrated.  Within the portfolio they can keep notes, documents, pictures, video and badges.  Badges help students have a bread trail of where they have been in their learning.  Portfolio’s are forever associated with a student, from year to year it travels and grows with them.  Students can also have the option of downloading their portfolio for offline viewing.

In addition to portfolios and planners, the Learning Genome Project includes wiki, blog and photo tools.

Community tools keep students, teachers and parents in collaboration.

My brother and I had many of the same teachers growing up.  We are very different people with 5 years separating us.  My favorite teachers were not his.  We had very similar experiences, the same outstanding teachers. But some teachers connected better with me than him.  How do we help every child have influence of a “favorite” teacher?  I created Twitacad.  Even if that teacher isn’t in the child’s school, there is a blended learning component that makes that connection possible.

Twitacad offers teachers and students a platform for sharing, communicating, and learning.  It is all tied in to the Learning Genome. Everything works together.  Virtual teachers are listed as teachers for parents, students and other teachers to interact with.

The Learning Genome Project has assessment tools built-in.  Assessment is based on mastery of a skill or concept.  This is directly related to what is happening in the student portfolio so that students, teachers and parents can view evidences of the learning.

How does content, resources, tools, lessons, apps, videos, etc. get into the genome?  It gets tagged with its learning attributes by incredible teachers around the world like you.  We all contribute to this project and we all benefit from it.

The hub (resource aggregation) portion of the Genome is free to everyone.  Every child deserves an education tailored to them.  Additional portions of the Learning Genome Project (planners, ePortfolios, blogs, wikis, Twitacad) will be a subscription based service.

The Learning Genome Project is not curriculum.  It is a sorting tool that pulls the best options for every child.  Teachers will be able to sort results based on price, Bloom’s Taxonomy level, standard, subject, and type of resource.  This will tell you what curricular resources will best meet every child’s needs.  Every time a resource is used, it gets rated by both student and teacher. Resources that are highest rated will be recommended first.

This is truly a quick overview of the Learning Genome project.  There are so many intricacies and features that will make it revolutionary to education.  The one hang up? I need help funding it!  Sure, I could go and get some venture capitalists to fund it. The problem: I want the force that drives what happens to the Learning Genome Project to be what is best for kids…not what best impacts the bottom line.  I believe that if we all put a little into this project, that we can create something revolutionary.  We can all have a part in transforming education for the world.

I hope you will join me.  I hope that you will realize that $1 and a few minutes is a small price to pay for a resource that has the potential to reach every child in the world.  This is a small price to pay for our future.  We can do this.  Please click here and donate now…then spread the word to everyone you know and encourage them to do the same.

Big, sweeping changes don’t seem to happen overnight, as quickly as we might like.  Thirty, forty, or a hundred years go into those sweeping changes: race relations, animal testing, women’s rights, recognition of addiction as a disease.  And yet, in each case, there was a turning point.  Those handful of pivotal moments when someone(s) decide it must be different and that in this moment in time, change will begin.

For me, this pivotal change happened in October of 2010.  Two years ago.  That moment of “it must be different” led to a school. Anastasis Academy.  In many ways, Anastasis feels like it happened over night (we started a school in 4 short months!) and in other ways, it feels like it will take years before the vision of Anastasis is realized.

Sweeping changes happen over time.  Often, they are hardly noticeable as they are happening.  This explains the 5-year-old, struggling through their ABC’s who is ‘suddenly’ reading.  When did that happen?!

People often ask why I don’t write more about Anastasis.  The whole process has been incredibly organic and hard to describe to someone who isn’t seeing it unfold with me.  I can tell you about students who are becoming fully alive and discovering that they love learning.  Until you see this happen before you, until you hear the students talk about it, it is really a weak representation of what is happening.  Here we are in year two. In a lot of ways, it has felt like a harder beginning.  This is strange in light of what happened last year…starting a school in 4 months from a place of zero.  I think it feels harder because the vision of what could be is being more fully defined and dreamed up each day.  There is this sense of frustration that it isn’t here yet.

The change is hardly noticeable as it’s happening.  It is organic and creeping.  Sometimes I overhear students talking animatedly about figuring out ratios, and exclaiming over learning what portion of the population lives on less that $1.25/day, the change is happening.  The vision is being realized one moment at a time.  These kids are becoming fully alive.  Those teaching them are doing the same.  We hear parents describe what we do to others.

This is community.

This is family.

This is church.

This is Anastasis.

This is the beginning of sweeping change, where students can be fully alive and learn how to properly manage their freedom.

So, we will go on wishing that we could already see the full realization of this vision, but we will also rest in the hardly noticeable moments of change in this journey.  We will appreciate the moments in time that keep everything from happening at once.  We will rejoice as we watch it all unfold in it’s perfection. We will wait anxiously for the day when this type of learning is available to children everywhere in the world.

***While we wait, consider joining in this mission to help students be “fully alive” in their learning.  Donate and spread the word about the Learning Genome Project.  This is the vehicle we will use to share this vision with ALL children.

Last year I had a “hunch” about learning…specifically about curriculum.  That hunch turned into a full-fledged idea and a mission to do better for kids.  Everywhere.  Along the line I met some truly incredible people who taught me things I didn’t know how to do before.  Like wire framing (thanks @ianchia), and pitching ideas (thanks @houseofgenius), and how to go about picking up programmers (thanks@toma_bedolla).  Now I’m ready to share the culmination of all this work with you.

This isn’t just a post to tell you about what I’m doing, it is a call to action for everyone (yes, even you).  It is a request for you to join me in this mission in whatever form that may take.

I have a vision: to make personalized learning a reality for EVERY child. 

I know, it is big.  It is also doable.

For those who are new to following me, here was my original “hunch” written here,Dreams of Education:

“The problem with curriculum and textbooks is that they complete thoughts.  Curriculum and textbooks give the impression that learning has an end.  That when you have made it from cover to cover, the job is done.  I know in my own schooling this was true, I thought that school was teaching me what was important and that anything outside of the curriculum wasn’t important or relevant to my life…wouldn’t they have included it otherwise?  How did curriculum get this way?  Well, people realized that there was no possible way to cover every facet of learning, so they stripped it down to what they thought was important.  The problem? What is important to you may not be what is important to me.  What’s more, something that is very important to me may have been cut all together so I don’t even get the chance to know that it is important to me.  Humans tend to like things that are definable, we like things that we can put into a neat, orderly box and carry out in a predictable way.  It feels safe and manageable.  This is what led me to the following hunch:

What if curriculum was more flexible?  What if curriculum/schools/learning looked more like Pandora.  If you aren’t familiar with Pandora, it is an online radio station that plays the music that it thinks you will like.  You type in an artist or song and it creates a customized radio station just for you.  It is remarkably accurate.  Pandora almost never gets it wrong for me.  It is like they have a direct line to my brain and can predict what song I would like to hear next.  When it is wrong, I can give the song a thumbs down and it apologizes profusely for the error and promises never to play that song again on my station.  The other thing I love about Pandora: I can have multiple radio stations.  Because sometimes I really couldn’t think of anything in the world better than Frank, Dean, and Sammy; but other times  I also want a little Timberlake, Whitestripes, or Bangles.  What if curriculum looked like that?  What if learning happened as a result of typing in one subject or topic that a student was enamored with and a completely personalize learning journey began playing out for them?  What if students were led through a journey that was completely customized?  What if they had several stations mapped out for them?”

I believe this is possible.  I believe it is within our reach to create a completely personalized learning experience to every unique child.  I believe that we can honor humanity instead of treating our kids like widgets in a factory.  I believe that teachers should be teachers, focused on the needs and development of the child instead of teaching the masses through scripted curriculum.

This is The Learning Genome Project.

The Learning Genome Project will empower teachers and parents to become engineers of learning by providing each individual student the exact content they need, at the exact moment they need it.  The Learning Genome will enable students to explore the process of inquiry, experimentation, discovery and problem solving.  Instead of learning how to pass the next test, we will enable students to construct meaning and learn how to transfer that meaning to new life context.  At the hub, the Learning Genome is a platform that aggregates resources and, using a series of algorithms, provide recommendations of the BEST resources to meet the individual learning needs of a specific child.  The Learning Genome creates those serendipitous moments of finding just the right learning tool to meet the needs of children at the right time.

Much like Pandora finds that perfect piece of music, the Learning Genome will find the perfect piece of learning material to aid the student in learning.  The key to the Learning Genome’s success is crowd sourcing.  I will be drawing on educators around the world (that’s you!) to help me tag curriculum, books, lessons, videos, apps, websites and other educational content.  This collection of tagged content lives in the centralized ”cloud” and wil allow users around the world to find and access materials that best suit student needs.  By gathering information about the individual student’s learning style preferences, multiple intelligence strengths, social/emotional levels, interests and passion, the Learning Genome can help teachers to create customized learning maps for each individual.  This portion will be free. Every child deserves a unique learning experience.

In addition to the Learning Genome Hub (the aggregate), the site will include a complete Student Information System, planning tools, e-portfolios, e-learning, individual learning plans, assessment and blogging tools.  All of these will work seamlessly together for you go-to for learning and planning.

Changing the world here.

Call to Action

So…how can you help?  I’m glad you asked!

1.  Learn more about the Learning Genome at indiegogo.

2. Please consider investing in this mission (see the awesome perks that includes below).

3.  Blog about the Learning Genome with a link back to the indiegogo campaign (be sure to link to those posts you write in the comments below!)

4. Tweet about this project…a lot.  Let’s completely take over the Internet with tweets about the Learning Genome and taking over education for kids! Please make sure to link back to the indiegogocampaign so that others can learn about it! Use the hashtag #standagain (because after all, we are helping children “stand again” in their learning)

5. Offer your time as a Learning Genome Content tagger or beta tester

6.  Mention us on Facebook and like us on Facebook!

7.  Did I mention spread the word? Seriously, that is SO helpful!  You never know who might see that tweet and drop a couple thousand (or more) to make this project go!

8.  Time is of the essence.  I have 40 days starting NOW to make this happen.  eeek!  I need your help!

So, what are the perks to helping with this project?  

$5  gets your name on the Learning Genome Change Makers page.  You are changing education. That makes you a big deal.  I want everyone to know what a big deal you are!  I know many of you don’t think that your $5 can do anything.  Wrong.  According to my cluster map, I have hundreds of thousands of visits to this blog.  If each of you pitches in…we all win fast!

$10 Remember all those cool Bloom’s Taxonomy posters I made?  This campaign is now the ONLY place you can get them.  These are 8.5″ x 11″ versions of the poster.

$30 Learning Genome beta tester. You get the inside scoop and ability to play before ANYONE else.  I know, pretty cool.

$60 EXCLUSIVE A full size large-format print of my Bloomin’ Peacock mailed to you.  That awesome little Peacock looks even better large.  Did I mention this is the ONLY place you will get a big version of this?

$500 Even more EXCLUSIVE  you get all of my Bloom’s re-imagine posters in the large format.  Perfect for your classroom, library or as a gift to your favorite teachers.

$1000  My Searching for daVinci webinar for your school.  What better way to spend your professional development dollars than learning how to create a daVinci like culture of learning at your school?  Worth it!

$5000 For my corporate friends who want to see their logo in lights as a company that supports education and changing the world.  If you have an education company, The Learning Genome Project will be the place to be seen.

We have $85,000 to raise.  It sounds like a big number.  We can do it together.  I figured if I am going to lean on crowdsourcing to transform education, the funding should be crowdsourced too.  How awesome will it be to join together as an education community to say, together we transformed the way learning is done.  We changed things for every child in the world.  Yeah, it’s big.

Yesterday, one of our all-star teachers brought in a Louis Vuitton purse.  Brand new. Probably worth about $1400.  Lance offered it to us, “I’ve had it for a few years, my wife isn’t a designer purse kinda gal, who wants it?”  The purse is beautiful. I won’t say that I wasn’t tempted to take it.  I have a hard time portraying this image.  Don’t get me wrong, I love designer everything but I’m specific about it.  I view designer dresses, shoes, bags, the way I do art.  If I can appreciate the designer as an artist, if I know their story, if the design resonates with me, I’m all over it.  In other words, designer for the sake of designer doesn’t do it for me.  That may be anti-girl.  The funny thing is, all of the girls turned it down.  “How do people spend that much on a bag, I’m not sure that is the image I want to portray.”  “It is just too big for me to use as a purse realistically.”  “Why don’t you sell it on ebay and use the money for your new baby girl?”  In the end, Lance still had the purse.  He said he would hang onto it for a few days in case any of us changed our mind.

As it turns out, Lance didn’t hang onto the purse.  Instead, he gave it to one of our janitorial staff as a gift.  He asked her if she would teach him Spanish in return.  She happily agreed to this arrangement.

When I walked out of our staff meeting, I saw Betza sitting in a chair with the purse clutched to her in an embrace.  When she saw me, her face broke into a reverent smile.  “The professor gave me this beautiful purse.”  Our student teacher joined me in the hall and translated Betza’s words for me.  She proceeded to tell us about how she was wealthy in her country, the wife of a diplomat.  She has grown children who are all over the world.  One is in Milan studying fashion.  She said over and over again how blessed she was by the kind professor’s gift.  She said, “In the United States, God has given me the gift of humbleness.”  What a statement!

These are the kind of people who surround us.  People who sacrifice for others.  People who love deeply.  People who can laugh together.

How did we build this culture?  When @matthewquigley and I began the interview process with teachers, we agreed that it needed to be someone who shared our vision.  Equally important: it had to be someone we could laugh with.  In the interview process, our last question was, “What is your drink of choice?”  You can learn a lot about a person by their answer.  At first, this was really a joke, to help add a little levity to the interview process.  As it turns out, the answers told us a lot about who each person was outside the classroom.

I don’t think it is possible to create strong school culture until you have a strong staff culture.  I love the people I work with.  We share jokes, life’s rough spots, and relaxation.  We read books together, convince each other it is a good idea to go to a midnight showing of Hunger Games even through we have to work the next day.  We watch basketball games together, have dinner with each other and have shared many happy hours.  We truly enjoy each others company.  That is an easy place to build from.

Our students and families pick up on this.  When you have a staff who can laugh together, you have students who join in.  Students have a model of healthy social interaction.  We work hard to give our students opportunities to work and play together regardless of the age.  Every morning, our whole school walks a mile together.  This is a great time of culture building as students talk, explore, and skip together.  It is incredible to see one student comment on the amount of trash they see on the walk and bend down to start picking it up.  Even more incredible is to watch as the majority of the school community joins in to help pick up trash.

After our morning walk, our school gathers together for a morning devotion.  Having all of the students together like this is so valuable. They are all hearing the same vision cast.  They have this shared experience every day.  Our students also have recess all at the same time, and lunch together every day.  We don’t separate their relaxation time based on an age level.  They do it together.  I can’t tell you how neat it is to watch two seventh grade girls notice that a fourth grade girl is sitting alone at lunch, pick up everything, and join her.  Without prompting from an adult.  That is how community should be done.

We invite our parents to be a part of the community.  Often parents join us on the morning walk (sometimes with dogs in tow).  They sit in on the devotion time.  They stop by to have lunch.  They offer to carpool for field trips.  They come to Parent University to learn together.  They get to know their child’s teacher outside of the parent teacher conference.

As a school community, we are experiencing the gift of humbleness.  Starting a school will do that to you.

“Does the curriculum you teach now make our society stronger?”

For the first time in my 9 year education career, I can say, “yes!”  Of course I have to preface that with, we don’t really teach a “curriculum” in the traditional sense of the word.  Instead, we have inquiry topics that give us a rough guide for learning and the Common Core standards that ensure the basics are covered.  (And I do mean basics. Have you read through them all?  They are underwhelming to say the least.)

I found the following to be all too true in curriculum:  “There’s no room for someone who wants to go faster, or someone who wants to do something else, or someone who cares about a particular issue. Move on. Write it in your notes; there will be a test later. A multiple choice test.”

When I was dreaming of a new kind of school, I knew that it couldn’t be tied to a one-size-fits-all boxed curriculum.  I have yet to meet two children who are identical.  We are all unique, we all have interests and passions. We all have our own set of gifts and weaknesses.  To measure every student against a predetermined “completely educated student” model isn’t going to work. Why is it that we keep pushing this idea that every child should look the same upon exiting their formalized schooling?  My guess is that we do it because we are lazy, because it is easy to take something that is measurable and create a system around it.  Only, humans aren’t easily measured are they?  I feel like every standardized test score should come with an asterisk next to it that explains the intricacies of the score.  “This score is misleading because….” Followed by the multitude of reasons that the score doesn’t really offer an accurate picture at all.

At Anastasis, we aren’t in the business of measuring kids against some antiquated idea of educational perfection.  Instead, we are in the business of dreams.  We work to teach kids to be brave and connected.  We help kids realize their passions and go out into the world with empathy.  I’m considering adding the following quote from Seth’s manifesto in our staff handbook:

“We do not need you to cause memorization. We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage in the outside world to make those dreams happen.” -Stop Stealing Dreams

It’s one thing to believe these ideals and it is another completely to live them every day.  To be brave enough as a school to stop the madness even as we are asked about standardized testing, curriculum, and grades.  I’m proud of our little community for their bravery.  I’m proud of the way they support and help each other through those times when they aren’t feeling so brave.  I’m proud of them for sticking with us when they can’t point to endless standardized data to back up their claim that their child is learning.

Every 5 weeks, we get together as a school community for Anastasis Serves.  This looks a little bit different each block based on what we are working in our inquiry unit, what needs the community has and what opportunities are available to us.  One of our incredible parents organizes Anastasis Serves.  She works hard to take into consideration what the kids are learning, and what they could do as a school community that would grow us as global citizens.  This block seemed to have some major divine intervention.  One of our teachers, Lance, has a ministry called Impact Edventures. Through the ministry, he had been in contact with the Watoto Children’s choir and worked to get them to join us at Anastasis.  Words cannot express the tremendous blessing this was for our community.  The Watoto Children’s choir is a program whose mission is to rescue an individual, raise each one to be a leader, and ultimately rebuild a nation.  The group from Uganda began as a result of an enormous population of orphaned and vulnerable children and women in Africa.  Many of the children that make up the choir have lost one or both parents to war and HIV AIDS.  Watoto provides a home and stability for these children and tours around the world to spread awareness of the conditions and hopes in their country through song. This is an incredible group of children and adults.  Each child in Watoto has the opportunity to travel the world and sing in the choir only once.  Upon returning home, the children train the next choir who will travel.  You can’t help but fall in love with these children and have your heart-broken over the stories they share.  They have seen tragedy, but what our students noticed more than anything was the unmistakable joy that these children have.  They are thankful, loving and happy.

Denver Post 2012

View the video of Watoto with our students here.
@Michellek107 prepared our students for the Watoto’s arrival by teaching them a welcome song in Swahili.  Our students sang to the traveling choir to welcome them to our school and community.  I do believe they were impressed with our attempt!  They helped us pronounce and enunciate some of the words and taught our students to dance.  It was an incredible morning of cultures colliding and an opportunity for our students to realize that children are children no matter where they are from.  All of the children ate lunch together and played together.  Anastasis families volunteered as host families for the Watoto children.  The Watoto choir put on another performance in the evening and many of our families made a special trip back to school so that they could spend more time with the incredible group.  It is hard to put into words the blessing that this day was for our community.  (To see more pictures of our day, check out this article in the Denver Post.)

This is learning.  This is what education is about.  Connections.  Collisions of human stories.

One of the things that the Watoto children taught us was about what their lives would look like without Watoto.  Some of the children shared their pasts as child laborers.  This is where that divine intervention I mentioned earlier came full swing.  The parent who organizes the Anastasis Serves days does so months in advance.  This Anastasis Serves day was to happen the day that Watoto left us.  The topic: Child Laborers.  This was an unusual Anastasis Serves because our students weren’t necessarily “serving” others.  Instead, the goal was to help students understand what child labor is and to help build empathy.  We used Red Card Kids Lesson 5 on Child Laborers as a guide for our day.  All of our students, 1st-8th grade, gathered together for the day.  We began by talking about the “work” that our students do at home, or a job that they have had.  We briefly discussed laws in the United states that permit children who are 15 and older to work as long as the jobs do not risk their health, safety, or moral development and don’t interfere with their attending school.  We asked students why they thought these laws existed.  Currently, more than 200 million children between the ages of 5 and 15 work up to 14 hours a day instead of attending school.  It is easy to talk about child labor, watch a video, listen to some statistics and promptly walk away unchanged.  We didn’t want this for our students.  We wanted them to really understand the hopelessness, anger, and resignation that these children feel.  We planned out a simulation of what it means to be a child laborer.

Each student was given a situation card.  The card described the new identity the students had for the day.  They learned what their home life was like, what struggles their family was currently facing and what their job was to be for the day.  Each student was given a hammer, protective eye wear and a brick.  For the next 30 minutes, students used the hammers to break the bricks into sand for our imaginary road.  There was absolutely no talking, no breaks, no water, no mercy.  If a teacher saw a student slow down, they would yell at them to pick up the pace and threaten to lower wages.  You could see the frustration and anger in the students eyes at the unfairness of the situation.  We didn’t let them stop if they started to get a blister or their arms got tired.  We were mean. When we were finished, the students had to collect all of the sand and gravel into buckets and haul it to the dumpster and then were marched silently back to their classroom.  Teachers decided what the wage would be for the work.  It wasn’t always a fair  wage based on the work done (fair being $0.35 total). Some hard-working students only received a dime.  Students were asked to go back to their situation cards and decide how they were going to spend their money.  They could use the money to pay rent, to pay for rice to feed their family, or a small toy at our makeshift store.

The empathy for those children they had played with the day before was enormous.  Anastasis students of all ages talked about the injustice of child labor.  Asked questions like “why don’t they just rebel?”  Got teary eyed as they realized many of their favorite brands employ child laborers.  Vowed to change the world.

I was amazed and proud of our students. They took the simulation seriously and honestly considered what life would be like if they couldn’t go to school. If they broke bricks 14 hours a day for $0.35.  What would happen to them physically if this was their life. Asked hard questions about what happened if a child became disfigured as a result of their job.  They jumped to each others aid when a bucket got accidentally dumped and needed to be gathered again.  This day was culture building.

This look into child labor happened on a half day leading into our spring break.  Incredibly, the kids didn’t just leave the hard day behind them. Instead they worked together to start a movement.  @leadingwlove’s class created this site and are working to make LSGW a 501c3 foundation.  Here is the note they added as a result of the child labor day:

To Anyone with a Willing Heart & a Compassionate Spirit:
Here at LSGW, we are starting a Revolution, a movement to make a change in the world, to respond to the needs of people with compassion and justice! We challenge you to join us in the fight to end the injustice that plagues the people of this world. We hope you will be moved to make a difference.
Welcome to the official site of LSGW**, Let’s Save God’s World Foundation. Our purpose is to reel in the next generation of changemakers. God has blessed us with many resources and materials to begin this new and exciting project. We hope to work along side all of you in our exciting journey to make God’s creation a better place. Please check out the advertising campaign that the students in Mrs. Lauer’s class have put together to promote our cause, and spread the word!
**LSGW is an educational non-profit foundation and an official middle school learning process at Anastasis Academy in Lone Tree, CO. 100% of donations and fundraising go to the cause!
Enjoy and Make a Difference!
- Written by Lexxi, Jake, and Mrs. Lauer

 

I believe that these are the children who are going to change the world.  These are the children who are going to put an end to child labor.  These kids are generous enough and honest enough to make those dreams a reality.

This is the reason I can confidently answer “yes” to Seth’s question, “Does the curriculum you teach now make our society stronger?”

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,800 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

With permission from Umair, this is my Betterness Manifesto for education:

So you want to build a better education, but how?  Consumption of enough content and material alone won’t do it.  We must reach forward for a complete reboot in education.  We must yearn for betterness.

Betterness in education requires:

1.  Companies that don’t get into the business of education to push a political movement or to make a profit at the expense of our youth.  Instead we need to support education companies that can be profitable, but that profit by doing really meaningful stuff that matters.  Start investing in, and supporting, education companies that are sustainable and have real substance that will impact children positively.  Support those education companies that take an interest in, and engage, the education community.
2. People and businesses who will take an interest in what is really happening in local classrooms.  Don’t take the word of major news organizations that thrive on scandal.  Instead, visit classrooms, find out what is really happening, discover the real needs of education.  Volunteer in a local school, take a teacher out to lunch and discover what the learning landscape is really lacking.  Give something of yourself.
3.  People who will put their money and words behind educational movements and companies that do awesome stuff that is made with love, ethics, and passion (they DO exist!).
4. Administrators, lawmakers and educators who will stand up to, and quit, curriculum companies who push something that is meaningless (i.e. curriculum designed to help pass a test created by said curriculum company).  Betterness in education can’t come as a result of companies churning out toxic junk.  Only support education companies that do meaningful work.
5. People who will involve themselves in building a school community of talented, passionate support.
6. People who will become a volunteer, mentor a child, get involved.  Do something.  Support those that do something that benefits the children inside of a school more than it benefits themselves or their political agenda.
7. People who support what they really think matters.  Do you want children who learn to be critical thinkers and problem solvers? Quit supporting standardized testing.  Do you want children who have their gifts and talents nurtured? Stop purchasing boxed curriculum as a one-size-fits-all education solution.  Do you want students who arrive at school ready to learn?  Ensure that every child in the community is well nourished and healthy.  Support what it is that really matters.
8. Educators who will continue to do what is best for kids every day.
9. A learning environment created with children in mind. A place where students can inquire, discover, explore, experiment and problem solve. A place where they can acquire skills and knowledge not to pass the next test, but to construct and transfer meaning to new contexts.
10. Administrators who will let their teachers be teachers. Administrators who build a dream team and then support them to be their best every day.

It is only when each of us stand up and take responsibility that we can work toward a better educational future that impacts us all.

Let’s together change the fabric of education and, subsequently, our future.  Real change doesn’t happen as we wait on politicians and the big six (curriculum publishers) to make a shift.  Real change begins with each of us, educators and non-educators alike.  Education is an institution that has touched every one of us, some positive and some negative.  It is something that we all have the responsibility of pouring into and working toward betterness. Currently we are making poor decisions by trying to fill in the gaps with the same old toxic junk (one-size-fits-all curriculum, standardized testing).  We are the freest people in history, it is time that we started educating accordingly.

Every revolution begins from the bottom up.  If we are truly fed up with the current education mess that we find ourselves in, then it is time to do something about it.  The current system needs to be rejected and refused. It is up to us to build a better education opportunity instead.

Thank you Umair for the inspiration, the launching point, and agreeing to let me write an education version of your great “Betterness Manifesto”.  Here is to betterness in all capacities of life in 2012!

Ways I hope to bring betterness in 2012:

• Continue working to make Anastasis Academy a betterness education model that can spread.
• Launch the Learning Genome that will take steps to customize the learning landscape for every child.
• Continue connecting with passionate bottom-up educators around the world through Twitter, blogs, conferences, and the Reform Symposium.

For me it started with an obsession and passion for creating rich learning environments where every student was recognized as an individual. In that first post I wrote:

“I have a dreams of education. I have dreams of the way that schools should look. I have dreams of kids who find their passions. I have dreams of schools as rich learning centers.”

I had dreams of stripping the “vanilla” away so that passions could emerge.

Dreams of ditching that boxed curriculum that we call an education and watching the factory model fade into the rear-view mirror.

Dreams of ending the practice of viewing teachers (and students) as expendables.

I had dreams of schools that were beautiful, that were designed with students in mind.

Dreams that education would stop looking so much like the McRib.

Dreams of breaking free of the box, of valuing students and teachers,  of using the right tools, of a school where a student’s inner da Vinci can break through, of a school that customizes learning.

I shared dreams of more fabulous failures.

The dreams started trickling into reality in March of this year (2011).  In March I started getting some hints that these dreams weren’t really all that far-fetched.  By May I had officially started a school.  In August we opened the doors to Anastasis Academy with our first 50 students in 1st through 8th grade and had hired a dream team of 5 truly incredible teachers to lead them.  In four short months we went from dreams to reality.

At Anastasis Academy, we lease space from a church building throughout the week.  We have our own wing with classrooms, a playground, a gym and a kitchen.  All of our furniture is on wheels.  This makes it easy to adjust space daily based on needs, it is also a necessity since we use shared space.  Twice a week we move all of our belongings across the hall into a storage room (if I’m honest, this is the part we could do without!).  We can’t complain about the space.  It is pretty incredible!

You will notice that we don’t have rows of desks.  No teacher’s desk either.  We have space that kids can move in. Corners to hide in, stages to act on, floors to spread out on, cars to read in.  We are learning how to learn together, learning how to respect other children’s space and needs, learning how to discipline ourselves when we need to, learning how to work collaboratively, we are learning to be the best us.

You won’t see a worksheet at Anastasis. We use iPads.  That isn’t to say that we ONLY use iPads, in fact, you’ll often see us building, cutting, pasting, writing on a whiteboard/chalkboard and even paper.  We do a lot of blogging, a lot of reflecting, a lot of Evernotting, a lot of cinematography, a lot of discussing.

Every morning we start with a 15 minute walk outside together…as a community.  We invite parents and siblings to be a part of our morning walk. Occasionally we have the dogs join in on the fun.  After the walk we come inside as a whole-school for a time of devotions. Again, this is a time for us to build community, to foster the culture we want for our school.  Families are invited to join us every morning.  We always have at least one family and, many times, multiples.  We pray with each other and for each other. We have hard conversations and funny conversations. We think together and challenge each other.

Matthew West joining us for devotions!

Our inquiry block is a time for hands-on transdisciplinary learning.  This is my VERY favorite time to walk through classrooms.  It is incredible to see the joy in discovery.  It is incredible to have a second grade student with dyslexia discover an app to make stop motion animations, teach himself how to use it and proceed to stand up before 7th and 8th grade students to explain how stop motion works.  I wish I could bring you all through the building during this time.  Every time we have a visitor the students pause long enough to describe what they are doing, the learning that is happening. I often have to pick my jaw up off the floor. These kids are amazing.

We have no curriculum. At all. Zip. What did we do instead? We hired the very BEST teachers we could find.  We gave them a base level of skills that we wanted students to have- an outline if you will.  We used the Common Core Standards as our baseline.  We don’t use the standards like most schools do. We use them to make sure that our students have the building blocks and foundations of learning in place.  And then we let our students and teachers GO. The standards are not a weight we are tied to, they are the underpinnings that make it possible for us to soar and take our learning anywhere.  When you look at the Common Core standards they are pretty underwhelming.  I’m glad they are! They provide us with just enough momentum to propel us forward and then off we go on a journey of learning!  We also have our big inquiry questions in place.  From there, we go where the learning takes us, bunny trails and all.  It is pretty fantastic.  Today one of our primary students came out to see me and said, “Look at this boat I found in this new library book. Can I try to make it?”  My answer: “Absolutely! What materials do we need?”  Together we made a list of all the materials I needed to pull together for him.  Tomorrow he will build that boat he is fascinated with and find out if it works the way he has planned.  That is learning!  Tell me what boxed curriculum allows time for that to happen? None. That is why we don’t have it.

In the afternoons we have more “content” area subjects (i.e. math and language arts).  In the primary grades this means students building the skills they need to support their inquiry.  In the intermediate grades this means honing those skills for better communication and more thorough inquiry.  Again, we don’t work from a boxed curriculum. We find the lessons, approaches, and materials that work for the individual student.  Sometimes this means working with manipulatives, sometimes it means exploring measurement outside, and sometimes it means using an app.  It changes daily based on the needs of the students.

We have mixed age level classrooms.  We do this for a lot of reasons.  Most importantly, it is good for older and younger students to work together and learn from each other; it is vital that a child be able to work at their developmental level and progress as they are ready to; and it deepens inquiry when students with different perspectives work together.

Once every five weeks we invite the parents to join us for Parent University.  This is a time for us to help parents understand this new way to do school.  Detox, if you will.  It is a time for us to show parents what best practices in education look like, why grades aren’t all they are cracked up to be, why play is important.  It is a time for us to think and laugh together. It is a time to get questions answered.

Also every five weeks, we hold a “Meeting of the Minds”.  This is a parent/teacher/student conference where we all get together and set our road map for the next 5 weeks.  Students write goals with the help of their teacher. They have ownership over what they have done the last 5 weeks and tell mom and dad what they have planned for upcoming 5 weeks.

Every Friday we have a learning excursion or an opportunity for an “Anastasis Serves”.  Learning excursions are field trips all over the place that help students start to recognize that learning doesn’t just happen when we are at school.  Learning happens everywhere we are and, if we are paying attention, all the time.  Anastasis Serves is a time for our students to give back to the global community.  Sometimes this is a door-to-door scavenger hunt for donations, sometimes this is learning about orphans around the world, or packaging cookies and letters to send to our troops.

We don’t do grades, we do assessment all day every day while we learn.  We don’t do homework, we pursue our families and passions at home.  We don’t do worksheets, we do interesting (sometimes frustrating) work. We don’t do boxed curriculum, we do on-demand learning.

We do mistakes. We do community. We do collaboration. We do messy. We do play. We do fun. We do technology. We do learning.

How do we do all this? We have a 12 to 1 student teacher ratio (or less).  We have incredible students, parents and teachers.  We have stinking smart board members who are invested in our success and trust our judgement calls.  We set our tuition at $8,000 (per pupil spending in our district) to show that even though we are private, this can be done in the public schools.  We started with nothing…well almost nothing, we had dreams.  There was no capital raised, no fund-raisers, no huge donation. We started the beginning of the year at $0 and put blood, sweat and tears into it.

This is not to say that we have it all figured out, that all of our students are perfect, that all of our staff or families are perfect. We are perfectly imperfect as every school is. We have days when the kids are BOUNCING off the walls, we have disagreements, tired teachers, stressed parents, a founder who has occasional melt downs (that would be me), students who need extra love and support, tight budgets, parents who demand different, scuffles, sniffles and band-aids…lots of band-aids.  There is nowhere else I would rather be. No other group of people I would rather work with. No other students whose germs I would rather share. This is my dream.

There are moments throughout the day when I am stopped in my tracks by the realization-this is my dream.