National Public Lands Day is the nation’s largest hands-on volunteer effort to improve and enhance the public lands Americans enjoy.  As part of this mission they have solicited videos that answer the question “How Do You Love Your Favorite Public Land?”

Avalon, a GVS 4th grade homeschool student, narrated a video for Camp Bayou and this video is a finalist in the National Public Lands Day contest.  Please check it out and if you like it, sign into YouTube and vote by clicking the thumbs up icon.

You can check out Avalon’s blog where she shares her love of frogs, snakes, turtles and other things she loves to learn about here: http://www.wanderingwhimsy.com/

3Story Films Trailer

http://www.3storyfilms.com/

Free to Learn is a 70 minute documentary that offers a “fly on the wall” perspective of the daily happenings at The Free School in Albany, New York. Like many of today’s radical and democratic schools, The Free School expects children to decide for themselves how to spend their days.

You can watch the whole documentary online here: http://www.educationrevolution.org/freetolearn.html

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.

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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

Ojai, CA April 20, 2010 — In celebration of Earth Day (April 22), Global Village School, a leader in distance learning through homeschooling, is proud to announce its new K-8 Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum. This innovative approach in education features a learning styles-centered program, focusing on engaging the whole child with an emphasis on diversity and developmental stages.

The school’s new K-8 curriculum guides are centered on the four core principles of the Earth Charter: (1) Respect and Care for the Community of Life (2) Ecological Integrity (3) Social & Economic Justice (4) Democracy, Nonviolence, Peace and Diversity.

Families of children attending Global Village School are already enthusiastic about the new curriculum. Parent Beth Campbell-Rafdal says, “We received our Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum guide last week. We are so excited that we found Global Village School. I feel as though the curriculum was written for our family! Thank you for helping us navigate an even more meaningful path of homeschooling with our kids.”

While most standard curriculum is shaped by a textbook and a workbook, the Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum is built around the inspiration found in many types of literature.
Sally Carless, founder and Executive Director of Global Village School explains, “The K8 curriculum guides cover all of the core academic subjects in a way that engages students through a sense of enchantment, awe, and wonder as well as through the incorporation of art, music, nature, imagination, and story.”

“Global Village is truly a school with heart,” says Marriage, Family and Child Counselor Nancy Hart, M.A.. “How can a child truly learn when his or her focus is the fear around test taking and memorization? If the strongest emotion around schooling is fear, then that fear gets connected to the learning process. Promoting the love of learning, not the fear of failing to learn–wow! What a concept! Isn’t this what we want for our children?”

About Global Village School -
From its base in the coastal hills of Southern California, this successful distance learning school reaches out to students as far away as Arkansas, Argentina and Australia. The school offers an international K-12 homeschool diploma program that empowers students to cultivate their gifts and passions by engaging them in a creative, flexible educational process grounded in the principles of peace, justice, diversity, and sustainability.

The K8 Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum is currently being used by private and charter schools as well as by homeschoolers.  To explore samples of the K8 courses, visit www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-curriculum.html.

Media Contact: Michaella Seveney
Phone/Fax: 805-646-9792
P.O. Box 480 Ojai, CA 93024
E-mail: info@globalvillageschool.org
http://www.GlobalVillageSchool.org

The K8 curriculum guides are centered on the four core principles of the Earth Charter:

(1) Respect and Care for the Community of Life
(2) Ecological Integrity
(3) Social and Economic Justice
(4) Democracy, Nonviolence, Peace and Diversity

K-8 curriculum guides cover all of the core academic subjects in a way that engages students through a sense of enchantment, awe, and wonder as well as through incorporation of art, music, nature, imagination, and story.

An early review of the curriculum:

We received our “Whole Child, Healthy Planet” curriculum guide last week. We are so excited that we found Global Village School. I feel as though the curriculum was written for our family. I truly never thought I’d find a curriculum… that “fit” us, but now we have! Thank you for helping us navigate an even more meaningful path of homeschooling with our kids. The resource list in “Whole Child, Healthy Planet” allows me to spend a little less time hunting for the right materials and more time enjoying learning with my kids! What a gift. – Beth C-R

To learn more, see http://www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-curriculum.html

These are some of the ideals that fuel the vision of Global Village School (GVS), an international K-12 homeschool diploma program based in Ojai, California. Founded in 1999, GVS represents a radically new model of education that combines alternative educational methods and philosophies with the goals and values of progressive social movements. GVS aims to effect change at both the personal and global levels by educating individual students about the problems and possibilities facing our planet.  The homeschooling model ensures that the resulting impact will reach beyond traditional borders since students around the world can participate.

Global Village cultivates a supportive atmosphere for many different kinds of students whose needs have not been met during their previous school experiences. Many are delighted to discover a school that shares (and can help them implement) their desire for a more just and peaceful world. Others choose GVS for academic reasons; some need to work at their own pace or want to delve deeper into subjects than traditional classroom settings permit.  Students who are branded with labels like ADD, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or “lazy” thrive when they take part in a program that adjusts to accommodate their interests, talents, and learning styles.  The GVS system allows young people to rediscover their natural abilities and love of learning.

New students take a learning styles profile that provides information about their disposition, modality (tactile-kinesthetic, visual picture learner, etc.), interests, and talents. Families choose between structured text and online curriculum, fully customized curriculum based on their individual interests, needs, and learning styles, or – for those already experienced homeschoolers – using their own curriculum. Global Village teachers provide support, review, and documentation.

Peace, justice, diversity, and sustainability themes are woven into core academic areas (English, Science, Math, etc.).  Students become familiar with effective strategies of inspirational role models like Gandhi, King and others through courses such as Reflections on Peacemaking, Global Spirituality and Activism, The History of Civil Rights in America, Literature of Diversity, Peacemakers, and Service Learning.  GVS Service Learning converts theory and idealism into meaningful action in the students’ local communities.

GVS students earn elective credit for many different kinds of life experiences, such as traveling, participating in cultural events, performing in community theater productions, pursuing a career in athletics or the film industry, or starting their own business. GVS youth engage in a wide range of activities, including: studying anatomy, holistic healing, and herbal medicine, working on a presidential campaign, volunteering at a botanical garden, publishing an alternative newspaper, learning their tribal language and traditions, organic gardening, and operating a home recording studio.

Traditional methods of schooling shut down students’ creativity; students are taught passivity and obedience to authority figures. It does great harm to children when their potential is stifled, and it does great harm to the planet when its future stewards are so numbed, pacified, and disempowered.

These are crucial times. We need people in this world who have the potency to take action when they care about something and the passion and commitment to see their efforts through.  This vision calls for a new type of education that empowers, informs, enlivens, and plants the seeds for a peaceful, just, and sustainable future.  Global Village School answers that call.

To learn more, visit the Global Village School web site.

A beautifully written and inspiring essay by Global Village homeschool 9^th grader Maryanna Newton:

When I found out I was going to get to go to the 2009 presidential inauguration, I freaked, and I couldn’t wait! Then I found out that two of my very best friends were going to go with me and it made it even better. I couldn’t believe I was going to get to see Obama get sworn into office! Everyone knew it was going to be one of the biggest moments in America’s history. I found out that I was going by bus with the school that I used to attend. We would meet at the school at 9 P.M. and we would be on the buses ready to roll at 10:00 P.M. only to arrive in Washington D.C. at 4:00 A.M.! As planned we pulled into D.C. at 4:00 A.M. and nobody had slept at all on the buses, but the adrenalin was enough for most everyone.

It was by far, the brightest night I had ever seen, bus and car lights were everywhere, the city looked amazing. We pulled in with a few hundred other buses to an already half full parking lot and got our metro tickets. Then we walked with a huge crowd down a gated walkway to the shuttles. All along the path there were people— girl scouts, boy scouts, adults, vendors—everyone was welcoming us with energy, asking us where we were from, greeting us with smiles, all at 4:00 A.M. Everybody seemed so much more alive than usual.

We got on a shuttle that took us closer to the National Mall where we walked down the crowded streets with cops directing traffic and little orange cones everywhere and lighted signs, buses, cop cars, ambulances, fire trucks, all in the middle of the roads.

We got to the Mall and filled in behind the crowd and found a good spot close to a screen projector that showed what was going on on the capitol steps. It was cold, but it was perfect. Everyone was pushing and shoving trying to catch up with others, there were moms and group leaders running around looking for teenagers that got separated. It was chaos.

Everything was decorated beautifully and the marine band and girls and boys chorus of San Francisco was performed very well. The crowd was all hyped up and very positive, the happiness was felt all around; strangers were talking peacefully, and hugging after the first couple of hours. It was a peaceful gathering of the nation. The cold was also felt all around, we had hand and foot warmers with us, but we used them anywhere they would fit, our coats, pants, socks, hats, gloves, scarves, anywhere! At 4:30 A.M. it was about 15 degrees, then the sun came up and it warmed to a “toasty” 25, maybe 30 if we were warmer than we thought.

Hours passed as we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. They showed the inauguration concert from Sunday night that was held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the screens, but it was rather difficult to watch while we were jumping up and down to keep warm.

Finally the Inauguration ceremony started, as well as the tears. Just thinking of how the Obama family must have felt, to feel the energy of two-million people together in one place, peaceful and happy, and so positive was amazing. It was like all my body had gone numb; no longer could I feel the cold, the tears on my face, the weight of my extra clothes, all I could feel was a smile on my face and the chills throughout my body. The moment was happening. Martin Luther King’s dream wasn’t a dream anymore, it was reality.

After President Obama spoke, our group had to get back to the buses. It sounds a lot easier then it was though. The bus was 3 miles away and we weren’t going to take the metro with two million people. That was the other issue, there were no directions, there was one way: with the crowd. We finally got to a clear area and looked at a map, but the streets we had planned on walking were down for the parade, along with all public transportation except for the metro station.

We finally found out way back to the buses, asking army guards and bus drivers where to go. When we got back on the bus it was about 5:30-6:00 P.M. and we were all exhausted after walking about 6-8 miles. On the way home we all had some time to think and reflect on what we had just witnessed, and that’s when I realized, anyone can be someone, and anyone can make a difference and Barack Obama is proof. Also that people tell me “You’re the youth of America, therefore you are the nation’s future.” But I’m not, as America’s youth, I am not the future, I am now.