I’ll be presenting at the upcoming 29th Annual MicroSociety Conference on July 12, 2022. MicroSociety is an innovative educational program developed by artist/educator extraordinaire George Richmond in the 1960’s where students re-create the institutions of society within their own school environment, including having their own economic system with banks, their own judicial system with student-created...Read More

When I was a third grader at Clara Barton Elementary School in Fargo, North Dakota, my principal Miss Minnis held an assembly where she showed us home movies of her summer trip to Australia.  I was amazed at the existence of such a large a country so far away from the U.S.  We learned the...Read More

Summer is officially here, and many parents–after homeschooling their kids for the last three months–are wondering whether they should keep schooling their kids to make up for a potential ”summer slide” or just let them enjoy the summer.  I come down strongly on the side of enjoying summer, but that doesn’t mean learning need not...Read More

iWe are so conditioned to regard the child as ”less than” adults (e.g. less tall, less intelligent, less emotionally stable etc.), that we miss something that I believe is essential to understanding not only childhood, but life itself.  Yes, children lack many of the essentials for independent living in the world – that is only...Read More

After this pandemic is over with (or at least sufficiently in the background of American life to warrant little comment), plan to go into a classroom and ask yourself, does this classroom have life?” That’s the key test of whether there’s any real learning going on. There could be fake learning going on, to be...Read More