I wrote this story and read it to a crowd of about 100 at our first NUA Sparrow Open House earlier this month. I thought you all might enjoy it, as well. It's one way of explaining the dissolution of Xara and how this new school miraculously came to be.
Not so long ago, a small kingdom with a big heart was falling apart at the seams. As rulers, courtiers, and villagers dispersed to the four corners of the land, a small band of individuals remained hopeful that, somehow, the struggling kingdom would survive.
When word came that the little kingdom had pulled up its drawbridge and bolted its gates, this group knew in their hearts it was not, in fact, the end. But what were they to do? “Our kingdom had its troubles, to be sure,” they cried, “but if given a chance, we will take what we learned and create a kingdom like none other; one that is wholesome and good for our children and our families.”
A brave and good knight from a neighboring kingdom heard word of their plight. Sir Halfaker traveled far and wide to the land of Nua to beseech its Duke to take in the small band as his own. Duke Bernie agreed, and there was great rejoicing…
… but only for a moment, for there was little time to celebrate when so much was to be done. The land of Nua had no castle for this tiny new kingdom, and Duke Bernie had decreed that if, and only if, the band could find enough villagers to join together with them, would he help them find their castle and support their new beginning. The small group had only seven weeks to fulfill the Duke’s wishes.
Amidst the castle hunting and courtier screening and villager recruiting, the small band worked night and day to amend and enhance their kingdom’s mission. “Our old kingdom had heart, but let’s now add head and hands, for only when the three work together in harmony will our kingdom be balanced and whole.”
By the sixth of the seven weeks, atop a small hill with a gently blowing breeze, there was found a tiny castle just perfect for their new kingdom. The band scurried and scrubbed, painted and prepared, and by the end of that one very last, very short week, they were actually ready.
On September 12th, 2011, in the Land of Nua, the kingdom of Sparrow opened its gates and welcomed its people. And the small band of individuals who had hoped it so, who had made it so … smiled.
The Story of Sparrow - A Fairy Tale
Checking In
Hello readers! I've missed you! I've been a bit busy these past few months ... starting a NEW SCHOOL! I'm so eager to fill you in, but I've only gotten as far as updating the About page, so go check that out to find out a teensy little bit. I've been writing a ton, but it's all going into our promo materials and a new website for the school, (and emails and newsletters and curriculum and and and...). I'll share the website here when it's ready.
There is so much to share ... about how this whole crazy thing happened in seven weeks flat; about how miraculous it was that we found the perfect site only one week before we were scheduled to open and how crews of parent volunteers transformed the place in nine days; about how all these parents hung in there through a summer full of slim chances to take this leap of faith together; about how 100 people packed into our open house on the one stormy October night that it rained buckets in San Diego ... there are so many stories!
I'll do my best to share them here as I carve out the time. It may take a while.
Oh, and by the way, the name of our school is National University Academy - Sparrow Program, or NUA Sparrow for short.
Love's Place in the Classroom
I say love is central, and it trumps all other aspects we could possibly consider.
When I say I love my students, I mean that I am seeing them for who they truly are, appreciating and accepting them right there in that space. My love for them isn’t dependent on their cooperation or compliance. It’s not affected by their academic performance. Some take longer to get to know than others, and so it follows that some take longer to love than others, but love comes … always.
It comes from my curiosity about how they operate in the world, what they think about life. It comes from watching their valiant efforts, day in and day out, to overcome limits and stretch their abilities. It comes from honoring the risks they take to be honest and forthcoming with one another. It comes from noticing them testing the community waters for safety, and then, finding it consistently secure, extending themselves to others in new and wonderful ways.
And as I love them, they have a model for how to love and accept others. One day, when a boy in our class announced in dismay that he’d just accidentally wet his pants, the class simply heaved a collective, sympathetic sigh. “Ohhh.” Not a single person laughed. A soft conversation began about how these things happen sometimes to probably everyone. He left the room to change, and it was never brought up again.
When the most introverted girl in our class got up in front of the group to excitedly share about her discovery working with the electricity set, her classmates honored her with rapt attention and compliments for speaking in front of the group. They recognized this important moment for her. They accepted her for who she was and were able to appreciate the great risk she was taking in that moment.
Without this love, there is no safe place to take these risks. Without taking risks, we stagnate. Even worse, we develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to protect ourselves from the pain we feel at not being able to express ourselves fully; at not being seen fully. These coping mechanisms look suspiciously like the “behavior problems” that teachers and schools spend so much effort to punish, diagnose, medicate, and remediate.
Our schools are filled with children; children separated from their families for a large chunk of the day. How can we not acknowledge the vital importance of love in their school lives? Do we really think that for those six hours of the day, love can be suspended and they won’t be affected by it?
I’m not saying all we need is love… but it truly does need to be the all-encompassing field within which we do this very important, very sacred work of caring for our world’s children.
Student-Initiated Pet Day
What do bearded dragons and guinea pigs have to do with student initative? At Xara Garden School, well ... actually a lot. Here is another documentation piece, this one from early in April, highlighting the amazingness that is my first and second grade group of kiddos.
She and M surveyed the class to see who had which kinds of pets. They were careful to screen out any pets that were known to cause allergic reactions for our many sensitive classmates. The two discussed organizing the pets by category. For instance, mammals in the science area, reptiles on the bookshelves, amphibians in the language area, etc, and they worked out a plan that included everyone’s pets. However, when the big day arrived, the size of the travel habitat ended up having a greater bearing on where the pets were placed.
When it was finally presentation time, B drew names from the name bag, and one at a time, each person carried their pet container to the meeting space and shared some facts about their pet. The class asked questions, and then, at the owner’s discretion, pets were passed around for viewing, petting, or holding. The kids were very respectful of the sensitive ears and potential nervousness of the pets, and were very quiet and gentle while handling them.
Once again, initiative, empowerment, curiosity, and teamwork rule the day in the Rainbow Garden class.
It’s Electric!
On Tuesday, E, J, and D experimented with a cool, old electrical set donated by one of our parents. The directions weren’t very kid-friendly and my electrical knowledge wasn’t going to be much help, which worked out just fine. I wanted the kids to explore the set and see what they could come up with on their own.
After some experimentation, they shared their process with the class:
E: First, we started out, and D said to do the cover. J’s idea was to do the directions. Then we tried using all the pieces and it didn’t work.
J: I followed the directions. I had the idea for the green ones touching everything so we wouldn’t have to use the little pieces.
E: Then she followed the steps after she found the pieces.
J: We wanted to make it safer, because the batteries got hot.
E: That’s why I didn’t touch it.
(At this point, others joined in to offer their thoughts.)
M: Maybe to have it not burn, you could put something on the top.
E: How the batteries got hot was that the light was on and lights are hot.
J: Maybe it burnt us because it’s a circle.
C: If it keeps going round and round in a circle and it keeps burning you, you shouldn’t do it again.
After just one hour of free exploration, the kids were closing in on some key understandings (and misunderstandings) about electricity and circuits. With more concrete exploration, their understanding of these concepts will continue to evolve, without ever receiving an abstract explanation from grown-ups.
An additional note for those of you not familiar with my class: student E was so excited about her discoveries that this typically reticent and quiet classmate was bursting to share her ideas with the entire class. It was a delight to see!
Cheers!
Alexis
What is the Purpose of School?
What is the purpose of school? Can it be okay that different people have different ideas about why they send their children away to other people for most of the day for an average of fourteen years?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that our country went mad one hundred years ago when compulsory education began to gather steam, and our collective mental condition has only deteriorated since then. We seem to be suffering from the delusion that education makes us better human beings, and I just don’t see any evidence of that.
The other morning, I dropped Lucas off at his preschool. After checking in with his teacher, he followed me back out to the gate to wave goodbye. I looked back at him standing behind the fence waving to me as I drove away, and I thought how strange it was to be leaving him there, while I drove down the hill to spend the day teaching other people’s children.
How very, very strange.
Why do I do this seemingly insane thing? Why do I spend five days a week giving my all to other people’s children, while trusting, hoping that someone else is doing likewise with mine? And why do families across this country and around the world send their children away to other people?
Part of that answer is that our society doesn’t pay us to be parents. With many single-parent homes and dual wage-earning households, who is home to watch the kids? I think this is a much bigger part of the answer than most people are willing to honestly consider. It relegates education to childcare, and if we pretend otherwise, we’re fooling ourselves.
And we have – fooled ourselves, that is. We have fooled ourselves into thinking that education is about creating leaders, thinkers, and innovators for tomorrow. Hmmm. Really? Think about what you learned in school. What was innovative about it? Were you encouraged to question the teacher’s ideas or think for yourself? If you weren’t the most popular kid in class, what did you learn about leadership? No, any leadership, creative thinking or innovation has happened in spite of a system that seems hell bent on crushing it.
This is even truer today than it was twenty years ago. The effect of No Child Left Behind and the explosion of standardized testing is that students are now taught only what’s on the test. They are learning how to take tests, how to cheat, and how to game the system. Meanwhile, teen suicides and stress-related disorders in children and teens are at an all-time high. An in-depth look at this phenomenon is explored in the film, Race to Nowhere, being screened privately across the country right now. I highly recommend the film! It was eye-opening for me, and I’ve been in this field since the ‘90s.
So … what should we be doing with the country’s entire population of children in our care? Thus far, it seems most people think we should be teaching them specific things, though what those things are vary greatly depending on who you talk with. Should we teach them skills, trades, history, the classics, technology, the basics, the arts, the sciences? Political will and cultural forces have historically pushed the pendulum first one way and then another, but I think we’ve become hypnotized into thinking that our answer lies somewhere along that pendulum’s path. What if the purpose of education is … none of the above?
What if we let go of the pretense that school is a place for adults to teach children things we want them to learn? Because guess what? They aren’t learning it, anyway. They’re learning the system. They’re learning competition and scarcity. They’re learning conformity and obedience - or if not, they’re learning that they don’t belong. They’re learning to take tests, and they’re learning a whole host of dysfunctional habits and beliefs that will take them years of therapy to work through and release.
What if we stopped pretending to know what our economy will require fifteen years from now, when we don’t even know what it will take to dig ourselves out of the current financial mess created by people who were trained by this very school system to compete and consume at all costs?
~ ~ ~
What if, instead, we embraced the notion that school is, indeed, childcare – caring for children? What if academic learning was more of a side benefit; or a natural result of children’s innate curiosity and imagination when they’re not squelched by our adult concepts of reality and importance?
What would it have been like for you if school had been a place in which you felt you utterly belonged? A place in which you were deeply cared for, understood, and nurtured as the unique and special person you are? What would it have been like to have been allowed your own natural timeline for development without arbitrary benchmarks labeling you “behind” or “ahead?” What would you have said, challenged, questioned, wondered if you had felt safe to speak your truth? What would it have felt like to have been able to discover and explore your natural gifts and interests, no matter what they were?
How much of what you were taught do you use or even remember? Isn’t it possible that your time could have been much better spent?
So, so, so …
I say, instead of educating them, let’s deeply care for the children entrusted to us by their parents for this long and precious road to maturity. Let’s respect that childhood has its own timeline and its own priorities, and allow children to be children. Let’s respect that each individual has their own unique gifts to share with the world, and give everyone – not just the mathematicians and scientists – the opportunity to explore and nurture those gifts. Let’s allow children to feel the joy and confidence that come from overcoming worthy challenges that they set for themselves. Let’s give the children safe boundaries, loving guidance, and practical tools for lifelong respectful interactions with others.
We’ve been making it so very, very complicated, when what’s needed, in my not-so-humble opinion, is really quite simple. Let’s get honest with ourselves about why we do this thing called compulsory education in the 21st century.
