Hello all, happy almost-there! Happy your-fingers-are-almost-touching-the -wall-of-the-pool on the deep end! Happy summer!

OK, I am sure a lot of you saw the article in BFP about the Year End Studies Program in BHS. And some of you are involved in them, right? (You go Peter!)

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013306070022

So, I am wondering why this type of programming, where students make new friends, learn about each other, culture, craft, their bodies, and SAT prep can't happen throughout the school year, as part of the All Year Studies Program?

Not meaning to sound flip here, just so excited to see other forms of teaching and learning working successfully in a school day. This model is very similar to the Folk High School idea, and I think would be really cool to see embedded in the mainstream course offerings.

Imagine...

Sending a whole lotta respect, alison*

Colin and all,

Foxfire looks so cool! I wasn't familiar with this place or project or the publications, but it seems really interesting. (Seems also similar to the Folk Live Center Community Project work going on this summer: http://www.discoveringcommunity.org/#Curriculum). Have you been to Georgia to visit?

This is sort of like the folk high school model; in fact, it may be one of the closest American iterations of the folk high schools of Scandinavia - wherein students live and learn together and drive inquiry together through place based learning. And yes, there is an element of rural preservation and validation here, like Foxfire.

Lately, though I've been reading more about the folk school model and have realized how integral social justice is to adult and community/place based education. Where in a people's education is "an education that developed and released a social intelligence capable of promoting social change...". That really, folk school education is about student lead decision making and agency, and thus, social change.

So, how can the model of YES, the model of Foxfire be extended and sustained in mainstream ed? Sometimes, I feel really on the fringes of the ed. community..so, insights?!

Full disclosure: This is from a socialist magazine...But, I've become increasingly interested in charter schools for our state, and needed some 'push back.' Here's an interesting piece

Look on pages 25-26 for a brief description of a Danish folk high school course "Take the Future." In it, Mette Hojland describes how her class looks at a 'spiritual, individual, and global perspective'; she also talks about a rubric that she has for developing the sense of self-and it's not reductive!