By Chip Bruce
Creating a sabbatical school for Emily and Stephen has been a challenge for their teachers, Susan and me. We decided not to enroll them in a Chinese school because they knew little Chinese, and also because we were arriving and leaving in the midst of a semester. We knew that simply living in China and other parts of the world would be an educational experience far beyond anything we could construct, but we also wanted to give them some structured activities, both to help them learn and to make their days more manageable. This was partly in response to the sentiment expressed in Stephen's statement , "I want to have real school and not just look at the Grand Canyon!"
We decided to adopt a project-based approach for the major part of their schooling, with structured activities interspresed. The projects would be of varying scope. Some might be done in a morning; others would take several weeks, and some might continue throughout the year. Several project criteria seemed especially appropriate for our situation.
One was that the projects should capitalize on the natural learning opportunities presented by our travels. For example, we wanted to present a gift to the cabin at Lake Tahoe. There were many kinds of information about the Tahoe basin that would be useful to future visitors to the cabin. At the same time, we wanted to learn more about the area ourselves. So, we decided to make a scrapbook with drawings of animals, bus schedules, information about trees, the story of Tahoe Tessie, and more.
A second criterion grew out of our awareness of our distance from home. We wanted each project to result in some kind of communication to family and friends. That meant that most projects would have a productwriting, lists, drawings, photographs, or some other tangible means for sharing with others. That product, incidentally, provided a focus and goal for each project. The product was thus very important, something to be treated seriously, but it was viewed as a real comunication, not just a guise for teaching conventions.
A third criterion arose from our knowledge that we could not know what we did not know about any of the places we would visit or the people we would meet. So, we wanted activities that would open up, or uncover, ways of thinking and new ideas, rather than simply cover a preset sequence of concepts. Obviously, we came with notions that aspects of culture, history, science, art, music, politics, and so on, were worth investigating, but the specific structures of our projects would emerge from the inquiry.
Collaboration
Care
Initiation
Complexity
Tahoe Scrapbook
Ging Newtrich
Learning Chinese
Accounting for meals
Taxi No. 1729
Picture Walk
Miles so far