True story: A NJ public library cleared off one of their walls and invited the local elementary school and a homeschool learning co-op to display student artwork for the community. On one side of the wall were the school students’ paintings, which were all slight variations of the exact same picture–obviously given as an assignment in art class. On the … Read More
Boy, You’re Gonna Carry that Weight
We just went through a wild year. And that is putting it lightly. A pandemic, everything that goes with the pandemic, civil unrest, a riling election, climate disasters, you name it. Weren’t there also aliens at some point? And here we are now, in 2021, still going through it. We’ve all been going through it in our own individual ways … Read More
The Conveyor Belt to Success
Around this time of year twenty-three years ago, I was a senior in high school fretting about applying to college. The whole process was intimidating, but what plagued me the most was that I didn’t know what I wanted to study. I didn’t know that because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t … Read More
Weaning Teens (Off Dependency)
We all know someone whose maturity, for no apparent medical reason, is stunted somewhere in adolescence. It may be a friend, a coworker, maybe even a parent. This person may be attention-seeking, self-centered, irresponsible, people-pleasing, prone to tantrums, or simply unrealized. How is it that the body matures without a hiccup, but the mind doesn’t always follow? The body grows … Read More
Credit, Credibility, and Sausage
If a person doesn’t go to school, how will future employers know that he or she is capable of the work at hand?
Good Stress, Bad Stress
Our members often describe PLC as a low-stress environment compared to their previous schools. Many of the common stressors in school are simply not present at PLC: competition for grades, mounds of homework, inflexible rules and regulations. We consciously try to reduce that kind of stress as much as possible. But one of the common concerns people have about self-directed … Read More
Common Sense Learning
“Common Core-aligned” has become the quality control test by which we measure a legitimate education. A quick Google search will reveal droves of businesses selling academic resources and programs on the basis of their “alignment.” Teachers are feeling constant pressure to “hit the standards,” standards that are meant to get everyone on the same page. And yet, I think the … Read More
Well-Rounded?
In a blog post about misunderstandings, Seth Godin wrote this: And anyone who has been through high school has been reminded how important it is to be well-rounded. But Nobel Prize winners, successful NGO founders and just about everyone you admire didn’t get that way by being mediocre at a lot of things. It got me thinking. It’s nearly an … Read More
Teaching Character vs. Compliance
Educating children can look and feel a lot like raising them. It is certainly not the same as parenting—I say that as an educator and a parent. However, the purpose of parenting and educating are very much aligned. The word “educate” means “to lead out”—to lead out into the world, into adulthood, into a future. I think it’s important that … Read More