#EdJourney by Grant Lichtman

Author:Grant Lichtman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business
ISBN: 9781119422921
Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Hacking School

These few stories represent a small fraction of the new approaches to course development and changing student-teacher roles I saw on my trip. When I visited these schools, I did not ask educators to talk about or show me the courses I have described in this chapter; I only asked to be shown what they felt was their most innovative or exciting program, and every school I visited had something to show. These are the pilot projects that leaders at each school believe hold the keys to their evolving future. Nearly every school I visited is adapting course descriptions, testing the bounds of subject, and starting to place student engagement at the core of the academic program. Courses of study are evolving to embrace the life skills that even children recognize are more critical to their future success than a specific body of content knowledge. Schools are remembering the power of passion, both in adults and students, unleashing energy by allowing students and teachers as co-learners to follow those passions and through them achieve both foundational and extraordinary learning outcomes.

A few months after I arrived back in California, a social media contact told me, “I know you are checking out how K–12 education is evolving to link interest to learning; you have to check out this kid.” “This kid” turned out to be then thirteen-year-old Logan LaPlante, who gave a TEDx talk at the University of Nevada in February 2013 that, at the time I am writing this, had crossed over 4.7 million views.

Logan’s parents pulled him out of the traditional school system when he was nine years old, and he explains in his talk how he and they have developed the mindset that education, like pretty much anything else now, can be effectively “hacked” without participating in a traditional school institution. Partly on his own and partly in connection with the Squaw Valley Kids Institute, Logan says he spends his days learning, but on his own terms. He studies a lot of traditional subject material, but often through the lens of his first love, skiing. He says that whether he is writing, speaking, studying physics, interning at a local clothing design company, or learning wilderness survival skills, the motivation of studying what he is passionate about speeds up the learning process.

Logan says that when adults ask kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the adults generally assume the answer will include a profession. Logan says that adults largely anticipate that happiness occurs as a function of doing well in school, going to college, and getting a good job. Kids, Logan says, pretty much just want to be happy, and he asks why education does not prioritize the practices of being healthy and happy. The lack of that practice is what drove him and his parents to try hacking school on their own.

“Hackers are innovators who challenge and change systems to make them work differently, work better,” says Logan in his talk. “Everything is up for being hacked.

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