Classroots.org

So, we’re about to hit our testing window. I don’t have a lot of innovative testing ideas to share, though our school is doing some awesome work to make students feel comfortable and cared for during their three-week ordeal. We’re also going to reinvent our daily schedule after the tests to delve school-wide into what students want to learn. I can’t wait. I’m not sure we should wait.

Anyway, I have two stories today from a nearly democratic classroom.

This morning a student saw me carrying around a copy of Guerilla Learning, by Grace Llewellyn and Amy Silver. He immediately ditched his Google Sketch Up skate-board design project, grabbed the book from me, and Googled The Teenage Liberation Handbook, also by Llewellyn. Then he showed his friends. Then they had a big dust up over homeschooling and whether it was sick and pro or fail and noob. They were greatly confused. They wanted to be home, but not necessarily alone. They wanted to learn something new each day, but not necessarily on their own. They had ascribed in their minds some worth to being at school even though they often resist it greatly. They ended up agreeing that they would like to learn what they want to learn, but that leaving school didn’t seem okay – it was “hobo.” I kept quiet, let go of their self-directed learning goals for the day, and felt a little heartbroken that these marvelous boys still trusted school even though it has wounded them so much and so clearly failed to meet their needs and wants as people and learners.

This afternoon, while researching the civil rights movement through some resources I’d gathered, another student edited the Wikipedia page for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I watched him add a bunch of periods to the top of the entry. I kept quiet. I watched him save the entry. I watched him open the entry again to delete the periods. I asked him afterwards why he undid his edit. He said, “I didn’t want to get in trouble.” I asked him what he thought would happen to him. He didn’t know. We talked about how other editors would have undone his work and why. He added, “I didn’t want to be mean.” He smiled the whole time we talked, kind of amazed at his own power and proud, I think, of his decision to be responsible when given the chance to make amends for an impulsive act of Web 2.0 learning.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow.