Table Of Contents







What do we Mean by the Spectrum of Democratic Education?
Feedback From Readers About School Shooting
Readhead Results of the Survey by Henry Readhead on Which Keynote Topic You Want!
Tentative Schedule Now Posted
Henry Readhead will be a keynoter at the upcoming  AERO Conference, June 28-July 1st at LIU/C.W. Post Campus, NY. 

Last week he sent the following note to AERO conference attendees to help him decide on a keynote topic. Below it are the survey results:

Note from Henry Readhead to AERO Readers:
The subject of Summerhill School is not always so easy to cover in a short talk. Over the years I have covered most of the elements, so we thought it would be fun to give you all a list of topics I could speak about for my keynote and you can all vote on which ones you would like me to emphasize.

I will be giving a keynote speech with a Q&A, and a separate session later on in the conference. Here is a list of topics I can cover:
  • 100 years of freedom within education
  • Social and emotional development
  • Community life and boarding at Summerhill
  • 100 years of democracy at Summerhill
  • Learning at Summerhill with non-compulsory lessons
  • The meeting process, laws and conflict resolution
  • Parenting and Summerhill

  

Results of the Survey:

  

There was a tie at 27% each between  "Learning at Summerhill with non-compulsory lessons," and "100 years of freedom within education." This was followed by 22% who preferred "100 years of democracy at Summerhill."    

  

See tentative schedule on conference site.  

  

You can still register this week at the earlybird rate for the AERO Conference HERE.  A deposit can hold this rate.  

  
mini-talks We're Sending You Six AERO Mini-talks in a Separate e mail!
Still Room for 10 Workshops
On Friday afternoon, June 29th, we will kick off the AERO conference with six TED-like mini-talks. This has become one of the most popular features of the AERO conference.

By a separate e mail we are sending you six mini-talks from the last two AERO conferences. Some have never been seen before. It took a lot of work to put this together.

So far we have listed three of the mini-talks that will be presented at this year's conference. You can read about them here. They are by Joanna Faber, Roopa Reddy, Michael Hynes, Jamaal Bowman, Shilpa Jain, and Judy Yaro. You can go to this year's TED talks for $6000 or see our mini-talks as well as well as three other keynoters and 25 workshops for the current $225 early bird rate!

Speaking of workshops, we can still take about ten more submissions for this year's conference. Send submissions here.  
 
You can still egister this week at the early bird rate here! A deposit can hold this price.

TooGood Some Days Are Too Good to be True!

I can't believe I even wrote such a sappy title. Me, the tell-it-like-it-is gal, who never exaggerates. But let me describe a bit of a very recent day. As I was walking down to school, on an absolutely perfect morning, a young boy (7), whom we will call Jack, was biking down behind me. He slowed down to bike at the same rate as I was walking and to say good morning. Of course, all his "goods" were with him, mostly in his backpack, but in his hand he had an oddly shaped object that looked like an extremely large gavel, clearly made of plastic and non-threatening.

There were two teenage boys sort of poised on bikes at the picnic table that is near the entrance to the cellar of the school. They both called out, "Hey, Jack, is that Thor's hammer?" Of course it was. I had asked him what it was, and he told me that it was Thor's hammer, but I confess it meant nothing to me. In fact, I even wondered if I had heard him correctly! But the 16 year olds were quite interested in the hammer, and spent some time talking with Jack about it. It was age mixing at its most lovely - building relationships with people much younger and/or much older. They tried to explain the context of the Hammer to me too, but clearly I was culturally insufficient.

Read the rest here.
seeds 13th Report for Sprouting Seeds Learning Centre
Ed: Sprouting Seeds is an AERO member in Myanmar directed by Jim Connors. 

Dear Friends and Family

We hope you all had a happy holiday season and a happy transition into the new year.

Things here at Sprouting Seeds Café, Bakery and Eco Shop are really moving along. Unfortunately, due to the press Myanmar is receiving about the conflicts in Rakhaine State, there are many less people coming to Myanmar. It is extremely noticeable here in Kalaw.

However, we are very excited to share that we received an award here at the café for our work with the local community. We are now starting to focus on small trainings to expand our natural products through the Eco Shop part of the project. Trainings in sewing, knitting, crochet, lip balm and hard soaps is now expanding to reach more people.

Read the rest here.
SVS What Do People Learn at Sudbury Valley?
A New Look at Learning
By Daniel Greenberg
 
At the Sudbury Valley School, we have encountered a new version of the old story of the parent-child dialogue: "Where did you go?" "Out." "What did you do?" "Nothing." Our version is: "Where do you go?" "Sudbury Valley." "What do you learn?" "Nothing." All too often, that seems to be the refrain associated with the school by parents and by people in the community, and it has come to plague us more as time goes by. When the school opened, there was a whole catalogue of objections to what we were doing; as the years have passed most of them have slowly faded away. In the beginning, we were told that the problem was that we were new, and people didn't want to try out a new school before they knew whether it would work or survive, or be accredited. Of course now we're not new anymore, and we have survived, and we are even accredited. Earlier, there was always the question of how our students could get into college without courses, grades, or transcripts. We had to try to convince people on the basis of abstractions.

Read the rest here.
What What do we Mean by the Spectrum of Democratic Education
Some people have asked what we mean by the theme of this year's AERO Conference, "The Spectrum of Democratic Education." Of course AERO readers know that we support a learner-centered education approach that empowers students. But there is no one way to do this, and even within those that call themselves "democratic schools" that are many different approaches. In this conference we hope to highlight some of those different approaches. We will also have an alternative education fair to showcase them.

For example, Summerhill, one of the oldest democratic schools, nearly 100 years old, has non-compulsory classes but has a set timetable from which students can choose. On the other hand, Sudbury Schools don't have set classes offered by staff members to students. Students request the classes they would like to have or organize them on their own. Between these approaches that are an amazing variety of other approaches such as those of the Agile Learning Centers and many others such as the Lehman Alternative Community School in Ithaca, a public democratic school, Brooklyn Free School, an Independent democratic school, Pono, a democratic homeschool resource center, etc. All will be represented at the AERO Conference

Let us know as soon as possible if you would like to showcase your school or program at the alternative education fair at the conference. We'll take about 25. If you haven't registered yet, you should e mail us ASAP by replying or writing to info@educationrevolution.org. If you've registered already or register now you are already scheduled for this. 

You can still register this week at the earlybird rate for the AERO Conference HERE. A deposit will hold this rate.  

Factor Reader Feedback from AERO Essay on School Shooting
We received many responses to our essay on the most recent school shooting in Florida. Newsday published a cut down version in today's paper.

Here are some of the posts about the essay.

"Thank you Jerry and everyone who has responded.  I appreciate the well expressed and powerful thoughts here.  
 
If you are still going to develop this and other pieces, Jerry, I've got a couple of thoughts.
 
I think it would be important to emphasize how outmoded and irrelevant schools have been for decades now.  I think if we don't make that point, it will be easy for naysayers to argue that the current model of schooling has worked for generations and nobody used to shoot up schools. The "logical" conclusion could be that the "problem" must lie elsewhere; and there are countless places to lay the blame: the students, teachers, parents,guns, social media..." They could easily disregard the failure of schooling itself. 
 
I also suggest that you offer this new lens in the spirit of opening up a new kind of conversation - more emergent and nuanced (which your statement offers the possibility for).  We don't have to make the knowing, causal claims that are the brand of partisan politics. Because of who we are, we can lead more democratic and emergent conversations. Conversations which might create discoveries, ones which could potentially develop us and our young people."
Gwen
Gwen Lowenheim, M.S.Ed.
Performing the World - Conference
 
East Side Institute

"I agree with the eloquent responses so far.
Anonymity and lack of a feeling of self worth can be brought about in an institution which doesn't give freedom.
From my years as a teacher and administrator in "Traditional" schools, I came to see that a number students felt isolated, powerless, had a lack of voice, lack of connection to peers and trusted adults and had low self esteem.
Small, non-traditional self directed/democratic schools provide an environment where you can flip all of those. They tend to produce connected, powerful, vocal students (each in their own way of course!)."
 
Ben
 
Ben Kestner
Co-Founder and Staff Member

Jerry
 
"I agree with all the comments. In England young people don't have easy access to guns so they resort to arson and other attacks on school buildings. A short term success, if the school has to close, but a long term failure as the authorities just build another one. It's clearly no use destroying buildings - its the Idea of a school that has to go. The whole concept of institutional education is misguided"
 
Ian Cunningham
Self-Managed Learning Center
England

Click here to see original essay.

jobs Several New Job Openings
Anchor11Links and Calendar

Links
Ongoing
Calendar
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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