http://www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-curriculum.html

Take a look at our curriculum samples by grade here:

http://www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-sample.html

Rachel Brazie, a Spring 2010 Woolman graduate, created Sustainable. Affordable. A Young People’s Guide to Sustainable Food Shopping for her Environmental Science Project.  You can read all about how to shop ethically without breaking the bank. Just click on the title and you’ll be taken to a page where you can read the guide.

http://medicine.arizona.edu/spotlight/learn-sarver-heart-centers-continuous-chest-compression-cpr

QUEENSLAND children are so anxious over national tests they are wetting the bed and being physically sick, a federal inquiry has been warned.

Concerns over the exam regime has also prompted a rare public statement from staff at one state school, who described Education Queensland’s “mandate” to lift results by 4 per cent as “unreasonable”.

A raft of concerns about NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) has been raised in hundreds of submissions from parents, schools and educators to a federal inquiry, which is examining the administration and reporting of the tests.

A submission to the Senate inquiry from Moggill State School’s Queensland Teachers Union members warned the exams caused anxiety in children and had “a disastrous impact on teaching time”.

“Some students were visibly stressed over the tests and required lots of reassurance – I was told of bed-wetting issues,” it said.

“Teachers at Moggill State School have found that preparing children for NAPLAN has caused the most disastrous impact on teaching time in the classroom.

To continue reading please go to:  http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/children-worried-sick-by-testing/story-e6freon6-1225889540099

The book is called Teaching as an Act of Love: Thoughts and Recollections of a Former Teacher, Principal and Kid, written by Richard Lakin.  Here’s a brief description:

“The 55 thought-provoking, humorous and heartwarming pieces in this collection are geared to teachers, principals, parents, and all those concerned with making schools more loving and effective. It presents a close look at a school staff working together to create a caring and challenging learning environment where children come first, as well as at a real partnership between school and home.”

Download the book online here:
http://www.thanks2teachers.com/Portals/0/docs/Teaching_as_an_Act_of_Love.pdf

How did this happen so fast?

“I went to public school in Georgia until fourth grade,” says Pyron, “but I didn’t find it very engaging.” His mother decided to home-school him for two years, after which Pyron took the ACT and scored well enough to enter Georgia’s Piedmont College at the age of 12, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in biology at 16.
Looking at prospective graduate schools, Pyron contacted Professor Frank Burbrink of the Graduate Center’s Ph.D. Program in Biology, whose lab is based at the College of Staten Island and whose research focuses on the phylogenetics of snakes, reptiles, and amphibians.

Burbrink’s lab was a perfect fit. “I was extremely excited to be accepted at CUNY, as I knew that was where I really wanted to do my graduate work,” Pyron says. So a 17-year-old from rural Georgia headed to New York City to study his passion, snakes.
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know I wanted to work with snakes,” he says.

In research for his thesis, Systematics and Historical Biogeography of the Lampropeltinine Snakes, Pyron found that the biodiversity of these types of snakes is greater in temperate North America than in the tropics—the opposite of which is true for most animals. He has also studied the evolutionary patterns of non-venomous snakes that mimic venomous snakes.

Next January, Pyron will become the Robert F. Griggs Assistant Professor of Biology at George Washington University, which runs a graduate program in his field of systematics and evolution jointly with the Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian. There, he will be on the fast track to becoming one of the nation’s leading herpetologists, and perhaps the youngest.

Original Source: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/press_information/current_releases/2010/May/commencement.htm

For more information contact David Manning at dmanning@gc.cuny.edu

We are talking about two completely different paradigms: One, the traditional one that is failing, assumes that children are naturally lazy and need to be forced to learn. If you believe that then you need competition for grades, passing and failing, tons of homework, long school days, long school years, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

But modern brain research doesn’t confirm that assumption. Rather, it confirms a second paradigm, that children are natural learners, that the brain is naturally inquisitive. If you operate on that paradigm, as many progressive educators and homeschoolers do, almost none of the approaches mentioned above should be used. The teacher’s role is to actively help the student find resources to explore and learn about everything they are interested in.

In fact, forcing students to be in traditional schools operating on the first assumption creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: After about six or seven years of forcing students to learn things that they aren’t interested in and are often irrelevant to their lives, they do appear to lose interest in learning. That natural ability to learn is gradually extinguished. Anyone who has ever administered standardized tests to that group can see clearly that the rate of improvement on the whole decreases to a crawl, even on those flawed standardized tests. But beyond that, you see the light go out of their eyes. They retreat to watching television and playing video games. Even worse, they retreat to drugs, or in some notorious cases, decide to try to kill people in their schools or themselves.

The latter cases may be rare, but they do reflect that culturally we simply accept as fact that children hate school. Why do we accept that? If children are natural learners and they say they hate school, something is wrong with their school. Something is wrong with many, many schools.

There are schools that children love, and love to go to. These are under the general heading of alternative and progressive. They are learner-centered in their approach. I know of one democratic school in which the children voted to ban all snow days. They didn’t want to miss anything.

Did you wonder why the government never gives statistics comparing home-educated children to publicly educated ones? In many states homeschoolers are required to take standardized tests. The answer might be because in at least one study homeschooled students scored in the 86th percentile nationally.

We need to end No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Education is not a race. Nobody tests you in order to allow you to leave the public library. You are assumed to be a natural learner. All people are. All children are. We need to understand the new educational paradigm before it is too late.

———-

Feel free to forward, reproduce, or send to your local newspapers as an op-ed.  Please attribute the following information along with it:

Jerry Mintz

Executive Director, Alternative Education Resource Organization

jerryAERO@aol.com

www.educationrevolution.org

(516) 621-2195

Check out his talk on TED.com: http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

The Institute for Humane Education is offering two dynamic, hands-on summer institutes designed to deepen your understanding of the interconnected issues of environmental preservation, animal protection, human rights, and media & culture, and teach you how to inspire students to be leaders for a sustainable world. Our summer institutes will challenge you to think creatively and critically about integrating global issues into your classrooms and communities, preparing you to enliven your teaching and add even greater depth and relevancy to your curricula – regardless of the grade you teach, the educational setting, or the subject areas in which you specialize.

Teaching for a Better World: A Summer Institute for Teachers
June 28-July 2, 2010
At the Institute for Humane Education in Surry, Maine

Develop new ideas and practice new skills with other committed educators who share your enthusiasm for inspiring young people to hope and action. Our Summer Institute is at our beautiful headquarters, just a 40-minute drive to Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. Earn four (4) Continuing Education Units (CEUs) through the University of Maine (40 contact hours). Space is limited!

Teaching for a Positive Future:
A Distance Learning Summer Institute
July 5-30, 2010

Explore relevant issues and learn how to integrate them into your teaching without the need to travel. Participants complete five exercises per week on their own, with access to an online discussion forum and frequent phone salons that provide connection and support throughout the course. Earn 3.5 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) through the University of Maine (35 contact hours).
Early bird deadline: June 13 (save $25!). Special discounts for teachers from the same school.

Learn more and register: http://humaneeducation.org/

Contact: Amy Morley, Events Manager, Institute for Humane Education, amy@humaneeducation.org or (207) 667-1025