I was touring the Village Free School in Portland OR. As I sat chatting to Elliot, a volunteer who takes the kids to a farm once a week, she said, "Say, you know, there was this guy here last week who also used to teach in a more traditional school system. He decided he didn't like it, left, and is now spending a year roaddtripping through the US, touring alternative schools and writing a blog about it."
PING! SPROOING! went my mind, as I tried to wrap it around the fact that this dude is doing my trip…at the same time I am. And apparently visiting the same schools.
Elliot found me his business card and, later that week after checking out his amazing blog (including entries he had just posted about the last two schools I had just visited myself), I emailed him my story. Since he was in Chicago, I thought maybe we could meet up when I headed out that way. But lo and behold, he was spending the next 2 weeks in San Francisco, which is where I was headed next. Naturally.
So we arranged to meet at a coffee shop.
And there I found myself, a few days later, sipping highly priced coffee in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, chatting with my alter-ego, Michael.
Michael graduated from college several years ago with a degree in English and immediately got a job teaching at a charter school in Chicago. The school had a strong academic bent with a focus on grading and testing. After a year working there, he realized that something about this approach was not working for him. Not knowing where to start, he key-worded the almighty Google and discovered that other methods did indeed exist and were, in fact, being used successfully all over the world. Michael began reading books on the topic, and interviewing people in the field. Filled with a desire to see these methods in action, he hatched a plan to spend a year traveling around the US, visiting as many different alternative schools as he could: Waldorf, Montessori, charter schools, Reggio Emilia, Sudbury schools, unschooling, schools that follow no specific philosophy at all…
He is now 6 weeks into his trip. An excellent writer and researcher, Michael is documenting his experiences as he goes. If you are interested in learning more about some of the alternatives that are available and how they work, check out his write-up on each of the schools he has visited at the link above.
PING! SPROOING! went my mind, as I tried to wrap it around the fact that this dude is doing my trip…at the same time I am. And apparently visiting the same schools.
Elliot found me his business card and, later that week after checking out his amazing blog (including entries he had just posted about the last two schools I had just visited myself), I emailed him my story. Since he was in Chicago, I thought maybe we could meet up when I headed out that way. But lo and behold, he was spending the next 2 weeks in San Francisco, which is where I was headed next. Naturally.
So we arranged to meet at a coffee shop.
And there I found myself, a few days later, sipping highly priced coffee in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, chatting with my alter-ego, Michael.
Michael graduated from college several years ago with a degree in English and immediately got a job teaching at a charter school in Chicago. The school had a strong academic bent with a focus on grading and testing. After a year working there, he realized that something about this approach was not working for him. Not knowing where to start, he key-worded the almighty Google and discovered that other methods did indeed exist and were, in fact, being used successfully all over the world. Michael began reading books on the topic, and interviewing people in the field. Filled with a desire to see these methods in action, he hatched a plan to spend a year traveling around the US, visiting as many different alternative schools as he could: Waldorf, Montessori, charter schools, Reggio Emilia, Sudbury schools, unschooling, schools that follow no specific philosophy at all…
He is now 6 weeks into his trip. An excellent writer and researcher, Michael is documenting his experiences as he goes. If you are interested in learning more about some of the alternatives that are available and how they work, check out his write-up on each of the schools he has visited at the link above.