Alternative Learning Opportunities

While I was in Tucson over Winter Break, I took some time to visit my nephew's school.  To give a little background, he attends a private school there. Arizona's educational system is very different from ours:  there, anyone who wants to contribute to a child's private education may do so and earn a tax credit for up to $2000.  If you're interested, I'm happy to give you my full opinion on what this does to diminish support for public education.

Tucson's schools are in a very large system, where there are many alternative charter options.  One of the charter schools is #2 in Newsweek's best schools because they allow only the highly academically motivated students and their numbers of AP exams give yearly is off the charts.

But, I digress...

Check out what Alex's school (St. Gregory's, but not parochial, with approximately 300 6-12th graders) hosts a community garden, provides leadership programming including their own high ropes course, collects their rain water for recycling, and manages their own livestock.  Check it out...

Their water collection system - wouldn't this be a great science project?

It's hard to see, but here's their high ropes course.  I don't expect we'll do anything like this, but what other ways can we foster student leadership?

The above two pics show the community garden:  families "rent" the space for $15/month and are responsible for maintaining their own plantings.  This is a partnership beyond the school, but wouldn't it be cool to work with Sunset Hills/Crestwood to do something similar.  Anyone have a passion?

Chickens and goats!  Doesn't that sound like fun?

You all know how much I love authentic learning, and these are great examples of authentic learning opportunities for students.  However, programs like this require a lot of dedication and passion -- I think there is a great opportunity within Flyertime to spearhead these types of learning activities, but that will be something that will evolve over time.

Welcome back!