Join us for Ruckus Parade!Club and Honk!TX in March

Caitlin Macklin is back on the blog with a cool invitation for your kids. Caitlin plays many roles in the Austin community, including those of founder and teacher at Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse, trombone player in marching bands, parade enthusiast, and, most recently, new mom!

Here at Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse, we’re gearing up for Parade!Club 2015, and you’re invited! This will be our third year to put out the call for families with children of all ages to be part of the Honk!TX excitement. Come march in the parade with us!

Honk!TX is one of our favorite Austin festivals. Twenty-some community brass bands descend on the neighborhoods around town to play for free! Come out and participate in the transformation of our public places into joyous celebrations of community and music.

This year we are the Ruckus Parade!Club. Since we moved off 9th Street last June, we have become the Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse, aka RRCS, which we pronounce “Ruckus”! See below for more about the Schoolhouse name.)

To join the Ruckus Parade!Club, follow our Vimeo channel and like us on facebook so you will not miss any of our video installments or Club announcements. Your family prepares for the big day at home by making cool costumes and parade crafts (our colors are RAINBOW, so be as colorful as you can!), and learning the parade songs we will sing and dance to.

Another way to participate is the Parade!Club Open Shop. The illustrious Austin Tinkering School will be hosting this crafternoon on Sunday, March 8, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Bring raw materials to make your own costume, musical instrument, flag, or ribbon dancer. Participate in the creation of giant street puppets. Play games and get to know other families. RSVP here. It will be a blast!

Then join the Club for PARADE DAY on Sunday, March 29, 2015, at Pan Am Park! Line up at 11:00 a.m. sharp; parade rolls at 12 noon. Show up in your hand-crafted finery ready for a jaunt through East Austin led by the combined forces of the Yes Ma’am Brass Band and the Hey Lolly Brass Band. So fun!

WHO:  Parents with kids of all ages
WHAT:  Ruckus Parade!Club: make costumes / crafts to be in the Honk!TX Parade
WHERE:  Pan Am Park
WHEN:  Sunday March 29th, 2015 line up at 11am sharp, parade leaves at 12noon
WHY:  Reclaim public space for joy and music!

This call is open to one and all, so pass the word along to anyone you want to dance in the streets with. YOUR KIDS are the main source of creativity for this spectacle, so go all out! Get together with friends for a Vimeo watching party, host a costume crafternoon for your school, or come up with dance routines to the songs with some neighborhood kids.

Parents need to accompany their children during this family event; strollers and wagons are welcome to assist little legs. The parade is a mile and a half long or so—that’s about two hours.

More about the Schoolhouse

Last June, we said goodbye to our original East Austin home on 9th Street and loaded up bikes, trikes, and trailers to relocate the Schoolhouse. In our new spot at 3310 Red River, we’ve become Radicle Roots Community Schoolhouse! We are sharing the space with the incredible and creative after-school and summer camp program Spilled Milk Social Club. That means we are better able meet the needs of working families by offering on-site after care. We already strive to keep tuition as low and accessible as possible. We are excited to have plenty of room to grow in this beautiful building, and we look forward to this new chapter in the life of our learning community.

You may have noticed the spelling of our new name. We do embrace methods that are a departure from the traditional schooling model, though we wish that learning through direct experience, participating in community democracy, and being led by the innate curiosity of children were not radical ideas. However, we’ve adopted the biology term for our appellation:

rad·i·cle noun \ˈra-di-kəl\
1: the smallest part of the seed that becomes the root.

One of the things this means to us is that we guide our students to seek within to discover their passions, talents, gifts, and interests during Self-directed Learning. If you’d like to find out more, we’d love to show you around during a parent tour, happening every Wednesday until March and alternate Wednesdays after.

See you in the streets!

Caitlin Macklin

9th Street Schoolhouse is moving . . . by bike!

On Sunday, June 1, starting at 9:00 a.m., the 9th Street Schoolhouse community will move the entirety of the school’s belongings to its new location using only bicycles. Austinites with cargo bikes and trailers of all shapes and sizes will make the three-mile trek from 2006 E. 9th Street in East Austin to 3310 Red River, fueled by free coffee and doughnuts. The group will ride slowly in a pack together, obeying all traffic laws and keeping to residential streets.

Families with children who are road-ready cyclists are invited to participate. Caitlin Macklin, founder and teacher at the schoolhouse, said, “It’s a great opportunity for our youth to see what is possible when a community comes together.”

Caitlin was inspired by the Yellow Bike Project shop move in 2008, which accomplished the shipment of a 3,000-square-foot bike shop via a caravan of over 100 people on bikes. She added, “At the schoolhouse, we are always looking for ways to harness people power and live sustainably—and have a lot of fun in the process!”

The Schoolhouse is an independent alternative school founded in 2010. It is a democratic, experiential learning community that has the freedom to pursue meaningful learning, joy, and connection. The Schoolhouse currently serves youth in K–4th grades and will grow to serve K–8th grade youth.

You can RSVP here to join the event!

9th Street Schoolhouse is Moving by Bike!

SUNDAY JUNE 1, 2014

9:00 AM at 2006 E. 9TH STREET

EAST AUSTIN, TEXAS

The 9th Street Schoolhouse will move the entirety of the school’s belongings to their new location using only bicycles. Austinites with cargo bikes and trailers of all shapes and sizes will make the three-mile trek from East Austin to 3310 Red River, fueled by free coffee and doughnuts. The group will ride slowly in a pack together, obeying all traffic laws and keeping to residential streets.

Families with children who are road-ready cyclists are invited to participate. Caitlin Macklin, founder / teacher at the schoolhouse, said, “It’s a great opportunity for our youth to see what is possible when a community comes together.” Macklin was inspired by the Yellow Bike Project shop move in 2008, which accomplished the shipment of a 3,000-square-foot bike shop via a caravan of over 100 people on bikes. She added, “At the schoolhouse, we are always looking for ways to harness people power and live sustainably—and have a lot of fun in the process!”

About 9th Street Schoolhouse

The Schoolhouse is an independent alternative school founded in 2010. It is a democratic, experiential learning community that has the freedom to pursue meaningful learning, joy, and connection. The Schoolhouse currently serves youth in K–4th grades and will grow to serve K–8th grade youth.

You can find out more at http://9thstreetschoolhouse.org/

You can RSVP to join the event at https://www.facebook.com/events/271773276327245/

Staying close to the fire

It’s cold this week here in Central Texas, but the folks at 9th Street Schoolhouse are keeping the fires lit. Founder Caitlin Macklin, our guest today, writes about her students’ latest unit of study and how you might try this kind of collaborative, interest-driven inquiry with your kids at home.

 

This encouraging dragon kite soars above our classroom.Over here at the 9th Street Schoolhouse, we are engaged in a continual effort to close in on meaningful learning. We also seek to develop 21st-century skills and a lifelong love of learning in our students. To this purpose, the older class has started working based on a more open-ended learning model for our unit study. Unit study is a 45-minute chunk of time during our morning class lessons. For the next couple of weeks until the winter holiday, our unit will focus on student-driven, curiosity-based questioning. Students will become seekers, hot on the trail of inquiry, researching the answers to these questions via internet searches, supplementing with written reference material, and contacting knowledgeable people as well.

This is how it will work:

Students will be generating questions in a small notebook. The notebook—dubbed our Book of Wonderings—will be carried back and forth between home and the schoolhouse. In fact, we recommend that they keep it in a pocket at all times, because you never know when curiosity will strike! It is their responsibility to generate at least one question per day on their own time. Questions should be about things students want to know, are curious about, and have a genuine interest in finding out. They may be broad or narrow, easy or difficult. At the heart of it, their questions should spark the fire of their interest and be Important To Their Lives.

“How can we make pom poms? Who invented books?”

During the unit study portion of our class lesson time each day, students will share their questions. We will alternate turns of whose question we will answer each day. Students will mainly use the internet to find out answers to their questions, also seeking out good books and people who know. They will keep a record of their findings on notepads and posters. Students will help each other answer these questions. Discussing what they find, how to search, and what does it all mean will create more lasting learning.

As their mentor, I will guide them to evaluate the validity of the sources they use and will encourage them to go deeper into their findings. If a question can't be answered in one session, we will keep with it until we are satisfied. Perhaps a question will spark a longer project for a student or the whole class.

We will share the findings and process of this unit with our community at our end-of-semester Showcase. Please follow our blog if you are interested in the conclusion of the unit.

The goals of this unit are to:

• Develop critical thinking, reading comprehension, collaborative work habits, and interpersonal skills.
• Refine the ability to question effectively.
• Build technological proficiency.
• Generate inner motivation through understanding that learning is an essential part of everyday life.
• Connect students’ lives and what they care about to what is being learned.

This collaborative, open-ended research method is inspired by:

• An amazing article from Wired magazine.
• Sugata Mitra's research in child-driven Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs).
• Most of all, it is based on the experiences Laura and I have had teaching in the classroom, and our desire to move toward the fiery source of interest that is at the heart of kids' passion to know. We continue to strive toward a Free to Learn approach, while maintaining a strong mentoring relationship and offering our own experiences and ideas to expand the kids’ growing edges. As educators, we have many questions and will continue to refine and research as we go.

Interested in trying this at home?

You can download the SOLE Toolkit from TED. Once you get started with your youth, here are some suggestions for what you can do to support your students’ process:

• Begin noticing when your children have questions.
• Help them develop deeper questions that they can bring to their explorations.
• Encourage them to write these questions down in their Book of Wonderings (or whatever they choose to call their special book!).
• Read about the inspiration for this project. It will give you good background info and insight into guiding the children to follow their own purposes for learning.
• Observe your children, notice any changes in their enthusiasm for learning, or school, or life!

We would love to hear from you if you are engaged in this learning design. Keep in touch by commenting on our Facebook page. You can also post on the SOLE Tumblr to connect with the larger movement.

In closing, here’s a great truth from author Sir Arthur C. Clarke that Mitra references:

“If children have interest, education happens.”

For us, finding that coal of red-hot interest in each child is what it is all about.

Caitlin Macklin

Why did the chicken cross the schoolyard?

One of my clients, new to Austin, recently asked me, “What’s up with chickens on campus? Seems like all the cool schools around here have them.” We Austinites love our backyard chickens, and I am no exception, but her question got me thinking. Why do so many alternative schools, each with a different educational approach, make hens and other domestic animals important parts of their curricula and learning environments?

I asked educators and students in the local alt ed community. Their answers—some detailed and complex, others beautifully simple—were full of surprises and insights. Here’s what they shared, in words and pictures.

Animals are an important part of our community at the schoolhouse. They help us meet our commitment to real sustainability, and they are wonderful companions too! We keep chickens at the neighborhood garden on our block. Every day the kids have jobs to contribute to the work of the schoolhouse. Each week they take a turn on Kitchen Patrol or Chicken Patrol. The Chicken Patrol feeds, waters, fills the nesting boxes with straw, collects eggs, and enjoys the company of our eight hens. We find it a wonderful way to build connection, feed kids’ curiosity about living things, and teach responsibility and practical skills as well. It is also a visceral encounter with “closing the loop”: we use our chicken poop to fertilize our garden beds via a “chicken tractor”; the feathered ladies scratch and turn up the ground, eating bugs and depositing free fertilizer in the garden!

The kids just love playing with the birds, and are so proud to take home eggs each week. We have a Coop Co-op where participating parents bring in a bag of feed in exchange for a turn on the egg rotation. Fresh eggs can’t be beat! And the kids get the pleasure of sharing the bounty with their families at home.

We also have two cats at the schoolhouse: Super Cat, and the more elusive Guthrie. Everyone works to build the trust of the cats, learns how to pet them gently, and is always on the lookout for a Guthrie spotting. (She is the more skittish and of course becomes the prodigal cat when she sneaks up on the porch during the quiet of Class Lesson time!) The kitties often provide a cozy comfort to someone who needs a little love.

—Caitlin Macklin, founder and mentor, 9th Street Schoolhouse

The Austin EcoSchool community was recently joined by a cheerful flock of seven fowl: six hens and one rooster who has very feathery feet! Our flock was donated by a parent who has been raising chickens and goats in the city for some time.

In our Morning Circle last week we talked about chickens, what we know and don’t know about taking care of them. Many of the kids have had some experience and were generous with their knowledge—thank goodness, since I know so very little about the subject!

The kids are, of course, all agog at the new additions and spend time with them every day. We’ve been collecting eggs and using them in various cooking projects. There is talk of selling eggs a little later on. We’re also planning to add some chicks to the flock, and eventually we’ll even have pygmy goats!

On the subject of urban school farms, our squash plants are going bonkers; there are squash blossoms everywhere! The baby fig tree has wee, cute baby figs on it, and the asparagus plant is pushing up more asparagus shoots. It’s amazing what some rain will do!

We’re so excited to be expanding our school farm and edible campus, and I invite everyone to come by and check it out.

—Cheryl Kruckeberg, campus director, Austin EcoSchool

Our animals are a great asset to the Tinkering School. They are often the first thing that kids connect with when arriving; they help in adjusting to the new environment. They’re a comfort and provide a lot of comic relief and entertainment!

—Kami Wilt, director and founder, Austin Tinkering School

We have chickens, a donkey, two mama goats, and three baby goats at Inside Outside School, with more babies due any day. The students feed the animals, collect eggs, hang out in the barnyard, and love on our animal friends. Soon we will all be learning how to milk a goat and how to make cheese and soap.

The students have integrated study projects to learn more about animal husbandry and also grow foods in the garden for the animals. Three of our own hens’ eggs hatched last spring, and the students got to watch them grow and change daily. In a world that sometimes seems short on compassion, caring for animals is one incredible way to grow children with big hearts!

—Deborah Hale, executive director, Inside Outside School

  
Animals are an important and personal way to experience the life cycle and to accept and marvel at how amazing it is.

—Paula Estes, director and teacher, The Living School

They love us no matter what, and they teach us to love and care for something other than just ourselves.

—Adam, student, The Living School

The kids absolutely love them! At Whole Life Learning Center we have 20 chickens, a goat named Eleanor, and a mini-donkey named Gertrude. The kids help with their daily care, collecting eggs and tossing chicken scratch, putting out hay and water, and, most importantly, giving them love and attention. They learn about meeting those basic needs as well as some of the more involved aspects of animal husbandry, like training a stubborn donkey to walk on a lead!

The kids are so sensitive to the animals’ needs; it’s beautiful to see their senses of empathy and responsibility develop in relation to our feathered and four-legged friends. And it goes both ways: when a child needs some quiet time or wants to practice reading, she can go sit with Gertrude and Eleanor and chat or read with them—good friends always listen.

Oh, and finally, they get to see how the animals fit into the whole ecosystem. The chickens give us tasty eggs, the donkey protects the chickens from predators (and protects the gardens from vegetarian predators too), and Gertrude and Ellie serve as our lawn service, complete with fertilizer for the gardens!

—Michael Carberry, founder, director, and mentor,
Whole Life Learning Center

Hi, my name is Averi, and I’m a student at the Whole Life Learning Center. It is a really awesome school and we really love animals. This school really helps fullfill my passion for animals because it has tons of animals, like Gertrude the mini donkey, Ellie the goat, and a lot of chickens. I think that animals can teach just as well as humans, just different things. As Nelly, one of my friends at WLLC, says, “Animals can be teachers too!” Human teachers teach stuff like math, reading, and writing, and animals teach things like love, responsibility, and a sense of purpose. I wrote a quote: “You can study all you want, but true learning comes from experience.”

—Averi, student, Whole Life Learning Center

Teri

Movers and shakers

Austin’s alt ed community has seen lots of movin’ and shakin’ this summer. Here’s a roundup, in no particular order, of some changes you should know about as you're looking for schooling options for your kiddos.

A new school serving ages 3 to 103 is forming in Central Austin, just south of the river: Integrity Academy at Casa de Luz, Center for Integral Studies. Led by executive director Ali Ronder, formerly of AHB Community School, and founder Eduardo “Wayo” Longoria, the school is currently enrolling (and hiring!) for the 2014–2015 school year. You can help shape the school’s future or just enjoy a stimulating discussion about how humans learn by attending one of Integrity’s weekly salons.

Taking over the helm at AHB is M. Scott Tatum, who brings a wealth of experience in arts education, administration, and integration. Meet Scott and learn what makes this part-time elementary school in Hyde Park special by watching its new series of short videos.

Bronze Doors Academy has a new campus and a new name. According to director and chief motivator Ariel Dochstader Miller, Skybridge Academy will continue the same liberal arts college–like program for junior high and high school students for which Bronze Doors was known, but with some additional STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) opportunities made possible by its new location at the Stunt Ranch in Southwest Austin. As always, both full-time and à la carte options are available.

Accompanying Skybridge in the move to Oak Hill is its elementary school partner, the Soleil School. Cofounder and head of school Carly Borders says the new location on the Stunt Ranch will give her young students access to a ropes course, a pool, and more than 20 acres of beautiful land to explore.

Another unique school on the move this summer is Acton Academy. Construction on its permanent home on Alexander Avenue in East Austin is nearly complete. Laura Sandefer, Acton’s cofounder and head of school, invites you to check it out at the open house on October 24; meanwhile, take a peek at this architect’s rendering. It looks plenty big to house the academy’s current elementary and middle school students as well as the high school program slated to open in 2016.

The Olive Tree Learning Center, a Reggio Emilia–inspired preschool, recently opened its second campus, at 6609 Manchaca Road, near Garrison Park. Like the original Bouldin Creek campus, the new one is currently enrolling children between the ages of 18 months and 5 years. Director Michelle Mattalino says she is “very proud of the staff at both locations” and excited to fill the beautiful campuses with happy children.

Mariposa Montessori is also opening a second campus in South Austin. It will house this American Montessori Society full-member school’s new Lower Elementary program. Head of School Whitney Falcon recently reported that there were a few spots open for fall enrollment.

Progress School is expanding this fall to serve kindergarten through 5th grade. Located in Hyde Park, Progress offers “authentic education for natural learners,” with full- and part-time options as well as an after-school program. More exciting news from director Jennifer Hobbs: “We're getting chickens!”

Likewise, the Inside Outside School has expanded to serve kindergarten through 6th grade this fall, says executive director Deborah Hale. Its current enrollment of 24 will make up three classes—primary, intermediate, and upper elementary—on the school’s seven wooded acres in Pflugerville.

9th Street Schoolhouse is growing, too. The East Side home-based school will serve ages 5 through 9 this fall, with 8 students currently enrolled. 9th Street now has two mentors: founder Caitlin Macklin and Laura Ruiz.

Finally, the Whole Life Learning Center is rolling out a new nature-based one-day program called Mother Earth Mondays, which fosters a connection with the earth through gardening, wilderness survival skills, arts and crafts, games, and other fun activities with mentors Braden Delonay, Caroline Riley Carberry, and Leesalyn Koehler. In addition, director and founder Michael Carberry says he is excited to introduce the newest mentors for the Teen Mentorship Program, Kizzie, Etienne, and Adam, whose bios will soon be posted on the WLLC website alongside those of the school’s veteran staff.

Any questions or comments for these movers and shakers? Feel free to leave them below.

Teri

Open houses and open doors

On the heels of last weekend’s wildly successful Education Transformation School Fair, many participating schools and other alt ed programs are following up with open houses, tours, and special events for this week. In fact, the entire month of March is positively bursting with opportunities to get to know the people and places of Austin’s alt ed community—and find the right fit for your kid. Check our calendar for all the details. Here’s a preview:

On Saturday, March 2, visit The Natural Child Learning Community, a Montessori-inspired, nature-oriented preschool in the heart of Georgetown. The program provides a part-time, holistic learning environment for children between the ages of 2-1/2 and 5.

The next day, Sunday, March 3, head over to the 9th Street Schoolhouse in near East Austin to meet Caitlin and Laura, who place radical faith in children and, following the Free School model, offer guidance and experiences to develop lifelong learners. They have one immediate opening for a girl and are enrolling boys and girls age 5–12 for the fall.

Monday, March 4, is a great day to check out two South Austin alternative schools. The Whole Life Learning Center, part of the Self-Design network, is a two-acre school where kids age 5 and up work with mentors to develop holistic, individualized learning plans, honoring each learner’s physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development. The Austin EcoSchool is offering a family tour of its "Edible Campus," where you’ll see students’ work, meet the staff, and learn about the school’s unique programs, including Game of Village. It is currently enrolling for ages 5–14.

On the evening of Tuesday, March 5, the Clearview Sudbury School will host a free talk and Q&A with scholar and author Peter Gray (who is also speaking in town this week at the SXSWedu conference). Dr. Gray, a research professor at Boston College who blogs regularly at Psychology Today, is a leading authority on the role of free play in children’s development; his new book, Free to Learn, will be officially released the same day. Clearview staff, students, and parents will be on hand to answer questions about this democratic K–12 school in Central Austin.

Friday, March 8, is your next chance to visit the Inside Outside School. Let them know to expect you, and you'll get the full tour of this community-based, intentionally small learning community situated on more than seven wooded acres in Pflugerville. “Teaching for Human Greatness” is their creed, and they’re now enrolling kindergarten through 5th grade.

And now for something completely different: On Wednesday, March 13, the Growin' Together Hands-on Afterschool Program will host a SXSW Youth Showcase, featuring some of the hottest bands in the 18-and-below universe. It’s free for all ages (donations accepted) and will rock the Austin EcoSchool campus.

After spring break, on Wednesday, March 20, join the parent tour of AHB Community School, a creative and collaborative educational alternative that seeks to cultivate authentic, balanced critical thinkers who are prepared for a life of learning and community engagement. AHB serves ages 5–12 in Central Austin. Be sure to give them a heads-up that you’re coming so they can prepare the best tour possible for you. Can’t make it that day? You’ll have another chance on March 27 and on other Wednesdays in April and May.

To stay up-to-date on alt ed events, make a habit of visiting our calendar and clicking on any listing for details. Much more is coming up this spring, with many doors opening to you and your children.