Posts in Category DemEd in Real Life
5 More Lessons Kids Can Learn From Pets
When my daughter was four years old, I wrote this blog post about all of the different kinds of things children learn from having a pet. Now that she is six and we have been unschooling since, I have been able to witness several other ways pets have helped to enrich her life. 5. Compassion
Animals, including humans, will do what comes natural to them; when you have cats and a mouse (I know, who thought of that?), your cats are going to try to eat your mouse! Our cats got a hold of our little mouse, Blue, two times; the second time was fatal. My daughter took the news hard, but when we talked about how it was in River's nature to eat mice and he couldn't really help it, she approached him...
Posted on May 30, 2012 - 09:15 PM by Sara Schmidt
The Yellow Zone
At Vermont’s Middlebury Union Middle School, students and teachers learn to thrive in differentiated classrooms by staying in the Yellow Zone.
“Theoretically, students learn better if they’re all in the same room,” says first-year student-teacher Emily Culp. “You get less discrimination problems and less teachers teaching down to lower tracks, which plays into all sorts on inequities that we have.”
“But if you’re going to put them all in the same classroom, you can’t keep teaching the same way, because it won’t work,” says Culp. “You have to teach so that the students who are struggling and the students who don’t struggle at all in school are challenged all at the same time....
Posted on May 22, 2012 - 01:05 PM by Megan Nesbeth
Reflections from the NYC Innovation Tour
Do we need to change our failing education systems or do we need to transform them? Do we need to envision and build something new from the ground up or can we work with what we have? These are just two of the many questions that I am stitting with after participating in an insightful IDEA Innovation Tour in New York City, and as I reflect on my own journey and my mother's journey as an educator.
I stopped by my family’s home in Queens the other night so that my one-year old daughter could hang with her grandparents. My mother was able to spend some time with her grandaugther, but had to quickly jump back into work. She is a 56 year old teacher in the New York City (NYC) public...
Posted on Nov 21, 2011 - 09:31 AM by Manauvaskar Kublall
Real Education is as Relevant as Buying Milk
Real education is relevant. It presents students with a reason to learn and care about the subject at hand. It’s not rote memorization for a test or tedious exercises, but problem solving that forces students to think on their feet. The first child in any family is a guinea pig and beyond survival, one of the biggest things that new parents are trying to figure out is how to transmit essential information to their kids. My parents took the approach of making the world my classroom. They gave tasks to complete at every turn – from the playground, to amusement parks, to the supermarket.
For some reason when I was a little girl my family bought milk from somewhere different than...
Posted on Nov 03, 2011 - 05:10 PM by Megan Nesbeth
Real Education is Powerful
Today's theme for Blog for IDEC 2012 Week is "Real education is powerful."
One of the most powerful experiences of learning I've ever seen is captured in the Frontline special "A Class Divided." Here's an excerpt from the introduction on the website:
One of the most powerful experiences of learning I've ever seen is captured in the Frontline special "A Class Divided." Here's an excerpt from the introduction on the website:
On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their "Hero of the Month," and they couldn't understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels...
Posted on Nov 02, 2011 - 05:26 AM by Melia Dicker
A list of incredible humans who know what real education looks like
Late last week, I was in a conversation with Sheryl Petty where she graciously encouraged me to look at just how much IDEA and my own thinking is impacted by other humans who have put their ideas and love into words.
In support of #blog4idec and today's theme of "Human", I thought I'd try to brainstorm off the cuff (no help from Google) the names of the people whose writing has profoundly shaped my thinking about what real education looks like at the most human level.
Feel free to add your own incredible humans in the comments box.
And yes, I am inviting several moments of, "how could I forget ________, and _____________, and __________ . . ."
Here's my list of incredible humans:
...Posted on Nov 01, 2011 - 08:59 AM by Scott Nine
Blog for IDEC 2012 Week Roundup: Real Education Is…
It's Blog for IDEC 2012 Week, and each day you're invited to submit a post on one of the defining values of the conference and what it means to you. Leave a link to your URL in the comments section, and we'll add it to this post. Check back throughout this week as we update this post with new links. Use the Twitter hashtag #blog4idec.And don't forget to register for IDEC before the Early Bird Special ends on November 7!
Tuesday, November 1: Real Education is Human.
- Esther Ohito: "Teach for Humanity"
- Kirsten Olson: "Real Education is Human"
- Zahra Lightway: "What does human education mean?"
- Melia Dicker: "Real Education is Human"
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Justen Eason: "Real Education is Human"...
Posted on Nov 01, 2011 - 08:49 AM by IDEC 2012
Real Education is Human
Today's theme for Blog for IDEC 2012 Week is "Real education is human." My most recent experience in the classroom comes from Reschool Yourself, a project I undertook in 2008 to reboot my life by reliving my education. I spent a week in each grade in my childhood schools, attending classes with the current students and writing about the process. "Human education" brings to mind something I witnessed in the third grade classroom at El Verano Elementary in Sonoma, California.
When I was a student at El Verano (the first time around), the school was predominantly white, with a few Mexican children in each class. Now the demographics have flipped, and there are a handful of white kids in...
Posted on Nov 01, 2011 - 06:42 AM by Melia Dicker
Teach for Humanity
This is a story about experience. Strangely enough, experience has the power to both sever and prompt connection. There are threads of my story—my experience—that are particular to me as a black child, a black woman, and an African immigrant. On the other hand, there are fibers in my story that are universal, and linked to my and your human self. I imagine that you will find things in my story that will surprise you, resonate with you, frustrate, and perhaps even anger you. I hope that all of the above will happen. When you arrive at the end of my story, I hope that you will be wrestling with your own experiences, struggling to understand how they have shaped you as a particular...
Posted on Oct 31, 2011 - 03:15 PM by Esther Ohito
It’s Blog for IDEC 2012 Week!
Happy Halloween, and Happy Blog for IDEC 2012 Week!
The goal of the event is to put IDEC 2012 and democratic education on the public radar. If you have a blog -- whether you're involved with IDEC or not -- you're encouraged to post on the four distinguishing values of the conference --human, powerful, relevant, and transformative.
Here's the schedule:
The goal of the event is to put IDEC 2012 and democratic education on the public radar. If you have a blog -- whether you're involved with IDEC or not -- you're encouraged to post on the four distinguishing values of the conference --human, powerful, relevant, and transformative.
Here's the schedule:
- Mon, Oct 31: Kickoff
- Tues, Nov 1: Real education is ... Human.
- Wed, Nov 2: Real education is ... Powerful.
- Thurs, Nov 3: Real education is ... Relevant.
- Fri, Nov 4: Real education is ... Transformative.
The prompt is, What does this ("human education," "powerful education," etc.) look like to you, and why...
Posted on Oct 31, 2011 - 06:20 AM by Melia Dicker
IDEA Bloggers
- admin
- Jonah Canner
- Tanya Reza
- Ammerah Saidi
- Dana Bennis
- Alison Bagg Brink
- Khalif Williams
- Shawn Strader
- Tim Curley
- Darren Schwindaman
- Melia Dicker
- Claire Russell
- Scott Nine
- Kristan Morrison
- Adam Fletcher
- Sara Schmidt
- Laura Stine
- Luis Moreno
- Zuleka Irvin
- Cian Sawyer
- Jason Lacoste
- Esther Ohito
- Laura Chytka
- Manauvaskar Kublall
- Adam Burk
- IDEC 2012
- Dana Bennis 77
- Kelly Dillon
- David Loitz
- Kirsten Olson
- Isaac Graves
- Guest
- Leigh Pourciau
- Sabrina Stevens
- Susan Chen
- David Loitz 14
- Sam Chaltain
- Jesse Bason
- Beth Sanders
- Jonathan Carlisle
- Catherine Reynolds
- Nadya Vila
- Dana Bennis and David Loitz