This week was my son’s 3rd-grade exhibition of learning, where he presented his final project and read his poem to over 100 people, like many of the other parents, I was beaming with pride. He was very proud of his work and able to articulate what he was learning- both the academic skills like autobiographical and biographical writing, opinion writing, poetry, graphing, reflection as well as what he was learning.

His project was called “Get Up, Stand Up” and the focus was to create a caring community of students who understand themselves deeply and can empathize and advocate for themselves and others. He described what it meant to be an upstander, wrote and shared his gratitude in a poem about my parents’ dog, which he thinks is his:) and described the adversity that J.K. Rowling faced, his favorite author who he wrote a biography about. My favorite part was this autobiographical writing project. When he wrote his personality facts and described himself as funny, clever, creative, imaginative, energetic, and handsome?!?- clearly humility is not one of his traits.

This exhibition was particularly meaningful for me to see Zack loves school and learning because last year he painfully pointed out that I was working so hard to fix school but it wasn’t working! I knew we had to do something different. Our family decided after much deliberation to move from the highest ranking school in the area to a school with lower test scores, a more diverse population and a focus on authentic, project-based learning.

Our decision has been reinforced over and over as both of our kids love school, feel more confident and are developing the skills and mindsets that we believe are critical (and so so does the workforce). It made me grateful that he could be in a place, with an amazing teacher who cultivates his creativity and curiosity while developing the academic skills that are so important to share and develop his ideas.

When I saw that Zack described himself as creative, clever, imaginative, I was reminded that I wrote this following post- Will School Kill My Son’s Creativity a little over 4 years ago when he was about to start kindergarten. I deleted it soon after I published it because I was afraid of hurting people’s feeling or rocking to the boat too much but it turns out that what I was afraid of started to come to fruition earlier than I ever imagined.

Will School Kill My Son’s Creativity?

This year my son begins Kindergarten and I have been more anxious about how school and the traditional expectations of learning will shape his path and love of learning and creating.

He has always been a builder and has been putting together Lego sets far beyond his years for a while now. He can sit for extended periods of time with an intense focus on projects that he values. His independence and confidence with his creations is a beautiful thing. He loves math and has a great number sense but when I see him retreat when talking about sight words and reading a book it makes me wonder how he will fare next year.

His letters and reading have not come as easily as it did for his big sister. I remember finding him with a book about turtles (which he loves with all his heart) last Christmas and he had copied a couple pages out of the book to write a letter to Santa requesting a turtle. He was motivated and had a very authentic purpose for writing. This was at the same time when he was very reluctant to write his name and practice his letters in preschool, yet he took it upon himself to write pages when it meant something to him. This scenario is not much different from many other children and I know all too well that many learn to adapt to school while many others learn to hate it.

In a recent blog post Kids don’t Need to Be Ready for School…Schools Need to be Ready for Kids, Justin Tarte wrote:

We know life and the world around us are changing more quickly than ever before. And, it’s these kids who come to our schools wanting, needing and DESERVING a system that’s ready for them and is able to meet their needs.

I spend a lot of time with teachers and in diverse classrooms. I know that a lot is changing in education but many schools and teachers are working within a system that still is still structured around a more traditional view of learning. Having just had my daughter complete the school year that he is about to begin, I know she learned a lot and had an amazing teacher but I also know that there were not many opportunities to create and build and investigate the world.

Just tonight as we were reading a book about giraffes it sparked more questions about how they live and how their babies were born. He said, “Let’s look it up!” I grabbed my phone and we watched a video that helped inform all of us about giraffes. I don’t know that this would have been allowed in school. At home he is used to this access to information and it sparks more curiosity. The better the questions he can dream up the better the information he can find out. This is how my son learns (as many children do) and I wonder if he will see the value in his genius even if it’s not elevated at school. Will he have the confidence or motivation to read when it is hard or uninteresting? Will he stay curious and ask thoughtful questions about the world?

As an educator myself will I be able to stay true to my son and his needs against conventional norms? I guess my biggest fear isn’t that he won’t succeed, it is that he will have to suppress what he loves and his curiosity to conform to school rather than school meeting his needs as a learner.

Rocking the Boat

Moving schools is not easy and in many cases, it’s not an option. I have always been a fierce advocate of local, public schools and moving my kids was not an easy decision. The school that my kids are in is a public charter school with similar infrastructure, testing requirements, and resources as the school they were in previously but how their view learners and learning varies pretty significantly. As Sir Ken Robinson points out, “One of the roles of education is to awaken and develop the powers of creativity. Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization.” My hope in sharing this is not to advocate for moving schools, and certainly not to bash educators who are working so hard, it is to acknowledge the power we have as educators to create the environment and the experiences that cultivate the skills, habits, and love of learning in our students, not perpetuate the culture of standardization.

I deleted this post 4 years ago because I was afraid of rocking the boat or hurting people’s feeling. I am sharing this today because I have seen the incredible impact that a more holistic view of learning and learners can have on the skills, confidence, and motivation of kids (and their teachers). I am sharing this today because I am now more afraid of what will happen if we don’t rock the boat.