Last week, we started an interview of Jackie Swanson, an 8th grade writing teacher at North Middle School, in Rapid City, South Dakota. During the interview, Jackie told us how she started using The Writer’s Workshop as a model for teaching her students. This week, we get to see the actual students, as Jackie interacts in class. It’s amazing to see, and I hope that this could be come one of the ways to transform our educational system. Next week, a short piece on what it would take to actually change the way that our children are taught. But this week, let’s just be inspired.
Jackie Swanson has been teaching for 31 years but the first 25 were not what she wants people to know about. Calling herself a “traditional” teacher, after 25 years she made a change and started using a pedagogy called “Writer’s Workshop” The results and changes for her and her students are both amazing and inspiring. It is a model that could be used by our entire education system. In fact, her school, North Middle School, in Rapid City, SD is in the process of doing just that. Today, Jackie tells the story of how she came to the Writer’s Workshop. Next week, we will see how this process works, and what the students are doing in her classes now.
Jamie and I went to Colorado Springs to celebrate our son-in-law’s graduation. Nate Walla got his masters degree from Colorado Technical University, and it was a blast. All of Jamie’s kids were there, although we missed Brian Millard, Lisa’s husband, but Lisa came with Kaiden-our newest grandson. Nicci, Nate’s wife, came with all 5 of her kids – Gavin, Jaaren, Kelsey, Korah, and the youngest of her brood, Adrien. Tom and his wife-Erica drove down from Denver. The next day we all gathered again in Denver and celebrated Christmas. But we would not have all gotten together if Nate hadn’t worked his butt off and gotten his Masters. It was a lot of fun, and I’m so proud of Nate. Father of five, working full time at the University of Nebraska, and still taking the time to work like a beaver for fifteen months and get an advanced degree-it’s beyond anything that I would want to do-that’s for sure! Congratulations Nate!
We are working on a rather large project on the history of education, the path of learning, and the school systems in the United States. When it is completed, it may end up being a series of several hours, but that will become clearer as we move along. Today, I thought I would post a short demo reel of some of the folks that we have interviewed over the last year. This will give you an idea of where we are going, but please understand that this does not include any of the pieces that show how long it takes to learn “anything”, and it also does not include any of the students that have suffered from Neurogenocide, and it certainly does not include any of the school rooms where neurogenocide is happening, and of course it does not include all the wonderful things that we want to show folks about how education could be done – that would let people grow up excited about learning, and totally engaged in the process of learning.
I've been working on our original website 
