Five Dangerous Things All Students Should Do

Five Dangerous Things All Students Should Do

by | Aug 7, 2014 | Blog

The other week my wife Lisa and I went out on a group date with my older brother and sister and their spouses.  Since we all live far from each other this was uncommon, in fact I think it was the first time we’d ever done something like this.  At dinner, as you might expect, we started to reminisce about our childhood, doing things that most kids don’t get a chance to do these days, like bike across town without a helmet to the outdoor swimming pool when we were only 6-years-old. However, since I spent the first 10 years of my life on a farm we had a list of adventures most parents (including myself) would have a hard time letting their kids do these days.  There was jumping from the 3rd story barn rafters into the hay loft below, climbing around the 10 story silos, using the electric bandsaw in the basement unsupervised, blowing up the power line transformer with a perfectly placed kick from a basketball to the power line, and my favorite, flipping over the handle bars of a trail bike (basically a motorcycle) going 25 mph after getting shot in the neck by a BB gun.  To say the least, life doesn’t seem as dangerous these days for kids. I recently listened to a TED talk by Gever Tulley titled: 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.  They include: play with fire, own a pocket knife, throw a spear, deconstruct appliances, and drive a car. Tulley is the founder of the Tinkering School, a summer camp outside of San Francisco that gives...
Is Learning the Primary Goal of Schools?

Is Learning the Primary Goal of Schools?

by | Jun 11, 2014 | Blog

Earlier this week I officially started my doctorate at the University of Hawaii.  My parents being oh so proud, keep telling me how they run into my former teachers and love telling them that I am working on a doctorate of education.  I think they really enjoy the shock value. Truthfully, my former teachers have good reason to be a little shocked because let’s just say I wasn’t a very good student growing up.  It’s not that I didn’t want to do good, at least when I was really young.  It was just that I seemed to have a hard time following instructions, submitting homework, and doing what the teacher wanted. However, when I think back to my childhood I remember being an constantly curious kid who was always tinkering with this or that and would often walk my own path.  In fact although I didn’t always do too well in school, I feel that I was alway hungry to learn something new and interesting. This got me thinking the other day, is learning the primary goal of schools?  You’d think so right, but the more I think about it, the more I’m less sure their systems are designed to be flexible learning-centered places of learning (does that sound redundant).  For example, on any given day a student  comes to school usually at a time when their brains aren’t fully awake, to take classes that are only roughly designed around their individual ability, in core courses (math, language arts, social studies, science) that have remained the more or less the same subject area for over a hundred years, and pep rallies,...
Why You Should Be Teaching Your Students to Beg

Why You Should Be Teaching Your Students to Beg

by | May 12, 2014 | Blog

My wife and I have made a concerted effort to decrease the amount of interactions our 2 year old daughter has with technology.  We haven’t so much decreased her screen time as just avoided it all together.*  However, if you’re a parent like I am, then you know that your  child has an uncanny ability to chip away at your resolve.  Between ear twisting whines to sweet smiles our daughter has learned the art of begging, leaving shame in her wake to finagle her way into getting what she wants.  Lately, as her reasoning ability has begun to develop it’s been interesting to hear her try and use logic to get what she wants: “I can’t take a nap today because it’s cloudy,” or “I’m sad, can I have ice cream because it’ll make me feel better.”  Of course, when despite all her effort we still say no, she resorts to dramatic flails of her hands in the air with an exacerbated “please!” Truthfully, although I don’t want to give into my daughter’s iPad fix I’d like to see her sharpen her ability to beg, or said differently, sharpen her skills of persuasion.  I think we undervalue this skill in schools, and outside of schools we often relegate it to the used car salesman.  In doing so we miss an important skill-building opportunity with our students.  No not the art of car salesmanship, but the important skills of persuasion, argument, rhetoric, empathy, resilience, networking/community-building and many more. In fact, this is an area I continue to try and build in myself.  If you’ve been around me lately, you know...
How to Reclaim the Workshop

How to Reclaim the Workshop

by | Apr 16, 2014 | Blog

As far back as I can remember I’ve always been interested in working with my hands.  As a small child I would play with my dad’s tools in the basement, eventually making my own little workbench and collecting an assortment of tools.  When I learned to write I created a sign and placed on the wall, it read “ANdys Woke Shop”.  It was like something out of a cliche Sears commercial.  In our basement my dad had purchased a brand new band saw that sat on his work bench.  Being the great dad that he is he allowed me to use it with his supervision, even when I was so young that I needed a stool to see the cutting blade slice through anything in its way. Conscience of safety he hid the bright yellow safety key used to lock the on/off button when he wasn’t home.  But being an ever curious and sneaky child I’d sleuth around the workshop until I found it and continue experimenting with the saw and building an assortment of objects especially wooden swords, each one slightly better than the next.  Somehow I managed despite being a young 6 year old to not slice of a wayward finger.  These are the memories that come to mind when I hear the word workshop.  A place where things are cut-in-half, pierced with nails, painted, screwed together, and fixed.  Workshops are where things are built. Although I spend less time building woke benches (I mean workbenches) and using the band saw today, the word workshop is still in my regular vocabulary.  It’s been adopted by schools to...