Limited Edition AERO T Shirts Now Available With AERO Registration
AEROx Sold Out!
AERO Conference Early Bird Ends Next Saturday
The AEROx conference in Bethel, CT, from April 6-8 is sold out. The deadline was midnight Monday, March 19th.
The regional conference is part of the events leading up to this year's
AERO conference, June 28-July1. For example the founder of North Star Self-Directed Learning for Teens, Ken Danford, will be participating in the AEROx with many of this students. Ken will be one of the mini-talk presenters at the AERO Conference in June.
Meanwhile the AERO Conference early bird rate will end March 31st., next Saturday.
You can still register this week at the early bird rate for the AERO Conference
HERE. A
deposit can hold this rate.
New Book About Homeschoolers Getting into College In The AERO Store!
AERO member Lori Dunlap has written an important new book on what homeschoolers need to know to get into college and what colleges need to know about assessing homeschoolers. You can now order it at a discount through AERO
"As the number of homeschoolers continues to increase, professionals who work with homeschoolers seeking higher education need to develop a plan to recruit, assess, and assimilate these particularly motivated, thoughtful, creative students. Combining her professional experience with insights gathered from surveys of US colleges and universities, author Lori Dunlap Of TeachYourOwn.org provides the information you need to more fully understand this population, along with strategies and approaches for easily and effectively connecting with, engaging, and assessing these non-traditional students. Lori also helps homeschooling families discover what admissions professionals are looking for in their ideal applicant, better preparing them for the college application process and working with the admissions professionals at their chosen schools."
Get a Limited Edition AERO T-Shirt This Week by Registering for the AERO Conference! Early Bird Rate Ends This Week!
We still have limited edition t-shirts left in all sizes, This is the first time in five years AERO has offered a t-shirt. We have just received every size but could run out of some if you don't order right away. In the "order notes" type in your size: Extra Large, Large, Medium, Small, Youth Medium, Youth Large. We're not likely to reorder until after the conference and it may not be this design. We see people still wearing the ones from 5 years ago!
For this week only you will get a free t-shirt mailed to you if you register for the AERO conference. We'll also give you a free AERO membership or renewal. Total value: $60- $95!
Also, the early bird rate ends this week, on Saturday, March 31st.
A tide of commuters came and went as a Brooklyn-bound F train stopped at the 14th Street station in Manhattan, and a smattering of others milled around the platform, staring at their phones or nothing at all as they waited. None of them paid any attention as Rahiem Taylor strummed his bass guitar and his twin brother, Amiri, tried to reattach the strap to his acoustic guitar.
Students Organize Massive March! Over 800,000 in DC Alone! Our Take on March For Our Lives
Massive student-organized rallies and marches have been taking place all over the country, over 800 at last count. There is an unspoken message in all of this: For the first time in memory, massive numbers of students are empowering themselves to have their voices heard. Of course AERO has championed this for nearly thirty years. This may be the catalyst for real education change in schools around the country. Articulate students are expressing their frustration with adults in their world who are making decisions for them in an authoritarian way. The issue now is obviously gun violence and gun laws, but something seems different now. The students do not seem willing to just let this issue fade away. And it is possible that the scope of their empowerment will be extended. They are perhaps coming to realize that it doesn't make sense for students to put up with authoritarian schools and top-down bureaucratic decision-making in what is supposed to be a democracy. Twelve years in an authoritarian system is not good preparation to participate in a democracy. This may be the deeper issue that students are discovering.
Some of the rallies were led by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, site of the killing of 17 students. They lost siblings and friends. But as one of them pointed out, if this movement is to be effective it needs to inspire many other students to become leaders. Thousands are rallying here on Long Island. Others groups have gone by bus to Washington.
USA Today estimated that 800,000 protesters attended the Saturday event in Washington, which would make it the largest in history.
"If they're correct, the event would be the largest single-day protest in the history of the nation's capital. The total is bigger than the inaugural Women's March, which brought 500,000 to D.C., according to the Washington Post.
The number doesn't include large rallies in cities such as Boston, Houston, Minneapolis and Parkland, Fla., the site of the Valentine's Day attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead." - JM
Click Here to see a picture of Paul McCartney at the protest.
Will March For Our Lives Actually Change Laws? Read article here.
A 12-Year-Old Protester's Interview Went Viral. Here's His Story
By Kirk Slocum
This week, I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue with my friends as we all cheered and hollered, "End gun violence, no more silence!" I went to the
student walkout in Washington on March 14. Students from all over Montgomery County in Maryland and Washington came out to the White House and the Capitol to march for gun control policies and new bans and laws.
At first, my parents said I could not go. I had already gotten caught up in a small school walkout back in February right after the tragic Parkland shooting. It ended badly. A couple of friends and I got lost, and it ended up with me just missing school. I got an "unexcused absence" and got no credit for the work I missed.
Over the past two decades, a handful of massacres that have come to define school shootings in this country are almost always remembered for the students and educators slain. Death tolls
are repeated so often that the numbers and places become permanently linked.
What those figures fail to capture, though, is the collateral damage of this uniquely American crisis. Beginning with Columbine in 1999, more than 187,000 students attending at least 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours, according to a year-long Washington Post analysis.
California homeschoolers now have two legislative threats!
Assemblyman Medina and Assemblywoman Eggman each introduced bills of concern to homeschoolers this ye
ar, and CHN has been following both.
Medina's AB 2756 "fire marshall" bill has received most of the publicity, but Eggman's AB2926 has been watched carefully, and last night our worst fears were confirmed.
On the surface, Eggman's AB2926 bill started as a nothing bill because just a few words were changed in existing ed code. And that's why we monitored her bill so closely! Bills like this are known as "spot bills". They are introduced by the deadline and are holding the spot so that the bill's author can gut the bill and slip in something new. If you think that's unethical, we would agree, but that's what Assemblywoman Eggman did yesterday!
AB 2926 threatens the right to homeschool in California in a way that we've never seen!
This bill would establish an advisory committee that would make recommendations about the following:
"appropriateness and feasibility of imposing on a home school additional requirements, which shall include, but are not limited to, all of the following."
(1) Health and safety inspections.
(2) Additional, specific curriculum standards.
(3) Certification or credentialing of teachers.
Opposing this dangerous bill is going to take the full force of the homeschooling community, regardless of how you homeschool.
We think it will impact those enrolled in Charter Schools too.
Please send us feedback on this issue. also, we would like to have more articles written by AERO members and about AERO school and organizations.
Thank you for your ongoing support. With your help, we will make learner-centered alternatives available to everyone!
In Service,
Jerry Mintz
Executive Director
Alternative Education Resource Organization
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