Welcome to our blog

This is the story of two educators on one journey. Each day we will record our reflections on the process of being involved in an innovative educational environment. The decision on our part to leave the public education system was deliberate due to our growing frustrations over the factory "one size fits all" model of education. This model has dominated the educational landscape and is not designed to meet the needs of the 21st century learner. Step one in our journey was to find a place that would allow us the freedom to break out of the system. We needed a chance to just breath and facilitate learning in the ways that we both know are best for children. That step has led us to Rosemary Beach Florida to work with the students attending the OH Institute. The OH Institute is a unique educational environment that we find humane. The curriculum focus is on the individual learner with an infusion of technology project based learning. Currently, it has 20 students in grades 4-11 all of whom are seeking something different than what the factory system of education has to offer. This is where our adventure begins...

Monday, November 29, 2010

Tuesday November 16th

Randy -
I feel that things are actually running quite well in all fronts. The main concern is people falling back on their FLVS work which of course I think should be sort of OK but it is not as far as parents and such are concerned.

Amy-
So I am starting to again wonder what my role is in the model. It has been great having Tim in the room to give us a different set of eyes on the day. Today he mentioned the possibility of having a third facilitator enter the picture and my only question is what he would see this persons role as and why he sees the need for a third facilitator?

It is a weird position that I am in because I thought my role was documenting the process and producing a document that is transferable to other locations. Having a third person while it would of course be amazing support would not be realistic for transferring the model to another school. We did not have much time to talk it over and we will see where this is going.

As for the day I am really struggling with my role and feel almost like I have a split personality. There is so much writing and research that I need time to do but I am constantly in the room so I feel like anytime I start to write my flow is interrupted. I am going to talk to Randy about what his needs are from me and if he feels okay I am going to start stepping out a bit to start working on taking all the information that I have gathered and organizing it into something that makes sense.

I also feel really strongly that I need to do some research and write a rationale supported by research for what we are doing...

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