StuVoice Twitter chat + SS chat tonight 8:30pm EST... the Power of Diverse Learners

[xcriteria]

The weekly StuVoice Monday night Twitter chat is tonight at 8:30pm Eastern / 5:30pm Pacific time.

The topic is follow-up conversation from the StuVoice Live panel, The Power of Diverse Learners.

Here's a video recording of the Sept. 20 session.

Hidden stuff:

Watch on YouTube

However, they didn't delve far into the issue of learners who really find school-as-usual to be a poor learning environment overall. It'd be awesome if people from School Survival come tonight and share your experiences with school, and what you'd like to change.

To join the chat, follow and tweet using the hashtag #stuvoice

The easiest way to do that is to go to http://tweetchat.com/room/stuvoice and sign in with your twitter account (make one on Twitter if you don't have one.)

Each line you send on Tweetchat will have the #stuvoice hashtag added for you.

Let's also do a follow-up School Survival chat during and after the Twitter one... just use the SS Chat link (which is also available at the top of the forums.)

[xcriteria]

This is starting now: http://tweetchat.com/room/stuvoice

I hope some people from SS can join and share their experience with not fitting in with school-as-usual.

Finally, after so many years, so many people are listening and discussing how to change things... and yet we need more people who don't like school to speak up beyond SS itself. It's the only way change will ever happen... now's the time to be a part of it!

[GamerGurl]

I saw a post you made in my ACS thread in regards to most Survivalists not really caring about your threads, xcriteria. I'm sorry you feel that way. I will go more into detail about that, and possibly more of what you said in your post, later, but for now this will be my last post of the day.

In terms of StuVoice, I really can't relate to them because I don't want to associate myself with a system which has turned my life upside-down and has ruined the relationships I've had with my family and has made life for me so depressing and full of hate. I don't want to collaborate with the system. For the future I want others to have a choice in the matter if they want to attend school. I don't think you can expect those who are anti-school, pro-learners, school-adverse, or whatever else you want to describe them be able to associate with the system and make their situation better if they hate school and the system in the first place. It's like making a horse drink out of its water trough even though it doesn't want to. It won't get you anywhere, and I'm thinking that's possibly the main reason you see SS being quite apathetic towards discussions concerning StuVoice and StuVoice-type topics.

Those of us in SS want to be a part of so many different parts of changes, so it's going to be hard to try and get all of us together to collaborate. I may want to abolish compulsory schooling and disassociate myself with the system, but others like Hans may want less radical approaches and may want to genuinely improve the system. It's apples and oranges.

In a different thread I asked you (and Hans is open to doing this as well if he wants to) to represent ACS in StuVoice because I personally feel our radicalism and opposition of the system won't really be appreciated or even acknowledged in a group like StuVoice.

Thoughts?

[xcriteria]

(11-01-2014 12:15 PM)SirMarty Wrote:  I saw a post you made in my ACS thread in regards to most Survivalists not really caring about your threads, xcriteria. I'm sorry you feel that way.

Well, I'm sorry they feel that way.

Seriously though, there's a long-standing pattern where threads about changing things, or exploring the nature of education in more depth, or doing outreach, tend to get limited engagement, and die out even on longer threads where engagement does happen.

In a relative handful of cases, like with you, Hansgrohe, and Neue, there's been more active discussion of particular people's situations over time. That's something I'd like to see more of.

But the situation remains that a rather large population of young people are stuck in school (and family) situations they dislike. And, an overlapping set of situations remain for a rather large population of young people who are out of school, however they make it out, who are at the ~17-20's age range where the question is, what to do to navigate life beyond family and school-as-usual.

Digression into my story

I had a burning desire on the day I walked home after I dropped out of high school to do something about all this, and an idea about making a web site about it, but I didn't follow through on that at the time, nor really know what to do. A few years later, after dropping out of college and finding a job at a web startup where I finally felt appreciated and learned a lot, I reflected on life and thought about how I wanted to focus on changing education. But I didn't know how to do that, connect with others, or really what next steps to take.

Not so long after that, when I was 21 or so, I found School Survival -- circa 2001. I felt validated, and it gave me a sense of hope and not feeling alone, but I wasn't sure how to get involved or how to connect with more people, or really what to do in general. And, since I realized coding wasn't really for me, I was still dealing with the "get a job" issue and the question of what I was going to do in practical terms with my life.

Like you, I also had a family which really wasn't supportive of the idea of focusing on one's passions, pursuing them as a career, and they didn't grasp the concept of entrepreneurship or being any kind of what my mom called being a "maverick" as a very practical approach to life.

Fortunately, somewhat like you, my (divorced) parents -- and stepparents -- did reluctantly open up to letting me stay with them for a while, after I had actually been living on my own and working for a while, at the startup job I found. But I still had to figure out what to do next.

Reflecting on that, it's worth noting that the idea of "The Power of Diverse Learners" often amounts to something better stated as "The Plight of Diverse Learners."

I tried learning on my own, and of course I learned some things, but I was still stuck on what to do to make money and strike back out on my own in a way beyond the "get any job" angle. I ended up trying college a couple more times, in 2003 and 2005, but I was also frustrated with the slow pace of learning and lack of active support for figuring out an alternate path.

I looked into School Survival again in 2004, and finally joined the forums and participated in 2005, during my last foray into college. It was there that I experienced the forums during 2005-6, which was a time Doc Johnson was active, and the period SoulRiser wrote about in her vent/reflection post from earlier this summer. I also found some related efforts during that time, like Adam Fletcher's SoundOut site (promoting student voice), National Youth Rights Association (NYRA), Misled Youth Network (roughly similar to Student Support Network), and The Icarus Project (which focuses on mental illness.)

Discovering those allies helped me get excited about the potential for change, and I ended up moving to NYC and meeting various people associated with the latter three organizations.

But there were still disconnects. And in NYC, I ended up finding various "survival jobs" that at least were satisfying as jobs go, and let me once again live on my own and and live an independent life, which of course is expected by the time one is in their mid-20's.

But, what to do about the education situation and my goals of helping those who dislike school of finding alternative ways to learn and figure out life were still hitting roadblocks.

Then, in 2009-2010, I started working on the entrepreneurship angle, and launched a startup intended to focus on web technology as a path to transforming education, with a friend, Nick, who was a co-founder of Misled Youth Network. We ended up focusing on building a Student Information System for a new charter high school, but that ran into major roadblocks just on the programming side of things, and the school was more like school-as-usual than I'd expected.

By 2011, that all fell apart, and I did a lot of reflection on life, and research into other ways of going forward. I realized that what I really needed to do was connect with a broader range of people, and figure out how to achieve some kind of credibility as a voice for those who struggle in school-as-usual and figuring out life in a complicated and uncertain world.

During that time, I started finding a lot more people giving talks and writing books and doing things about changing education and college, but I still wasn't in dialogue with any of them. During 2012, I finally started connecting with many of those people, thanks in large part to Priscilla Sanstead and the UnCollege Network FB group, and people I met on G+ thanks to getting to know Justin Schwamm through the Ed Startup 101 MOOC.

That summer (of 2012), I returned to the School Survival forums to share what was seeing -- lots of allies -- but the forums were down, due to SoulRiser's frustration with the SS community.

When the forums were back up, I started taking a more proactive approach here, trying to communicate what I was seeing: hope for change.

A good example of that is my replies to Sub's thread, Maybe We Should Start Something in late 2012.

My list of links there references people I'm still in conversation with, almost two years later.

So, what next?

The question remains, what to do. I'd like to see things change and promote more active involvement in changing things, I wonder how that can happen.

In times before all that, it seemed like very few people saw the issues with school-as-usual. There were certain authors like John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, and the psychologist whose blog post has long been featured on the front page, but nobody from here was in dialogue with them, or anyone else. Some adults showed up here and could relate, like Doc Johnson and I, back in 2005, and TheCancer more recently.

Others have showed up with "pro-school" views, vs. the overall approach of "anti-school" that's been promoted here, and I'm not sure any conversations framed in "pro- vs. anti-" terms led to much learning or change of heart among participants.

But, for the most part, change hasn't seemed possible, and this site and its forums have been focused on helping people feel understood, providing an overall community of like-minded people, and providing information for those few whose parents are open to often-feared steps like homeschooling/unschooling and dropping out.

And yet, so many more people than ever before are seeing problems and searching for solutions.

And so... what next?

(11-01-2014 12:15 PM)SirMarty Wrote:  In terms of StuVoice, I really can't relate to them because I don't want to associate myself with a system which has turned my life upside-down and has ruined the relationships I've had with my family and has made life for me so depressing and full of hate. I don't want to collaborate with the system.

I understand your frustration with, and resentment of, "the system" -- especially with your experience of truancy police and parents opposed to doing things differently.

But, StuVoice isn't "the system." I'm not sure that you, or others here, even have a good sense of the individuals that comprise StuVoice.

Overall, they'd like to promote the voices of all students -- including those who are very unhappy with school, even if they themselves have managed to survive in school-as-usual and go on to college.

And in general, many people involved in "the system" are interested in changing things. They see at least some of the problems with school-as-usual. But in order to really change things in a substantial way, it's going to take the actual voices of people who take issue with forced, traditional, one-size-fits-all education.

And that's where I see a big, and tragic, disconnect -- those who are unhappy, and the range of people who are looking to change things -- are not in very active dialogue.

(11-01-2014 12:15 PM)SirMarty Wrote:  For the future I want others to have a choice in the matter if they want to attend school.

So do I. And, I see value in looking at "education" -- which is important -- in terms beyond "school-as-usual" and "getting out of school-as-usual."

I think we can all probably agree that learning and figuring out one's life are important things. So the question is, how can those who care help facilitate those things. It's very hard to do so without hearing from those who take issue with school-as-usual, and without getting in dialogue with parents, who ultimately have a large degree of influence, whether or not governments mandate attendance at school-as-usual.

(11-01-2014 12:15 PM)SirMarty Wrote:  I don't think you can expect those who are anti-school, pro-learners, school-adverse, or whatever else you want to describe them be able to associate with the system and make their situation better if they hate school and the system in the first place.

One of the biggest things I'm trying to convey is, it's not just a matter of there being a single, monolithic "system." Looking at things in those terms can be misleading.

(11-01-2014 12:15 PM)SirMarty Wrote:  It's like making a horse drink out of its water trough even though it doesn't want to. It won't get you anywhere, and I'm thinking that's possibly the main reason you see SS being quite apathetic towards discussions concerning StuVoice and StuVoice-type topics.

Hmm. I'm curious to hear from others, as well. In short, my response to that is, StuVoice is not equivalent to "the system." They're one of many groups of people looking to change the way things usually work to actually matter to, and be influenced by, young people themselves.

What I see is, too much stereotyping and false assumptions going on overall. School-as-usual certainly doesn't do much to help people to think outside the box, in many cases... but just getting out of school doesn't necessarily do so, either.

What can we do about that?

(11-01-2014 12:15 PM)SirMarty Wrote:  Those of us in SS want to be a part of so many different parts of changes, so it's going to be hard to try and get all of us together to collaborate. I may want to abolish compulsory schooling and disassociate myself with the system, but others like Hans may want less radical approaches and may want to genuinely improve the system. It's apples and oranges.

Yes, it's hard to get all kinds of mixes of people to get together and collaborate. But the key here is to look at underlying interests and see where they might overlap in unexpected ways.

(11-01-2014 12:15 PM)SirMarty Wrote:  In a different thread I asked you (and Hans is open to doing this as well if he wants to) to represent ACS in StuVoice because I personally feel our radicalism and opposition of the system won't really be appreciated or even acknowledged in a group like StuVoice.

I'm happy to explain your perspective to StuVoice, and the same goes for anyone else who wants to speak up and share their voice, but doesn't feel comfortable doing so... whether its in StuVoice, with your parents, or with your school. That's a big part of what Student Support Network is about.

Lots to digest there, but again, the question is... what next?