“12 children, ages 9-12 asked for a math class. The adult they asked initially tried to discourage them (something I would never dream of doing) and then insisted that the children act responsibly (appear on time, etc) or the math classes would stop.

The class met twice a week for half an hour for 20 weeks, for a total of 20 hours of instruction. The class was structured, but any child was free to leave at any time. There was homework, quizzes, the whole nine yards. The children set the pace. They used a primer written in 1898.

Daniel Greenberg wrote the article “Learning Without Coercion: Sudbury Valley School”. It appeared in Mothering magazine, No. 58, Winter 1991.”

All 12 children passed at the end with flying colours.

I have heard of that school (or similar ones) before. There’s a similar school here in Victoria (Oak and Orca) which is one of the only schools I’d consider sending my girls to if we did choose to send them to school. I read an article called “Learning without Coercion” about something that takes place at a Sudbury Valley school, possibly the same one you’re talking about, though I can’t find a copy of the article. The students asked to learn math, and the teacher taught it to all of them in a very short time frame.

I agree about going aligned for more funding. We don’t have to do something like that to get the funding, but if we did I’d likely do the same thing in the early grades. With Self Design, we basically just tell the learning consultant what we do each week, and she turns it into school talk for the government.

I’ve read about workboxes and shelves and such in the past. I think I might set something like that up for Meredith. Probably not yet, but when she’s a little older. I think I’ll set something up in her room that will be a place to show things she’s done, as well as somewhere to find materials to work on or read if she wants.

I also love the idea of the perpetual calendar. You’ve reminded me that I want to do something like that too.

I also want to use my blog to document things, partly so if I need to show that we have covered something in the future I have it. The head of our school board said that you could skip parts of the yearly curriculum (if you are aligned) if you can prove that you have already covered it. I am probably going to go aligned to get more funding because I think it will be fairly easy in the lower grades to seed the environment for curriculum, while still basically unschooling.

This is why I made the perpetual calendar. It is hanging on the wall, but most days we don’t do anything with it. Sometimes they only are interested once a month, but it is there and they are learning. I also have made Sam and Ant each a shelf with workbooks that they have chosen, paper, colouring stuff, scissors, a story telling pad etc. They don’t use it everyday (although Ant is in love with his scissors and putting everything that he loves and wants to keep forever in a box on his shelf).

I am pretty excited for this year, and to see what happens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7W5TQ3HaA&feature=player_embedded#!

There’s a school in the states that has no curriculum. Clearly ‘alternative’, they are run completely by the students’ desire to learn. If kids want to play, they play, for days, months, it doesn’t matter. But, the moment they express any interest to learn more about something, the faculty is there to do everything they can to help that student learn more about their new interest.

It’s fascinating! I love the concept and the school does really well. Kids learn through living, as you talked about, and in this case, are then provided with all kinds of resources and guidance to learn as much as they want.

In an interview, a math instructor there said that on average it took students 6 months to learn traditional grade 1-12 math. He said that once the student is interested, they absorb the info quickly and easily, no school bells, forced classes or boring topics.

The graduates from the school, and all graduate, are so creative and inspired that they have a very high success rate of students moving on to prestigious universities. (for those who find that a landmark

The only difficulty students tend to have is when they introduce kids from public schools into this school because the kids don’t know how to make their own decisions, they are so used to being told what to do and when. That part just blew me away. It took those kids a few months to rediscover their own inner guidance and feel inspired to learn new things.

Neat heh? I’ll have to try to find out what the name of the place is, I’m sure you’d love it.

Have a super day!