Is your child highly sensitive?

Laura Sanders, MA, LPCA, is a licensed counselor, EMDR trauma therapist, author, and mindfulness teacher specializing in working with highly sensitive children and adults at her private practice, Cosmic Heart Counseling, in South Austin and online. We’re happy to welcome her as a guest contributor to the blog with two companion pieces this week to help parents and educators better understand and support highly sensitive children.

Photo by Ksenia Makogon on Unsplash

High sensitivity is a form of neurodivergence that is gaining in recognition and popularity. An highly sensitive person (HSP) is just that—highly sensitive. Their ability to tolerate sensory information and emotions is smaller than that of others, leading to overwhelm. A highly sensitive person has a finely tuned nervous system that can prime them for anxiety and stress. Without positive coping skills, this sensitivity can be overwhelming and lead to a host of behavioral issues in childhood and beyond.

With knowledge, understanding, and positive coping skills, sensitivity can be a superpower! Although navigating the challenges of sensitivity can be difficult, your child’s sensitivity can wield multiple gifts, including creativity, empathy, and even intuition.

Many adults are becoming aware of and owning their sensitivity, gaining coping skills, and thriving. For children, it can be more difficult as their brains, bodies, and nervous systems are constantly growing and changing. They have little control over their daily activities, foods they eat, and clothing they wear. An HSP child is even more vulnerable to the environment as exposure to even small amounts of stimulus may be too much.

To a neurotypical (NT) adult, the sensitive child might seem over reactive, overemotional, and dramatic. To the NT parent, the child is having an absolute meltdown because they don’t want to wear the shirt that was picked out for them. To the child, the physical body has become so incredibly uncomfortable that it causes stress hormones to spike. In turn, the child’s nervous system is activated, and they are flooded with emotions that they don’t know how to process. Screaming ensues.

To sensitive children, the world can seem entirely overwhelming. They may recognize that they respond differently to the world than their peers and not understand why. Arming them with knowledge, tools for self-care, and nervous system regulation at an early age can change the trajectory of their lives so they can use sensitivity as a superpower and avoid having to go through so much heartache.

Image by Rod Long on Unsplash

So, how do you know if your child is highly sensitive? Here are some signs that might indicate your child has a finely tuned nervous system and might need some additional tools to thrive in our crazy world.

Sensitivity is threefold—physical, emotional, and energetic. Physical sensitivity affects the five senses: touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight. When any of these senses start to get overwhelmed, a highly sensitive person’s nervous system detects a threat and goes into hyperdrive.

 Here are some physical sensitivity signs that your child might be an HSP:

• allergies to perfumes and other synthetic fragrances in detergents, scented candles, and even dishwashing soap

• an aversion to certain types of fabrics or shapes of clothing

• complaints that certain environments, video games, or television shows are too loud

• multiple food allergies

• proprioception or tactile sensitivity

• meltdowns after time spent in big crowds or places with bright or fluorescent lights

 Emotional sensitivity can look like:

• crying easily

• having feelings hurt easily

• bursts of anger

• feeling overcome when watching television and movies

• feeling a high level of empathy for animals, stuffed animals, or other people

• a sense of not belonging

• asking deep questions or having deep thoughts

• being described by others as “an old soul”

Energetic sensitivity shows up in some children and adults as:

• a strong sense of overwhelm in crowded places

• connection to spirituality

• having an increased sense of imagination

• possessing “second sight” or psychic abilities

• heightened creative abilities

If you think you or your child might be a highly sensitive person, don’t worry! It’s not a mental illness, and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. It just means that your child might need a little extra care in navigating the world. Little changes in the household can decrease sensory overload. Using fewer chemical cleaners and fragrances in the home, dimming the lights, and making time for “chilling out” in between activities can give your child’s nervous system a much-needed break.

For more tips on decreasing sensory overload, check out this blog post on Alt Ed Austin. For further information on this topic, visit therapyforsensitives.com.

 
Laura Sanders, MA, LPCA | Cosmic Heart Counseling

Paper, please

Guest contributor Ken Hawthorn is back with a great art + geometry activity you can try with your family. Ken is the founder of Austin School for the Driven, a unique environment of experiential learning, the hacker mindset, and outdoor education, all curated by community. He is the author of Super Arduino and consults with both Austin Community College and the University of Texas at Austin on makerspace education and design.

Paper is a structural material that forms the basis for so many wonderful math, science, and art projects at school and at home. From slide rules to “sharks with frickin laser beams,” paper is an amazing place to start!

Today I want to share some recent explorations of pop-up card geometry and even provide you, dear reader, with the actual files we used in class at Driven so you can make the same project at home with a Cricut, scissors, or an X-ACTO knife.

The below picture is a prototype pop-up card design students constructed in the third week of school at Driven. The genesis of the idea was a collaboration between Adam Soto, a literacy teacher at Griffin School, and me, Ken Hawthorn. Adam works with his students to individually go through the process of writing their own novel. Adam and I were looking for meaningful project-based intersections that combined the makerspace and the novel-writing project.

We realized that cards people give each other are really about the story of two people and the relationship between them. A spouse purchases a card that has symbols and words that proclaim appreciation and love for a partner, mom might get a handmade card from a child with a drawing of the whole family, or a co-worker might select a card that expresses how good the recipient is at being an inclusive member of the team. Whatever the occasion, the well-chosen card will usually express not just a particular sentiment, but also images and words that reflect a relationship and shared experiences between two people. When a third party reads a card, originally given from one person to another, they can infer a lot about the story of that relationship based on the design of the card and the words used.

With this in mind, why not have students make cards that are not from one person to another, but that encapsulate the important parts of the novel they are reading or writing? In this case, students at Driven wanted to look at a fairytale castle. Below are the steps they took to create a pop-up castle card.

 
Here is a link to the svg file you can use for your own geometric explorations.

Ken Hawthorn | Austin School for the Driven

A chat about AI and the new learning landscape

Photo by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash

You’ve probably seen funny, intriguing, or scary news items popping up over the past few weeks about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of ChatGPT, Claude, LLaMA, and other interfaces. You might have heard podcasters explaining or bemoaning the revolutionary new world that’s about to replace our old one. At this point, for me, it’s all still pretty confusing in terms of how it will affect my day-to-day life, but I’m curious and very cautiously optimistic.

One thing that’s pretty certain: Our kids’ lives will be dramatically shaped by AI—and in ways we can’t possibly predict.

In education, two big names—Khan Academy and Duolingo—announced last week that they are on board the ChatGPT train, having been granted early access to develop and test ideas. We’ve already seen both learning platforms suggest some of the benefits they anticipate for learners and educators, but let me preface this short summary by saying I have no idea what the real-world educational outcomes will be because we are so early in the exploration stage. Having said that, here’s a rundown of what’s happening at Khan Academy and Duolingo, along with some links that will take you on a deeper dive, if you’re interested. 

ChatGPT-4, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4, is a sophisticated AI model that can understand the context of questions and create written responses that are much more “human-like” than past versions. Khan Academy, a nonprofit dedicated to free, high-quality education for all, has been around since 2008 and is well known in the alt ed community for its library of outstanding YouTube video lessons on math and a vast array of other subjects. Duolingo is a for-profit language learning company that has been on the scene for 12 years. Duolingo teaches more than 100 languages to people all over the world in gamefied lessons, primarily through phone apps. 

There is a free version of Duolingo, but the new AI-assisted features will be offered only within a $30-per-month paid premium version. These features will offer learners more detailed explanations of how a language works in a feature called Explain My Answer. But most fascinating and useful will be the option for learners to role-play and interact with the AI tool like a personal tutor. After a conversation, users will get specific feedback they can use to improve their responses in their next Duolingo conversation or in real life.

Even more powerful possibilities seem to lie in the approach Khan Academy is taking to this new AI tech. Khan is calling its AI-powered platform Khanmigo. It is still in the development stage and open primarily to educators and school districts that are already working with Khan Academy on other projects, but it’s likely that more and more features will be rolled out to ordinary users in the near future.

Because each learner is different, the value of Khanmigo is that it will immediately adapt its tutoring in any subject to meet the individual’s needs, just like a one-on-one tutoring session with a human teacher. So, if a student is struggling with a particular type of math operation, Khanmigo will ask questions that direct the student toward a deeper understanding, rather than providing quick answers. And if a student needs to understand a controversial current news story, the Khanmigo tutor could gather information in order to debate multiple sides of the issue with the student in real time.

Khan Academy also wants its AI tool to become a valuable assistant for educators as well as students, removing some of the time-consuming work of lesson planning and grading so that educators can spend more time engaging with each student.

Sensibly, the folks at Khan are carefully communicating with users and adapting their projects to make sure they are safe and that kids are truly getting an enhanced learning experience rather than simply getting all the answers to their questions from Khanmigo. The short demonstration founder Sal Khan did on YouTube reminded me of a Socratic back-and-forth between students and teachers.

Next week, I’ll take a look at the world that’s opening up for students with disabilities as a result of AI learning tools. If you have hopes, fears, or experiences to share regarding AI and learning, please comment!

Here are a few links to learn more:

• John Fensterwald, “AI in School: Virtually Chatting with George Washington and Your Personal GPT-4 Tutor,” EdSource, March 20, 2023.

• Khan Academy, “GPT-4 In-Depth Demo,” March 14, 2023 (YouTube video).

• Aisha Malik, “Duolingo Launches New Subscription Tier with Access to AI Tutor Powered by GPT-4,” TechCrunch, March 14, 2023.

• John Spencer, “We Can’t Predict How AI Will Change Learning,” February 4, 2023 (podcast).

• Tyler Cowen, “AI Is About to Transform Childhood. Are We Ready?” Bloomberg, March 16, 2023 (opinion); and “How to Learn and Teach Economics with Large Language Models, Including GPT,”  SSRN, March 17, 2023 (academic paper, with Alexander T. Tabarrok).

• Ray Schroeder, “AI Is Impacting Education, But the Best Is Yet to Come,” Inside Higher Ed, March 15, 2023 (opinion).

Shelley Sperry | Sperry Editorial

Hiding scary things from kids

Deborah Hale, founder and director of the Inside Outside School, kindly granted Alt Ed Austin permission to republish this timely and soul-searching piece. It originally appeared on her school blog earlier this month, soon after large protests against police brutality and racism began in Minneapolis, Austin, and many other communities throughout the world.

 
Recent events following the murder of George Floyd have offered me, a white woman born in the 1950s, an opportunity for self-reflection. I am not doing a good enough job of growing anti-racist children. I’ve always taken the approach with environmental education that we don’t focus on what is wrong like glaciers melting; instead we help children fall in love with nature, so that one day they will harness that love in a way that actively protects the environment. Playing in a creek, gardening, and feeding chickens are our methodology of raising an environmental activist.  We address race issues mostly through literature. We teach respect for everyone. The students study the Civil Rights movement, Jim Crow laws, slavery, the Underground Railroad, segregation, and prejudice. 
​ 
In her book Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness, Anastasia Higginbotham shows a mother saying, “Oh no, not again.” Her daughter hears her and says, “Mom. What ‘not again?’” The mother doesn’t want to tell her child about the George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Mark Ramos news break of the day. She wants to “hide scary things” from her kid. Boy, do I get that! I really want children to enjoy their sacred childhood, running, playing, laughing. The dangers they face at school are poison ivy, sharp rocks under their bare feet, snakes, and puss moth caterpillars. Their parents might worry about that a bit, but they don’t have to worry that their child will be murdered by police. I can protect them from the horrible, frightening details in today’s news, but because there is not a lot of diversity, I cannot help them fall in love with people of color through direct experience. Our school isn’t free, there is no free breakfast or lunch, we are not on a bus route. We lack socio-economic diversity. As a private school, we serve privileged children. That’s not what I want, but that is what I created.

Our family has recently had our own run-in with racist police brutality. Like many white grandparents, we have grandchildren, daughters-in-law, nieces, and nephews who are people of color. Our grandson was peacefully protesting in Austin and was shot at close range by a police officer’s rubber bullet.

Our grandson, now 20, is a photographer. The bullet hit his right arm. He required emergency surgery to save his arm. He has a huge scar which runs down the center of his Texas tattoo. He was holding a camera, not a gun. 

He is a peaceful man. He eats a vegan diet so that he may do no harm. I adore my grandchildren. They matter to me deeply and personally. Our grandson recently shared with us how difficult it has been for him, growing up black. I heard his pain, the things he has faced that our other grandchildren will never have to face because they are white. I do want them to know what happened to their cousin. I know it is a scary thing, but knowing about this is important. We cannot let them grow up thinking that the color of your skin doesn’t matter. It makes all the difference if your skin color isn’t white. I knelt in the grass on a recent Sunday at Huston-Tillotson College listening to the heartbreaking words of Brenda Ramos, whose son, Mark, had been killed by police in Austin 6 weeks earlier. Mark was unarmed and had his hands up in the air.  There has been no justice, no arrest. My heart is hurting for her and for all mothers and grandmothers whose children are people of color.

One of the reasons we don’t teach our students at IOS about deforestation and climate change is that these big problems can paralyze children into a fear that they can only shut down around. I feel this paralyzing fear about our world right now. Are we facing civil war? Are people trying to stir up such an unimaginable evil in the year 2020? I cannot remain frozen in fear. I have to use my voice to speak out against racism. It was not my idea, and if you are reading this, it was not yours either. We do not support it, but are we fighting it?

My grandfather introduced racism into our home when I was in kindergarten or first grade. He said the N word at the dinner table in reference to his co-workers at the post office. My mother bravely ripped her father in law a new one in front of his granddaughters. It made an indelible impression on me. I thank God that my mother shaped my belief system, not my grandfather. When we saw the race riots on the television, she did not send me out of the room. I saw. I see. I cannot look the other way.

Our next module in our Wit and Wisdom curriculum at the Inside Outside School is “Civil Rights.” We will open with this integrated theme in our pandemic world classroom, whatever that looks like. I will help shape the belief systems of my students. I will continue to teach them the Three Respect Agreements of our school: Respect Yourself, Respect Others, Respect the Environment. I will continue to teach them about a growth mindset and about the Dimensions of Human Greatness. But, when we talk about interaction, I want them to actually have interactions with people of color. I don’t want it to all be book learning. 

My semester reports are all written, and now I am trying to plan for a world where students can’t be closer than 6 feet from each other, where I may be teaching with a mask over my mouth and nose in triple-digit Texas heat. But just as importantly, I also am imagining how to plan a world where the student population at our school reflects the diversity of our wider community. I can stand against racism by not being satisfied with my white privilege. I can ask for the means to serve more intentionally in creating a more just and loving world. I can reach into the greater field of life where this school originated and find the next upgrade. Through our shared intention, let us see that manifesting. 

Please join me. Namaste.

Deborah Hale

Alternative education post-pandemic: Where are we going from here?

We have an opportunity to create a new and better normal if we consider the needs of all learners
in re-entry. . . . As natural and human-made systems collide in unprecedented ways, young people
are growing up in a world where novelty, complexity, and mutuality are the norm. How we respond
in adaptive, thoughtful, inclusive, and creative ways will be the most important lessons we teach.

—Eric Tucker and Tom Vander Ark
“How to Reopen Schools: A 10-Point Plan Putting Equity at the Center”
GettingSmart.com, April 29, 2020

We’ve come to the fourth article in our series on the adaptations and transformations that are happening in schools here in Austin as a result of the sudden necessity of distance learning during the COVID-19 crisis. We started with a broad view of education in emergencies, then looked at how our own ATX family of alternative schools is handling social-emotional learning and injecting creativity and play into their evolving learning plans. Now we are going to look at a topic that’s on our minds a lot these days: What does the future hold? 

Without question, the way we educate our kids (and they educate themselves!) in the United States and across the globe will feel the impact of this moment going forward. Education reformer Tom Vander Ark sees cause for optimism “post pandemic.” He describes schools that embrace more personalized learning and flexibility based on competency. As we might expect, he anticipates more home-based and hybrid learning, with as many as half a million students just not returning to their regular schools. “Hundreds of parents will turn their homeschool into a microschool,” says Vander Ark. He also sees a boom in project-based learning:

. . . with state testing cancelled and a lot more flexible time, many learners are engaging in interest-based learning and impromptu projects. School closures have been a reminder that learning can happen anywhere. When kids return to school, some schools will respond with more project-based learning connected to local problems and opportunities.

Earth Native Wilderness School students turn their backyards and kitchens into botany classrooms.

And in very good news for our alternative learning communities, Vander Ark also sees the end of more than 30 years of preoccupation with testing as the main basis for measuring learners’ and schools’ progress.

Douglas Harris, an academic who studied the dramatic changes in New Orleans’s schools after Hurricane Katrina, says there are general lessons about how educators and students adapt to crises that we can learn from the New Orleans experience. One likely outcome of the pandemic is that there will be a few tools of distance learning that both students and teachers decide they like, and those tools will stick around. But it’s unlikely, Harris thinks, that there will be a dramatic move toward either homeschooling or fully virtual learning because there are too many disadvantages for the majority of families. Unlike Vander Ark, Brown also doesn’t think competency-based learning will expand dramatically in the long run. But there will be some surprising long-term indirect results of the pandemic, including putting more teachers and parents in the role of coaches, with students taking greater control of their own learning.

In our own survey of 35 Austin-area alternative schools, we found that all the educators are thinking about and planning for the future right now, with many focused on expanding just the sort of student-directed learning both Brown and Vander Ark are talking about.

Educators in the community feel it is their responsibility to support parents as far as possible in their new roles. In some cases that has meant continuing schooling online so that kids have a familiar routine and parents are able to focus on other tasks, says Eustace Isidore of 4Points Academy. And in other cases, it means guiding parents in setting up homeschooling, as is the case at Bridges Academy Austin.

One of the most consistent issues in our survey comments was dedication to student-directed learning. Cathy Lewis of Long-View Micro School explained:

Long-View has a cultural norm of “driving your own learning.” We take this very seriously as we are cultivating intellectually curious and driven learners. This norm was taken to a new level when we had to pivot to learning at home . . . We have seen some kids step up to new levels: We have one learner helping us develop content and several others choosing to support younger kids by meeting with them virtually or giving them feedback on work they’ve turned in.

Laura Sandefer of Acton Academy added that she believes parents have been “happily surprised” about what independent learners their kids are and that they do have the skills to drive their own school projects, even at young ages.

Clearly, the success of schooling right now depends on flexibility on all sides, and schools are trying to accommodate families’ needs. Acton Academy West Austin (the Westlake campus) shortened its spring break to help keep kids on track, and at Ascent, another Acton Academy, each family is getting one-on-one support tailored to their needs. Abrome and other Agile Learning Centers are working in collaboration to add new, optional offerings for learners.

A strong, kind, smart, and powerful Acton West Austin student opens up her home toolbox to hone some maker skills.

Beyond learners and families is the larger community, and the schools we surveyed are reaching out to connect there, too. La Tribu preschool is now opening to enroll students in a Spanish-language virtual learning program that mixes live classes and other activities. Jenny Alperin of Guidepost Montessori at Brushy Creek shared that they have created an online platform that is free to the general public so any family can join in interactive learning and find other resources. Long-View is also opening its micro school to kids beyond the regularly enrolled students who might like to take just a few classes.

So, what will the future hold for Austin’s alternative schools?

Some schools, including International School of Texas, AHB Community School, La Tribu Preschool, and Kirby Hall School report that they have seen an increase in connectedness during the crisis, with students and families feeling grateful for their communities in a way they hadn’t anticipated.

We see in all the schools’ responses a lot of hope for the future and the next phase of alternative education in Austin. There’s the hope, expressed by David Darcy of School on the Rise and Anne Remme at Speech-Language-Play, that small alternative schools, especially micro schools, will be among the first to reopen because the small class sizes mean less risk and easier social distancing.

David Darcy begins morning lessons live via laptop from a School on the Rise classroom.

Angela Griffiths of Acton Academy Northwest Austin says she hopes that parents everywhere will see more clearly all the realities their kids are facing. “It’s my sincere hope that they look at what their kids are being put through and say to themselves . . . ‘There’s got to be a better way.” And maybe that better way includes alternative education models.

Looking toward the future, journalist Anya Kamenetz reports that education researcher Maria Litvinova says the safest and best future is what most of our alt schools are doing already: keeping class sizes as small as possible. In Denmark’s International School, right now they’re sticking to 10 students per class. Other researchers suggest that staggering calendars for different groups of students, changing attendance policies, and improving both digital learning access and social and emotional support for all students are prerequisites in post-pandemic schools everywhere. Not only academic support, but also mental health support for students, says James Lane, Virginia’s state superintendent of public instruction, will be the top priority when kids return to brick-and-mortar schools.

In the meantime, educators, parents, community activists, and students are all thinking about the future and hoping that new and better ways of learning and connecting will emerge from this unusual time. As author Rebecca Solnit has observed in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, sometimes the worst of times can provide flashes that give us “a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become.”

Shelley Sperry  |  Sperry Editorial

Creativity and play in distance learning: Alternative schools help Austin kids thrive during COVID-19

Bet your bottom dollar we work best under pressure.
(Yo teachers, I wanna like THANK YOU!)
Get your yoga pants set.
Gotta earn that paycheck!
On your mark, get set, let me go, let me Zoom!

—Emily Glankler and Akina Adderley
Zoom! A "Shoop" Parody for Teachers, Griffin School

 
We’re back again with more survey results from 35 Austin-area alternative schools. The first article looked at the broad topic of education in emergencies, and the second tackled social emotional education in this period of social distancing. This week we’re diving into the importance of creativity and play in many forms.

The educators who contributed to our survey suggest that making space for creativity in the curriculum—and unstructured play with other students—is an essential component in their child-centered learning strategies. As a recent article by illustrator Louis Netter noted, we are all necessarily turning inward at this moment, “to the vast inner space of our thoughts and imagination,” and we feel more keenly than ever how important the arts and creativity are to our well-being.

We’ve probably all seen some of the outpouring of creativity and humor from students and teachers on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook—with music, creative writing, theater, and art taking center stage. Locally, Griffin School’s Emily Glankler and Akina Adderley jumped into the fray, offering students a funny, timely comment on Zoom school life in a musical parody of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop.” 

For isolated theater kids, unable to mount their productions in person, Skybridge Academy’s Brian Oglesby is donning a new costume each day to turn the ordinary into something a little more special, explaining that there’s a lot of joy in this innovation-by-necessity:

It’s like we’ve landed on this desert island. It sucks on this desert island. When we discover that by rubbing a couple of sticks together, you can make fire, there is triumph and a certain joy. Sure, it would be better not to be stranded, . . . but in the meantime, look at this cool thing we did.

Oglesby adds that his students are developing flexibility and even more creative thinking in a school that prides itself on always pushing boundaries. “Other schools are having to cancel their productions, and my heart breaks for them. We’re trying to figure out how to perform through video conferencing. It’s going to be its own weird thing, fit to the form.”

Play and child-led discovery—from giant bunnies to a virtual Earth Day

Lulu Bautista of Corazón Neighborhood Preschool offered us some valuable insight into her deeply held beliefs about the value of play, creativity, and discovery. Lulu calls what she does “Respite Care,” and it helps relieve children’s anxieties. It’s clear that lessening anxiety is one of the most important aspects of creative engagement in all the schools we surveyed.

How do schools do it? At Corazón, they use both tactile and virtual learning:

We've taken a trip to the moon . . . the children "hand" me items through the screen to pack in our group bag, and then we all buckle in our seatbelts and blast off, calling out the things that we see along the way and floating around our screens in slow motion! We've used our magic wands to turn each other into everything from sleeping robots to gigantic bunnies.

Tactile, “real world” play that moves kids away from screens for part of the day is a priority at many schools. For Bloom Preschool kids, dancing together and reading together are as necessary to the curriculum now as ever, even though it’s done at a distance.  At Acton Academy, educators are creating care packages of project supplies and other items that help with inspiration. Skybridge is putting together weekly “grab bags” of science and art supplies. And Ashley Reinhardt says WonderWell’s teachers have designed experiences around easy-to-get household items as well as curated learning kits they provide. For example, they give little ones who need some fine-motor-skill development an ear of corn covered with coffee grounds and a toothbrush!

WonderWell distance learning supply kits ready for “contactless” pickup by preschool families

The contents of an art supply kit made available for Skybridge teens to pick up at specified times

Anne Remme of Speech-Language-Play is creating an entire set of short videos for Facebook that allow kids to be involved in a virtual playgroup with reading, “table time” art activities, cooking, outside play, and even pet care.

Back at Corazón Neighborhood Preschool, children are encouraged to choose their favorite items at home and make up games with them spontaneously, which can lead to a lot of new learning opportunities on the fly. “One child created a pretend marshmallow store and roasted marshmallows to sell to us. But she only had enough for a few of us!” says Lulu. “We walked through our problem solving skills, and together the children came up with an idea so that others could partake. We did this all from behind screens, all through the magical world of pretending that children live and thrive in.”

At International School of Texas, older kids had the chance to do similar experiments in adapting their ideas to the world of screens. They held an art contest in a virtual art gallery and they also created a whole-school Earth Day project online.

Art with Ms. Bo: The International School of Texas art teacher shows kids how to make and use stamps from recycled objects found around their homes.

With so much time spent in virtual classrooms and chat rooms, it’s inevitable that students of all ages will get creative with colorful and crazy virtual backgrounds and morphing faces. Pam Nicholas of Huntington-Surrey says they are using an app that turns people on Zoom into hilarious creatures. They use it sparingly, but it works to bring the community together through laughter. Chris Ready, assistant head of school at Austin’s Academy of Thought and Industry, said:

Our student government is coming up with weird contests to keep the student body engaged. We are going to launch a ‘guess that student's workspace contest.’ David, our student body president, has sent out a survey asking everyone to vote on what should be done with his facial hair . . . 

Kids at Huntington-Surrey are revising their school yearbook to include the new world of distance learning they’re exploring together.

What’s also happening, says Kori McLain of Lake Travis STEM Academy, is that educators and students are becoming closer as a result of sharing and getting a peek at each other’s spaces, including all the “learning forts” kids are building. And students always come up with new ways to add some pizzazz to ordinary meetups. “We celebrated a teacher’s B-day by surprising her with virtual B-day backgrounds, and we all wore funny hats and sang ‘Happy Birthday,’” says McLain.

We’ll let Lulu Bautista have the last word on this topic. She says:

Our version of creativity comes from the same place it has always dwelled, the children. . . . [it] centers on finding ways to ground ourselves in the familiar and hold onto something consistent to help children retain a sense of joy and relief from uncertainty when we gather together, even if that means virtually.

Shelley Sperry  |  Sperry Editorial