A Jouney Through Alternative Education

by
Rob Creasy
Instructor: Middalia Carpio
IDS TA 96
M.Ed. Curriculum and Instruction

How I got here... I would like to think that I am the teacher that I needed when I was in school. Right now I don't think that I am there yet, but I think that just by trying to is half the battle.
When I was a forth grade student I was placed in an SLD program because of difficulties I was having in math. At that time in Lake County this meant that I would just be taught only the very basics (1+1=2, 2-1= 1, etc.) at the beginning of each year and expected to be on grade level by the end of the year. Surprise, surprise no one ever accomplished this, so the next year we all would start over from the start. As you can imagine this tended to teach us that no matter how hard we tried we were going to fail. In our minds we were failing because we were not as smart as the other kids. We didn't realize that we were being set up to fail. All we saw was that everyone else got to advance we never would.

One definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes. For me that is exactly what school was, insanity. We were never taught other ways to do the problems, as a matter of fact we were actually not allowed to do things any other way than the standard. The teachers were not allowed to start the students off any were other than at the very basics. The rule was the student would start at the bottom and work through a series of worksheets and drills and once you did that you go to the next series of problems. The sheer volume of the work hampered advancement. The students could not test past any parts, they could not succeed. I had one good SLD teacher in 8th grade that finally told the school that the SLD program at the school was wasting the students time, because the teachers were not allowed to teach the students what they needed. She had all these crazy ideas like if the student knows how to do addition and subtraction but not multiplication then teach them to multiply, not continue to drill them on basic addition. She decided to ignore the curriculum and guidelines given to her and just teach each student as an individual and address their own unique needs allowing every one to progress at their own pace. The controversial idea seemed to be the progressing part. After all who did she think she was, a teacher. Eventually the school fired her for noncompliance. Proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

So here I am trying to keep that from happening to any more students. Trying to be half the teacher Ms. Ginann was. I think the first step to doing that would be to realize that the system is broken. Now thats not to say we should give up on it altogether just realize it does not work the way it is now. We as educators talk about such things as the multiple intelligences and how we should use them, but I ask you how many of us truly do? I know that at the beginning of the year we all set up our rooms with that in mind but how long does it take for those great ideas to go by the wayside? Sooner or later most of us slip back into the “old reliable tried and true” methods of the past that we all seem to slip into at times. I think that it is important to look at all the research into the multiple intelligences all and the brain based teaching. For more than thirty years research into such things as Brain Gym® and sensory motor exercises has shown that the human brain can be remapped by physical activity. This is technique used extensively with brain injury patients. In one instance a young child with a severe and rapidly progressing form of epilepsy was suffering from 300 to 400 painful seizures a day. The doctors felt that in the very near future the one of the seizures would kill her. In a radical operation the surgeons removed one half of her brain. It was believed that if the child survived she would be left severely disabled if not in a complete vegetative state. Not willing to give up on their daughter the parents and doctors chose to try and remap the girls brain with physical exercise. The human brain needs to control so many activities that the same areas of of the brain controls hundreds if not thousands of things. The theory is that anytime a person learns to do something any other action that uses the same section of the brain will be enhanced as well. Research has determined that the same area of the brain that controls reading also controls balance, so if you improve your balance you will also improve your reading ability. After 13 years of physical therapy the girl has been able to learn to walk, talk and even graduated from high school with regular diploma and is planning on going to college.
It would seem to reason that something different must be done to the current system. If such techniques can be used successfully with such an incredible case, then what could be done with your average student. That very question is why I sought out the school that I am at now. When I began the search I knew very little about the different alternative educational techniques that were being used I just knew that what we were doing now wasn't working. When I found Summit Charter School it seemed to be just what I was looking for. “Seemed “ being the operative word, as it turned out saying and doing really are two different things.
The curriculum at my school is a combination of many teaching styles and techniques. The belief is that there no, "one size fits all" program that will suit every child's needs. All of our students have one thing in common they all have various learning disabilities. We will continue to strive to improve on our program by developing new techniques and combining them with successful elements of educational teaching programs found to be effective with SLD students.

The basis of our program includes techniques as:
Auditory Processing Training
Character Development.
Dennison's Brain Gym®
EEG Neurofeedback
Eric Jensen's Brain-Based Learning
Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences including Art and Music with the Brain in Mind
Interactive Metronome
Montessori Reading and Math Manipulatives
Moving With Math" in conjunction with Edwin Lieberthal's Finger-math
Project Adventure's Experiential Learning/Adventure in the Classroom/Adaptive P.E.
Reading Research Foundation's Perceptual Motor Training in conjunction with the American Manual Alphabet and "Moving Out The Letters"
Sensory Motor Integration
Stevenson's Reading and Language Skills Program in conjunction with Encoding and Decoding The Phonics Game™ and The Math Game™
Visual Processing Training

Having explained the program it's easy to see why I was excited to be at this school. The reality of it is that the majority of those things never make it off the paper. Curriculum over cite is nearly nonexistent and incompetence is business as usual, and the only way to get fired is to complain. My experience at this school has greatly effected my opinions about the educational system as we know it. I think it is such a shame when so much work and thought has gone into a system and is wasted out of laziness. I think the old saying that goes “To get anything done right you must do it yourself.”

I plan to one day open a school where the alternative teaching styles are used on a daily basis. We would have curriculum specialists that would use the students IEP to create a specialized program of study for each student. The core curriculum would include extensive use of Brain Gym®, sensory motor and music therapy.

Brain Gym®:
For approximatly 30 years researchers have been looking into the connection between the mind and body. Preleminary observations noted tha many of the LD students also had coordination problems, a connection seemed obvios to Dr. Paul and Gail Dennison. In 1969 they noted that many of the students had the intelligence to succeed at the tasks. What many of the students had in common were a deficiet in their physical/perceptual abilities, that had often plagued the child's development, uncorrected, since infancy. This led to difficulties in spatial awareness, a concept of wholeness and closure. The ability to focus attention and perceive an organization or a structure, are requisite learning skills, seemingly easy to teach yet often not available to the children who need them.

The idea then became to look at seemingly easier task of improving their coordination as that is something readily visable. “Brain Gym® consists of simple movements similar to the movements that are natural in the first three years of life to accomplish important developmental steps for coordination of eyes, ears, hands and the whole body.” These are used to reinforce 3 diminsions of brain function. These are:

Laterality is the ability to coordinate one side of the brain with the other, especially in the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic midfield, the area where the two sides overlap. This skill is fundamental to the ability to read, write and communicate. It is also essential for fluid whole-body movement, and for the ability to move and think at the same me.

Focus is the ability to coordinate the back and front areas of the brain. It is related to comprehension, the ability to find meaning, and to the ability to experience details within their context. People without this basic skill are said to have attention disorders and difficulty in comprehending. At a deeper level, focus allows us to interpret a particular moment or experience in the greater context of our lives or to see ourselves as unique individuals within the larger framework of our society.

Centring is the ability to coordinate the top and bottom areas of the brain. This skill is related to organization, grounding, feeling and expressing one's emotions, a sense of personal space, and responding rationally rather than reacting from emotional overlay.
A recent study (Dr. Robert Eyestone, 1990) found that more than 95 percent of individuals in groups labeled as "at risk" (teen mothers, juvenile detention, ADD/ADHD, in learning disabilities classes, drug rehabilitation, alcohol support groups) were operating in a homo-lateral state, as compared to 8 to 13 percent in random groupings.

Sensory Motor:
Sensory motor programs are specifically designed to identify individual strengths and weaknesses needed for academic success. By determining "how students learn" rather than "what" they learn. Once the program finds sensory motor difficulties, the staff would develope exercises to help correct these problems. The latest available research shows that a childs brain becomes organized in a certain predefined sequence. Children with learning disabilities some of the sequencing has not occured. This often creates difficulties in learning such things as math and reading. Researchers have found that many of the same areas of the brain are used for balence as well as word decoding. If a students balence is improved, that students decoding ability is also improved. This produces improved reading skills in both speed and comprehension. By reprogramming the brain, children develop the necessary sensory motor and cognitive skills necessary to learn the content taught in school. The gains made are self-reinforcing, and should be for life! Adaptive physical education programs incorporate many of the key elements found in sensory integration and occupational therapy as well as traditional and experiential P.E. Programs.
Music Therapy:
This is a philosophy that is born out of my personal experience. As I child I was labeled as having having learning disabilities. These disabilities seemed to be corrected as I went through high school. At the time my parents and I thought that I had simply outgrown them. It wasn't untill I started doing research on alternative educational styles that I realized that what had happened was I had reprogramed my brain.

My freshman year of high school I began playing drums in the marching band. I first thought that the reprogramming was as a result of simply the brain gym sensory motor type movment that is involved in playing the drums. The speed of the change is what suprised me however. I made it out of the SLD program after my sophmore year. Something more must have been at work in my case. I began searching for information regarding music and more specifically rythem instuments, and their effect on learning disabilities. I found that there was a sizable body of research pointing to a correlation between rythmic sounds and mood / behavior modification. The research shows that rythemic sound releases several different chemicals in the body that in addition to relaxing the brain also prepare the brain to recieve information. There are many progams in use across the nation that involve the use of “drum circles” with at risk youth programs. In my case effects of playing drums accomplished more than 7 years of SLD class could.

I think that the school I want to open would be geared at helping to give the student the skills they need to thrive in the traditional educational environment. We would attempt to move the student back into the mainstream as soon as possible. I feel that the traditional school system would be best suited to handle the long term education of a student. Our students would be with us for between one and three years.

One has to wonder if alternative educational techniques will be the ultimate answer to the educational crisis that we are now facing.

John Dewey“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont on October 20, 1859 to Archibald Sprague Dewey and Lucina Artemesia Rich. He attended the public school system and the University of Vermont in Burlington. He received his PhD from the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in 1884. After obtaining his bachelors degree in 1879, Dewey taught for two years as a high school teacher, where he began thinking of pursuing a career in philosophy. He is recognized as an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He is was one of the driving forces behind the philosophical school of Pragmatism, as well as functional psychology. He became a professor of philosophy at Columbia University In 1904. He became a leading representative of the progressive movement in U.S. education during the early 20th century.
Dewey wrote many important papers and books detailing his theories. These theories have been a source of influence to many educators in the United States and around the world. In 1896 he wrote a critique of a standard psychological theory called "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" which many feel to be his most influential work This would become the basis of all his further work. He later went on to write:
“Human Nature and Conduct” (1922), a study of the role of habit in human behavior;
“The Public and its Problems” (1927), a defense of democracy written in response to Walter Lippmann's The Phantom Public;
“Experience and Nature” (1929), Dewey's most "metaphysical" statement;
“Art as Experience” (1934), Dewey's major work on aesthetics;
“A Common Faith” (1934), a humanistic study of religion; Logic:
“The Theory of Inquiry” (1938), an examination of Dewey's unusual conception of logic.
“Freedom and Culture” (1939), a political work examining the roots of fascism.
Throughout his works he worked his key themes into his explorations of different philosophical themes.
Dewey attempts in his work to at once synthesize, criticize, and expand upon the democratic or proto-democratic educational philosophies of such philosophers as Rousseau and Plato. He disagreed with Rousseau's theories as placing to much importance on the individual while Plato's theories as placing to much importance on the society in which the individual lived. Dewey felt the mind and its formation was a communal process. Therefore the individual is only meaningful when viewed as a part of his society, and the society has no meaning apart from the individuals living in it.
He felt it was important that education teach the skills and knowledge which students will need and use in their lives as citizens and human beings. He felt that this was best done by teaching them with a practical element learning by doing this came as a result of his subscription to the philosophical school of Pragmatism. Dewey and his wife Alice put this theory into action when they ran the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, where children were taught many of the basic principles of chemistry, physics, and biology by investigating the natural processes which went into cooking breakfast in their classes. Many of his ideas, ideas became very popular, however were never widely practiced in the American schools systems, though some of his values and terms have taken root.
Today we see the wide use of various forms of manipulatives to give students a more concrete understanding of things like math. This seems to be a very direct descendant of his practical element theory. Most subjects taught now include many hands on examples and experiments. Teachers are encouraged to give as many real world examples of the concepts being taught. This is at all levels of education, from pre-k. up through college. Many schools now offer vocational programs where in addition to a high school diploma the student also receives a certification in a particular vocation. These philosophies have all become commonplace in the modern school system.
I believe that many of John Dewey's theories are valid today. The core of his school of thought was based on the belief that education should been relevant to the students who are being taught. That alone sums up what modern educational theories strive to be.

Racism: How We Feel it Everyday.

Racism is one of those things that seem so obviously wrong that you would think that it wouldn't be a problem any longer. Unfortunately as any can attest racism is still a problem. Today a lot of it is more covert and in someways more insidious. You will find that many people will swear up and down that they are not racist and perhaps they even believe it however they support many of the policies and institutions that are designed to maintain a white power majority.
My first realization of racial tension came we I was in kindergarten. It was 1974 and the civil rights movement was still being openly resisted in places all over the south, places like Lake County Florida. It had only been a few short years since the Lake County Sheriff made national news when an Orlando Sentinel story reported the FBI had launched yet another investigation in racially motivated crimes including murder committed by the sheriffs office. That made him the most investigated law enforcement officer in U.S. history. This became such a big story that it was picked by the AP and reprinted by papers all over the country including the New York Times. Earning the reporter a Pulitzer Prize, and more death threats than she could count. Some of the the threats came from the sheriff himself in the form of “warnings” about different people in the area who have been so riddled with guilt about spreading such terrible rumors about him they hung themselves from the nearest tree. To this day many consider Sheriff McCall to a great man. I guess the good old days aren't so good after all.
As I was saying, I was in kindergarten when a fight broke out between two high school students one white one black. They were both suspended, which was uncommon then. The white boys parents were upset and made some calls to the local KKK and the next day the Klan showed up to demand the principal allow the white student back in. The school board caved in and brought back the white student. By noon the parents of the black student were demanding the same to no avail. For the next three days several hundred angry blacks and whites faced off in the streets of Mt. Dora, and it looked like we would have an all out riot at any minute. Angry mobs on both sides were roaming the streets stopping traffic beating on cars and throwing bottles. The police were telling everyone to stay out of downtown, and from around the schools. The schools were ordered to stay open, they were denying the problem even existed. They just needed to hold out until Easter three days away. Surly no one would riot on Easter Sunday. They were right, and calmer heads prevailed. When school stared back up the next week the police were stationed in the schools. In time things just sort of died down, but every one still remembers how bad things got that spring.
I remember asking my mom why people were hitting our car and trying to stop us from going to school after all I had a very important Easter egg hunt to go to. My parents tried to explain it to me, but couldn't I just had more important things to than fight over something so silly as the color of your skin. I knew Fred and Earl were two black kids in my class and they were my friends, Earl was a year older than us so he was automatically the coolest kid in class. As a kindergärtner I just couldn't understand what the big deal was. Like I said I had more important things to do.
I guess thats basically how I feel now. I just don't have the time worry about silly things like color. With things like war, the economy, education, work,and family I don't have the time for nonsense.

The Good, the Bad, and the Different. : The First Two Months at NLU

The first couple of months here at NLU have been a lot different than what I expected. Actually I'm not quite sure what I really expected. NLU is structured a lot different than the other schools that I have gone to, it's a lot ore relaxed environment than they were. This is a welcome change from the rather strict format of my past schools. My only complaint is a two parter and the first part barely rises to the level of complaint is that the class is to student participatory in that after spending eight hours talking to kids the last thing that I want to do is make a presentation. I see about 100 students a day and by 4:30 I am pretty much talked out. Now I do realize that this is my own problem as I am not as naturally gregarious as many of the other students. I also realize that presentation is pretty much the entire job in teaching so once again this is more my issue (see it's my need to be a better communicator again) than a problem with the course. My next thought is about putting some time limits on student presentations. I feel that some of the presentations have been overly long and tedious, that time could have been better spent with instructor led discussion or lecture or group time. This is in no way meant to be an attack on any of the students. Those presenters effort and research is admirable to say the least. I simply feel that we have a very finite amount of class room time in this program and a great deal to cover, so efficient time management is key to our success. Perhaps this is just part of the big picture. What makes a effective and concise lecture? Is it simply a wealth of information? Or a rousing personal speaking style. I tend to believe they both equally important. After all what good is the information if the listener has already tuned out?
Despite my complaints, I would still give the program two thumbs up.

Brain Gym®

Article Review: Brain Gym®

By Tom Maguire
(Published in “New Learning”, Spring 2001, U.K.)
“Brain Gym is a series of exercises designed to help learners coordinate their brains and their bodies better. This holistic approach to learning also enables students to find an equilibrium between both sides of the brain and body. When well learned it is a tool for life-long learning.”
(Published in “New Learning”, Spring 2001, U.K.)
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For approximatly 30 years researchers have been looking into the connection between the mind and body. Preleminary observations noted tha many of the LD students also had coordination problems, a connection seemed obvios to Dr. Paul and Gail Dennison. In 1969 they noted that many of the students had the intelligence to succeed at the tasks. What many of the students had in common were a deficiet in their physical/perceptual abilities, that had often plagued the child's development, uncorrected, since infancy. This led to difficulties in spatial awareness, a concept of wholeness and closure. The ability to focus attention and perceive an organization or a structure, are requisite learning skills, seemingly easy to teach yet often not available to the children who need them.
The idea then became to look at seemingly easier task of improving their coordination as that is something readily visable. “Brain Gym consists of simple movements similar to the movements that are natural in the first three years of life to accomplish important developmental steps for coordination of eyes, ears, hands and the whole body.” These are used to reinforce 3 diminsions of brain function. These are:
- Laterality is the ability to coordinate one side of the brain
with the other, especially in the visual, auditory, and
kinesthetic midfield, the area where the two sides
overlap. This skill is fundamental to the ability to read, write
and communicate. It is also essential for fluid whole-body
movement, and for the ability to move and think at the same
time.
- Focus is the ability to coordinate the back and front areas of
the brain. It is related to comprehension, the ability to find
meaning, and to the ability to experience details within their
context. People without this basic skill are said to have
attention disorders and difficulty in comprehending. At a
deeper level, focus allows us to interpret a particular moment
or experience in the greater context of our lives or to see
ourselves as unique individuals within the larger framework of
our society.
- Centring is the ability to coordinate the top and bottom
areas of the brain. This skill is related to organization,
grounding, feeling and expressing one's emotions, a sense of
personal space, and responding rationally rather than reacting
from emotional overlay.
A recent study (Dr. Robert Eyestone, 1990) found that more than 95 percent of individuals in groups labeled as "at risk" (teen mothers, juvenile detention, ADD/ADHD, in learning disabilities classes, drug rehabilitation, alcohol support groups) were operating in a homolateral state, as compared to 8 to 13 percent in random groupings.
I feel this article should be required reading for all teachers and trainers for children and adults. Many top organizations are now useing themselves to train employees.

Now thats an important photo...

When I started this assignment I approached it from a rather conservative point of view. I like most people started going through my family photos and thought about who these people really are. After all when we look at a picture of our favorite uncle and all we see is the uncle that took us to football games and the boat show. We don't see the person who was an alcoholic wife beater and tax cheat. We make up our own realities about the people in our lives.
The people in the photos are not my friends or family, they are all well known recognizable public figures. Who they really are is up for debate though. What would the people in their lives say about them? Would their memories of these people match our expectations? When they think about them do they envision the great physicist or due they remember the person that was so emotionally distant that he would go days or even weeks without speaking to his own wife who lived under the same roof. The great artist or the substance abuser.
Who is to say who the real person is? We are all a thousand different people at different times. I begin to wonder how the people in our see us. In the backs of peoples minds do they see the artist or the abuser? How the world sees us is too often given to great of an importance. It allows the guilty “charmer” to go unpunished and the innocent “schlep” to suffer the undeserved judgments handed down by the self righteous.
If we as a society would spend more time looking at the the objective realities of the world around us we would always reward the and chastise deserving. Instead of perpetuating the stereotypes and prejudices of our fathers.
Try to think about this tomorrow morning when that one particularly difficult student starts up again.

How I got here...

I would like to think that I am the teacher that I needed when I was in school. Right now I don't think that I am there yet, but I think that just by trying to is half the battle.
When I was a forth grade student I was placed in an SLD program because of difficulties I was having in math. At that time in Lake County this meant that I would just be taught only the very basics (1+1=2, 2-1= 1, etc.) at the beginning of each year and expected to be on grade level by the end of the year. Surprise, surprise no one ever accomplished this, so the next year we all would start over from the start. As you can imagine this tended to teach us that no matter how hard we tried we were going to fail. In our minds we were failing because we were not as smart as the other kids. We didn't realize that we were being set up to fail. All we saw was that everyone else got to advance we never would.
One definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes. For me that is exactly what school was, insanity. We were never taught other ways to do the problems, as a matter of fact we were actually not allowed to do things any other way than the standard. The teachers were not allowed to start the students off any were other than at the very basics. The rule was the student would start at the bottom and work through a series of worksheets and drills and once you did that you go to the next series of problems. The sheer volume of the work hampered advancement. The students could not test past any parts, they could not succeed. I had one good SLD teacher in 8th grade that finally told the school that the SLD program at the school was wasting the students time, because the teachers were not allowed to teach the students what they needed. She had all these crazy ideas like if the student knows how to do addition and subtraction but not multiplication then teach them to multiply, not continue to drill them on basic addition. She decided to ignore the curriculum and guidelines given to her and just teach each student as an individual and address their own unique needs allowing every one to progress at their own pace. The controversial idea seemed to be the progressing part. After all who did she think she was, a teacher. Eventually the school fired her for noncompliance. Proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
So here I am trying to keep that from happening to any more students. Trying to be half the teacher Ms. Ginann was.
Thanks Ms. Ginann, you were right all along.