Those "Aha" Moments!

On our website we post ten foundational premises that provide the philosophical footing for everything we do at Veritas Varsity.  The first of these stresses the need for education to address the "whole" child, his or her mind, soul, body, and spirit.  Another way of stating this would be that effective education has to reach out and grab the attention of the teen being educated, connecting with them on several levels.  This is the old relevancy argument that kids throw in the faces of their teachers on a fairly regular basis when they ask, "why do we have to study this?"  As annoying as that question is, it's certainly a fair one and one for which teachers must have a meaningful answer. 

Perhaps like us you've discovered that there isn't one pat answer to the question though.  It is a continuous, daily process to discover meaning in what we teach our students -- meaning, not just for us, but more importantly, meaning for them.  How do we connect, not just with our students' minds, but with their hearts as well (their soul and spirit, in other words)?  How do we make what we study not just relevant (though that alone is a worthy goal), but significant, interesting, challenging, maybe even life-changing?  I'm interested in your thoughts on this because it should be obvious that if I had a formula to follow by way of answering this question I could become a very rich man very quickly.  But that in itself is an important part of the answer -- there is no pat answer.

I'm convinced, however, of how NOT to connect with our students:  1) by sticking to the text (or the test, if we're in a state that uses minimum competency testing to determine the quality of what we do in the classroom), and 2) by staying in the building (the facility, the plant, the campus, you know -- the school!).  A significant part of the answer to this problem of relevancy is to get the kids' (and their teachers') noses out of their textbooks and bodies out of their classrooms and into the "real" world, connecting with real people (not just teachers) in real places (not just schools) and in real situations (not just canned lectures or presentations).  There is no question that every once in a while an "aha" moment of discovery and connecting the dots happens in the classroom, but learning, like serious conversations with our kids, can't be scheduled or planned, rather it happens in the context of living life.  Let me give a few examples from this past semester in getting our kids off campus and into their worlds.

In September we took our first of many college campus tours.  Our goal at Veritas is to begin exposing our students to various campuses around the state and across the country early and often to encourage and inform their decision-making processes related to the next step in their educational careers.  This September we visited Sul Ross State University.  The tour was not particularly professional or smoothe, yet several of our students were so impressed with what they witnessed in person that they are seriously considering this West Texas campus for their college choice.  I saw eyes widen and heard voices filled with excitement as question after question was asked about college life in this small, somewhat remote part of the state.

In October, on our semester trip to the east coast, students saw hillsides filled with trees that actually turn colors before falling to the ground!  I heard more exclamations of wonder and amazement at the vibrancy and variety of color than I would have thought teens capable of making!  On that same trip I saw this group of teens gather in their congressman's office (Chet Edwards, District 17 in Texas) and listen attentively to his plea to them to become active participants in their democracy.  A week later, while debriefing the trip at least one student said her most memorable moment was Chet's admonition to learn to disagree with one's fellow citizens while remaining respectful of their right to reach different conclusions on matters of importance.  That may be the single most important principle in participating in democracy, yet it probably would never have been learned from a text or a teacher sitting in a classroom.

In November we took the students to a From the Top (public radio) performance of young musicians at Baylor University.  These musicians, all under age 18, were not just talented, but served as life lessons for the importance of practice and hard work to make your dreams come true.  Meeting them in person after the concert was an eye-opener, too, as our students got to see that these were kids just like them -- talented, yes, but kids nonetheless.  Who's to say that one of Veritas' own can't be just as successful at some future date if they work hard enough to make it happen?!

From participating in a Star Party at the McDonald Observatory in Ft. Davis, Texas to playing in the snow on top of Beech Mountain, North Carolina, from visiting an amateaur photographer in Waco, Texas to seeing the homeless on the streets of Washington, DC, from sitting in on famous authors' lectures in Austin, Texas (Texas Book Festival in October) to sitting in Congressman Edwards' office in DC, from the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine, Texas to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum in Washington, DC, our students have had numerous "aha" moments during the past four months, all made possible because we did not confine our "learning" to textbooks or classrooms.  Indeed, although our academic regimen has been fairly impressive, much of what our students will carry with them into adulthood by way of memories has nothing at all to do with that regimen, but everything to do with what we introduced them to in the real world.

Nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

The title of this week's entry comes from the tag line that ends most newsletters for Veritas Varsity.  The quote is from Victor Hugo who, though living 200 years ago, aptly characterized our conviction that we're on to something big with this social experiment called Veritas.  A more recent writer, Gregg W. Downey, editor of eSchoolNews, in an October editorial talks about "the avalanche of change" that is inevitible for our school system in America.  We're trying to ride the crest of that avalanche, so to speak, with the innovations we've implemented this year.  What about you?  What are you doing to prepare for this coming avalanche?

In his editorial Downey suggests that earlier movements for educational change died for lack of sustainability (or as likely, due to resistance among educators); i.e. after the 1957 scare resulting from the Soviet launching of Sputnik, or after discovery in 1983 that we were A Nation at Risk in danger of being overwhelmed by a tide of mediocrity.  Yet both these (and many others beside) crises faded into the proverbial sunset, having blazed across the educational landscape for a few years with only a few ongoing, lasting effects (No Child Left Behind?).  Yet Downey is sure -- as sure as Thomas Friedman that the world is flat and getting flatter everyday -- that this time there will be no running away from lasting change.  What's different?  The advent of technology -- hardware, software, the internet, digitilization and "the whole nine yards" that threatens to snap the constraints that have bound educators to date.  And like with Mother Nature's avalanches, there's simply no running away from this.  Just as outsourcing and off-shoring have permanently changed the landscape of business in America, so too education is in for a rude awakening if it seeks to continue doing business as usual.

I told my Veritas kids this past week, in one of my not-so-infrequent musings on why we do things the way we do at Veritas, that I'm convinced high schools in ten years will look very little like what is seen today.  I think more teens will get their high school diplomas online in virtual school programs.  Traditional schools will combine live student to teacher interaction classes with distance learning and virtual school offerings.  Why struggle hiring a chemistry teacher when you can go online and get the benefit of an expert in the field for less cost to the school or district?  Indeed, the concept of leaving home and going to a centralized location to be force-fed an education that might or might not be consistent with one's personal goals and needs will be one of the first things to get swept away in the avalanche that is coming.  The social structure of school as we now know it will seem very distant in the not too distant future!

Will schools still be places for gathering hundreds or thousands of teens together for a canned instructional program?  I think not.  Why should my teen take the same curriculum as my neighbor when he or she has none of the same goals or interests?  And make no mistake, a student's individual interests will play a larger than life role in the selection of courses taken in the regimen of this 21st century school.  Everything else is being individualized and personalized in this new techno-age, why not my teen's high school graduation plan?  The state-mandated tests that today assure standardized, most would say marginalized, instruction will be as passe as writing a letter to a friend across the country or world.

Doubtless, there will still be school campuses, per se; they just won't look a lot like the ones currently out there.  Districts passing bonds to erect new multi-million dollar complexes should really be looking for more relevant ways to spend that money, because these mega-campuses are also going to go out with yesterday's printed newspaper.  I'm hopeful, expectant rather, that schools like Veritas Varsity will still be needed in this new age.  We congregate daily, not for the purpose of standardizing instruction among our students, rather to collaborate with each other, discuss with each other, learn with each other, and encourage each other.  There is also the "real world" aspect of the program.  By getting off campus every week and including extensive domestic travel in our semester routine one focus for coming together becomes to go out together to see and experience our world.

A brave, new world is indeed coming.  Not the one imagined by Aldous Huxley perhaps, but one that I'm convinced will be as brave and courageous as it is new.  Say what you will about Veritas, we hardly cling to the status quo and although we make no claim to have discovered Huxley's (or anyone else's) new world just yet, we're certainly willing to take a few tentative steps in that world's direction as we seek to ride the avalanche that is coming to a safe harbor, rather than get uprooted or swept away by it.

Why Veritas? Why this blog?

Remember when your children first went to school, how excited they were?  They'd come home with handprint turkeys or letters meticulously written on those lined sheets of paper (with the d and p inevitably backwards), with word-by-word replays of what Miss Johnston told them about such and such -- in short, with smiles on their faces and enthusiasm in their hearts for absolutely everything they did at school.  Sadly, with each passing year those smiles were more infrequent and the enthusiasm less and less pronounced until, along about 8th or 9th grade that excitement for learning was replaced with protestations of "why are we studying this?" or "when am I ever going to use this stuff?"  Apathy had set in, big time, with its offspring of rebellion or withdrawal.  Instead of being engaged in their education as was once the case they are now entrenched in attitudes of resignation or rejection -- of an educational system that has abandoned them to an abyss of lectures, reading assignments from tomes too heavy to carry home, and teacher-centered instruction that leaves them gasping for the oxygenated air of relevance.  No wonder, in spite of a university system consistently rated the best in the world, the U.S. K-12 educational system is ranked among the lowest for the top 25 industrialized nations.

There are many things wrong with that K12 system, yet we cling to it as though to something sacred.  Our concerns at Veritas are for the secondary part of the system.  The school we have founded is committed to helping teens regain that passion for learning that once was theirs.  It is admittedly not an easy task.  The difficulty is compounded by educators who too often are the last to embrace new ideas and parents who, because of having been raised in the archaic system that refuses to change, are reluctant to encourage, much less embrace, genuine change.  Consequently, the educational system that has been in place since the beginning of the 1900s gets tweaked from time to time, but nothing of any real consequencial significance comes of it.  We were not interested in tweaking the system, rather in tossing it out and starting from scratch, thus Veritas Varsity's conception and founding.

However, in thinking outside the box and looking for real solutions and alternatives for how to educate our teens we have been anxious for news from others who are similarly committed.  Thus this blog.  If we can generate a meaningful dialog among parents and educators we feel that our goal for helping our students buy into their education with zeal and commitment can only be moved forward in a positive direction.  We don't expect everyone to agree with us, but don't disagree and stop there.  If you think we're off base, what do you think is the right base?  If we're naive, help us see the light as you see it.  If you think we're guilty of throwing the baby out with the bath water with some of our radical departures from tradition, tell us how, and why the "baby" is worth saving.  In short, don't react, rather respond -- thoughtfully, helpfully, keeping the end goal always in mind (an education that is not only relevant for this new age, but one about which teens can be truly passionate).