Recently, IDEA, the Institute for Democratic Education in America named Salmonberry a “Showcase School” and invited us to become a member of this organization as well.  This honor has moved me to explore further the meaning of the phrase “democratic education” as well as the work of IDEA.

IDEA was founded a year and a half ago with a mission to “ensure that all young people can engage meaningfully with their education and gain the tools to build a just, democratic and sustainable world.”  They do this by employing a wide range of strategies.  The one most relevant to us at Salmonberry is that IDEA “showcases the bright spots.”

“IDEA is committed to showcasing what’s working in education.  Like curators at a museum, we review and spotlight what we think deserves a larger audience.”  And this is where IDEA’s interest in Salmonberry comes in.

IDEA defines democratic education as “learning that equips every human being to participate fully in a healthy democracy.”  This is a few shades removed from the way the phrase “democratic education” has been used by free schoolers, unschoolers and progressives during the last several decades.  It is more in line with a newly emerging sense of democracy being put forth by Parker Palmer in his latest book, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit.

In this book, Palmer writes, “(democracy) is the ancient and honorable human endeavor of creating a community in which the weak as well as the strong can flourish, love and power can collaborate and justice and mercy can have their day…(it is) rooted in the commonwealth of compassion and creativity.”  Palmer correctly positions the need for community at the center of the democratic “experiment.”  We must recognize and embrace difference and diversity and find a way to elevate humanity for all.

Palmer goes on to point out that at the core of healthy community is the workings of the individual human heart.  “The heart is where everything begins: that grounded place in each of us where we can overcome fear, rediscover that we are members of one another, and embrace the conflicts…(it is) the heart’s alchemy that can turn suffering into community, conflict into the energy of creativity, and tension into an opening toward the common good.”

I see Palmer’s holistic vision of democracy fitting beautifully and seamlessly with IDEA’s clear and pointed activism and with the heart of Salmonberry’s work with young people every day.   Today I am very proud to be closely associated with a school, Salmonberry, that is considered worthy of highlighting to IDEA.  I am beginning to fathom the depths of a “healthy democracy,” and what its implications could be for education.  IDEA is undergirding their passion and change-making activism, with a “soulful” understanding of democracy, and this aligns well with Salmonberry’s perspective on education and wholeness.

A few people have asked if I could post the contents of my talk about the Salmonberry Program.  Here it is:

Exciting Times

These are exciting times to be involved at Salmonberry School.  I remember eight or nine years ago, when Lydia Miller and I both attended a PNAIS (Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools) governance conference.  I recall embarrassingly and apologetically responding to questions about Salmonberry.  Where is it?  How many students?  What kind of school is it?

Just a week ago I attended another PNAIS conference and what a striking difference a few years can make!  I was able to proudly and confidently answer these kinds of questions, but more often I found that I didn’t have to.  Large numbers of attendees said they knew of our little school, that they had visited our website, and that they had heard such good things!

This summer when I attended the AERO (Alternative Education Resource Organization) conference in Portland, I was warmly greeted and congratulated by a lot of progressive educators who knew of our recent holistic education conference, as well as the celebration of our tenth anniversary as a school.  I received so many expressions of kinship, support and admiration.

This year, much more than ever, I see Salmonberry mentioned in the national discourse around educational alternatives and progressive and holistic education.  For example, Salmonberry was recently listed as a “Showcase School” in the “eduvation library” on the website of IDEA (Institute for Democratic Education in America.)  We are regularly contacted by teachers, educators and adult students who are eager to see firsthand a powerful educational initiative that has clear, well-articulated and high ideals, and actually lives up to these ideals in the form of a dynamic child-centered holistic program.

So, what is it that makes the Salmonberry program so unique?  More than anything it is the fact that in this top-down, standardized and standardizing dominant educational paradigm, here is a small school that takes seriously the radical idea that education should be about nurturing individual learners’ capacity to reach their full potential.

And when you take that position seriously, when you really make an effort to step into the shoes of a child and see the world through their eyes, and feel it with their heart, many practices naturally follow:

-Salmonberry is a place where parents are truly welcome as critically important collaborators in the educational mission of the school.  If we are looking through the child’s eyes, how could we not include parents as integral players?

-Salmonberry emphasizes Arts, broadly defined, and the arts play an integral and integrated role in the program: fine art, music, craft of many kinds, dance, and theater all have an important place here; they are among the many languages of the child and therefore must be present.

-There is a richness, a texture and a three-dimensionality and a depth to the curriculum;

-Students spend more than one year with a teacher, as it takes time to develop meaningful relationship and mutual understanding;

-There is a focus here on self-knowledge and reflection, on mindfulness, on critical thinking, creativity and innovation, and community;

-There is a culture of caring, of craftsmanship, beauty and quality of work;

-There is a sense of humor and fun and spontaneity that is ever-present;

-Kids are allowed and encouraged to move physically and interact with one another in meaningful ways;

-There is a flexible pacing to student progress.  Having skills not between the 40^th and 60^th percentile is not considered a pathology to be diagnosed and remediate, but is recognized as another indicator of the wonder and uniqueness of the learner.

-And we are academically outstanding, excellent, rigorous and supporting of high student achievement (I used to be hesitant to admit that – as it can imply a lack of focus on other areas, but there is no doubt Salmonberry is academically excellent and this is in no way inconsistent with a child-centered approach.)

But of all the many traits and aspects of the Salmonberry program, two related characteristics stand out to me as crucial and defining features of the Salmonberry experience.

First, there is at Salmonberry an intimacy to the learning environment and experience.  This is in part evident in the low student:teacher ratio and small class sizes, but it’s more about an approach that values uniqueness, reaches towards meaningful differentiation of instruction, addresses multiple learning styles and intelligences, strengths and interests and is always embedded in deep personal relationship.

And second, a Salmonberry education is one that engages learners by providing education that is meaningful and personally relevant by using an emergent and experience-based curriculum.

—

And although it’s wonderful that we are enjoying a surge of recognition and appreciation on a national level, I believe that we are still one of the best-kept secrets right in our own backyard.  This is why we need everyone here to continue to support the school in every way.  Please share your testimonials with friends and neighbors.  Lets spread stories of our children’s individual growth and transformation and how it was nurtured at Salmonberry, with many many members of the broader Orcas Island community.

And in addition to supporting the school through your monthly tuition payments, which is absolutely huge, of course, please let’s be intentional about building increased momentum in terms of rolling up our sleeves and joining together in all the support work that a small tuition-funded school like this requires.  I urge you to continue to volunteer joyfully, donate generously, pitch in enthusiastically with fundraisers and community events.  Your child’s experience is truly enhanced and deepened as you parents dig your roots down into this fertile soil.

Thanks for all the support you already give towards your child’s growth, as well as that of the school.  And thanks as always for your trust in allowing us, Salmonberry’s teachers, to witness and nurture the process of your children’s unfolding.

Once again, Salmonberry School hosted our annual fall festival.  This year’s festivities included rides on the miniature donkeys, a fall journey walk, candle dipping, apple cider pressing, and pumpkin-roll relay races.  What a terrific day to connect with the entire Salmonberry community.  Happy Autumn to all.

The Bee Keeper

With the Scarecrow, Pumpkin Man

Another Scarecrow moment

The Man, Himself

There he is!

He’s up there!

“Letting our everyday intelligence go mute: to feel the intelligence of what surrounds us.

Take a tree, a flower, a blade of grass – and study their stillness.  Become their stillness; aware only of the air your imagining begins in.

There is something in our learning – which begins and ends – without words

Often the poetic must remain our most quiet, unspoken experience – a healing silence frim the cacophony of explanations.

The point is not to teach – but to evoke, to stir our desire to believe differently.

Invent as many dawns as you can.”

-Richard Lewis

I met Richard Lewis this summer in New York City.  Richard is an educator and director of The Touchstone Center for Children.  He has dedicated his 40 year career to exploring and nurturing children’s capacity for imagination and creativity.  After talking with him, not unlike the character of Mr. Plumbean in Daniel Pinkwater’s book The Big Orange Splot I was moved to explore creativity and imagination with children.  Using one of Richard’s poems, which he has used to launch all kinds of art, drama, poetry and musical projects with children, we initiated a project with Salmonberry’s intermediate class.

The work shown here is the stunning expression of 14 children age 8-11.  After some time spent in the presence of a special tree, these students used their incredible imagination to express “tree-ness.”  Then they each chose a line of the poem, “A Tree Lives” by Richard Lewis that had personal meaning to them and created the following images using a range of art media.  Enjoy!

A TREE LIVES:

IN OUR BACKYARD A TREE LIVES

IN ITS LEAVES - SPRING WINDS

IN ITS BRANCHES - HUNGRY BIRDS

IN ITS ROOTS - MOVING WATER

AND INSIDE THIS TREE - ANOTHER TREE LIVES

IN ITS LEAVES - DISTANT SKIES

IN ITS BRANCHES - SHADOWS OF STARS

IN ITS ROOTS - DREAMING DARKNESS

AND FURTHER INSIDE - ANOTHER TREE LIVES

IN ITS LEAVES - A MOON GROWS

IN ITS BRANCHES - THE SUN RETURNS

IN ITS ROOTS - A DAY BEGINS

AND FURTHER STILL - IS THERE ANOTHER TREE?

ANOTHER TREE LIVING INSIDE?

A TREE LIVES

]]> http://salmonberryschool.org/828/feed 0 http://salmonberryschool.org/759 http://salmonberryschool.org/759#comments Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:39:18 +0000 Paul http://salmonberryschool.org/?p=759

Salmonberry officially began it’s second decade this week, and this milestone leads me inexorably toward reflection and introspection about this amazing project.  I remember so clearly the first gatherings of eight 3 and 4 yr-olds in rented and borrowed spaces around the island.  Now, I look around and see our three lovely classrooms, our incredible staff of five awesome teachers plus specialists and volunteers, our expansive and established grounds, and 32 incredible children spanning ages 3 to 11, and I am awed.

This week, as I once again shook off  some serious first-day jitters, now so familiar to me, (I figure this is my 39^th “first day of school” 20 as a student (not counting graduate school) and 19 as a teacher.  Yikes!)  I remarked again and again to other teachers, on how sweet everything seemed, and they echoed this assessment.  Reuniting with these kids and these adults in this place was magical.  The children universally seemed to return to school with excitement, and an expectation and spirit of engagement, collaboration, support and trust.  These children came ready to learn and hungry for adventure.  Parents filled the classrooms, porches and grounds, also full of expectation and in no hurry at all to get on with the long-awaited Sept.1, “Independence Day.”  The teachers fell immediately into the now-so-familiar roles of passionate instruction, loving nurture, and continuous reflection.  In the intermediate grades classroom study ranged from the calculation and comparison of densities of different liquids, to a discussion and journal writing assignment about what it means to be human – this is third through fifth graders, mind you, in their first week back to school!!  A majority of classrooms would be working on getting names straight and playing “get to know each other” games at this point.  Many whispered adult conversations during recess focused on how individual children seem to be settling in socially and emotionally, while kids delved into their rich vocabulary of cooperative games.  At the end of the day on Friday, a spontaneous game of “blob tag” erupted.  All were included, and boys and girls of different ages held hands and ran together shrieking with laughter.  What an incredible canvas on which to begin the art of a year of growing and learning together.

I spent much of this summer meeting and talking about educational theory and practice with a wide range of educators from across the country at various conferences, both big and small, as well as personal and professional meetings.  Now to carry all that talk, theory and this vast expanse of perspectives back to Salmonberry, my home base gives me pause.  I feel blessed and privileged to work in such a place.  This is truly a school and an environment that untold dedicated educators are dreaming of, longing for and working towards.  Some educators I speak with have trouble believing such a place is possible, others are making it happen in their own communities.  But Salmonberry School has definitely achieved a national reputation as an oasis of humane education amidst a troubled landscape.  Progressive educators are actively seeking out models of how education can be done in a way that honors rather than wounds children, and engages and nurtures natural capacities for learning and growth, rather than coerces and manipulates them into narrowly defined and standardized areas of achievement.

Educational activists everywhere are seeking to find ways to balance academic excellence with experiential education that has personal relevance and meaning for the learners.  They are wondering how can we imbed creativity, critical thinking, self-reflection, passion, compassion, and caring into a rigorous approach to education.  How can we keep kids’ experiences human-scaled, built solidly upon a foundation of deep and positive personal relationships that recognize and value individual uniqueness – rates of development, learning styles, and interests?  Small schools that achieve these lofty goals are few and far between, and Salmonberry School, despite any blemishes or imperfections we might have, is clearly one such very special place.  It is not an exaggeration to say that Salmonberry in many ways realizes “an ideal” of holism within the educational alternatives movement.

This week I feel so proud of where we’ve been and where we are now as a school community.  Parker Palmer wrote, “Education at its best – this profound human transaction called teaching and learning – is not just about getting information or getting a job. Education is about healing and wholeness. It is about empowerment, liberation, transcendence, about renewing the vitality of life. It is about finding and claiming ourselves and our place in the world.”  I am awed, as always, by the children at Salmoberry, inspired by the teachers, their passion and their care, buoyed by the love and attentiveness of parents, and blown away by the magic of it all.

Here’s to a wonderful second decade!

- Paul

Well…it’s not exactly a Salmonberry program, but…back in 2007, Salmonberry hosted it’s first Holistic Education Conference.  At that event, two dynamic speakers served as Keynote presenters.  The first was Brent Cameron, author of Self Design: Nurturing Genius Through Natural Learning. The other was Dr. David Marshak, author of Common Vision: Parenting and Educating for Wholeness.  The conference also served as Paul’s MA graduating residency from Goddard College, and helped Salmonberry to locate itself within the landscape of educational alternatives and specifically, holistic education.

In subsequent months and years Dr. Marshak and Mr. Cameron formed a partnership.  Marshak joined the Board of Self-Design, an educational initiative which uses a powerful paradigm for home-based instruction in British Columbia.  Cameron continued to serve as the organization’s E.D.  At some point, Marshak conceived of the idea of a graduate school that would use principles of Self-Design and bring awareness of this approach to adult learners interested in continuing their own education, or starting their own post-modern schools or learning centers.    He pitched his idea to the WA State Regents accompanied by all required supporting materials.

Recently, The Self Design Graduate Institute has been approved and is beginning to enroll students.  Paul Freedman, whom Marshak has referred to as the “spiritual godfather” of the program, will serve on the founding faculty.  His first class is called “The Joys and Sorrows of Leading a Post-modern School”

Speaking about this project, Freedman says, “It’s an exciting development.  I am so happy for David and Brent and I hope it will bring their important work to many people.  I am honored to be serving with such a distinguished faculty including my mentor, Ron Miller, and a number of other folks whose work has a prominent place on my bookshelf.  We’ll see how things develop, but I believe there is definitely a place in the post-secondary landscape for another progressive and holistic educational alternative.  And, of course, it’s just what I needed – another project!!”

Salmonberry’s intermediate class introduced ukuleles to all students as the newest part of our expanding music program.  Teacher, Anita Orne, spent a good deal of the first class helping everyone get tuned up.  Though the kids did manage to learn their first three chords and play a rousing rendition of “Skip to My Lou.”

Flies in the buttermilk...

One student summed up the experience, “That was awesome!!”

…shoo fly shoo

In an effort to fulfill our school’s pledge to plant trees for each Christmas tree sold at our December fundraiser, Salmonberry’s intermediate class made a journey to San Juan Island to continue our work with the San Juan County Land Bank.  The SJCLB is engaged with its largest habitat restoration project in the Beaverton Valley Marsh.  This area which has been largely used as cattle pasture for the past fifty years has the potential to return to one of the few significant wetland areas in the islands.

Salmonberry kids worked tirelessly despite the muddy conditions.  We laid down cardboard and hauled and spread wood-chip mulch around the base of each plant, and protected each planting with a protective plastic ring and bamboo stake, as voles and other rodents tend to browse on the bark of the young saplings.

Hands-on field experiences like this help the kids to understand and embrace their potential role as stewards of the earth and deepen their connection to place.

Oh, Boys.

A “catered” tea, and an “expert”-led afternoon of crafts and fun for 2-5 year olds and their parents.  The “experts” and “caterers” will be Salmonberry School’s Kindergarten class.  These children (along with their teacher, Linda Ellsworth) invite the Orcas community to an open house on Thursday afternoon, January 20, from 3-5 PM.  Salmonberry School is celebrating its tenth anniversary this summer and is planning a series of events to celebrate.  The first of these events is this preschool and Kindergarten Open House.  Come and try out the Salmonberry Garden’s brand new play loft; sample some homemade treats and spend some time in imaginative play and craftwork.  Come and experience a dynamic holistic approach to early childhood education.

The Salmonberry Garden is now enrolling children for spring semester, and it’s not too early to reserve a place for fall 2011.  Salmonberry remains the only island school to offer a pathway from age 2 ^½ all the way through the elementary grades.  Salmonberry offers an amazing intimate family-like setting in which to begin your child’s educational journey.  Kids at Salmonberry connect deeply with each other, with nature, and with their own interests and passions.  So come meet the teachers, administrators and children and find out what all the excitement is about.