AlterEd

Third Meeting (see below for the report)

As the time for our third meeting approached I realized we needed to 

move forward and so sent out this e-mail to our friends...

Dear Friends,  

When I sent out the minutes for the last Alternative Education 

gathering I suggested pencilling in 7th February as the next meeting date. 

In recognition of the value of your time, I would like to postpone the date 

until there is a more substantial agenda. Joel, Martin, Ajay and I will be 

working on a description of a proposed "school" and doing some 

background research on next steps.  I hope to invite you all to gather 

and continue the discussion on this exciting project early in March, 

look out for another e-mail.  Meanwhile, please continue to feed me 

with ideas and suggestions, even a name for the new establishment 

would be helpful. Something that encapsulates the individualised 

attention to each student and the respectful support given to that 

student's leadings and passions, while demanding a high level of 

mastery in some area...  

Paul

Report on our Third Meeting, 7th February, 2010

Our first two meetings gave us a lot to think about and really inspired us to keep moving towards doing something concrete to help the teenagers that will shortly inherit the society we live in.

To that end Joel, Martin, Ajay and I met on the 7^th February and after more conversation on educational matters came up with some goals:

Summer 2015 – an established permanent home;

September 2011 – open with 10 to 20 students meeting in a space yet to be determined;

January 2011 – establish an “office” with website and promotional materials together with a marketing plan;

June 2010 – have a name, mission statement, bye laws and be incorporated as a legal entity.

May 2010 - most important, establish a board of trustees.

A suggested philosophy statement that still needs work might be:

“Learning is natural and individual. We hope to inspire and nurture self-directed learning in a respectful, non-coercive environment.”

Any words of wisdom on any part are welcome but in particular, we could not think of a satisfactory non-negative alternative term for “non-coercive”, which could be construed as a criticism of other schools.... does anyone have any up-beat and positive suggestions?

Another interesting discussion point was the importance of lunch to teenagers and we thought about the need for a kitchen and common dining area in our future space. Making this an integral part of the educational experience could also have the desirable effect of modeling a healthy diet and strengthening the community of learners. (I would recommend a visit to Tinicum Arts and Science to see this in action.)

There is a lot of work to do, it will be stimulating and good fun but it does have a serious purpose. We are extremely lucky to have such good hearted and capable friends interested in moving this project forward.

Please pencil in another meeting on the 6th March where we can explore everyone's ideas about our time-line, philosophy statement and overall vision.

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