There were over 20 people from Rainbow Mountain Children’s School at the Sir Ken Robinson lecture last night, and we were all inspired — actually, validated, is a better word for it. Validated to know that the style of education we have been doing for 34 years at Rainbow, is now considered visionary, cutting edge, and the direction education needs to go nationally.
One of Sir Ken’s points that really stuck with me was when he answered a question by saying, “It’s about Spirit.” He clarified that he was referring to energy. Great teachers are energized by the children and by the material they are teaching. It resonates with their spirit. They also recognize what is special about each child, and they use that. For example, a child who habitually hums would be given more singing instruction and asked to lead songs for the class.
When asked to describe the perfect school, he might as well have been describing Rainbow: A school with strong underlying structure (as Ken said “creativity can only happen within structure”) and an ability to allow both kids and teachers to be creative in all subjects.
Are you passionate about education? Would you like to see the whole educational paradigm changed in America? Despite the seriousness of this topic, do you love to laugh? Then I highly recommend you take advantage of a great opportunity: At 6pm this Wednesday, April 27, TED Speaker, Sir Ken Robinson will be at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville. Rainbow Mountain Children’s School is an official supporter of this exciting event, and much of our staff and board will be in attendance. Tickets are $25 for adults, available at the box office or at the door. Here is one of Sir Ken’s talks. You will find his points are salient, and he is very, VERY funny. Enjoy.
The following link is a well-written blog that explains how we build self-esteem at Rainbow Mountain. Although the author doesn’t refer to Positive Discipline or The Responsive Classroom (two of the classroom management/behavior models we draw from at Rainbow), his beliefs and practices are exactly the same:
Educational Research has revealed that children learn best when the material is relevant to them. That is one reason why the “PIP: Personal Interest Project” has been a long tradition at Rainbow Mountain.
Students are allowed to chose ANY topic of their interest. They have to do deep research on their topic, write a research paper and give a presentation using PowerPoint. While some students chose incredibly sophisticated topics, others choose topics that may not seem particularly “educational,” but that’s okay. The primary point of PIPs is for students to hone their research skills. They learn how to delve deeply into a topic and become a “specialist.” By allowing them to chose a topic they are personally interested in, the PIP is relevant and very motivating for each student…and the students learn from each others odd and fascinating topics.
The sixth grade will be presenting their PIPs tomorrow. Here is their list of individual topcs: Vietnam War, Optical Illusions, Judas Priest, Betty Boop, Screech Owls, Cat Breeding and Show, Michael J. Fox, Extraterrestrials, Shamans, The Office, DC Comics, Led Zepplin, Dr. Who, Hello Kitty.
When is your child old enough to make decisions on her own? At restaurants, it’s not uncommon to see a parent asking a very young child to decide what she wants to eat. What amazes me more, is when I see parents asking their child what they want to eat for dinner at home. I sometimes wonder how these mothers have the time and money to operate a free restaurant out of their home with children as customers. I very much appreciate the parenting notion that children should be given the opportunity to make decisions and not have everything dictated to them (such as the authoritarian parenting style of the past). However, there is a lot of security in having a parent who is gracefully in control and doesn’t expect their child to make decisions before they are ready.
Think about how much stress decision-making causes us as adults. Early childhood should be as stress-free as possible. Ideally, a rhythmic flow operates throughout the young child’s day — from waking up, to getting dressed, eating breakfast, and so on. If this flow is constantly punctuated with, “Which shirt do you want to wear today?” or “What do you want for breakfast?” or other such decisions, that beautiful, rhythmical flow is lost. This can lead to behavioral issues. If the child perceives that the parent isn’t wise enough to pick out clothing or decide what’s for breakfast, how can the parent be trusted with bigger decisions?Imperceptibly, the child loses respect for the parent, and can begin to question the parent’s every move, becoming defiant. This can become a negative loop, where the parent asks even more decisions of the child to avoid getting in a battle of the wills over simple decisions. There are other emotional and behavioral implications for children when they are asked to be decisions-makers at too young an age. They can develop nervous tendencies, become over-active, or dis-attentive.
I’m not suggesting parents be domineering. But consider that young children are very different than adults. As adults, we don’t want someone deciding what our every move is, but for a child there is security in predictability and strong parenting. Ideally, when our children are babies (and therefore, can’t communicate their desires with words), we can sense when they need to eat, take a bath, or go to sleep. Even after our children have words, they still depend on the parent to have that sixth sense — knowing what the child needs before the child himself knows. That’s the ultimate in love and security.
It makes sense for children to begin making decisons when they are old enough to learn from mistakes. Before the age of seven, however, the child has a limited capacity to learn from his own poor judgement.  Reliable cause-and-effect reasoning develops later on. By seven, the child is ready to start making a few decisions on his own. By nine, even more so…and by age 12, he’s capable of understanding the hard lessons from the natural consequences of poor decisions.   Adulthood –where the privilege to make decisions comes with other responsibilities– will come soon enough. For now, allowing your young child to bask in the security of your wise parenting is a privilege he is fortunate to have.
“Holistic” is becoming a buzzword, but we have used it to describe the education at Rainbow Mountain Children’s School since 1977.
From Wikipedia: The concept of holism refers to the idea that all the properties of a given system in any field of study cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its component parts. Instead, the system as a whole determines how its parts behave. A holistic way of thinking tries to encompass and integrate multiple layers of meaning and experience rather than defining human possibilities narrowly.
Holistic education is a philosophy of education based on the premise that each person finds identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to humanitarian values such as compassion and peace. Holistic education aims to call forth from people an intrinsic reverence for life and a passionate love of learning….The term holistic education is often used to refer to the more democratic and humanistic types of alternative education. Robin Ann Martin (2003) describes this further by stating, at its most general level, what distinguishes holistic education from other forms of education are its goals, its attention to experiential learning, and the significance that it places on relationships and primary human values within the learning environment.
