Building a Community

When I began homeschooling, back in 1997, I had no idea what it would be like. I knew only one other person whose children did not attend school, and she lived several towns away. During the week, my neighborhood seemed quiet and empty, as all my neighbors sent their kids to local public or private institutions. I tried to ignore the nervous feeling that threatened to erode my confidence. Was I going to go crazy at home? Would my children become isolated and strange?

How were we going to meet people and make friends if there was no one around?


If my kids had attended school, their community would have been defined primarily by where they lived. In contrast, as I commuted to distant towns to meet with homeschoolers for group activities and field trips, I observed that town boundaries mattered far less to us than shared interests.

It seems we were part of a trend. A 2006 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, "The Strength of Internet Ties," describes similar changes in the way Americans in general have begun to view their communities:

"Instead of disappearing, people’s communities are transforming: The traditional human orientation to neighborhood- and village-based groups is moving towards communities that are oriented around geographically dispersed social networks. People communicate and maneuver in these networks rather than being bound up in one solitary community."

As a home educator, I knew I was not without a community. There were thousands of homeschoolers in New Hampshire, and over a million in the United States (according to this data from the U.S. Dept. of Education). It was just that, instead of being confined to one town, my community was scattered across the state and around the world. So, how was I to get involved?

Lessons Learned from a Debate About the Reading List for an English Class

It all started when my son's English teacher—an extraordinary mentor and all-around wonderful guy named Curt—sent email asking parents and students for their feedback on a list of books he was considering for the upcoming year. Unlike a requisite high school English class, this group was composed of seven homeschooled teens ranging in age from 15 to 18 who had been studying together for the past two years. They were accustomed to working collaboratively with their teacher and each other. Without the carrot-and-stick incentive of grades to motivate them, they had reason to make sure the books would be ones they'd feel inspired to read. So, when Curt asked for feedback, it was a genuine request for responses. 

Here's the list he proposed:

• The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Now, before you say what most people say ("Oh, those books are wonderful!"), let me stop you. I am aware that these are all distinguished works by well-respected authors. The Shipping News won a Pulitzer, and The Poisonwood Bible (a finalist for the Pulitzer) happens to be a personal favorite of mine. As models for writing fiction, they all have something to offer, from character portrayals to magical realism.


However, as I looked at the list, I could not imagine my son, a fairly typical teenage boy, enjoying a single one of the selections. His taste in literature runs more toward Terry Pratchett, Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Gaiman, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. So, although I should have known better, I decided to be his advocate. 

I wrote lengthy emails explaining why I thought he would dislike the books. Of course, I conceded, there's no harm in reading a few books you don't like, but was it reasonable to ask him to slog through over 400 pages of Allende's prose? I suggested other books he might like better. I asked whether it might be possible to read brief excerpts, a few chapters, to get a sense of the style. Curt waited patiently to see how others (particularly the students) would respond.

What Makes Attending a 4-Year Residential College Worth the Cost?

On a recent tour of Tufts University, I was impressed by the way our guide described his own experiences as a full-time, residential student. There was something about his passion that seemed genuine. He said he liked Tufts because it was a place where "smart is cool" and "everyone is a geek." He talked about meeting other students who were so passionate about their disciplines that "you should sit down before asking them about their research," because you would almost certainly be with them for a while. He described the frequent, positive interactions between faculty and students, interactions encouraged by the school's SPIRIT (Students and Professors Integrating Recreation, Intellect and Teaching) FUND, which pays for the (non-alcoholic) drinks when a faculty member invites a student to an on-campus cafe. He recounted serendipitous experiences, such as going to talk to a professor about a concept mentioned in class and getting so involved in the conversation that the meeting eventually led to a life-changing research internship.

I felt inspired, but also puzzled. I'm sure my son would love to attend a college where faculty are truly "caring and accessible," and students are "interested in serious intellectual discussions, but don't take themselves too seriously." Who wouldn't? What I had trouble understanding was why those qualities were considered noteworthy. Given the extraordinarily high cost of tuition, why aren't most college students highly motivated and engaged? Why is it an anomaly for a student to be interested in serious academic debate? Or for faculty and students to be interacting as equals?

Choices: Too Many, Not Enough, or Just Right?

What could possibly be wrong with having lots of choices? Choices acknowledge our individual differences: when we advocate for choice, we promote diversity, creativity, and critical thinking. As a parent and home educator, I favor creative alternatives to traditional forms of education—choices!—because I have met many students (my own children included) who do much better when they are not forced to conform to a single, prescriptive approach to learning. I have frequently argued that being able to choose for oneself is empowering, especially when it comes to education. Thanks to advances in technology, open educational resources, and online courses, hundreds of thousands of adults now feel empowered to pursue higher education on their own terms and schedules.

So, choice is good; but, what about too many choices? Recently, when I wanted to learn more about blogging, I used Google to search the Web, and I was presented with over 127 million results. Which ones were worth my attention? Later, when I needed to buy sunscreen, I made the mistake of going into a Walmart "superstore" and was stymied by the number of brands and varieties they sold. How is a person supposed to choose from so many seemingly identical choices?

It was after these two experiences that I came across Sheena Iyangar's TED Talks on "The Art of Choosing" (2010) and "How to Make Choosing Easier" (2011). She describes what happens when we are faced with "choice overload," and how some of our assumptions about having an abundance of choices can actually make us miserable. While we Americans like to believe that "the more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice," in practice, people tend to second-guess their choices and thus suffer from guilt, frustration, and even depression as they dwell on the choices they didn't make.

 

Looking back on my experiences as a home educator, I can see how having an abundance of choices has hampered me at times. When I first began homeschooling, I had to decide what sort of method and materials I wanted to use. The New Hampshire Home Education law (RSA 193-A) allowed me to choose any approach or curriculum as long as it consisted of "instruction in science, mathematics, language, government, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, the history of the constitutions of New Hampshire and the United States, and an exposure to and appreciation of art and music." I could also choose which of those subjects to teach each year as long as the annual evaluations demonstrated that my children were "making educational progress at a level commensurate with their ages and abilities."This freedom was both liberating and daunting. How was I ever going to choose the best educational materials from the wide selection available? (Consider: a single homechool curriculum vendor, the Rainbow Resource Center, offers over 40,000 educational products, and there are many other curriculum vendors.) Once I had chosen, would I be plagued with doubt, wondering whether I should have chosen differently?

Are You Drinking Water From a Firehose, or Casting a Line Into a Stream?

As part of my research for a high school course on "Thriving in the Digital Age" (course website), I have been reading Net Smart: How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold. In Chapter 2, he writes, "The real-time Web is not a queue . . . but rather a stream. Don't even try to keep up. Learn to sample." He goes on to describe techniques for sampling, by "tuning your antennae for the right signals" and "bringing the right information to you."

I felt a sense of relief as I read this. For weeks, I had been struggling to assess the overwhelming variety of Web 2.0 social media tools. Naively, I was trying to review every tool and learn everything there was to know, and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of information. "So," I thought to myself, "this is why people frequently compare using social media to drinking water from a fire hose." I needed a new approach, and Rheingold's mention of a stream opened my eyes to a different (though still watery) metaphor.

 I began to picture a beautiful stream, beckoning to me, inviting me to cast a line into the water. I thought about my husband, an avid fly fisherman, and how relaxing it is to watch him practice his art. The graceful motions inspire feelings of patience, serenity, inner calm and, on a lucky day, the thrill of the catch. It's not at all like the image of a fire hose, which I associate with scary, high adrenaline experiences: buildings in flames, mobs out of control, intense pressure and violent release. I would prefer my experiences in the online world to be more like catching fish than catching hell. I'm looking for quality, not quantity.

Rheingold writes about the importance of mindfulness when we use technology. To avoid unnecessary distractions, it helps to decide in advance what we hope to achieve in a given day, or year, or lifetime. Sure, those pictures of kittens are really adorable, but how much time do we want to devote to them? When, where, and how do we want to focus our attention? Ideally, online tools should help us to filter, organize, and limit the content that fills up our screens and lives. Used wisely, they can be as useful to us as the right fishing lure is to a fisherman.

An article from Steffan Antonas, "Drinking from the Social Media Firehouse—Six Lessons Learned," offers sage advice on how to use social media in a sane and meaningful way. He reminds us that "Social media interactions are meaningful only if you’re sharing remarkable ideas, being memorable, helping people achieve their goals, connecting to people and (most importantly) converting those connections into real offline relationships."

Obviously, we have to be selective about what we consume and create. The question is: do we want to be the ones doing the selecting, casting our lines strategically, or are we content to wait and see what hits us in the face at random? When I take time to learn how to tailor an RSS feed, set up a dashboard, or use tags and keywords to filter news reports, I feel it's time well spent. Like an experienced fisherman selecting the right lure, I can increase my chances of hooking something of interest while allowing everything else to flow past. Of course, I won't catch everything, but that doesn't need to be the goal for the experience to be rewarding.

Pushing Beyond the Comfort Zone

The only thing I enjoy more than a great TED Talk is a compendium of great TED Talks, all thoughtfully woven together with clever commentary and interesting interviews. That's why TED Radio Hour, hosted by Guy Raz, is without a doubt my favorite NPR program.

The most recent TED Radio Hour, "To the Edge," focused on adventurers who push themselves to their limits at the edges of the world. The program featured a polar explorer, a spelunker, a woman who rowed across oceans, and a high-wire enthusiast. Of all the stories, Roz Savage's ocean-going adventures fascinated me the most. Here was a woman who had been working in an office for many years until, one day, she decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean—in a rowboat. I mean, really, who does that?

Coincidentally, at the moment I tuned into the show, I had just been thinking about ordinary acts of bravery. My homeschooled son was away from home, living and learning for five full weeks at the Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul's School. The program is known for being intense, challenging, and extremely well loved. Past attendees (my younger daughter included) rave about it with a devotion bordering on zealotry. 

Thriving in the Digital Age

I've fallen behind on my postings but have been working steadily on plans for the course I described in earlier posts. The website for the course, Thriving in the Digital Age, is now available for browsing! Although the course is still a work in progress, most of the overall framework is solid at this point.

I've made some changes to my original plans. In Building on TED Talks: A Course for High School Seniors (Part I), I identified four tentative themes for grouping the talks and readings:

1. How We Think About Ourselves
2. How We Think About and Use Technology
3. How We Relate to One Another
4. How We Offer to Help Those Who Need It

I've since changed the themes for the course slightly to suit the needs of the students who will be participating. After discovering that one of my students was planning to take a college course on Global Social Issues this fall, I decided that much of what I had in mind for the fourth theme ("How We Offer to Help Those Who Need It," which included TED talks and related books by Jacqueline Novogratz, Dan Pallotta, Paul Collier, and Melinda Gates) would be too redundant. In a way, this was a relief to me: I was already worried that the focus of the course was too broad, and I was searching for a way to narrow it. Also, two of the books I was considering—The Bottom Billion by Collier, Charity Case by Pallotta—seemed as though they might not be a good fit for a few of my other students. 

So, I set aside the fourth theme, did some reorganizing, and ended up with the following themes instead: 

1. Empowerment, Personal and Political. What makes us feel empowered (or disempowered)? What types of situations or social conditions encourage more people to participate (online, face-to-face, at work, in our communities, or in general)? How does the internet influence who participates—and how and why do people feel empowered to do so? Why are some people effective leaders, able to motivate people to get involved, while others are not? (This theme is essentially a combination of "How We Think About Ourselves" and "How We Relate to One Another" from my initial planning phase, described above.)
2. Harnessing the Power of Distributed Expertise—How can we optimize our use of massive amounts of aggregated data and collective human brainpower? Major topics include Wikis, gaming, crowd sourcing, hive mind, and "cognitive surplus" (a term coined by Clay Shirky). The emphasis here is on intellectual collaboration.
3. Using Technology Mindfully for Sharing and Collaboration—How is technology changing the way our society functions, or how we are meant to coexist within our society? How might it alter the way we acquire, use and dispose of our "stuff"? Major concepts to be discussed include collaborative consumption, sustainability, open source, and (time permitting) "Sensible Cities." The emphasis here is on economic collaboration.

To explore these themes, I've found wonderful TED Talks and RSA Animates (posted on the Videos page), books (listed in the Syllabus), and websites. I'm excited about the idea of using student and class blogs to encourage discussions outside our weekly class meetings, so I've also added a page on Blogging. And, inspired by Howard Rheingold's admonishments to use technology mindfully, I've recently added a light-hearted page on Procrastination (with links to TED Talks by Vik Nithy, who offers advice on how to stay on task, and Dave Windass, who extols the merits of procrastinating). 

Currently, I'm working on developing ideas for class discussions and projects. I'll post more on those later.