Morning Meeting by Bert? Improv! – D56

This morning Bert was going to facilitate the meeting, but since he has been sick (rumor says that he has pneumonia) we facilitated as a group. First we watched some videos and wait for the other because we were only 8, and then only three more arrived later and we discussed a quote Bert gave us. We changed the method of the attendance sheet, so now everyone is responsible for putting his or her name on the respective column and that way we will know who's absent.

These are the videos we watched for today's morning meeting:

TED2012 remixed, 60 Second Adventures in Economics (combined), The History of Nikola Tesla, The History of Thomas Edison, and The History of Che Guevara.

We also discussed this quote, first in pairs and then as a group.

“…(As a public school teacher) I teach the lesson of dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of all, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meaning of our lives…We’ve built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don’t know any other way.”

- John Taylor Gatto

On Time... And New Method

The Crime of the Zebra

Euclid? Big Discussion – D55

Everything appeared to be normal, just a regular Euclid class, until Ingrid mentioned a new standard calling for exact precision on our drawings, making them with previous propositions. She tried to make proposition 4, but didn’t succeed in doing so, showing that that exercise is not practical in the future propositions. We did agree that we would do them as precise as possible using our tools like the compass. The discussion evolved into finding a solution for a better learning process of Euclid. What we concluded is that we should divide the class into three groups, chosen by affinity, and to have standards for all of us for presenting and documenting the propositions, but each group will have its own rubrics and objectives, although the general objective for everyone is to finish up to proposition 30 for this semester. My group is Pablito, Alejo, Gabbi, Chacho, and Isa. This is our rubric:

We also talked about excuses and “getting real”, and how we have been interacting as a group and giving each other feedback. There were different views on the topic, some (Gabbi, Alejo, and some other I don’t remember) were saying we should have a third person, like a moderator or psychologist to mediate with each of us, and others (Carmen, Lucía, Kata, and some others) were saying we don’t need that and that it should be a personal approach with each other, that it has to be within us and not to wait for other person. I agreed with both sides by saying that the change and proactivity to solve problems comes within us, and that it could help having a workshop on how to work better as a group. I also tried to keep calm and mediate the opposite views, trying to reach an agreement on what should we do next as a group. I think I did a good job doing this and proposing solutions to these problems. At the end, we advanced in our organization and I take something positive of the discussion.

Visit to Acton Academy Guatemala – Friday 21

We got an invitation from Daniel Herbruger to visit the Acton Academy, a student-centered school. I long time before, I heard about this school and after thinking and inspecting their program I am persuaded that when I have kids, they would definitely study in this kind of schools. It’s a place where students learn to think by themselves and learn what they are interested in; they specialize in what they like.

So, I wanted to meet the students and faculty a long time ago and now Daniel was inviting us. We had a dialogue, which they called it, Socrate’s Café, in reference to a book, and we discussed the following question: Do I have to listen to my parents? It was a very interesting dialogue with the middle school students and some of the faculty. I got to the conclusion that mothers think and advice their children more guided by their instincts, since they have this protective instinct caused by nature and us being with them for 9 months before we are born. On the other hand, fathers may think and advice more guided by reason. We may confuse this with how they understand us, so it is more probable to have a more fluid and easy talk with fathers than mothers, thus we may listen more to fathers. I’m not saying is this way, but it was a conclusion based on the experiences of the members of this dialogue.

After the dialogue, Daniel and I started talking about the education system and the potential of the student-centered systems. We also talked about documentation and its importance in our learning process of life.

Check out the book! Socrate's Café 

Documentary: “La Educación Prohibida” – D11

After a long and exhausting week, we decided to watch a documentary called “La Educación Prohibida”. We haven’t finished it, but it is about the traditional educational system and what it does to the students. Do we really learn and get educated on school? Is there another way to learn? A better one? A student-centered one? Now a day, most of the teachers don’t know their students, so how could they decide which method is best for their learning? We are in a culture in which we expect to receive everything, specifically knowledge, from someone else and always wait for an authority to tell us how things are and how they should be. We have stopped thinking! Is that sustainable or by any means good for mankind? We have to create spaces were people actually think; places were the teacher is only to help in the process of learning but not to teach what he or she wants or was told to “teach”. Instead of getting worried about what they would “teach” us and what to think, they should be worried about teaching us how to think by ourselves. It was an excellent end to the week.

*Here is the link to watch the documentary: La Educación Prohibida

Culture of Learning and Unschooling – Dialogue with Dale Stephens, D3

Is the actual educational system good? Is college the only way of learning? This is what the MPC is all about. It is about finding new ways of learning, of creating a new culture of learning, a student-centered and self-directed learning. The traditional, teacher-centered, educational system is becoming more obsolete every day that passes. So, what is the future of education? That’s what we are trying to change at MPC. It is about learning how to learn, becoming a self-learner. On Thursday, we had Dale Stephens, a Thiel Fellow, as a guest on our dialogue. We discussed his new project, UnCollege, and his upcoming book, Hacking your Education. He thinks college is not the only way to become an educated person nor that college is the best way to do it. He is in favor of unschooling, of letting oneself discover and learn by life experiences.