20 Under 20

A few days ago I learned that my nephew’s neighbor friend, Dale, is one of Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20. I’d heard about the program when the news first came out—this wealthy lawyer was giving $100,000 fellowships to 20 young people to not go to college. While that was the sensational sound bite story—when you look closer, you find that Thiel wanted to provide support to young entrepreneurs as an alternative to college and as a way to jumpstart their already developing ideas for businesses, products, and organizations.

When I heard about Dale, I wanted to know more—not about Thiel necessarily—but about what Dale had in mind. I don’t know Dale, but I have heard about him over the years. He was homeschooled in the unschooling philosophy. According to my parents, he was careful during his high school years to affiliate with a homeschooling charter school to assure that getting into college would not be a problem. Dale applied to colleges and was awarded a full scholarship to a small liberal arts university in the south where he looked forward to learning with like-minded people. Apparently, college was not what Dale dreamed it would be. He found it stifling. Instead of a place where thoughtful, intelligent young people come together to learn from each other and from the big ideas their professors bring them from the world, he found a place where hierarchy rules. The professor had the stage and there was little room for innovative thought, dynamic discussions, and what he understood as academic rigor and opportunities for true learning. Dale didn’t last the year at this university. When I looked up Dale on the 20 under 20 webpage to learn more about his entrepreneurial angle, I learned that he had founded UnCollege, something that aims to be a movement for people like himself who crave a kind of learning different from the college experience he had recently lived—a kind of college version of unschooling.

So thinking about Dale and Thiel’s 20 Under 20 makes me wonder about public education and who it serves and doesn’t serve. It also makes me consider the current state of public education in our nation. Isn’t our American right to publically financed schooling the great equalizer? The hallmark of our democracy? It seems that lately education has been under siege—teachers attacked for not being smart enough or hardworking enough, parents attacked for being too permissive, students attacked for not trying hard enough, schools attacked for not making sure their teachers are teaching well enough… the list goes on.

The accountability movement that arrived with No Child Left Behind has pushed schools and teachers into a standardization mindset. “All students must…” Pressures start early and don’t let up—to have all students “proficient” by grade 3 means that kindergarten is no longer about play, choice, exploration and orientation to the schooling process but is instead a place where students are expected to learn to read before the school year ends—whether they are ready or not. High schoolers aiming for college need to not only have high grades (4.0 is no longer good enough to ensure college acceptance), high SAT/ACT scores, and letters of recommendation from their teachers. They also need evidence of substantial community service, school involvement (from sports and clubs to student government) and it doesn’t hurt to have started their own business or charitable organization.

So—is college the end goal for every student? Who finds success at school—and who doesn’t? Should school be regimented, prescribed, standardized? Is that the key to academic success? What about curiosity, exploration, and play? What about the idea of learning outside of school?

As a public school teacher—I do believe in school. What I’m questioning is the ways that our schooling process expects conformity—of thought, action, language and culture.

Is that why Dale founded UnCollege?

I'm a Social Media Convert

I’m a social media convert. Well maybe not a total convert—but I have gone from being a resister to one who uses social media on a daily basis. I wasn’t enticed by what seems to be the usual social media lures: freebies and discounts, social games, access to cute pictures of friends and family, or the possibility of reconnecting with high school and/or college friends (is that an enticement?). Instead, I discovered that social media is a great way to connect professionally.

When a group of SDAWP Teacher Consultants and I created the San Diego Area Writing Project Facebook page I found many reasons to check my Facebook page, friend people, and use other social media tools like Twitter and RSS feeds. I look for interesting resources to post—and find many of them through Facebook, Twitter, and the blogs I follow through my RSS feeds.

The SDAWP page also helped me figure out how to use features on Facebook. I learned how to message—I had to figure out how to answer a colleague who had messaged me and then I learned that this message feature allowed me to send messages that wouldn’t be posted on my wall. I learned how to create an avatar, an online alter ego, since I wasn’t crazy about putting my picture on my Facebook page (I definitely have some privacy issues about online communication)—and now I think that my avatar is a picture of me! I learned how to comment and like other posts—and how those processes connect that content to my own. I know the difference between a page and a group, and know how to create and use both. I’ve even chatted through my Facebook page.

On the downside of Facebook, sometimes I feel like I get too much information about my friends. There is definitely a voyeuristic feel to peering into people’s lives without actually interacting. And I’m guessing that people take a peek into mine in the same way. (I’m afraid that I’m not all that interesting although I do have an odd mix of family, friends, and professional colleagues as friends on my page.)

Unexpected complications sometimes pop up like when I connected my Twitter account to the SDAWP Facebook page. Most of the times my Twitter feed just shows resources I tweet as an easy sharing tool—but occasionally I have a different result. Last weekend, for example, I called out to my Twitter universe for help with a new social media page I was creating for the National Writing Project forgetting that my tweets feed to the SDAWP Facebook page. I was checking my Twitter feed for responses and hard at work on the page I was working on—and not attending to Facebook at all, when I noticed a tweet from an SDAWP colleague telling me things were working fine. (They weren’t—but then she didn’t know I was actually referring to a different page on another platform) I heard later from my SDAWP colleagues that it was weird to them that I was posting this unrelated content on the SDAWP page. Clearly, I must think carefully before using my Twitter account! (Or remember to disconnect my feed before tweeting something not-SDAWP related!)

So, in spite of the downsides of social media (and am I ever glad that I am not parenting young teens in this time of cyber bullying and frenetic social interaction using the Internet), I proudly admit to being a regular user of social media. I like the speed of connections with my writing project friends, the ability to share resources and access resources easily and quickly, and getting a glimpse into the interests and lives of my colleagues. I don’t post many pictures of myself (although there is one of me parasailing in the Dominican Republic) and seldom “check in” to announce my location, but I do have an online presence—and I think I am here to stay.