Answer hunting

A problem:

Without hope of finding answers, posing ever-more questions can be miserable.

Though you wouldn't know this to read a lot of us educators — as a tribe, we're prone to praising asking questions, and to demean finding answers. (I sometimes hear the quote by Rilke: "Love the questions themselves" used to this end.)

But answers are thrilling. Finding answers is the goal of asking questions. 

Don't get me wrong: I love mystery. Love love love it. But I love true mystery: the sort that comes from questions that elude even my best attempts to answer.

If our schools revolve around a curriculum of question-asking, we need to match it with a curriculum of question-answering.

Our basic plan:

As stated in my last post, our students will collect questions in their personalized commonplace books. These questions can be of any sort — philosophical, scientific, mathematic, historical — anything. Once a week our classes will choose a few questions to pursue more deeply.

Then they'll decide how they want to hunt for answers. There are three things (at least) our students could decide to do with a question.

1. Write the question on our chalk wall. Our classrooms could have one wall (or a section of a wall) painted in chalkboard paint. Students could write the question, and then throughout the week other students could write their replies, and their replies to others' replies. (This doubles as an authentic chance to practice elegant lettering.)
2. Commission a student to find an answer. Imagine, here, each class as its own Royal Society: funding exploration to solve the most tantalyzing gaps in knowledge. At the end of the week, the student could issue her report in a brief speech — 4 minutes, say, outlining how she pursued the answer, and what she found.
3. Share the question with the wider community. We could, for example, ask other classes their opinions, or the faculty. Or we could ask the classroom parents. Or we could ask a few particular community specialists — a rabbi, perhaps, or an engineer, or a city councilperson. (Skype could perhaps help here.)

Our goals:

We hope to...

• Knit together a community through shared quests.
• Invite debate when everyone can't agree to an answer.
• Learn a whole lotta cool stuff!
• Develop some mastery at research. (Commissioned students could have practice using Google, Wikipedia, print encyclopedias, and — gasp! — an actual library full of books.)

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

If you waltz into one of our classrooms, you might spy a pair of students earnestly debating a policy issue — like whether a lowering of the drinking age would be worth it. Or you might see a single student giving a slick 5-minute presentation on what plants eat (hint: the Sun). Or you might see a whole class interviewing someone about history — like asking a veteran whether the United States should have invaded Afghanistan.

Some specific questions:

• When I was in high school, we sometimes had to write papers answering some specific question. Only rarely did I especially care about the question I was supposed to answer. Students should spend their time answering questions they actually care about.
• That last point wasn't actually a question. The real question: isn't this cool?

Question posing

A problem:

Schools don't teach how to ask good questions. Which is a shame, because good questions are magic.

They're hard to ask, though! To ask a good question, you have to understand what you know and what you don't know, and stand on the very edge. A good question transforms a cloud of unknowing into a tool. A good question directs your emotions toward finding an answer.

Posing a good question isn't easy. It's hard to ask big questions, hard to ask specific small questions, hard to ask solvable questions.

In fact, questions of any sort only come into schooling in a limited way. Students ask questions in school, of course, but often just at the periphery — when they really don't understand what the teacher just said, and feel bold enough to admit it. But great learning is powered by questions.

Our basic plan:

Every day, students collect their observations, questions, and stray hunches into a special idea-journal they have (for now, dubbed a "commonplace book").

Once a week, the class meets to share the questions they'd most like to pursue. In that meeting, students evaluate their questions — are they open-ended, or close-ended (for example, could they be answered with a single word?)? Are they factual, interpretative, or evaluative?

In the meeting, the class chooses a handful of questions that they'd most like to pursue.

(For how, specifically, the class might pursue the questions, look forward to the next post! It'll be epic.)

Our goals:

Our hope is for students to get good at recognizing what they don't know.

We hope that recognizing that they swim in mystery might make them much more curious about everything.

We hope that wielding the ability to control questions will give students control over their learning.

We hope that giving students a regular chance to share their questions (and explain their findings) might cultivate a community of passionate learners — something like that which is depicted in Raphael's famous School of Athens.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Walking into our classroom, you might notice students furiously scribbling notes in their commonplace books whenever a question pops into their head — as they study a ficus tree's roots, say, or watch the opening to Casablanca.

Some specific questions:

• I'm imagining this question-meeting as being once a week — but I wonder if there's a value in doing something once a month, as well. Maybe we could set a theme for the month, or set some broader questions.
• Initally, I imagine that the teacher will lead the question-meeting, but eventually it'd be great to have students try taking it over.
• When would be the best day to have our question-meeting — the first day of the week (Monday), or the last day of the week (Thursday)? The easy answer is Monday, but I wonder if letting the questions mull for a weekend might be cool. (Also, students could research the question on Friday, our "school day off".)

Independent work time

A problem:

Autonomy — being able to exercise choice in what you do with your time — is a human necessity. Quality work, emotional contentment, long-term personal growth: all of these depend, in part, on a person's ability to engage in the activities that they know they need to engage in.

In most schools, students have little autonomy.

Our basic plan:

For a significant portion of each day, students get to choose what they'll be doing — let's dub this their "independent work time".

This won't be the entire day — there'll be periods where we're all gathered together. But during independent work time, students will get to choose between many different options of pre-defined activities (drawing a plant, reading a book about their Learning in Depth project, re-engaging a nettlesome math puzzle, dissecting a toaster, copying a map, and other curricular pieces you've seen bandied about on this blog!).

During this time, students will be fairly autonomous, sometimes working by themselves, other times in partners or small groups (depending on the work). The teacher will be required to check that they're doing their work, and help them when they're stuck. The teacher will also confirm when a student hits a predefined level (say, being able to draw a map of Australia by heart to a certain degree of complexity), and records it.

To help students choose wisely, we may help them write up "work plans" at the beginning of the quarter (fine-tuned each week), which they can follow or riff off of.

Our goals:

• Students get experience in planning and self-management.
• Students get greater satisfaction in their work.
• Students are able to match their mood to the type of work: e.g. math if they're in a creative mood, technology-dissection if they're in an analytical mood.
• Students simply get more learning done.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Stumbling into our classroom, you might be surprised to find that everyone is doing their own thing — but that they're not running around wild. Rather, they look intently focused on a specific thing. After a while of observing, you might notice that a group of children who had been discussing the lyrics to a Tin Pan Alley song break up and each independently consult their work plans, checking off the box that says "music" before they move to different stations.

Some specific questions:

• Is there a better phrase than "independent work"? (I'm pulling this from the Montessori category of "works", which I'm shamelessly stealing this whole idea from.)
• Is there a better phrase than "work plans"? (Please let there be a better phrase than "work plans".)
• Can we have the teachers' records be stored electronically, say, in a Google spreadsheet?

Learning in Depth

A problem:

Students have no idea how deep understanding can go. They have no sense of how much of the complexity of the world they can re-create in their own heads — and so have no experience of the pleasures that come with this.

Students don't have any sense of this, because schools don't typically give them this until the master's thesis.

Our basic plan:

We'll build Kieran Egan's Learning In Depth projects into the school week.

Near the beginning of the first grade year, students will come to a ceremony where they'll be awarded a single, simple topic — e.g. dust, horses, or flags — that they'll research over their grade school, middle school, and high school years. (Here's a list of the possible topics.)

Students are the leaders in planning out their own research — their reading, experiments, surveys, and so on. They do so, however, with the help of the teacher, and perhaps with other community mentors.

At the end of each year, students present their learning to the community.

Our goals:

We'll have succeeded if students...

• gradually get a new conception of how complex the world is — even simple things.
• gain a warranted trust in their own abilities to understand new things.
• become convinced that virtually everything is interesting, no matter how dull it may have seemed initially.
• develop a new sort of love of a topic — a calm contentment that lasts after the flashy, excited passion for a subject has subsided.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

From the outside, nothing would look different — during our "LiD" study periods, kids would be reading, writing, and drawing — just as they might be throughout the day.

At the end-of-year LiD presentation, however, you might see parents, faculty, and local community members gathering in a darkened auditorium to watch kids presenting the fruit of their learning — proving that kids can understand so much more than most of us ever thought possible.

Some specific questions:

• How should the topics be assigned? We've got three possibilities:
  • Totally student-chosen. A positive: kids begin somewhat interested in the topic. A danger: shortly, they'll lose interest, and think that this is because the topic itself is no longer interesting.
  • Totally random — kids pick tiles out of a hat. This was Kieran Egan's original proposal. A positive: kids don't lose interest (because they'll probably not start with any), but gain interest. More than anything else we do, this could teach everyone in the community that everything is interesting. A danger: some parents may find this insane.
  • A mix — teachers choose a few topics for each child to pick between, based on that student's personality. Kieran recommends this as a possible meeting point for all involved. Some kids are more interested in mechanistic things: teachers might put tiles like "electricity" and "trains and railways" into their bags; other kids are more interested in living things: teachers might put tiles like "mollusks" and "silk worms" into their bags. Some magic (the magic of randomness!) is retained, by having students choose a tile at random.
• How much time per week should be allocated for Learning in Depth projects?
• Should we have dedicated Learning in Depth project time? Or should students pursue it as one of their many projects?
• Is there a danger in putting both Learning in Depth and Independent Projects into the classroom? Do they fulfill roughly the same functions?

Group math lessons AND personal math puzzles

A problem:

There's wonderful value in learning math as a group: students can help one another, and every day be reminded that everyone can understand math.

But there's wonderful value in learning math as an individual: each student can spend time struggling with whatever puzzles bamboozle him or her.

Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages — we need a synthesis.

The synthesis that many American schools choose often doesn't convince students that everyone can learn all of K-12 math, and also doesn't give every student a collection of math puzzles that bamboozle them.

Our basic plan:

We spend about an hour a day on corporate math lessons — in K-8, using the JUMP Math curriculum. (The JUMP approach excels at rapidly breaking down complex big ideas into understandable tiny ideas, and then helping students arrange these tiny ideas together.)

We also, though, have students individually play with off-curriculum math puzzles (starting with the puzzles of James Tanton), with the goal of finding puzzles that still stump them after (say) 10 minutes of focused struggle. We have them collect those problems in their personal Deep Practice Book, and help them make small-breakthrough after small-breakthrough. (We don't just tell them the answer.)

Because we understand that all memories deteriorate after time, we have students regularly re-solve (and re-approach) all the problems in their Deep Practice Books — perhaps once a week. As time goes on, and they re-solve a puzzle three, four, five, or more times, something wonderful can happen: problems that had once been unsolvable become easy, and even obvious. Puzzles that had been vexing and hateful become delightful and friendly.

And every once in a while, the student will realize that there's a much more beautiful way of unravelling the puzzle. This is a momentous discovery: it's as if the clouds roll back and a trumpet reveille sounds from the heavens! How often did moments like that happen in your K-12 math experience?

As students engrave these puzzles into their brains, they'll grow to love math more, and understand it much more deeply than is now possible in the conveyor-belt math approach that most schools use.

Our goals:

We think it's possible for all students to perfectly understand the K-12 math curriculum.

We think it's possible for all students to grow to love (at least in small part) the process of doing and understanding math.

We think math can become the place in the curriculum where students most develop their growth mindset — that they see math is something difficult that they can do. We can shatter the myth that only some people can understand math.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Walking into our classrooms, you might stumble upon one of our whole-group math lessons: expect to see the teacher posing a score of tiny questions to a focused group of students. During independent work time, you might see a student frowning intently as she tries yet another way to solve an especially diabolical puzzle. When she fails (again!), she goes through a problem-solving methodology, to better tease out any clues that could help her crack the riddle.

Some specific questions:

• Are James Tanton's puzzles good to start in grade school?
• What other good options are available for mathematical puzzles?
• I mention here developing a single, standard problem-solving methodology. That would be great — if we could train the kids in just one, then performing it would become a habit, one that could extend what our kids are able to do throughout the rest of their lives. But: what problem-solving methodology should we try out? (I do have the beginnings of this, and will be working on it over the summer. Presumably, too, the kids in the classroom can slowly evolve an even better one!)
• Lee, are the kids in your class too diverse in ages/math abilities to do any kind of group lessons with? Or are there enough little kids to jump into JUMP at the lowest levels? An alternative (that still uses JUMP) is just to have kids work through the workbooks themselves, with the teacher giving assists when needed. Corbett Charter School did something like this (though not with JUMP), and an amazing math teacher that both you and I know suggested that this "kids working by themselves" method might suffice to help kids learn the whole K-12 math curriculum (though she didn't think it was ideal).
• Math circles haven't come into this description at all. They're magical. Where should they fit?

Animals & plants

A problem:

Kids in classrooms can sometimes be like hamsters stuck in empty cages. Our minds are built to handle a specific type of complexity, and we feel satisfied when we're in it.

One aspect of the environment that we're built for is that it be filled with living things: plants and animals and fungi. That is, we're built to find animals and plants interesting. 

Biology, of course, grows out of this innate love — this biophilia, as a few authors have christened it.

We're built to crave being around living things, but schools (and much of modern society) largely divorces us from it.

Our basic plan:

We bring in as many animals & plants to our classroom (and to our school property) as possible. We find ways to put kids in contact with these living things, we encourage the kids to observe and pose questions about the living things, and we help answer those questions.

Our goals:

Our grade schoolers learn as much complex biology as many students learn throughout K-12.

Our students lose their "gross!" response (also an innate reaction!) as they encounter insects and worms.

Our students feel calmer.

Our students develop relationships with some of the animals, and from that become enchanted with the natural world.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Walking into our classrooms, you might notice the surprising number of plants that line the walls of the room. There are grow-lights galore, and a surprising number of hydroponic systems (the better for seeing roots, and being clear on how plants grow).

You might spot students taking time-lapse photos of a bed of mushrooms growing (to be eaten in a later lunch!).

Lots of schools have class pets, and we should pursue these, too: fish and hermit crabs and parakeets and gerbils. We might also pursue some of the ickier critters: worms and praying mantises and beetles; snakes and frogs and salamanders. Gross! shuts kids out of experiences that could support a vibrant intellectualism: helping kids desensitize to the slimy and creepy-crawly is part of our job.

I'd love for the school to have a chicken coop outside, with kids in charge of taking care of the birds.

For all of these animals and plants, we'd have kids make observations: drawing, especially, but also measuring growth and writing down behavior. (This can be done in blocks of independent work time.) We can then encourage kids to pose questions about what they'd like to understand: why does the gerbil get scared when I approach its cage? why do the mushrooms grow better away from the sunlight?

Having posed these questions (and perhaps shared them to our Questions Board), kids can start looking for answers, through Wikipedia, Zoobooks, The Encyclopedia of Life, and so on. Those questions which kids aren't able to answer on their own, but would like to have answered, are prime material for the teacher to have an Imaginative-Education-inspired circle time about.

Some specific questions:

• What's the least number of animals/plants/fungi we'd like to start with?
• What's the greatest vision for animals/plants/fungi we'd like to aim for?
• Beyond the animals/plants/fungi that I've listed here, what other ones could we put in?
• Lots of kids and teachers (myself included) have allergies to mammals. Does this automatically rule out having any in our classrooms, or are there clever ways around this?
• What kinds of safety issues do we need to talk about, if we bring animals into the school?

Independent projects

A problem:

There are some fundamental problems built into our typical conception of "school".

1. In most schools, students are afforded little freedom to choose to do what they want to do.
2. In most schools, students aren't even allowed to do very much — the "learning" that they're supposed to do is imagined to be purely cognitive, and doesn't involve affecting the world around them.
3. In most schools, students are cut off from the community. Schools become a barrier to encountering the people in your neighborhood.
4. In most schools, there are too few big projects: too much learning is done in small pieces. Holistic learning, however, should have a blend of projects of all sizes, from the micro to the epic.

Our basic plan:

Every quarter, each student takes on a fairly-epic independent project of their own choosing. With the help of a teacher, they come up with a measurable goal, a schedule for getting work done, and a team of mentors.

These projects have three (and a half) qualities:

1. They're student-designed (though helped along by various adults), and thus tied into each student's interests and goals.
2. They're ambitious, bigger in scope than most of what happens in school.
3. They're designed to be shared. They're not graded; they're presented to the community (and are often designed to be useful to the community).
4. Often, they're multi-disciplinary. They involve things in the real world, and thus don't pay respects to academic boundaries.

Our goals:

We hope that these projects can be a safety net, of sorts, for student engagement: even if, by some odd occurrence, a student is bored by everything else in the curriculum, he will always be able to look forward to this.

These projects can also be a safety net for what we're leaving out in the general curriculum: if a student, say, is obsessed with cars, cars can come into her independent projects.

Students can develop project management skills by doing these.

Students can fail here — they can bit off more than they can chew. (Failure is critical!)

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Walking into our classrooms during Independent Project time, you might see kids doing a crazy variety of things. [Lee, little help?]

Some specific questions:

• How much time a day (or week) do we imagine allocating to these projects?
• Are these in competition with the Learning in Depth projects? (In a way, everything in a curriculum is in competition with everything else for time, but I wonder if, goal-wise and feeling-wise, these two types of projects are in even more competition with each other.)
• Do we start at kindergarten/first grade with these, or introduce them in middle school?
• Quarterly — Lee, am I getting that right? Or are these yearly things?
• Lee, where can we see examples of these?

Realistic drawing

A problem:

We think using what we notice, but we notice very little. In fact, we're terrible at noticing things. We walk around believing that we see what's around us, but that's an illusion.

If only students could notice what's around them, they'd be much better learners.

There is a method to train people to notice what's around them: teach them to draw realistically. Drawing realistically (that is, representing what you're seeing onto paper) turns out to be a skill that human brains aren't designed to do, but it can be learned, using tried-and-true methods.

But most schools assume drawing to be an innate skill — one that some kids have, and most don't. Because of that, they treat art class as optional, and fill it with a smattering of media (drawing, painting, sculpture, photography) in hopes that at least one medium will connect with students' innate skills.

But in truth, everyone can become competent at drawing.

Our basic plan:

All kids can learn to draw what they see, and in our schools, all kids will. We'll use a combination of two tried-and-true curricula — the Monart method and the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain method — to help kids do this with a minimum of frustration and a maximum of joy.

Many methods of teaching drawing focus on the subject — "how to draw a face" or "how to draw a cat" — or on the media — "how to shade with charcoal" or "how to draw three dimensional objects". Both of these methods, however, focus on perception: they train you how to see.

As someone who's gone through the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain materials, I can testify that this is mind-bending. As Kimon Nicolaides writes, in The Natural Way to Draw, "Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see—to see correctly — and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye."

Our goals:

Ultimately, we want kids who can draw, and who take joy in drawing. The ability to really see what's in front of them, however, will lead to much better abilities in science (where observation is crucial). It may also help students think visually more generally, and help them in math.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Kids intensively focused on something: the jagged edge of a leaf, the membrane of a skin cell (seen through a microscope), or a face.

Some specific questions:

• "All students will." Is that too strong?
• Is it enough, for the first year, to have a non-artistic teacher go through the curriculum by themselves, and then lead students through the same? Or should we look into having a community volunteer? What would you like me to do to help with this?
• How often do we need students to engage in this? Daily? Every-other-day-ly?
• What's the role of critique and micro-adjustments in practicing drawing?
• I'd want to digitize all student art, so we can (1) send the real work home with them, and (2) make it easy for them to see their progress. What's the easiest way to do that? Have we a scanner?

Daily movement

A problem:

We're built for motion, but we imprison ourselves in desks. Human bodies are designed to regularly move and exert themselves. Human brains seem designed to work best when their bodies are being used. When we've been moving, we're happier and healthier. We have more energy to draw on, and yet (somewhat counter-intuitively) we're calmer, too.

But schools aren't built for motion. Gym class and recess are sometimes seen as add-ons to the school day — ones that, thanks in part to No Child Left Behind, have become rarer in some schools.

Our basic plan:

Two to three times a day, rain or shine, students will go outside and move! Playing organized games, and engaging in free-form play, they should return a little winded.

And inside the classroom, students will have opportunities to exert their bodies in more limited ways: balancing, stretching, and doing muscle-building.

Our goals:

Our school can help kids be fitter, happier, and calmer than they would be otherwise. The exercise they regularly get allows them to be more awake in the classroom, and think more clearly.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Kids who, come sundown, will fall asleep very quickly.

Some specific questions:

• "Rain or shine"? Am I going nuts here? Obviously there are some weather constraints. (When we have blizzards and hurricanes, kids should stay inside!) What are the practical limits? (I do like the idea, however, of having kids go outside in the rain. It's refreshing — it's wonderful! Can we have kids just store a change of clothes at the school?)
• What are the secrets for having gym class not become terrible?
• What list of outside games and sports should we compose?
• What inside activities should we have? A balance beam? A trampoline? A climbing wall?
• Are there any generally-agreed-upon goals that we should be shooting for? (For example, I ran across the phrase "kids should have 60 minutes of exercise each day!" Is that an Officially Thing?)
• The group PE4Life seems to be a leader in the "make gym amazing" community. Should we approach them for a formal partnership?

Cooking lunch together

A problem:

Kids don't know how to make delicious food for themselves — or for others! Instead, we "feed" them: culinarily, our schools guide children into a learned helplessness. Meanwhile, commercial food scientists develop ever-more-brilliant recipes for hooking children into less-than-healthy fare.

At the same time, the act of making food can be incredibly educational: cooking, baking, and eating can provide questions of chemistry, biology, physics, and culture.

Our basic plan:

Kids cook their own lunch.

We can start with simple (but delicious) dishes — easy soups and breads — and gradually move up the ladder of complexity until students are routinely creating complex dishes — like "Stir-Fried Asparagus with Shiitake Mushrooms" and "Quinoa Pilaf with Herbs and Lemon".

Kids will get experience in setting up a kitchen, cooking the food, cleaning up, and devising a shopping list.

They'll also get experience in enjoying food — not just wolfing it down, but in savoring it, and critiquing it. (At some point, a heated argument will break out as to whether the dish needs more or less tarragon. At that point, we will know we have succeeded!)

We'll encourage kids to ask scientific questions about what's happening to the food as they cook it — why are parts of the egg different colors? Why's the albumen turning white? Now why is it turning brown?

We'll also encourage cultural questions about the food — where does this pho recipe come from? Does it have anything in common with the other Vietnamese dishes we've cooked? Where is this chili pepper native to? (Hint: not Vietnam!) How'd it get there?

Our goals:

Kids will gain competence (and ultimately mastery) of one of the most fundamental skills: making food that nourishes and delights you, and the people around you.

Through this, kids will raise questions about chemistry and culture that can be investigated in other parts of the school day.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Kids measuring, chopping, stirring, planning, and cleaning. And eating — delighting in the food they and others have made, and making plans to make it even better next time.

Some specific questions:

• This is a situation in which fine-tuned mastery is key — and in which badges seem the natural measurement. Should we have cooking badges for each kitchen skill? (E.g. a badge for dicing, a badge for slicing, a badge for properly washing a pan, a badge for roasting garlic, a badge for leading a team of people through a complex soup, a badge for properly setting the table, a badge for making a grocery list…)
• Should we have a test for each badge?
• How should we rotate the roles? For example, should a group of students spend a week on prep work, then a week on cooking, then a week on cleaning up?
• Should teams of students stay stable for a semester?
• What food restriction issues should we be prepared for?
• Should we ethically source the food? (I'd love to be able to visit the actual farm, so the students can see where their food comes from.)
• What specific skills should be on our list for the first year? (E.g. slicing, dicing…) Where do we learn the Official Best Way to learn these? (YouTube? A book like The Professional Chef?)
• What specific recipes should we tackle the first year?
• How much time will this take at the beginning of the year? How much time will it take by the end of the year, as kids get more accomplished?

Leitner box

A problem:

We leak memories. In school, we stock up knowledge and understanding — but it evaporates. Forgetting is quick and brutal, and impedes future comprehension.

We leak memories even of things that we value. College, for me, was a never-ending series of wows! (It probably helped that I picked my classes mostly on whim, based on which struck my interest.) And yet I can hardly remember anything from my history degree. I learned this the hard way when I tried to teach a European history class, and couldn't remember any of the delightful little stories I had obsessed over in college. Sometimes, now,  I flip through my class books, and can't believe I've ever read them — there's just no memory there.

We're not even asked to value what we learn. In school we learn, and learn, and learn, but we're not given a chance to determine what things, specifically, we love.

Our basic plan:

Students keep, and regularly review, a collection of what they've found most valuable, or interesting, or wonderful, or important.

Each day each student adds to their collection, creating 1–2 flash cards that encapsulates what they've learned that they most love. Flash cards are made elegantly (however the student defines that) and are stored in a Leitner box.

Each day each students reviews their collection, using a spaced repetition system wherein newer cards get reviewed more frequently, and older cards get reviewed less frequently.

Over weeks and months, everything that students enter into their Leitner boxes gets engraved in their memories: they carry around their favorite knowledge wherever they go, and will for the rest of their lives.

The act of reviewing can be a delight: a chance to re-taste some tasty bits of knowledge and to re-visit their past selves ("Why did I ever think this was interesting?!"). It's also a chance to combine knowledge in new arrangements, making connections between information that was previously unrelated.

Eventually, we may transition the cards to a computerized spaced repetition system, like Anki.

Our goals:

Theologian James K. A. Smith writes:

our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love… what, at the end of the day, gives us a sense of meaning, purpose, understanding, and orientation to our being-in-the-world.

Our hope is that the Leitner boxes provide a chance for students to consciously ponder and freely choose those things, and to reflect on them more deeply (and ultimately build them into themselves).

Thus the goals for this really are that students experience more autonomy in school, see what they learn in school as an opportunity to build themselves, and ultimately care more deeply about what they learn.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Students slowly going through their day's reviews, smiling in reverie.

At the end of the day, the whole class pausing for ten minutes to reflect on what they've learned, and to carefully make two flash cards out of the choicest bits.

Some specific questions:

• Each kid should get a specific box, but what sort of box that is, and how it looks (or is decorated) should be up to the individual student.
• "Flashcard" connects soul-crushing tedium, but these flashcards are exactly the opposite! Should we avoid the word "flashcard"?
• 1–2 cards per day — is that a good number?

A song a day

A problem:

There's so much humanity squeezed into every song — ideas, stories, and feelings! Music activates some of our deepest cognitive plumbing. It draws us into the inner experiences of other human beings, some very unlike us.

Music contains multitudes. And what do schools use? Textbooks!

Even worse: Music divides people. What music we each listen to becomes a tribal shibboleth: high school classes split into rock, hip-hop, and country. We use music to divide others into "like us" or "not like us". Our culture makes us musically insular.

Our basic plan:

Each day, our classes will listen to a new song — and we'll use it to do wonderful things.

Songs will reflect much global diversity — we'll have a cappella and acid rock, alternative country and bluegrass, blues and boogie, bossa nova and breakbeat, calypso and classical and country music. And that's just up to the letter 'c'!

Over the course of 12 years, at the rate of 1 new song per day, students will become acquainted with something like 2,000 new songs — some they'd have run across anyway, but many they wouldn't have.

After students listen to the song together (perhaps twice — once without lyrics, once with), the song will be added to a "music station" in the classroom: a set of headphones and a iPod. There, in independent work time, students can re-listen to the songs they'd like and carry out a series of works.

Students can choose to listen attentively, paying close attention to a single facet: the rhythm, the instrumentation, or the melody. Can they tap out the beat? Can they name all the instruments used? Can they hum the melody, or re-create it on a synthesizer?

Or they can put everything they hear together and focus just on the feeling that the song evokes. Could they express that feeling in non-representational drawing? Could they try to explain how the song makes them feel that way? (This would be an excellent entrée to music theory.)

Another series of options would allow students to focus on the lyrics. What do the lyrics say? What do they mean (can the student summarize them)? Can the student pull a Weird Al, and write a hilarious parody of them? Can the student use the melody to write a song that helps other students memorize some aspect of the curriculum — the names of all the nations or the parts of a cell?

Or students could go beyond the song, research the story behind it (how was it conceived? how did people take to it?), the story of the people who created it, and the story of the genre as a whole. They could also critique it. Is it a great song? Why, or why not?

Our goals:

Part of our goals is to forge a common culture in our schools. We want to make it easier for kids to connect with each other across the usual lines that divide people (socio-economic class, ethnicity, religion, age, etc.). We also want to make it easier for students and faculty to connect together, and cultivating a common culture. We want to help students connect with adults outside the school — their parents' and grandparents' generations in particular. Finally, we want to help kids connect with people across the world.

Shared musical experiences can play a part in accomplishing all of this — a small part, to be sure, but a meaningful one all the same.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Kids liking, loving, and occasionally hating music — all together, or all by themselves.

Some specific questions:

• How should we pick the songs? I see three major options:
  • Option A: Each teacher decides. If we go this route, each day's song could become a means for the teacher to share her/himself with the students. Love is a virus, and spreads through people.
  • Option B: The whole staff decides at the beginning of the year. If we go this route, each day's song could help knit together students across age ranges.
  • Option C: It's centrally decided for the whole school. If we go this route, we relieve teachers of the responsibility to pick out songs. If we consult with some musical experts, we could also ensure a greater diversity of world music.
• A song every day, or every other day?
• How many times a day should we play the primary song? One seems too few.
• Are there legal issues here we should be aware of?
• It'd be cool to offer access to these songs to parents, so they can use the songs to bridge the generational divide as well.

Dancing!

A problem:

Human cultures have evolved an amazing tool for binding together groups of unrelated people. This tool creates trust among strangers, trains the body, and increases happiness. (It might even fight depression.)

It's dancing. And schools hardly use it!

Our basic plan:

Every day in our classrooms, we'll dance. When children are young, we'll capitalize on their desire to be wild — to wiggle, giggle, jump, and twirl. As they get older, we'll capitalize on their emerging desire to master precise movement. We'll engage a multitude of dancing styles from around the world.

Our goals:

Moving in synchrony has been shown to create trust, so we'll use dance to create bonds among students and teachers. Dancing is exercise, so we'll use dance to improve student (and teacher!) health. And dancing has been shown to increase happiness (and lower measures of depression), so a goal will be to cultivate happiness!

In addtion, dancing is deep cultural stuff: we hope that students will be able to engage with many diverse cultures (African, Asian, Polynesian, folk American…) through dance.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Once or twice a day, teachers will put on loud music, and everyone'll break into dance. That's right: it'll be like living in a Broadway musical!

You might see a video being projected that shows others engaging in the dance, to make it easier for our kids to learn the style.

Some specific questions:

• I conceived of this first for our future-Seattle-area school, which will open only with little kids. Island Academy, however, will be opening with mixed ages (grade school through early high school). If the older students balk at dancing, should we abandon it?
• Should we look to get community volunteers for this?
• I'd love to lay out a progression of types of dance that we do, but I've absolutely no expertise here. Anyone interested in talking about this?

Falling in love with books!

A problem:

Schools sometimes teach the skill of reading without creating the hunger for reading.

Not enough students fall in love with reading.

Our basic plan:

We'll pull out all the stops to cultivate a community in which all kids regularly fall in love with a multitude of books. (See the list below for how we might do that.)

Our goals:

Every student — not just almost every student — enjoys reading, and wants to do it more!

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

1. A small collection of books that constantly grows larger. A huge collection of unknown books can feel alien and imposing to people, so at a year's beginning you might only see a small number of books in a room. The teacher will give students a pitch for each of these books — to arouse students' interest. Then, each day, the teacher will publicly add another book to the collection, giving a very brief pitch about why students might find it interesting. (This uses a psychological trick: feelings of scarcity can create feelings of values. It also relies on students having more interest in a collection of books that they know something about, and that someone they know — their teacher — already values.)
2. A daily period of silent, sustained reading (SSR). In this period, students can read whatever they want. Ideally, it would be wonderful to synchronize this team throughout the school, so everyone — all students, all teachers, all administrators and custodians — could have the experience of reading simultaneously.
3. Comfortable reading spaces: bean bags, soft carpet, reclining chairs, fancy arm chairs, and the like. Our classrooms should be full of reading nooks.
4. Book tastings! It's hard to get excited about a book you know little about, so during we might kick off our SSRs with a 3-minute book tasting: students find a book they've never read, and dip into it for 3 minutes. If it's fiction, that probably means reading the beginning; if it's nonfiction, that means looking at the inside cover, the table of contents, and then just leafing through the book to see if anything catches your interest. (Tasting large numbers of books in libraries and bookstores is, by the way, one of my personal secrets as an avid reader.)
5. Students treating books with respect — and perhaps even reverence. We might have rules, for example, that books can't touch the ground. Like all rules of this sort, this would be silly on one level, but could lead to change attitudes.
6. Photos of authors on the wall. Books are not just things — they're fragments of real people. It can be good to help kids remember that.
7. A regular practice of kids giving short, public book recommendations. This is similar to the book reports we all did in grade school — except with the specific goal of actually getting other students excited to read the book!
8. An index of questions. As students read, they can write down what questions they think the book answers. For nonfiction, this might include questions like "What's the bottom of the ocean like?" and "Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays?" For fiction, this might include questions like "How could you survive if you were abandoned in the forest?" and "If your parents were divorcing, and were both emotionally distant from you, how might you cope?" Students looking for a new book could flip through this index of questions.

Some specific questions:

• Should we go so far as to help kids make a reading nook at home?
• In general, I'd like to guarantee families zero homework (or a very limited amount) each night. But I'm thinking about making an exception for personal reading — maybe requiring 30 minutes each day. What are the advantages and disadvantages to that?

Epic stories (independent work)

A problem:

When stories are told well, they're often told from only a single viewpoint, and told only once. Even when they're beautifully performed, they're mostly forgotten not long after.

Each story is a micro-world that students can play in.

Our basic plan:

During students' independent work time each day, they'll be invited to come to the epic story station. There, younger students will have all the props, visuals, quotes, and basic storylines. They'll be able to choose between multiple mini-projects: re-telling the story straightforwardly, or tweaking it — telling it from a first-person perspective, turning the heroes into villains, and any number of other games.

Older students will have access to all of that, and also to everything in the curriculum kits which their teacher prepared their original lessons from: they'll have quotes, primary sources, visuals, and contradictory scholarly interpretations. They'll be able to choose between all the above projects, but also some more advanced ones: dissecting the story to identify the characters' goals, conflicts, and resolutions; imagining another resolution than could have been better than the one that historically took place; and many more besides.

Our goals:

Students will develop expertise at story-telling. They'll hone their ability to empathetically take on others' points of views. They'll also accumulate a library of stories challenges — and a critical reflection on how those challenges were overcome.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Small groups of students acting out the battle between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, or considering alternate explanations of what the Gautama Buddha figured out when he was sitting under the bodhi tree.

Some specific questions:

• I'm collecting clever peoples' ideas for how kids can play with stories (the above is only a partial list). Any ideas?

Epic stories (group story-telling)

A problem:

At many schools, history class is shallow facts. It's frequently dull, and students (and teachers) often avoid deep engagement with it.

This means that students grow up disconnected from the wild diversity of real men and women whose experiences could expand their visions for what their lives could be. As a species, we crave to know what other people are really like: stripped of the chance to satisfy that need in school, students satisfy it in tabloid journalism and reality TV.

There's an alternate way to explore the lives of others, one employed in every culture that's ever managed to survive more than a single generation: stories. Through stories, we can experience how interesting other people really are. A story well told is as impossible to resist as sugar when you're hungry, or as a titillating bit of gossip.

Schools, however, don't make much use of professional storytelling.

Our basic plan:

Each week, teachers tell an epic story from history — one that's totally true, and totally captivating.

The story is broken up into four episodes, to be told Monday–Thursday. Each installment ends in a cliffhanger, and each begins in a recap of everything that's happened up 'til now.

These stories are told with the help of a curriculum that we'll be making. The stories will fit into our Big Spiral History progression — we'll spend a year in the ancient world, a year of the medieval world, a year of the modern world, and a year of the contemporary world. Then we'll go back to the beginning, and re-experience history from a more considered vantage point.

Each story will be planned with Kieran Egan's Imaginative Education framework — teachers will dive deep into the history, find what's most engaging, and tell the story with help of a cultural-cognitive tool.

(The curriculum we'll develop will give teachers guidance, suggesting certain research texts, and certain ways to unpack the story. Crucially, though, each teacher will breath life into the story with regards to their own struggles, hopes, and knowledge of the student.)

Our goals:

Virtually all kids in our schools will not only enjoy history, they'll care about it. They'll imaginatively enter the lives of other people far removed from them.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

A whole class of kids leaning in as the teacher unfolds the latest episode in the life of Confucius, or the Empress Theodora, or Frederick Douglass, or Steve Jobs.

Some specific questions:

• Is there a good general course in storytelling that our teachers could work through?
• I'd love to have a team of professional historians, and a team of professional storytellers that we could occasionally get help from. Anyone know any of those whom we might approach?

Games in the classroom

A problem:

Games teach, but they don't come that much into most classrooms.

Game-making is one of humanity's long-term projects — we've been at it for thousands of years. Along the way, we've invented games that teach numeracy, verbal dexterity, strategy, and socialization under stress. And games teach by tapping into deep human emotional reservoirs. Doing well in a game brings flow. A great win brings fiero — that rush of fiery joy that makes you want to throw your arms up in the air and scream in jubilation!

How often do you see that in a school?

A great loss, on the other hand, brings an opportunity to learn to lose gracefully. Games teach, but schools don't make that much of them.

Our basic plan:

On occasion, kids can elect to play games. Not dull, self-consciously "educational" games — real games, enjoyable games, especially ones that many kids don't get the chance to experience anymore: checkers, poker, Balderdash, charades, Yahtzee, solitaire, crossword puzzles; bocce ball and handball and heaven knows what else. (Forgive this entirely non-representative list!)

The goals:

Kids gain skill in verbal dexterity, numeracy, and strategy. They also gain interpersonal skills when tensions are high. Additionally, we hope to introduce kids to games that they can enliven their non-school hours with.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

A small group of kids intensely focused on a group game.

Some specific questions:

• Any especially good collections of old-fashioned games we should use?
• How should we prepare the inevitable parent question: "Isn't this a waste of time?"
• Are there any concerns about bringing games into the school day?
• What's a favorite game that you'd love to see introduced in a school, and why?

Meditation

A problem:

Our minds have minds of their own.

Think of our minds are dumb, sometimes-raging elephants, barely under control of the puny riders ("us") sitting on top of them. Most of the time, in our school, we whisper to the elephants — giving them curriculum that will interest them. (In fact, we consider "School for Elephants" as the name of this blog.)

But sometimes, we just have to take control. Meditation is a way to do that — to calm the elephant.

Our basic plan:

Kids meditate throughout the day, in short bursts. Over time, they get good at it.

The goals:

In the short-term, meditation helps kids segue from more-active pursuits (e.g. recess) into less-active ones (e.g. reading). In the long-term, kids become able to control their elephants more easily.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

Kids, sitting at desks and on the floor, meditating, while a teacher leads them.

Some specific questions:

• What curriculum already exists for this? Is there a "best practices" curriculum for meditation?
• What specific religious objections should we be prepared to work around?
• What specific types of meditation should we engage? (Mindfulness meditation? Lovingkindness meditation?)
• Is it possible to link meditation to any of the other subjects? (Art? Literature? Science? Math?)
• Is there an app for this? Are there ways to help kids do this individually, or in small groups?
• When should this be done in the school day? (Before/after what sort of activities?)

Map drawing

A problem:

A lot of us don't have a feel for how the world fits together — and so we have a hard time understanding what's going on. After 13 years of American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, I, for example, still can't remember whether Iraq and Afghanistan touch each other. (I think they don't. Maybe Iran is in the middle?) Nor can I draw a rough map of my hometown, or the city in which I currently live. This is ridiculous!

Sometimes, when schools want to focus on geography, they have students label the names of places, on pre-drawn maps. But this doesn't guide kids to think about the shapes — rather, it's just a trivia/memory contest. We need to understand names and shapes.

If we don't understand the stage, we won't understand the story.

Our basic plan:

Students, from kindergarten on, regularly draw maps. They do so calmly, almost meditatively — to silence, or to music.

They begin as simply as possible, just learning where the six vague continental blobs (Africa, North America, South America, Eurasia, Australia, Antarctica) go on the map. Later, students focus on one particular blob, and see if they can get begin to get the details right — its rough shape, its specific outline, its rivers, its mountains, its deserts and forests and reefs, then its cities and capitals. Over many years, the kids cycle through all the continents, and the major island chains.

Students will also make maps of their local areas — their blocks, their towns, their states.

Because we move so gradually, there's little pressure on the kids to get it right — and the actual act of drawing a map can be pleasant, a healthy counterpoint to the rest of the day.

Each time they draw a map on paper, students are drawing the information in the memories. After a few years, students will have an intuitive understanding of the geography of the whole world.

The goal:

Our main goal is for students to be less limited by the particulars of where they were born, and feel more at home in the whole world. People and events that happen far away should feel less "exotic" to them, because they're familiar with the areas.

On the other side, drawing local maps should root the students more to their local geographies. They should feel more at home in their communities than they would otherwise.

Also, students get regular practice at drawing: getting a pencil to go where their mind tells it to. (This is, for most people, quite hard.)

Finally, students get a daily break from analytic thinking and social concerns, and just be able to focus on the perceptual exercise of re-drawing a map.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

You might see kids, sitting at tables, intensely concentrating on the paper in front of them, while music plays wordlessly in the background. You also might see students' most beautiful (and accurate) maps hanging on the walls.

Some specific questions:

• How often should we engage in this — every day? every other day?
• In what ways might this be a hard sell to parents?

Art immersion

A problem:

So much great human history, emotion, and beauty has been distilled into painting and sculpture — but schools leave this mostly untapped. Most of us, indeed, have a hard time spending much time in an art gallery — we stare, we squint, at the works trying to somehow… somehow… experience them. Typically we fail, and move onto the next work.

There are worlds to be entered in works of art, but we feel shut off from them.

Our basic plan:

We make "engaging art" a regular part of the curriculum.

We do so, in large part, by employing a method of immersing ourselves in a painting or sculpture that's explained in the book Touching the Art: A Guide to Enjoying Art at a Museum, by Luc Travers.

One of the pieces of art he uses in the book is Pygmalion, by Jean-Léon Gérôme. Here's the full work:

The teacher puts out a piece of art for all to see. (Preferably, we'll be able to do this with a projector, a large screen, and a darkened room.) The teacher then leads the students through the following steps:

1. Create your own title for the work (for example, using the painting above, "Guy kisses statue"). The purpose is to get them to try to make sense of the work as a whole.
2. Take turns listing off lots of details. (For example: "The statue is turning pink." "There are freaky masks on the wall." "There's a fish at her feet." "Hey — some angel is about to shoot him with an arrow!" and so on.) This helps the students focus on the dozens of details the artist put in.
3. See if you can agree on a basic story as to what's basically going on. (For example: "The statue is so beautiful that it's coming alive, and it's kissing its sculptor, and this is all so wonderful that lightly-armed angels are joining in the party.")
4. Imagine being one of the characters — imagine seeing what the character is seeing; imagine hearing what they're hearing; imagine feeling in your fingers and arms and face and body what they're feeling; imagine smelling and tasting what they're smelling and tasting.
5. Now pretend to be that character — move your body so you're in the same position as they are!
6. Imagine that each character has a thought bubble coming from their head. What does it say?
7. Imagine that this painting/sculpture is just one frame of a 60-second video. Imagine watching the previous 30 seconds — what happened? Now imagine watching the next 30 seconds. What happens?
8. Describe the specific situation the characters are in. ("She's coming alive, and they're falling in love.")
9. Describe the general situation they're in. ("Falling in love.")
10. Call to mind a specific time in your life, if any, that you've been in the same general situation. What did you do? How did it compare to what they characters have done?

Finally, the actual information of the work of art — the artist, the real title, the real explanation — can be shared.

The goal:

Students regularly get out of themselves, and into a piece of art. There's something joyous about falling into another world.

Students also develop a love of art, and want to create art themselves.

If you walk into our classrooms, you might see:

You might find an entire class peering attentively at a painting or statue, scratching their heads, arguing happily, and possibly contorting their bodies into silly positions!

You might also see a single small group of students doing this during their independent time, peering at a painting in an art book.

Some specific questions:

• I've found that this method is wonderful for works of art that feature fairly realistic images of people. But lots of art doesn't have that at all. What other methods can we use to engage other sorts of art?
• Any recommendations for books that are full of representational paintings? (Preferably large ones.)
• At what age should we introduce nudity? Is it wiser to hold it back until later, or to normalize it earlier?