Vancouver reporter Geoff Olson writes again this week about SelfDesign. In his article “Kids climb own course in Wondertree program,” he quotes Wondertree and SelfDesign founder Brent Cameron: “Every single one of our learners is on an individualized curriculum that is tailor-made by and for each individual learner. Each learner from age six on is on a PhD kind of program whereby a committee co-manages and evaluates each learner’s ongoing work. The children learn that learning is an integral part of life…”

The individualized curriculum at SelfDesign pays off, as our learners become “knowledge-able” and not just knowledgeable. The latter concept was crystallized recently by Professor Michael Wesch of Kansas State University, when he wrote that “As we increasingly move toward an environment of instant and infinite information, it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move from being simply knowledgeable to being knowledge-able.”

Unfortunately, most schools continue to adhere to the old model of helping teachers become masters of delivering content in an assembly line system, instead of facilitating the process of helping students become knowledge-able. This is one of the key skills which will be needed by workers in the 21st century. Employers around the globe will want people who can think and are able to learn the knowledge they will need to do jobs and tasks that are ever changing.

As Geoff Olson mentions, Brent’s work has been — not surprisingly –ahead of its time. Brent puts this success down to his educational philosophy of ensuring that young students learn how to design, create, manage and evaluate their own learning, and then internalize a lifelong love of learning.

SelfDesign has garnered interest from around the world. In our pilot program, we have learners from Europe, Africa, Australia and North America. And visitors to our website have come from over 90 countries.

After serving thousands of families in British Columbia, Brent’s vision is to make SelfDesign a truly global endeavor. The pilot program will soon be entering its second year. Be sure to check back for more details!

Monica Cochran
Enrollment Counselor & Educational Consultant

Click button to share:

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 

Click button to share:

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

Click button to share:

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.

Click button to share:

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

Click button to share:

As a conscious parent, I am doing my best to raise my children so that they are the authors of their own dreams and destinies. I don’t want them to make choices to appease an outside, arbitrary authority and I don’t want them to learn to move forward on autopilot – suppressing their inner desires in order to avoid rocking the boat. I want my daughters’ eyes to keep shining with joy and enthusiasm as they playfully pursue their passions.

I am excited when I connect with organizations and families that affirm my choices and my path. SelfDesign has been a positive, affirming, and empowering choice for my family. My intention in my blog entries is to help other SelfDesign-ing and self authoring families find resources that affirm their choices.

I recently read an interesting article in The Guardian, where they review a new book, “How Children Learn at Home” published by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison of the Institute of Education, University of London. Here are some excerpts from the article: (The authors)…

conclude that informal learning at home is an “astonishingly efficient way to learn”, as good if not better than school for many children.

“The ease, naturalness and immense intellectual potential of informal learning up to the age of middle secondary school means they can learn certainly as much if not more,” they say in How Children Learn at Home.

The authors discovered that these children absorbed information mainly by “doing nothing, observing, having conversations, exploring, and through self-directed learning”. They liken the “chaotic nature” of informal learning to the process that leads to scientific breakthroughs, the early stages of crafting a novel, coming up with a solution to a technical problem, or the act of composing music.

“Its products are often intangible, its processes obscure, its progress piecemeal,” they say. “There are false starts, unrelated bits and pieces picked up, interests followed and discarded, sometimes to be taken up again, sometimes not… Yet the chaotic nature of the informal curriculum does not appear to be a barrier to children organising it into a coherent body of knowledge.”

Yet the lack of information quality-control does not appear to lead to muddled, confused children,” they say.

“In some ways, it may be an advantage because, rather than presenting knowledge in neat packages, the informal curriculum forces learners to become actively engaged with their information – to work with it, move it around, juggle ideas and resolve contradictions… It is not a static thing contained in a series of educational folders. It is alive and dynamic.”

You can read the whole article here.

This book seems to affirm my family’s choices as I watch my daughter pursue her learning choices in a chaotic and joyful way. How are your self-directed children doing? Lots of joyful chaos in your family as well? Better this than endless homework battles!

Debra Thorsen
SelfDesign Mom and 
Director of Strategic Planning

Click button to share: