Our idea is to encourage teachers, parents and students around the United States to write personal letters and mail them in May (not by e-mail) to Michelle Obama, telling her of your experiences and concerns with how high-stakes testing and other reforms are affecting those who actually spend their days on the front line, in our nation’s classrooms. As Nancy Carlsson-Paige described the current situation:

“As a professor of education, an educator of teachers, and someone who creates curriculum, I see the harm education reform is causing children — the disappearance of play, creativity, and the arts from our schools. Evaluation is now driving curriculum, and curriculum is being reduced to something mechanistic. This isn’t real learning.”

Educators like Dr. Carlsson-Page and Diane Ravitch have spoken out for years now, but for some reason their explanations have not been heard and understood by President Obama. He’s a very busy man, with a lot of issues on his plate. But he and Michelle are parents as well, with young daughters in school.

Which is why we thought an effective strategy might be for people from all over the Nation to write to Michelle Obama and let her know what is REALLY going on. As someone who spends time visiting schools, she should be able to quickly grasp these issues once she sits down, reads a few letters and really learns about the effect these policies have had.

Moreover, as First Lady she may be in the best position to help influence education policy. Once she “gets it” she can then explain the “uncomfortable” details of the issue to the President. One or two meaningful conversations between the two of them in the White House could lead to some big changes.

So, if you agree with this idea, we hope you will consider sharing your personal story with her. Let Michelle (and her staff) know what you’ve observed, as a parent, educator or student. Also, as parents and teachers, we can discuss this issue with our children and encourage them to write as well, expressing their unique point of view.

Isn’t this what “critical thinking skills” and participatory democracy are all about – finding a way for our leaders to hear (and be guided by) the voices and wisdom of the people, all the people, even the children?

Thanks for considering this idea and sharing it with others.

“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” ~Victor Hugo

Send your letter to:

Ms. Michelle Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Christopher Chase is the co-admin of The Art of Learning’s facebook page.  The Art of Learning believes “Human beings are natural born learners.” Chase worked with Hank Levin as a member of the Stanford Accelerated Schools Project, 1989-1993. Currently teaching English at Seinan Gakuin University, in Japan. Ph.D. in education from Stanford University, 1993.

Are we ‘school-year’ wise, but lifetime foolish?

Immediately after finishing the first video chapter of “A Year at Mission Hill,” I went over to the school’s website and read their mission statement. I was first struck by just how beautiful it is; their care and dedication to “helping parents raise youngsters” for a democratic society is evident in every single line.

But in thinking about how to make schools like this the rule rather than the exception, this part in particular stood out to me:

Toward these ends, our community must be prepared to spend time even when it might seem wasteful hearing each other out. We must deal with each other in ways that lead us to feel stronger and more loved, not weaker and less loveable…

There is so much in the whole statement that I would love to parse and consider, but the piece about time really struck me.

When we think about what schools need to succeed, money is usually the first thing that comes to mind. That’s especially salient in our austere and inequitable circumstances, where virtually everything, down to the physical condition of some schools, reminds some students, families and educators that there are those who view them as “weaker and less loveable” than others. But time is perhaps just as important, though much more rarely considered.

To be clear, funding is important. Teachers and principals are people (imagine!), who need to earn a living in order to take care of themselves and their families, and contribute to the communities in which they live and teach. Funding is also needed for the tools and other “things” that facilitate learning experiences. It also “buys” time in a certain sense, insofar as it allows school communities to hire enough people to cover a full course schedule that includes planning and collaboration time, or to keep classes at a reasonable enough size that students and teachers can take the time they need to interact with and learn from each other.

Yet aside from conversations or negotiations about longer school days and years, which often focus on the idea of spending more time on “traditional” academics (or worse, test preparation), it’s pretty rare to hear thoughtful discussions of just how time in school should be spent.

As a person who is very susceptible to demands of the fast pace of present-day life, I definitely understand how powerful those demands can be. I also appreciate how time can become the casualty of a very well-intentioned sense of urgency around making the most of every instructional moment, making up for “lost” time for students who struggle, or simply the desire to avoid disappointing other people by “falling behind.”

But just like the decision to buy a cheap product over a more moderately-priced yet higher-quality one might be “a penny wise but a pound foolish,” I think some features of our dominant schooling culture are often a school-year wise, yet a lifetime foolish.

For instance, I remember having to fight to protect practices like holding a morning and afternoon meeting in my elementary classroom. Though they were essential to the classroom community my students and I built, we were also subject to strictly-enforced mandates on our time (exactly 75 scheduled minutes for math; exactly 90 scheduled minutes for literacy, additional whole-grade intervention time, etc.). That may have made sense to outside administrators who assume all learning time is created equal, but teachers know that it isn’t.

Investing time in thoughtful community-building actually preserves instructional time by reducing the amount of time students spend feeling upset over un- or poorly-resolved interpersonal issues, and reducing the amount of time teachers spend on negative discipline. Over a lifetime, it pays off by helping students grow up to be conscientious adults who are less likely prone to causing unnecessary conflict, and less likely to resort to violence or other destructive approaches when conflicts do arise. Having the time to learn and practice pro-social interpersonal skills serve students long after they forget the random bits of testable information they’re taught.

While keeping to a rigidly-defined, “academics-only” schedule may make sense in terms of preparing students for tests or finishing units “in time” by the end of the school year, it doesn’t make sense if that comes at the cost of developing all of the other habits of mind, hand and heart students will need to thrive in the rest of their lives.

So how can we secure and protect the time students, teachers and the rest of the community need to build schools by and for a compassionate, democratic future?

It starts with asserting our values, and letting those values drive our goals (as the Mission Hill staff clearly have done). This also requires recognizing and confronting why the dominant arrangement exists as it does. The industrial schooling model we’ve inherited isn’t designed to foster democracy, personal autonomy or collaborative decision-making. It’s designed to foster the exact opposite.

Making autonomous or democratic decisions about the use of time, in particular, runs directly counter to one of the key aims of that model: getting future workers accustomed to working according to an unnatural schedule, under unnatural conditions, according to someone else’s dictates. Most of us have internalized that approach to time, so we will have to be incredibly intentional about reorienting ourselves in order to overcome that.

We’ll also have to be very intentional about preserving and strengthening the collective innovations we’ve historically come up with to protect our rights to self-determine our time, among other resources: our unions, parent-teacher associations and other democratic structures that help us as individuals find the safety and support needed to negotiate these issues with people who could otherwise exert power over us.

Fortunately, that process itself can be part of the learning; revitalizing our participation in democracies small and large will not only help us marshal the resources needed to better raise children, they’ll also allow us to model those processes for them.

Progressive students of America who care about social justice: I know you care deeply about education. I know you see yourself as a change agent, fighting injustice. I know you have organized for progressive causes on campus and in your community; you’ve done civic engagement, you care about the DREAM Act, you are disgusted by the achievement gap, you think we are cheating low-income students, students of color, and differently-abled students in our current education system. I agree with you. But please, please, do NOT do Teach for America.

Consider that teachers are being laid off left and right with extreme cuts to education funding, teachers who have dedicated their lives and careers to their students. When you take a job as a Teach for America corps member, the school pays much less for you (a starting teacher’s salary) than an experienced teacher with a Master’s Degree. Do you think a cash-strapped district is more likely to hire you, looking for a few gap years before law school, or your brother or sister in the struggle who has been teaching with a graduate degree for ten years? Good thing that anti-union laws have been advocated in state after state, making it easier for school districts to save money by laying off experienced teachers and hiring new recruits every two years.

Consider that Teach for America advocates for a “No Excuses” approach to the classroom – which asserts that the world outside of your classroom should have no effect on student performance. The crux of student achievement is solely the fault and responsibility of the teacher – there is no need to break down the social systems (racism, sexism, capitalism) that keep communities in poverty, there is no need to acknowledge the personal struggles a student might be going through. So – my student who is being harassed for being gay, my student has missed school because his depression is so intense he can’t get out of bed, my student whose mother is dying from cancer, my student who stays at school until 6 PM and commutes an hour and a half each way, my student who has been in three foster homes in the past year, my student who just immigrated with his family from Mexico the week before school started – they should all get zeros on missing assignments, detentions for falling asleep in class, should be told that they should work harder, should not be allowed adjustments or extensions, should be allowed to fail. And the teacher? If your students can’t succeed in that environment? You are the sole reason for that failure. For students who have been studying the impacts of social systems, you should see this line of thought as ridiculous and oppressive.

Consider that Teach for America serves as a pipeline for organizations like Leadership for Educational Equity (the sister organization of TFA that runs its legislative agenda), Students First, Stand for Children, and Students for Education Reform, as well as scores of charter schools across the country. These organizations support the privatization of public schools, the de-unionization of teachers, the emphasis of standardized tests over authentic instruction, and supporting anti-teacher policies like tenure reform and merit pay. These policies make billions of dollars for Education Management Organizations and for test and textbook publishers like Pearson — while public education funding continues to be cut. And It’s not just the policies and organizations that Teach for America supports, but where these policies have originated: from the same organization that has pushed the privatization of prisons and racist immigration bills like SB1070, none other than our favorite folks at ALEC. ALEC’s legislative agenda for education is eerily similar to the bills being supported by TFA’s partners — school vouchers, parent trigger laws, charter school privatization and expansion, teacher tenure reform, and anti-union reforms. It is hypocritical for us to advocate against racist policies like SB1070, to speak out against the privatization of prisons and healthcare, and then to support organizations that want to privatize public education. Do you trust that ALEC’s education policy is truly looking out for at risk students? Do you want to be a part of their agenda?

So. College seniors. I know you care about students, I know you care about your community. If you really want to be a teacher, know what you’re getting into. Commit to being a life-long educator. Commit to staying in the teaching field for more than the required two years – make that a part of your plan. Commit to standing against the legislative agenda of “education reform” and speaking out about their connections to the far-right wing. And if you can’t commit to that, don’t cut corners. If you answer the question of “Why do you want to do Teach for America?” with, “I want to teach for a while before grad school,” or “I want to help low-income youth,” or “I’m interested in education” – really, anything other than “I want to be a teacher,” you are doing more harm than good. There are so many ways you can affect change for students and communities without buying into Teach for America.

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Robin Lane is a native of St. Louis and a recent transplant to Austin, TX. She is a proud graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, with a degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies. Currently, Robin teaches middle school English, and is passionate about bringing the wonder of reading and the joy of writing to her students. Robin has her heart in several social justice projects, including serving on the board of Empower Art, a group that conducts art workshops for young women, and volunteering with the Workers Defense Project’s youth program. She is also involved in Occupy AISD, a grassroots group of parents and educators organizing around issues of charter school expansion, public school privatization, and standardized testing. Robin believes in the good of people, in optimism, in honesty and in love and carries these words with her into the classroom: as Audrey Hepburn said, “People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.” Her work has appeared in TeenINK Magazine and the Coe Review, as well as on the stage of the Red-Eye Theatre Project.

“When students awaken, the national conversation will change.”- Diane Ravitch, “When Students Awaken“

After a week of googling, and searching around Facebook, I think I’ve finally got most them. I have found that over 150 student protests have been held in the United States thus far in 2012. For some reason, I thought this would take me only a couple hours. I thought student protests for education were only taking place in New York and Pennsylvania (since that’s where I usually hear most of them are occurring), but man, was I wrong. I was pleasantly surprised to find these protests are happening in almost every state. All except for Alabama, Arkansas Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. If you know otherwise, please let me know, and I’ll add them on.

But why do this? As many of those who have been following me for a while, I am huge advocate for the voices of the students. I strongly believe that our education system should thrive off not only professionals\experienced educators in the education system, but what the students have to say. After all, this is their education.

It is also interesting to see the different issues that students are protesting for. Please keep in mind I tried to keep the focus on protests that focused on issues regarding anything that dealt with education or the school. Aside from the common protests to save teachers, protests against tuition hikes and budget cuts, there are more issues students are concerned about than I originally perceived. One school protested for their dress code, others for longer lunch periods, and some for the right to carry weapons on campus. It’s also important to note that the protests are being held from students as young as elementary school, all the way up to graduate school students.

Now, I am interested in how we can bring all these students together into one huge movement. Individually these voices are making sparks, but if we had a way to bring them all together, we can really make something remarkable happen. Students are waking up, and I don’t think they are going back to sleep soon.

Click through to see the list I compiled of student protests that took place thus far in 2012 in the United States.

Please add ones that I might of missed.

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Originally posted at Teacher Under Construction

Stephanie Rivera is a 20 year old Junior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. She studies Education and English. She envisions the future of education structured by those experienced in the field and the students. She hopes to expand other’s activism and awareness about Educational Equity issues by elevating voices of students themselves.

Originally Posted at Kim’s Blog

Edith Abbott

I had an assignment this past semester to research 5 educational leaders and besides the very well-known like Montessori, there wasn’t a lot of source material for women.  As a women in tech, I’m used to the being in the minority and my gender underrepresented in the media, but I was a little surprised to find the same issue in education.  As David from the Cooperative Catalyst writes, “The majority of teachers in this country are women, their impact on the history of education is vast, but only a few are covered in textbooks on education or talked about among the major thinkers in the history of education.”

This lack of visibility and acknowledgement of the impact of women in education clearly points to a bigger societal issue.  It’s an issue that the film Miss Representation takes up – the media’s historical and ongoing misrepresentation of women.  Many found the film inspirational.  Frankly, I found it depressing to encounter so little progress in gender equity issues during my lifetime.  So, I’m always glad to see work like the crowdsourced celebration of women educators & philosophers.

The only woman I wound up researching was Edith Abbott because I was looking for someone in her time period and her work clearly had a big impact on linking social services with public education.  I think she also represents a prevailing mindset in women who face stereotypes – they persevere.  They see a problem that needs solving, they advocate for others and they passionately pursue a solution.  I know many educators, male and female, who embody these same qualities.

Edith Abbott (1876 – 1957) Social Reformer
Edith Abbot was born in 1876 in Grand Island, Nebraska.  Abbott graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1901 and earned a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 1905.  She also studied at the London School of Economics and then taught economics at Wellesley College until 1908. Abbott became the Assistant Director of the Research Department of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, which eventually became the School of Social Service Administration, where she was Dean from 1924 to 1942. She was also a consultant to Harry Hopkins, an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Abbott’s contribution to education was of an indirect nature.  She was passionate about women’s rights, child welfare and immigration reform.  She was primarily concerned with seeing that a strong support system was in place for those in need and that it was staffed by well-trained social workers.  When she came to Chicago, social service agencies were disparate and under church or private control.  During her work in social services, she was instrumental in the transformation of this support from a private concern to a public mandate.  She wrote extensively about social work and public welfare, built a foundation for social worker education and was instrumental in creating social welfare legislation.

Her impact on education can especially be seen through her concerns about poverty, child labor, truancy and immigrant integration.  In her study about truancy and non-attendance in the Chicago public schools, she upholds the need for compulsory education, but then shows how difficult it is for those living in poverty to comply.  Many of the recommendations made in her report; attendance-based funding, books provided free of charge, free meals for those in need and raising the compulsory education age to 16 are embedded in the current educational system.  It is in these recommended actions that she firmly links educational concerns with social welfare services.

References

• Abbott, E. & Brekinridge, S. (1917). Truancy and non-attendance in the Chicago schools. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
• Harvard University. Working women: Edith Abbott.  Retrieved from http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/abbott.html.
• University of Chicago. Edith Abbott: Social service administration.  Retrieved fromhttp://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/centcat/fac/facch21_01.html.

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Kim Wilkens is a technology activist,  currently pursuing her MEd with a focus on leadership at Mary Baldwin College. Her goal is to empower young people, especially girls, to imagine new futures for themselves as innovators and change agents in our technologically advancing world; providing them with solid foundational knowledge of computer science concepts and inspiring them to share their vision with the globally connected community. Find Kim Wilken:Kim’s Blog, TechKim, Teen Tech Girl, Tech Camp, Project Justice.

Through these rare and precious firsthand narratives, school leaders can help us to follow in their footsteps and add to the incredibly diverse landscape of learning environments.  We can also heed their warnings and learn invaluable lessons from some of the efforts that somehow went awry.  And beyond the practical, these written pieces provide us with an opportunity to glimpse into the soul and spirit of impassioned, self-actualized, visionary change agents, from whom we may draw inspiration.  For anyone aspiring to launch a new educational initiative, it is definitely worth the time to learn from our daring colleagues.

We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams…

I am working on a project, which has led me to try to assemble a list of some of these inspirational and honest reflections from some of the world’s most passionate and dedicated educators on the joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies of starting and leading a learning alternative. I am hoping to tap into your collective wealth of knowledge to assist in my efforts.

I was so enthralled by David’s recent post here inviting everyone to share a few words about a favorite woman educator/philosopher in an effort to amass a powerful assemblage of underrepresented female voices through a process of crowdsourcing.  I am shamelessly following his lead and again, asking for your help.

Do you know of a school starter or leader, Principal, Director, Head who writes or talks about the experience of this leadership role and process?  Please add his/her name to the following list, as well as a reference to what he/she has written or produced, books, articles, videos, etc.

Here are a few of the better-known works to get us started.  I’d love to be reminded of what classics I’ve left out and also hear about some lesser-known folks whose works deserve our collective attention:

A.S. Neill Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childrearing; Summerhill School: A new View of Childhood; Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!

Daniel Greenberg, Free at Last: The Sudbury Valley School (and others)

Chris Mercogliano, Making It Up as We Go Along: The Story of the Albany Free School (and others)

Chris Mercogliano, How to Grow a School: Starting and Sustaining Schools that Work

George Dennison, The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School

Deborah Meier, The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem

Louise Boyd Cadwell, Bringing Reggio Emelia Home: An innovative Approach to Early Childhood

Caroline Pratt, I learn from Children: An Adventure in Progressive Education

Rebeca Wild, Raising Curious, Creative, Confident Kids: The Pestalozzi Experiment in Child-Based Education

Yaacov Hecht, Democratic Education: A Beginning of a Story

Tal Birdsey, A Room for Learning: The Making of a School in Vermont

Jane Kern, Inventing a School Expanding the Boundaries of Learning

Jill Ostrow, A Room With a Different View: First Through Third Graders Build Community and Create Curriculum

Until the 1970′s most books about education were written by men. When Vivian Gussin Paley, an early educator at the Lab School, wrote her first book, White Teacher, her work as an author/scholar was dismissed and chastised. Her fellow teachers and academics didn’t believe that it was the teacher’s place to study the lives of children she taught.

Action research is now taught in teachers colleges, but we still often forget to celebrate the work of women educators, for example, quotes by John Dewey show up daily on social media, but Helen Parkhurst, his contemporary and a pioneer in Progressive Education who created “the Dalton Plan”, is often forgotten.

We have some of the best voices in education at the Cooperative Catalyst and I thought it would be great to celebrate some of the women educators that inspire us, and celebrate some of the texts we look to and shape our own teaching, thinking and writing.  I would like your help in creating a primer of women education philosophers and educators and/or wiki for students and new teachers.

I think we should be able to crowd source at least  100 (we passed 50 on May 28th 2012) Women educators and/or philosophers.   Also I would love to put together a paragraph or two or blog post on each of them, along with annotations of some of their best work. Please help me by submitting or blogging your contribution or/and email me at coopcatalyst@gmail.com

Here is my list so far

• Maria Montessori
• Helen Parkhurst.
• Deborah  Meier
• Vivian Gussin Paley
• Jill Ostrow
• Maxine Greene
• Eleanor Ruth Duckworth
• Adora Svitak
• Lisa Delpit
• Linda Darling-Hammond
• Ellen Key
• Sue Palmer
• Caroline Pratt (founder of City and Country School)
• Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings
• bell hooks
• Diane Levin 
• Kirsten Olson
  • Cooperative Catalyst Presents: Kirsten Olson
• Nel Noddings
• Zoe Weil
• Mary Wollstonecraft 
• Sophia Blanche Lyon Fahs
• Sylvia Ashton-Warner
• Sydney Gurewitz Clemens
• Rebeca Wild
• Joan Almon
• Vea Vecchi
• Olivia Gude
• Diane Ravitch
• Gayle Moller and Marilyn Katzenmeyer
• Jean Anyon
• Annetee Lareau
• Mary Pipher
• Margaret Wheatley
• Michelle Fine
• Lisa Michelle Nielsen
• Rachael Kessler
• Maricela Oliva
• Catherine Marshall
• Jane Roland-Martin
• Susan Ohanians
• Carol Gilligan
• Susan Issacs
• Margaret and Rachel McMillan
• Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot
• Mary Leue
• Alice Miller
• Riane Eisler
• Barbara Brodhagen
• Nancy Sizer
• Monika Hardy
• Elise Boulding
• Lucy Sprague Mitchell
• Betty Jones
• Carol Dweck
• Margaret Donaldson (Picture N/A)
• Chris Athey (Picture N/A)
• Maya Angelou
• Edith Abbott:
  • (A Celebration of Edith Abbott (Guest Post by Kim Wilkens)
• Linda Levstik
• Nancy Atwell
• Lucy Calkins
• Susan Fleming 
• Paula White
• Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum
• Virginia Lynn Fry (Picture N/A)
• Grace Llewellyn
• Jane Vella
• Ruby Payne
• Gail Griffin
• Angela Maiers
• Zenobia Barlow
• Marietta Johnson
• Grace Lee Boggs
• Vandana Shiva
• Staceyann Chin
• Suheir Hammad
• Melissa Harris-Perry
• Sheryl WuDunn
• Leymah Gbowee
• Angela Davis
• Sonia Nieto
• Angeline Stoll Lillard
• Aline D. Wolf
• Jane Nelsen
• Constance Weaver
• Rachel Carson
• Constance Kamii
• Susan Sontag 
• Susan Engel
• Alice Waters
• Iona Opie
• Sally Jenkinson
• Peggy McIntosh
• Limor Fried
• Leah Buechley
• Deborah Ruf
• Debbie Silver
• Emma Goldman
• Carol Tomlinson
• Elizabeth Byrne Ferm
• Angella Gibbons
• Jane Jervis
• Kathleen Kesson
• Mary Carr
• Helen Keller
• Lynn Mikel Brown
• Margaret Ledwith
• Betty Jean Lifton
• Marie Clay
• Linda Christensen
• Naomi Shihab Nye
• Karin Chenoweth
• Karen Gallas
• Toni Morrison
• Audre Lorde
• Juliana Godoi
• Katie Salen
• Patty Younce
• Karla Haas Moscowitz
• Lella Gandini
• Loris Malaguzzi
• Dr. Sharon Friesen
• Laura Flores Shaw
• Heidi Hayes Jacobs
• Pearl Rock Kane
• Louise Rosenblatt
• Charlotte Hawkins Brown

If you want to write about any of them feel free to add it below in the comment section or Lisa Nielsen created a google doc to collect them more formally here

Hi my name is  Raychel Gafford. I’m 17 years old and I am in the 11^th grade. We are the students of Western International standing in solidarity with the students of southwestern. We are here not only in solidarity with southwestern but to draw the line and take a stand for our education.

We are walking out to fight for quality education and to protect our public school system. We are here demanding better education and that our voices be heard. Our school system should work WITH US not against us. I’m sick and tired of being pushed around. WHAT ABOUT YOU??

All I hear when I hear about DPS schools is closings, chartering, MONEY MONEY MONEY and LACK OF MONEY! To be honest, I don’t think our education should have a price tag. I thought schools are supposed to be about educating students so we can be the best members of the community and grow to be successful adults.

Schools are assets to the community. What’s going to happen when all our assets are privatized?? 80% of charter schools are for profit. THAT’S NOT WHAT OUR COMMUNITY NEEDS. Schools are not supposed to be ran as businesses, education is a long term investment. We should not be making money off of our students. We are children, WE ARE PEOPLE! NOT—DOLLAR SIGNS!

The solution is not to close public schools. It’s not a quick fix. It only does long term damage to our neighborhoods. (When schools close, our families, and our neighbors leave the community so that their kids can have access to quality schools and opportunities elsewhere.) We need to improve the public school system here, not shrink it down or sell if off to charters until it disappears completely.

Our community thrives off of public education. Without our proper education we are less prepared for life. We are the future! WE ARE THE NEXT GENERATION OF ADULTS! WE’RE HERE TELLING YOU THAT THERE IS A PROBLEM! We’re done choosing the lesser of two evils, or accepting solutions that are not good for our communities. This time we’re leading the way. We are demanding respect!

Here are a few ways you can take part:

• Join your local general strike by not going to school, or work, and by not shopping or banking!
• Join a protest locally or regionally! Many student and teacher lead walk outs are happening all over the country.
• Go into the commons! Used public spaces to host conversations around education transformation or direct democracy.
• Unschool your children or yourself for the day, Learn something you are passionate about, that you are not tested on, that is not found in a text book.
• Make your voice heard at Occupy Education Tumblr page by submitting a picture of why and how you are Occupying Education!
  • Share with us your stories of powerful learning in community. Take a picture of yourself holding a sign that highlights a few ways you are transforming education and/or share the countless, unique ways you help to keep democracy alive in public education. If you are a student, tell us what helps you learn best. Tell us what would make learning more meaningful for you. If you are a parent, tell us what kind of learning environment you want for your children. Tell us what schools should be focusing on.Below that, write “I occupy education.” or “I occupy my classroom” If you don’t show your whole face, please show at least part of it. Please have your note be hand written. Please do your best to be concise. Reclaim your voice in education transformation.

• Share your voice via a blog post and make public why you Occupy Education!

• Topic ideas:
  • Reclaiming Our Voice In Education!
  •  Student Voice (why it is important)
  • What kind of learning environment do you want for yourself, your students, or your children?
  • How do you put the public back in Public School?
  • How do we provide space for democracy in the classroom?
  • Is school an environment for democracy?
  • or anything you feel relates to education and the occupy movement? Submit the links here or email them to Coopcatalyst@gmail.com
  • Please use the hashtag #occupyeduM1

•  Please Join us at Occupy Education on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter!
  
• Add I occupy education or I march for education…. on your status and keep them up today.
• Contact your School Board, your Congress person, your local DOE, email Arne Duncan, or others and tell/share with them your vision of education transformation.
• Bring up education at your workplace, or school, or class, or any place your gather today.

As we stand up to rally on the steps of city hall or at the Department of Education, or at school board meetings or state capitals, let us rally for a Transformed education, for a positive vision of learning, for education and learning that matters.

Let’s use our energy and our coming together to OPT IN to what we want our education to look like, and start to collectively move both locally and nationally towards these visions.

What is your positive vision for a transformed education?

Ah, Spring. Now is the time where my family and I roll up our sleeves and dig into the dirt, preparing the soil for herbs, vegetables and flowers– up-rooting weeds, churning through the sun hardened soil and squishing our feet through the newly watered beds. We all have different approaches to accomplishing the same tasks. Personally, I love sifting the soil with my bare hands and don’t mind the layers of dirt caking my fingers. My mom on the other hand, wears gloves and wields a handy shovel.

As I was weeding the pots, I began to think about how these different approaches could be applied to look at school. Some schools take a gloved approach to learning- tackling material at a distance. But others dig right into the curriculum, unafraid to get their hands dirty in the process of truly learning. I think that in the world of education, the two approaches have different impacts. With gloves, you can only absorb and learn what’s on the surface, a mere fraction of the total amount of dirt (knowledge). But by peeling off the gloves and allowing yourself to get dirty, to really dig into the material, the richer soil (knowledge/information) is unearthed.

Like all plants and other growing things, students need to be cared for. A fine crop of produce is the result of lots of hours of weeding, adequate water and nurturing. Like plants, a well-rounded group of students emerge out of similar conditions. With guidance and nourishment, coupled with a hands on base system, plants and students alike flourish. Schools call their teachers to be gardeners, helping the students bloom.

It’s important that gardens get tended to properly, and as gardeners, teachers help care for their garden. Without a solid roots system and enough care, students and plants alike can burn out, over powered by the weeds and obstacles in our lives. Even though in school, one straggling student often passes by unnoticed, a parched plant is easily discoverable. If we adopt the garden mindset, then these parched or struggling students will get the care they need to spring back up and flourish. And rejuvenating one student energizes others to seek help when needed.

Over my years in school, I’ve seen that the best teachers are the ones who control the class while simultaneously encouraging their students and making an effort to learn alongside them. These “effective gardeners” have made a huge impact on my life. Thanks to teachers like Ms. G, Mr. A, Mr. B, Ms. F, Mrs. H, Dr. M and Mr. S, and my parents (Mr. S and Dr. L) who have pushed me to be the best I can be and believed in me, I am who I am and where I am today.

But what if not only our teachers were gardeners? What if enthusiastic teachers helped students take control of their own upkeep, like a virtually self-sustaining plant that requires only a weed check and a trim every now and then?

Let’s make our classrooms like gardens, where learning is always in season!