Alternatives to School

I am inspired and excited after speaking with a group of moms in Ojai last night. A friend of mine, Stephanie DeRosier, founder of The Love Project, hosted a meeting to introduce SelfDesign to her friends. Eight women gathered together in a living room to explore schooling options for our children. It was a diverse group – women in their early twenties to early forties, with their children in Montessori, homeschool, and in public school. 

My friend started our discussion by asking everyone to share their experience in school (focusing on the K-12 years). The conversation became quite emotional as woman after woman shared their school experience. “I learned to play the game, stay out of the teachers’ red zones, and take the tests. But, I didn’t figure out who I was and what I wanted to do until I was 28 years old.” “I was so bored in school. I don’t want my children to experience the same thing. I am still trying to figure out what my passions are.” “School was about driving the right car, wearing the right clothes. It wasn’t about learning.” “I love art class, but slept through the other classes. They didn’t seem relevant to my life.” 

Tears were shed. Hugs exchanged. How could such a diverse group of women, from several different countries, experience the same pain and suffering? It’s hard to fathom that all eight women are dysfunctional learners – after all, we are functioning quite well as adults outside of the school system. 

The fantastic truth revealed to me again that night is that school doesn’t work for most children. It never has. It wasn’t designed to work for children.

We then explore our associations with the word “education”. Without exception, all of the associations were negative: “prison”, “school bells”, “tests”, “competition”. Then we asked these women to share their associations with the word “learning”. This brought forth a different energy in all of the women. “Curiosity”, “fun”, “open”, “invention”, “growth” all came to mind.

Why the disconnect between education and learning? How can we possibly work together to design different experiences for our precious children? 

I invite us to forget about finding the best “school” or “education” for our children. Let’s forget about “alternative schools” which are often a milder, kinder version of what doesn’t work. Let’s focus on creating the best learning environments for our children. Let’s look for alternatives to school.

Each child learns differently. Each child has unique gifts and abilities. Each child is a unique gift to this world. 

SelfDesign is the only learning model that I have discovered that supports children as they learn at their own pace, following their unique interests and abilities. SelfDesign-ing children don’t need to wait until a mid-life crisis to discover who they are and what they love. They are discovering their passions and purpose every day of their lives. 

Join me on this unique learning experience with this amazing global learning community. I invite you to enroll in SelfDesign’s K-8 and High School distance learning programs – award-winning programs based upon self-directed, enthusiasm based learning. 

Caprice Pitcher
SelfDesign Mom and Director
SelfDesign.com 

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My Learning Community, My Family

I just climbed out of a salt water bath to write this blog.  I want to be sure I get my thoughts, about this most important subject of being in a learning community, down before I lose them.

I am not feeling well today.  I have a sinus infection.  My daughter is also very sick with bronchitis, poison ivy, and a horrible case of pink eye.

I write this, not to induce pity, but to help you understand my bath tub ponderings, and my overflowing, heartfelt gratitude, for the learning community that I am now a part of.

In the past few years, taking care of my terminally ill mother, I have had to grow up.  Faced with loosing my second parent to cancer, and living 2,000 miles from my closest relative, I have learned a lot about self reliance, and the value of true friendship.

When I ventured to Texas, I had a hard time, finding like minded folks, especially in regard to my views on education.  I have learned in my 15 years here, that you can find community in the most unlikely places, virtually, for example.

When I flew to Vancouver in August, for a SelfDesign weekend workshop, I was astounded at how peaceful the families in attendance, with children ranging from infants to teens, were.  There were no parents barking at their children.  The teens were playing with the toddlers.  I saw one parent head off a child, from another family, who was running towards a river on the property where we were staying.  It was an experience of true community.

While in the tub, just a minute ago, I realized how very important this is for me.  My son’s birthday was the day before Thanksgiving.  He has 3 grandparents now, and not one of them called to wish him a happy birthday, on his actual birthday.  However, he received one video recording, and several cards, from what I now realize is our SelfDesign Family.

This week, my family doesn’t even know that my daughter and I are under the weather.  From our SelfDesign Family,  a coworker and mom, asked Sadie’s symptoms, and sent me a page of suggested homeopathic remedies.  One dad, while on a conference call, went to ask a mom who was visiting his house, and his wife, how to help bronchitis.  After I did what they suggested, my daughter slept through the night, for the first time in days.  

I am flying home to see my family of birth at Christmas, and am so grateful to have the opportunity to share this holiday with them.  However, in being a mom and having had to emotionally grow up, I realize that I get to choose my daily life family, and that for me is wholly SelfDesign.

This learning community, is about so much more.  It is about support, nurturing, sharing, inclusivity.

The man in charge of our business operations wrote something this week, that it takes a learning community, to raise a child.  I believe he is correct.

For me, this learning community has become my family, where I receive support in my daily life, on good days, and bad.  I couldn’t SelfDesign, without them.

I love my family of birth.  I have come home to SelfDesign, my family of choice.

Ariel Miller
who is a SelfDesigner, a SelfDesign mom,
and works with SelfDesign in the capacity
of building relationships and alliances

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Development of the Child

As a SelfDesign Mom of two girls, ages 6 and 2, I am a keen observer of their development. I have observed that, while their bodies may be small, their imaginations, zest for life, and capacity for self-love is amazing! 

I would like to challenge our current cultural meme that informs us our children are “less than” because they are small. I meet so many parents who are trying to raise their children in a conscious and respectful manner, yet are struggling to break free of societal notions of children that are based upon prejudice and fear.

In the past 6 years, I have learned to view my children as amazing mentors while I reclaim my passion for life and learn to love myself just as I am. My daughters are my little zen masters.

Young children may not have the functional capabilities of adults, yet in many ways, they are closer to the state of happiness, peace, and contentment that adults are seeking. I watch my daughters as they dance through life, confident that they are loved and supported, free to explore this fascinating world. They are not plagued with self-doubt and negative judgments of themselves and the world.

They are moving forward as if everything is possible. Failure is ok. They have stumbled and tripped while learning to walk and don’t beat themselves up for failures. They pick themselves up and keep going. They are natural learning beings. 

How many adults do I know who dance through life with a smile on their face and a bright light beaming from their eyes? Not enough! Most adults I know are plagued by inner demons that block their enjoyment of life. This widespread hunger for self-love and acceptance has created a $10 billion self-help market.

My husband told me this morning that he got excited about SelfDesign when he realized that the way he was raised and educated led to years of suffering. He sees SelfDesign as a way to raise and educate our children in a loving, respectful, empowering way. Few of us are encouraged to develop awareness of our self and our learning process from birth. It is the rare genius who is given the permission and space to explore natural gifts. Too often, we are forced to fit into a system that may not work for us at all.

In “SelfDesign: Nurturing Genius Through Natural Learning”, Brent Cameron and River Meyer write:

…happiness comes to us naturally. We associate happiness with well-being, love, and balance. It is our fundamental condition and our indicator of essential fulfillment. Unhappiness arises when someone or something moves us out of this balance, which happens most often in relationship with others. Some relationships support and sustain our happiness while others limit us and reduce our freedom. A feeling of unhappiness, like the feeling of hunger, gives us the clue that something is missing and that a change needs to occur. In the politics of relationship, when our rights are diminished we feel frustrated and controlled. We succumb to apathy, or we fight for change.

As you reflect upon your life (and your child’s), ask yourself which relationships and situations support happiness and which limit happiness?  Do you or your children ever feel like your rights are being diminished? Do your work relationships support or limit happiness? If your child attends school – does this school support or limit happiness? Does school recognize your children’s natural right to choose what they think about? 

It is a destructive myth in our society that we need to be unhappy to make money or learn something. In fact the opposite is true. As Humberto Maturana, evolutionary biologist says:

Learning is a transformation in living together. We tend to think of learning in terms of acquisition of information–this is not what it is. It is a transformation in living together, a transformation of doings in a process of doing things together with others.

Only love expands intelligence, because love as the domain of those behaviors through which the other arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself, opens us to see and to enter in collaboration. 

I delight in watching my children dance through life with their eyes sparkling and a big smile on their faces.

Caprice Pitcher
SelfDesign mom and Director of Strategic Planning

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SelfDesign addresses details of Obama’s Educational Reform Agenda

8 ways to solve the problems of the past with thinking from the future

 
From the The Obama-Biden Plan -

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that our kids and our country can’t afford four more years of neglect and indifference. At this defining moment in our history, America faces few more urgent challenges than preparing our children to compete in a global economy. The decisions our leaders make about education in the coming years will shape our future for generations to come.”  (http://change.gov/agenda/education_agenda/)

Having read through the Obama-Biden Educational Agenda, we should be encouraged by the breadth of initiatives presented – structural, financial, pedagogical and more.  What hasn’t been fully revealed yet are the implementation details for successfully transforming education in America, often the bane of most great plans. Addressing the underlying causes of the symptoms that leading to these educational challenges and moving those to the top of the list should be next on the Obama agenda.

Yet, if Einstein was right – that the problems of today, cannot be solved with the thinking of the past – then perhaps it is time we started reconsidering, in ernest, the way WE THINK about education.  With educational change a national priority, and high on the Obama-Biden administration’s agenda, perhaps now is the time to re-frame the discussion to include a new structure, language, and criteria for delivering educational and learning programs from a modern perspective.

1) Include every student and parent in the creation of their own learning plan - not only those in specialized programs and not a re-packaging of the existing model to students and families.  The old mantra of ‘you have can have any colour Model ‘A’ you want, as long as it is black’ kind of service can be replaced with a personal learning plan & learning portfolio for every child.  If children in special education are provided opportunities for personalizing their own learning plans, let’s give each that same opportunity.

And while we are at it, why should parents be excluded from the fun of designing and creating a learning plan and learning portfolio with their child. Encouraging parents to participate more in their child’s education through more one-on-one time, help with ‘homework’ and discussions about their interests and challenges is, well, almost self-evident in terms of its potential impact.  Supporting parents to feel more comfortable with how to engage their children should be part of the role of every teacher.

2) Maximize enthusiasm and self-confidence - seek from every child a personalized learning plan based on their personal interests and abilities, not one limited to the existing jar of learning outcomes.  Understanding that each learners’ developmental stage is different and at any given time they may not be 100% in-line with the prescribed learning outcomes for that age.  Re-enforcing that 50% of every student thinks they are below average (what we inadvertently create through intense testing) is probably NOT the ideal way to engage and inspire all children at the most critical learning time in their lives.

Offering testing as a personal choice generates meaning around testing and engages learners to view exams and quizes as an opportunity for self-evaluation and improvement, instead of criticism and punishment.  Let’s allow children to move ahead at their own developmental pace, continue to encourage group activities, allow advanced students to mentor less-advanced and develop their own mentoring experience, and engage students in self and group evaluations.

3) Apply more learning resources to artistic subjects and creative projects - Brent Cameron, Founder of SelfDesign maintains that all children are geniuses when given enough room to find out what they are interested in and supported in that learning.  Instead of increasing learning time, increase the value and effectiveness of their learning time by providing relevant tools, inspired mentoring and freedom to learn at their own pace.  When their natural insatiable appetites and abilities to learn are unleashed, excellence in every subject they engage in WILL develop.

Ask corporate headhunters why so many MFAs (Masters in Fine Arts) in contrast to MBAs are being hired into senior management positions.  Research into the value of the arts and creative play is beyond dispute, as Sir Ken Robinson so eloquently communicates (www.ted.com). If entrepreneurs are driving new job growth – the monetization of creative ideas - then let’s help learners master those skills if they so choose.

If artists and design students are being recognized for creative, out of the box thinking, and if corporate powerhouses like Google and 3M place enough value on creativity, that they insist employees focus at least one day per week on creative play, imagination and thinking time, surely we can provide equal space in the current learning week for our children to engage in similar activities.

4) Transform teaching into mentoring, coaching, personal development counselling & learning consulting relationships - There is little dispute regarding the value quality teachers bring to a child’s life.  Yet, teaching does not need to be a one-way relationship, sage on the stage model, especially in a world where learners have equal access to information and often superior knowledge of specific subject areas than their teachers.

If relationships built on respect, equality, human rights, open communication and sharing of ideas are cornerstones of optimal learning and working models, can we not make this part of each child’s learning experience throughout their lives – and not wait until they have graduated from university and expect them to have mastered these critical skills?  They are the learning market of the future, so modelling how we interact with each other, not just the ‘customer’ with a dollar to spend, should be woven into our educational mission.

5) Use technology to significantly improve the delivery of learning media and increase collaboration opportunities - Reform educational delivery to meet learner media channel expectations, and use and support the technology already available and often in the hands of learners.  The new generation sees the laptop as the we see the desktop – certainly not as a portable device (have you ever tried to carry one in your coat pocket?). Let us think of technology, NOT as an elimination of the traditional learning structure as it is so often criticized for, but as a tool for enhancing and extending learning far beyond the time-and-place specific context of the classroom.

Access to books and knowledge are no longer restricted to the single ancient tombs of venerated university libraries and lecture halls, so it is time we unshackled our collective minds from the old paradigm and began to fully embrace the ‘printing presses’ of the future: hardware, software, content interactivity and design.  Where we once used command line code to work with computers, we now have user-friendly graphic interfaces and yet we have only opened the door to the potential of the computer- human interface.

6) Make access to outstanding coaching in soft skills like personal development, emotional intelligence, NLP techniques, communication, presentation, negotiation, entrepreneurial and leadership skills - what sets apart the most successful people in the world from the rest? Rarely has this success been tied to how intelligent they are, yet we still continue to develop curriculum and testing largely centred around rote learning and a narrow band of intelligence metrics, ignoring the the value of most of the other learning modalities.

If our individual learning goals encourage each of us to find our personal strengths and passions and make them our vocation, let us expand our understanding of learning, and support and LEGITIMIZE ALL learners who have different learning needs and abilities – instead of finding increasingly effective ways to filter them out of the system!

7) Embrace learning disabilities and fund up-to-date diagnosis and treatment - Our need to support learning disabilities is equal to our need to solve social inequality. We support physical disabilities in sport through the Para-Olympics and provide medical funding for physical disease.  Let us no longer continue to accept inequality in our support for people with learning disabilities and let us provide world-class assistance for those learners to understand and surpass their learning challenges so they are not limited by the narrow filter we currently apply to academic and employment access.

Research into the impact of early learning disability interventions and improvements in the diagnostic and treatment methods for learners of all abilities, can lead to significant improvements in emotional and academic success.  Funding for applied treatments like Floortime for autism, SOI (structure of intelligence) and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and dozens of others for all learners if made accessible, could greatly reduce long-term social costs and greatly enhance the lives of millions.

8) Facilitate Group Projects and Design Learning Communities - working together in groups, on group projects and for community benefit is critical to the development of skills in a knowledge-based economy, so let’s allow children to develop responsibility and accountability for both the projects they are excited about and to their community as early as can be facilitated. Our communities need our help, the world needs volunteers, and Mr. Obama is asking for them, so let’s give our children access to the wiser generations, apprenticeship opportunities and community connections they need by engaging them in real world projects, while providing relevant learning opportunities through volunteer programs with learners of all ages.

With an entire generation of baby-boomers on the verge of retirement, and senior-citizens often undervalued and under-engaged in terms of their potential contribution to community projects and mentoring opportunities with children, we could be well-served providing children with a greater level of connection with the grandparents generation.

If we ask ourselves why K-12 education appears to be so focused on producing university professors and highly trained academics (some of my best friends , while often under-valuing the contribution of other areas of learning, we come up with a variety of responses usually in its defense. My mother was a high-school English & French teacher and I work in a very progressive learning environment, so I am no stranger to discussion on pedagogy, yet the current discussion on educational change could be well served by applying and implementing some modern ideas and already proven research.

The time has come …

… to value each child’s right to design his or her own learning plan.

… to transform teaching into mentoring relationships & learning consulting.

… to provide every child with technology tools, access and support.

… to leave behind the limitations of ‘No child left behind’.

… to increase our commitment to the arts and creative learning projects.

… to begin modelling communication skills from the age of 5 not 25.

… to stop asking what your child’s school can do for you, and start asking what you can do for your child’s school.

… to embrace the wisdom of our grandparents through learning communities.

… to stop ‘delivering’ education and start ‘inspiring’ learning.

 
If we do, great things will emerge from our children and each other!

Our time has come …
 

Parker Cook
Executive Director
SelfDesign Global

“One learning consultant per child”
www.selfdesign.com

With a 25 year award-winning history, a thriving learning community 1000 learners in British Columbia, Canada, a scaleable implementation model, and learners on several continents, SelfDesign is becoming a catalyst for change in the world.  Parker Cook is a SelfDesign father of two and a 15 year member of the SelfDesign / Wondertree Community.

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“Mom, who is this Brent Cameron guy?”

When I look back on the 38 years I have spent on this lovely planet, there are a few events I can identify, that wound up being a major crossroads for me.  This is where, the fabric of my life wove together in such a way, I could see a picture emerge that I had not seen before.

That is certainly the case, in regards to the Vancouver trip I took in August, to attend a SelfDesign seminar. I arrived in British Columbia a women that has been on a life long quest to find meaningful education in my own life, provide it to my children, and the children of the world.  I left a SelfDesigner.  

I knew this shift in consciousness would have a huge impact on my life.  I completely underestimated the effect it would have on my family.

When my husband and children picked me up from the airport, I told them on the car ride home about my weekend.  I was explaining how one of the many highlights for me, was when Brent Cameron taught a room full of adults how to spell, more or less perfectly, in less than 10 minutes.

I have been in conversation with Brent for a year, before this conference.    I knew that he was wonderful enough for me to fly a few thousand miles to meet him, but when he told me about this demonstration, I must admit I entered the room with a “Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it,” attitude.

Brent taught us that most people who are poor spellers, have trouble because they are still trying to “sound it out.”  This is something commonly taught in elementary education.  However, as Brent explained it, spelling is a visual process, and when you get this, it is easy to spell any word backwards OR forwards.

In that moment, I was liberated from a story I had created about myself, that wasn’t true.  I grew up thinking I am terrible at languages, because I am a visual learner.  My sister, the auditory wonder, was the language guru in our house.  She now speaks four languages, and one of our favorite pasttimes as children, was for me to give her words out of the dictionary, and she would say them backwards.  I have yet to find a word, that she can’t phonetically work out in her mind, and say backwards.

I had a nerve wracking bus ride back to the Seattle airport from Vancouver, that picked me up late enough, I was in serious danger of missing my flight home.  To keep my mind busy from wanting to throttle the bus driver, who seemed to be in no hurry at all, I passed the time by practicing Brent’s spelling philosophy.  I found that I too, when picturing the words visually in my mind, and breaking them into segments of a few letters at time, could easily spell forwards and backwards.

What I realized on that trip is that Brent understands who children are, as neurological beings.  When I explained this to my family, in our minivan on the way home from the airport, my eleven year old son, looked at me shaking his head in wonder, and asked, “Mom, who is this Brent Cameron guy?”

I gave him a quick explanation of how Brent is the head of SelfDesign, a cutting edge educational program in Canada, and thought that was the end of it.  Something I said, obviously made a huge impact on him.  The next day he came home from his beloved school, where he was highly vested in his teacher and friends, and said he wasn’t going back, because he wanted to SelfDesign.

I have looked back on this moment often, and wondered how it happened.  My son LOVED his school.  He would evangelize the self-directed, child centered philosophy, to anyone who would listen.  He was very popular and had a deeply connected social network.

How did he, in less than 24 hours, go from being a student in his school, to a SelfDesigner?  The only answer that my heart gives my over active mind, that makes any sense, is that he is so connected with me, that when I put my stake in the ground and surrendered to the fact that I AM a SelfDesigner, it was the most natural thing in the world, for him to become one too.

What would happen if each of us surrendered to our own process of unfolding as a life long learner and neurological being, that hungers for meaningful knowledge and wants to participate in our wonderful world?  If each of us placed our stake in the ground, and claimed that as adults it is not too late for us to learn what is meaningful to us, in a way that really works for our own unique learning styles?

I am sure that I have only scratched the surface of who Brent Cameron is, but will be taking my son with me this year to British Columbia, so he can answer this question for himself.  I am endlessly grateful that Brent has held the space for the past twenty five years, so that now anyone on the globe can be a SelfDesigner.  It is as if Brent gave me a treasure map, where I was able to uncover a new truth about myself.  The buried treasure that I found in the woods of Vancouver, is that I am actually great at language, and a wonderful speller, in my own unique way.

Ariel Miller 
SelfDesigner,
SelfDesign mom,
Enrollment Counselor & Educational Consultant

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Giving Thanks for My Learning Community

As I reflect upon why I chose SelfDesign as the learning program and learning community for my family, I am inspired by a piece that Brent Cameron, founder of SelfDesign, wrote while at the University of British Columbia:

“SelfDesign has been working with children and adults for the past 25 years in an innovative learning community beyond the paradigm of schooling. Our program emerges from the enthusiasm and curiosity of all learners, and we practice consensus and wellness as fundamental aspects of the work. We have grown from a group of twelve to a learning community of over seven hundred. We hope to share the nature of our work with lifelong learners around the world as an offering of peace within…

Peace is not the illusion of something that we will achieve in the future, nor is fulfillment a goal that we can obtain. Peace and fulfillment are the qualities that we bring forth to others from our essential selves in each present moment. SelfDesign is about living from this essence as a spiritual practice within our complex of spirit, mind, heart and body learning.

SelfDesign is a new paradigm of learning, a new way of thinking about learning beyond schooling. It is a modern educational methodology in alignment with ancient insights and perennial truths. It blends together the masculine and the feminine, the east and the west, allowing the infinite wisdom within to play a role in healing our universe. A new world view is possible when each one of us is allowed to be free — free to choose to work within nature and natural systems, and free to live as an expression of our heart. 

SelfDesign is about living in enthusiasm, en theos – the experience of god within.

thanksgiving by alicepopkorn

As my family prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I place the SelfDesign Learning Community at the top of my gratitude list. I give thanks to Brent Cameron and all the people who have worked tirelessly over the past 25 years to develop and grow the SelfDesign learning model and community. I give thanks to the peace that I feel in my heart as I watch my daughters and myself unfold our natural genius in a community of love and affirmation.

Debra Thorsen
SelfDesign Mom and
Director, Strategic Planning

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A journey back home – Origins of the SelfDesign Learning Community

Looking back 15 years I remember meeting Brent Cameron, the founder of  a small, innovative educational learning community called Wondertree, around the green felt of a free billiard table in a friendly ‘Cheers’-like bar in Vancouver, BC – The Press Club.  It was a place where journalists and media folk would gather after the days work to share stories and discuss the news of the day, and helped open my mind up to many new ideas and the inner workings of the press.  Brent was a good pool player and after months of practice, I was almost able to match his skill and play competitively with him (my reference point for many things at that time).  It was that encounter that would influence much of my thinking about business and how I conducted my life.

He spoke to me of a different kind of high school he and Michael Maser, a Vancouver-based journalist, geologist, musician and teacher, had initiated nearby in a 4 story mansion house in the venerated Shaugnessey area of the West Side of Vancouver, British Columbia.  In fact, he did not refer to it as a high school at all.  Instead, Brent referred to this new kind of school as a learning centre with learning consultants, instead of teachers, where learners were initially engaged in the process of exploring the more important questions we as children and adults alike are rarely asked to consider – questions about what we are inspired by and how we could optimize how we learn through the latest learning technologies like NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and the different modalities of learning we now more commonly understand as the multiple intelligences.

With my interest peaked, I visited and volunteered at Virtual High  (the brick and mortar high school age version of SelfDesign), where Brent’s daughter and 35 other students gathered everyday to design their own learning plans, manage budgets, hire learning consultants and mentors to provide coaching and expertise in group topics of interest. They organized cooking for lunch, cleaning and facility upkeep, outreach projects into the community, were hired by public and private corporations to develop software projects, designed sustainable village architectural models for what is now the current site of the Olympic Village for Vancouver 2010. They won several national and local awards for their innovative use and development of software, yet at the heart of it all was an ethic for learning with each other which kept all of them captivated.

Despite the students’ excellence in the use of computers and software development, technology, I discovered, was little more than one of many tools for facilitating what was underlying the pent up enthusiasm for life which each teen brought to Virtual High each day.  And why were these students were so jazzed about ’school’ that Brent and  Michael were asked by the parents to make agreements with the learners to spend more time at home with their families throughout the week!

The answer, in its shortest form, was about trust and freedom and choice – the trust parents had of their children to be free to choose their own life and learning paths based on their blossoming energy for everything, and then the realization by each student that they could really learn and do anything after being supported to do so and coached in how they might learn faster, more effectively and more creatively than ever before. And they most often did! Through their personal discovery of their own limitless energy and abilities, these students immersed themselves in everything they found an interest in.

In addition, these SelfDesign students also learned about a different  way of communicating with each other and how collaborative models of school and business were incredibly effective in creating superior results when practised. Brent mentored and modelled negotiation skills, personal development strategies, interpersonal communication skills techniques for perfecting spelling, opened doorways to inner passions and helped connect all of these into the development a lifelong journey of purpose.

From this sense of purpose, my competitive edge was transformed into an effortless journey toward a mastery of everything I loved doing, hindered only only by my next self-imposed boundary. It is a place where my life became a match between my leisure and my labor, with a congruency in which achieving excellence, appeared not much different than a child’s elegant mastery of rapport with her mother or how all children learn to walk without an instruction guide.  I had taken the first steps on my own path back to childhood, to that place we all know, and returned to know it for the very first time.

I had become a SelfDesigner.

Parker Cook
SelfDesign Dad and
Executive Director

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What is a great learning program?

SelfDesign Global is part of a family of learning programs which includes the Wondertree Learning Center in Vancouver. Recently a grandmother visited the school there to see how her grandchild was doing. She shared this concern during the visit:

“I’m an educator, a retired schoolteacher with years and years of teaching experience, and I can’t really understand how this whole self-directed learning piece works for children. I do visit my grandchild as often as I can, and I know how hard school was for him and how frustrated he and his mother were during that time.  In my last few visits I can see that things have changed, and I’m certainly glad to see his excitement each day and to hear him talk about going to Wondertree. But I do worry — he seems so happy now – but how can he be learning?”

How sad the grandmother couldn’t trust her own observations that her grandson was indeed happy and learning?  How did she come to associate learning with boredom, drudgery, and “not fun activities.”

What if we all found a few quiet moments to reflect on our own feelings about education, assessing any words we associate with it?   Would we find words of excitement and joy? Or would we recall words of coercion, boredom and resignation?

When I reflected on my feelings about learning they included “curiosity” and “wonder.” And when I reflected on education, I thought of “school” and “homework.”

Which would you prefer for your child or yourself? At SelfDesign Global, our goal is to develop joyful, enthusiastic life-learners who embrace the unknown with confidence and clarity of purpose.

Monica Cochran
Enrollment Counselor & Educational Consultant

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A Lesson From My Father

Today would have been my father’s sixty sixth birthday.  My heart hurts, when I think of him, and how young he was when he died.

He was a very successful businessman, the top of his field, one of the very best in the world, in his niche.  Yet, before he died, he told me that when he recovered from his battle with cancer, he wanted to do something else, that his career was making him feel empty.  He was thinking about becoming a teacher.

What does it mean, when someone who is considered wealthy in every way, he had status, a loving family, a beautiful home, a company where his employees loved and respected him, isn’t fulfilled in his career?  I have to wonder if he was so good at doing something that wasn’t his life’s passion, what he could have created if his joie de vivre, had danced with his raison d’etre.

My father grew up very poor.  He told me once that people made fun of him, because of this.  One of his life goals was to become rich, which he accomplished.  Yet, I believe he died, knowing that this formula for success had not worked.  A dear friend told me he was at peace at the end of his life, in everything, but his business.

I carry a quote in my day timer, that I tore out of a magazine years ago, and look at everyday for inspiration.  While being interviewed, Bill Clinton said the following, “When I was governor, I read an astonishing study about ten people who’d grown up in impossible circumstances but all made successful lives.  One guy had been abandoned early and had four brothers in jail, yet he was a doctor.  He’d lived with his grandmother and sometimes slept under the steps of the apartment.  Near the entrance to the building, a guy who ran a newspaper stand there would talk to this child every afternoon.  He kept saying, ‘You can do anything; you’re a really smart kid.’  The study concluded that this boy and the other nine people had one thing in common: a caring adult who made the child feel like the most important person in the world.  When I met Hillary, she was working at the Yale Child Study Center, and I began learning through her work about child development issues.  It was the first time I got it:  I am where I am because somebody made me feel I could be anything.”

I wonder what would have happened if my father had had this as a child, a mentor who told him that could be anything he wanted.  How would his life have been different if he had moved towards a passion, rather than away from his childhood circumstances?  Perhaps he would have found a resolution, and peace in his career, before his death.

This, no doubt, is part of what drives me in my own commitment to change the world of education.  I am currently working with SelfDesign Global because I believe every child that is enrolled, has the relationship with their personal Learning Consultant, that President Clinton spoke of.

I consider my father’s story tragic, to have lived a life where he worked so hard, only to wonder at the end, if indeed he had been in the wrong career.  While I believe he gained comfort, knowing that he had provided well for his family, I know he would have traded all of the status, and wealth he had achieved, to live to see his first grandchild born.

Perhaps that is why, for me, a life lived in any other way than being 100% in your passion, is a life half lived, and why I have literally gone to another country, to find a child centered program for my kids.  They are being given the gift, of their education being one in which they are unconditionally valued.  My children are home learning with SelfDesign Global, a Canadian organization that has been pushing the boundaries in education, and winning awards, for the past 25 years.

I find it interesting that at the end of my dad’s life, his desire was to leave the business world, where he knew great success, and go into education.  I believe it was so he could offer to young people what Bill Clinton spoke of, a mentor who knows a person who is aligned with their passion, can be anything.  Would it have healed him, to give what he had never himself received?  I don’t know, but will allow it to heal me, in his stead.

Ariel Miller
SelfDesign Mom,
Enrollment Counselor & Educational Consultant

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Core Concepts of SelfDesign

SelfDesign is a pioneer in redefining learning and envisioning a new way of educating our children and ourselves. Underlying our work at SelfDesign are some core concepts and values that I would like to share here. 

What are the core concepts of SelfDesign?

• We believe all beings are born into goodness and happiness. 
• Our cornerstone is respect for self and for the other, regardless of age or stage.
• The specific languaging techniques we offer create the most conducive environment for learning and personal growth.  
• We believe that life is an enthusiastic exploration for depth, excellence, and interconnectedness. Life itself provides the curriculum for learning.
• We support an ongoing process toward a balanced, ecological, sustainable environment for self, for others, and for the natural world.

We invite you to join us on this amazing learning journey called life. Believe in your goodness. Celebrate your innate capacity to learn with joy and enthusiasm. Work to make your home and community in balance with nature. And don’t forget – have lots of fun!

Debra Thorsen
SelfDesign Mom and 
Director of Strategic Planning 

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