There are a lot of articles these days on the undoing, reforming, turning around, rethinking of schools across the nation. We are not satisfied with what we have done or are doing. But at the same time, we don’t seem able to learn from our mistakes. There is an overwhelming desire to control, control, control that classroom and have uniformity, uniformity, uniformity as we teach children we encourage to be different, different, different.

I remember when the best schools in the nation were the one room school houses in the far outback of the western Midwest. These schools produced the highest test scores and their students found their way into more good colleges than any other schools in the nation.

The big moneyed “to do” schools of the east produced conflict. The big fancy schools in the west produced a love for nihilism while the Midwestern kids to the center stage of learning and produced our thinkers, our movers and our shakers.

So as we look into the future, what are we looking forward to? One political position is to increase government and therefore the size of unmanageable schools. Another political position is to reduce the size of government without plan.

As a grass roots person, I believe if you want to do it right, do it yourself. If you wait for government, you are waiting for a pipe dream. Government is good for one thing – arbitration. In the rest of the world, it’s like a giant oaf. If government was a person, he or she would be locked up either in jail or a home for the deranged.

So, not wanting to wait for government, we started with six students and $160.00 and went off to build our own school. Our primary question was “What CAN children do?” Second question was “What WILL they do?”

What we discovered, and why we are so successful, is simple. We built a small school for the children. We did not build with any other thing in mind. We did not draw from other schools. Other schools drew from us. We did not copy curriculum from books; we used our own skills to teach. We did not plan our days according to “developmentally appropriate” practices because this theory retards growth.

Here’s what we discovered:

Three year old children simply want to experience learning without actually making a commitment. They want to be around learning. They want to dabble, try for a time, and take home something wonderful that they made or half made. Their skills are developing slowly, and they want to do a lot of play. But they don’t really know how to play, so being around older children during play reaps a positive reward. No three year old likes to nap. And we found that threes will memorize a lot.

Four year old children are usually ready for a lot of the usual kindergarten work. They love the paper work and think they are big when they can do it. They think fast, do things quickly, and absorb with an alacrity most college kids would envy. They are spunky, and energetic and take great pride in being included in the play. This is the time when handwriting, letter learning and pre-reading skills dominate a child’s life, because they simply WANT to know. Reading is a little like that rock climb. They are ready and willing.

At five, children are ready for ideas. They tire easily of paperwork, sitting and the same old same old day after day. So sprinkling their lives with stories, play acting, science, foreign language, geography, fine arts fits better than anything else. With the reading and writing under their belts, they can begin to explore in independent study. This is the real foundation builder for their adult lives. At five, the child’s answer to nearly everything is “more, more, more, please!”

Now how do you translate this into big government schools?

If I were to rebuild what needs to be rebuilt, it would be this: I would design schools to have a pool of fours, fives and sixes who I would call “poly wogs” in every public grammar school. I would divide these into small groups of about twelve children. Some children excel quickly, and some do not, so as a child learns and develops reading and writing skills to a point he or she is proficient, I would launch him or her into the mainstream school any time of the year that it happens – to first grade. This allows for the individual approach to caring for our children. It also allows for the brighter child to advance. It allows for the struggling child to get some time to understand. During the school year, some children would advance out of one class and into another across the school. Age is not a determinant for ability. Some children reach out and learn and some don’t. By having fluid learning, the curriculum could fly. Every child in every room would be up to the learning bar by his own choice and work. This way, there is no disgrace in remaining in one class for a second year because the fluidity of movement is at the discretion of the teacher.

At the other end of the spectrum, the early birds who may only be fifteen or sixteen at the end of their high school years and are emotionally too young to go off to college would have a year or two of independent study. These children could either work half a day or begin to learn what it means to pull knowledge together into a real project. Internships of one kind or another would be an option. Attending bussed classes in near by colleges would be an interesting idea.

From an administrative point of view, there is no increase in anything including building space or teaching staff. There are no test scores that would not be good because the children learn at their own pace, and the curriculum is more interesting because every child is on target.

Just a thought for a Thursday…

If people of faith really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, we might be speechless. Did you know that during WWII there was an adviser to Churchill who organized a group of people who dropped what they were doing every day at a prescribed hour for one minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people and peace?

There is now a group of people organizing the same thing here in America If you would like to participate: Every evening at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (8:00 PM Central) (7:00 PM Mountain) (6:00 PM Pacific), stop whatever you are doing and spend one minute praying for the safety of the United States, our troops, our citizens, and for a return to a Godly nation. If you know anyone else who would like to participate, please pass this along. Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have. Please forward this to your praying friends.

Engaging in a conversation with a lazy or selfish child is about as interesting as slogging through wet concrete and about as easy. Younger, lesser conversant children will often ignore the adult who is trying to make conversation. Letting go of his or her “own time” is a real pain. Older children will silently or inaudibly respond or answer in a single word answer simply to be free of the invader of his or her space. Drawing this child out is many times simply not possible.

When the lazy child finally allows conversation, it is nearly always about them, their needs, their wants, and their minutia. They report a full gamut of information to be sucked in by the listener, and then when they are done, they promptly end the conversation. The listener, who is looking for a time to respond is defrauded of his personhood in the dupe of the selfish lazy child who can’t, for the life of him or her, return a question or be interested in the listener to any extent.

Lazy, selfish children often have few friends because the conversational exchange is nil. What pleasure is it to be used as a sounding board if the response is a no interest dead pan look?

Re-training a selfish child is not easy. What is easy is to become irritated early in the conversation. When the adult becomes angry and punishes the lazy child, this only tightens the grip on self. The point is to demonstrate that the child will gain something by engaging the listener in a whole other perspective. He will gain information he can use. He will get to laugh. He will know someone better.

When listening to the selfish child, the adult needs to ask questions that bring second and third people into what the selfish child is talking about. “What did Roberta think when you…?” “What do you think Roberta thought when you…?” “Don’t you wonder what Roberta thought when you…?” “Is there something wrong with what Roberta might have thought when you…?

By bringing to the selfish lazy child’s attention that there are other points of view, and that those points of view are indeed interesting, and do this over and over and over again, the hope is that this conversational training will produce a more outgoing less selfish child.

Bringing to the selfish lazy child’s attention that he or she is responsible in the “care” of the conversation, and not just the “use” of the conversation for his or her own needs is tantamount in training someone who can communicate well.

When you hear an adult who is a “babbler” speak, it’s a mile a minute about self, and there is little if any need for a listener. You get the impression that if you suddenly turned into a life sized poster it would be OK. This is what we want to avoid with our children. This motor mouth is really quite dull and grasping, and we could all name a few adults who were allowed to be lazy about others and selfish about self.

The child who rattles on and on without a break needs to be told quite abruptly that this is not allowed. “Stop,” says the loving parent. “Rachel, who are you speaking to?” This question is often met with confusion. “Are you speaking WITH me or are you using me to rattle off your stream of consciousness? I am a person and it is now MY turn!”

Teaching conversational skills means turning off all the audios in the room and sitting down with a child and really engaging him in conversation. It doesn’t have to be long. Parents need to expect a decent response that should grow in time. Expect him to exchange ideas with you. He can go first, but he is expected to ask about the listeners. It’s called taking turns. It’s called conversation. The rattle is called monologue.

Selfishness is all about me. And in a world as small and filled as we find ours, we need to lesson the selfishness and the laziness in our children for their sakes.

Good Evening, on this Monday. This morning I left the house at 5:30 to pick up Edith in Chandler because she was leaving her car for an oil change. So, consequently, I didn’t get this on the hopper this morning.

This week we are focusing on reading. Some children will read letters, some words, some sentences, and some will read books. We are hoping that the children will step up one level each, and those who are reading letters will go to words and those who are reading words will go to sentences, etc.

We are trying a few new lunches this week. Today we had a taco bread. It was homemade whole wheat bread that we rolled out thin, stuffed with taco meat and cheese and baked. We sliced it and served it with black bean chili which the children really liked. Two new favorites.

Motivation is also a theme word for this week. Too many of the children are “floating” through the school without a project at hand. Every child needs to be employed at all times. That can be as simple as looking out the window. It cannot be annoying another child or being destructive.

As the weather begins to improve this week, we will start to go outside again.

Please read your calendar. It was sent home today. It tells you all you need to know about this months activities.

Please keep ill children home. We will send a reminder of what it means to be ill. Please read this Indiana State Health Code for early childhood. It will mean so much that your child is not exposed and does not expose other children to what is going around.

Judy