Posts by Jonah Canner

A World Tour… My experience with IDEC

When I was twenty years old I contemplated dropping out of college to travel the world an find interesting education projects to work on. In the end I decided that I wasn’t quite ready to do that. I wanted to get some experience working in education and creating locally before going out to see what the rest of the world was working on. So I finished college, went to grad school and became one of the founding teachers of the Community School for Social Justice, a small public high school in the Bronx.

In 2006 my good friend Becky Raik and I quit our teaching jobs and started Camp Kadia. It was the most fulfilling thing I had ever done in my life. Years of thinking, planning, and...

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Posted on Oct 31, 2011 - 03:54 PM by Jonah Canner

More Than School - Why I do what I do and how you can help

It seems that everywhere you look, people are talking about innovation. We talk about it in conversations about technology, about agriculture, and it shows up a lot in the education conversation. There are hundreds of new schools with new classroom models and new curricula, and everyone wants to call their school reform project the next big innovation in education, but are any of them really?

My hunch is that most of them are not. Why not? Because while many school reforms are very effective and extremely important, almost by definition school reform efforts are stuck in a paradigm that defines education as learning that happens in school.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying we should...

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Posted on Dec 01, 2010 - 11:00 AM by Jonah Canner

Good Teachers or a Good Education

In this post Jonah deconstructs the teacher tenure debate and calls for a change in the way we think about stand out teachers.

Hi Jonah, I have a question about the teacher tenure debate. I am currently in college and when thinking (back) to my high school experience, two types of teachers stand out in my mind. The first were the teachers that worked really hard, they were often young, inspired and inspiring. I liked being in their classes and I felt like they really taught me things. Then there were the teachers who had become disillusioned with teaching decades ago, used the same lesson plans year after year and seemed to show up just so that they could collect their check. Isn't it...

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Posted on Jun 18, 2010 - 11:12 AM by Jonah Canner

What’s up with June anyway?

Question: According to the calendar there are still two and a half weeks of school left, but according to my students school ended the second the temperature in my classroom reached 90 degrees two weeks ago. I'm usually a laid back teacher who has a very good relationship with her students but at the end of the year they start bouncing off the wall and reverting to behaviors they haven't shown in months. Is there anything I can do about this or should I just suck it up and pray that nothing goes terribly wrong over the next two weeks?

- Anonymous Middle School Teacher


Endings are hard. They might be the hardest thing to do well. Don't believe me? Go watch a movie. How many times have...

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Posted on Jun 09, 2010 - 10:35 AM by Jonah Canner

You Say You Want a Revolution…

I am a teacher in New York City working in a very poor community with mostly youth of color. Every day I see the effects of centuries of racism and class oppression show up on my students' faces. On some days I have hope that we will be able to create a just future and I want their schools to be better. Some days are harder and I think the only way out is for their schools to be destroyed. What does IDEA have to offer me?

Anonymous Teacher - The Bronx, NY

Thank you for the question. First of all, I do not have an answer for you. Your question very much hits home for me, and the best I can do in this situation is to tell you how I have figured out to live with those conflicting thoughts...

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Posted on May 10, 2010 - 09:10 AM by Jonah Canner

Education or Indoctrination?

Education and Indoctrination: Is there a difference? In this post, Jonah explores the challenges that face those of us who want to give young people an indoctrination-free education.

Hi Jonah, I saw that you were presenting a workshop at the Left Forum in New York this weekend entitled "Fertile Grounds Project: Spaces for Youth to be Youth/Education over Indoctrination." I will not be able to attend the session myself, but I was wondering what you meant the difference between "Education" and "Indoctrination" to be. Even if you are "educating" people towards democracy or social justice, isn't there still a certain level of indoctrination going on?

-Anne M., Toronto


Hi Anne,

Not only is...

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Posted on Mar 19, 2010 - 09:52 AM by Jonah Canner

Resistance, Hope & Democracy

I used to direct an after-school program, which was housed in a public school classroom, and I tried to implement a democratic meeting with my middle school students (a diverse group in terms of race and family income). As well-intentioned as I was, the students didn't respect me as a leader because I was offering them decision-making power. They seemed so used to an authoritarian school day that they didn't know what to do with an unexpected dose of freedom. It was also just a drop in the bucket compared to the way they spent the majority of their time. How would you have handled this situation?
- Redwood City, CA

I have a few thoughts regarding your situation but first I must say: Kudos...

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Posted on Feb 24, 2010 - 02:46 PM by Jonah Canner

The Tyranny of Report Cards

I want to teach in a classroom where children will learn important things without a lot of well-meaning intervention. I want a classroom in which students have choice, and can pursue their own projects that involve clay and blocks and paint and weaving and cooking and hammer and nailing. But I don't think I know how. I've been teaching for 10 years and I think all I know how to do is control children. I've been "in the system" long enough to know about "behavior management" and allotting equal time for Math time and Reading time, Writing time and Science time, etc.

How does one become a teacher who is comfortable enough with the chaos of learning to let students study bridges or snowy...

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Posted on Jan 30, 2010 - 07:14 PM by Jonah Canner

Remembering Hope & Joy

I am currently on vacation in Nicaragua, and while I have been doing a lot of thinking, I have not been doing very much writing, as is wont to happen from time to time. And with thinking inevitably comes questioning. So what better place to explore some of those questions than here?

I'll begin with a story. I spent the last four days on a small hostel/ranch/community center/aspiring eco-destination called Rancho Esperanza in the isolated fishing village of Jiquilillo. The owner of the ranch, Nato (Nate), was born in Maine and has been involved with the village for eleven years, living there full time for the last eight.

Six years ago Nate began an after school program for the youth of...

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Posted on Dec 27, 2009 - 02:41 PM by Jonah Canner

Lightening the Load

I am a high school teacher and adviser and lately the students seem to be pulling away, into smaller groups or individually. Many of them are pretty stressed with college applications and some realities setting in. Some of them are also bringing a lot of negativity into our meetings. We want to get everyone back together, and more bonded together as a group, so that we can bring each other up and support each other more than spreading negativity. We tried the human knot activity at our last meeting for an hour and weren't able to get it done. I am open to any and all suggestions that you have.

Erika M., Chicago IL - High School Teacher and Adviser

I have a few initial thoughts and also...

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Posted on Nov 25, 2009 - 10:03 AM by Jonah Canner

The Building Blocks of a Good Education

This week I'll be asking the question. Here it is:
What ever happened to Kindergarten?

This past weekend I found myself in Western Massachusetts for an old fashioned Timber House Raising. Now I have to be honest, before this weekend I had no idea what a Timber Hose Raising was. Living in Brooklyn it's not so often you come across someone who decides they're going to build their house and then invites the whole neighborhood over to help. It's even less often that you get to watch a house being build with no metal. But that was exactly what happened. Over the last two years pieces of tree were cut, shaved and carved into lumber, each piece measured and chiseled to fit exactly into the...

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Posted on Nov 18, 2009 - 02:02 PM by Jonah Canner

Aren’t Facts Important?

This "democratic" approach to education seems nice, but don't kids need to know certain facts to thrive in the world?

In a word... yes.

But I'm not going to stop after one word. Yes, there are absolutely things that people need to know in order to thrive in the world, but we will never be able to teach people everything that they will need to know for their life. And people, depending on the life path that they choose, will need to know different facts at different times. So rather than filling our young people's heads with facts, we should teach them how to find the information they need and give them the skills to analyze and interpret that information for themselves.

If our schools...

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Posted on Nov 11, 2009 - 08:25 PM by Jonah Canner

Smart, funny and slightly disruptive

I have one kid I can't get to shut up and pay attention. He's smart, funny, and cute and is just always playing and being slightly disruptive. It's like being quiet for one minute is impossible. I don't want to totally shut him down, but I want to be able to work with him. What do I do?

- Minna D., San Francisco, CA, 9th grade teacher

This is a classic situation. The pace and structure of school carries with it expectations of what young people are and should be like. We expect our children to be able to "shut up and pay attention." But what do we really mean by that? In this situation it's not only that you want him to pay attention, it's that you want him to pay attention to what you...

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Posted on Nov 04, 2009 - 11:27 PM by Jonah Canner

Welcome to ‘Got Questions?’

Welcome. Before I begin responding to your questions I would like to say two things about what I will be doing here.

The first has to do with my own life as a young person. I remember being very excited about the concept of democracy: People coming together to decide, through discussion and compromise, through an open exchange of ideas, the best course of action that they, as a group, should take. Perhaps that is why I never understood censorship or indoctrination. If you believe an idea to be wrong, let it out in the world so it can be proven wrong. Don't turn it into a precious subversive commodity that people can rally around without being given the space to truly understand it or its...

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Posted on Oct 14, 2009 - 02:16 PM by Jonah Canner