A must read by Seth Godin: Stop Stealing Dreams #free!

What it is: Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors and bloggers to read.  He so often has insight that cuts right to the heart of a matter.  What I appreciate about Seth’s writing most, is the way he can say things in a way that people can hear and accept.  Seth has a brand new digital “book” (manifesto) called Stop Stealing Dreams.  I love the dedication that he begins with: “Dedicated to every teacher who cares enough to change the system and to every student brave enough to stand up and speak up.”  The “stand up” stands out to me because that is what we aim to do every single day at Anastasis.  In fact, we chose the name Anastasis because it translates to “stand again” or “resurrection” from Greek.  That is exactly what we aim to do every single day…help kids stand again in their learning.  Now you know where our Twitter hashtag comes from. 🙂

Seth poignantly points out that “Instead of amplifying dreams, school destroys them.”  That is a hard statement for those of us in education. We sign up for this crazy ride to help dreams flourish and yet because of the system of education, end up doing precisely the opposite.  It is hidden.  We don’t set out to do this…truly we don’t.  But consider the way that we push kids through education and tell them what the most important things are for them.  Students get the message loud and clear: check these boxes, take these classes, pass these tests.  Do it so you can get into high school.  Do it so that you can go to college. Do it so that you can get a job.  What message are we really sending?  “You and your dreams are not enough.”

I don’t want to give too much of the manifesto away because I think that it is worth reading for every teacher, administrator and parent.  Seth offers this download for free.  The guy knows how to spread ideas!   The point of the manifesto is not to leave you feeling hopeless over the current situation of education, but asking questions and encouraging us to say “why not?”  Print the book out, read it on a digital device, and share it…share it widely!  The first step to a revolution is spreading the idea and opening door to the possibility.

How to integrate Stop Stealing Dreams into the classroom:  Read Stop Stealing Dreams.  Highlight it, earmark pages, write in the margins, challenge yourself.  Then share it with everyone you know.  I find that it is easy to find teachers who are ready to hear this message and act on it.  It’s been my experience that parents are a little harder to convince.  We are all “experts” on education because we have all been through it.  We have all of these assumptions that we know exactly what it should look like and even assume that the classroom model has been perfected.  This manifesto helps challenge those assumptions and come up with new ideas apart from the assumptions.
@matthewquigely had our Jr. High students download Stop Stealing Dreams today.  Students have assumptions about education too.  I’m excited to hear the kids reflections on the manifesto.  They will have a completely different view, different questions, and come up with their own fantastic ideas about how education can stop stealing dreams.   I would be interested in having the kids come up with a manifesto of their own!
Tips:  When you are finished reading Stop Stealing Dreams, I highly recommend the next books on your reading list be those mentioned in the manifesto.  If you haven’t read them, they are a must!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Stop Stealing Dreams in  your classroom!

November Issue: #ProjectPLN

It’s here, it’s here!  The November issue of Project PLN is finally finished (thanks to many of you!) and ready to share.

We are excited about the November issue of Project PLN because it is full of feel-good stories about the amazing things that are happening in schools around the world.  We have a great collection of stories that will have  you inspired and thankful to be a part of this thing we call education.  Take a look at the stories in the new issue, leave a comment for those who contributed and feel free to share your own stories on Twitter using the hash tag #SchoolDidaGoodThing

At Anastasis, we had a few students share what good things they saw happening at school, it is always great to have the kids perspective!  Be sure to check out that post in Project PLN this month!

For the December Issue, we want to do something AWESOME. We want to hear from students from across this country and around the world. Educators, politicians, parents and many more have been doing a lot of talking about what schools should look like to best serve students. Well, we had the crazy idea of actually asking the students what they would want their school to look like if they could design it! These can be group projects or a collection of smaller projects. If you send it, we will publish it. :-)  I did this project with students a few years ago and it was really neat.  Amazing things happen when you ask for student input!

Using this Google Doc, please sign up for the grade level you teach and have your students draw, write, film, animate, etc what they want in their dream school. In all, we would like to have 13 posts representing K-12.

We would love to have all submissions by Monday December 19 so we can put them up for Tuesday December 20th before the Holidays get the best of us.

Dreaming: A look at Anastasis Academy

You may be wondering (or not) where the daily posts have been lately.  Believe me, it isn’t for lack of tools to share!  The slowness here is directly related to the time I am spending starting a school…as it turns out it is quite a bit of work! 😉  If you are a reader of all of my blogs, you have already seen this one, but for those of you who only follow me here, I thought I would give you a peek into the school I started this year.

Below, I share a picture of an incredible morning we had at Anastasis Academy where we welcomed singer/song writer Matthew West to join us for our morning devotion…we had NO idea it would result in the incredible private concert that it did.  What an enormous blessing to have Matthew share his time, creativity and passion with us.  Check out video of the morning on our school blog Stand Again.

|Kelly Tenkely|

It’s a pretty incredible thing to see dreams come to fruition.

For me it started with an obsession and passion for creating rich learning environments where every student was recognized as an individual. In that first post I wrote:

“I have a dreams of education. I have dreams of the way that schools should look. I have dreams of kids who find their passions. I have dreams of schools as rich learning centers.”

I had dreams of stripping the “vanilla” away so that passions could emerge.

Dreams of ditching that boxed curriculum that we call an education and watching the factory model fade into the rear-view mirror.

Dreams of ending the practice of viewing teachers (and students) as expendables.

I had dreams of schools that were beautiful, that were designed with students in mind.

Dreams that education would stop looking so much like the McRib.

Dreams of breaking free of the box, of valuing students and teachers,  of using the right tools, of a school where a student’s inner da Vinci can break through, of a school that customizes learning.

I shared dreams of more fabulous failures.

The dreams started trickling into reality in March of this year (2011).  In March I started getting some hints that these dreams weren’t really all that far-fetched.  By May I had officially started a school.  In August we opened the doors to Anastasis Academy with our first 50 students in 1st through 8th grade and had hired a dream team of 5 truly incredible teachers to lead them.  In four short months we went from dreams to reality.

At Anastasis Academy, we lease space from a church building throughout the week.  We have our own wing with classrooms, a playground, a gym and a kitchen.  All of our furniture is on wheels.  This makes it easy to adjust space daily based on needs, it is also a necessity since we use shared space.  Twice a week we move all of our belongings across the hall into a storage room (if I’m honest, this is the part we could do without!).  We can’t complain about the space.  It is pretty incredible!

You will notice that we don’t have rows of desks.  No teacher’s desk either.  We have space that kids can move in. Corners to hide in, stages to act on, floors to spread out on, cars to read in.  We are learning how to learn together, learning how to respect other children’s space and needs, learning how to discipline ourselves when we need to, learning how to work collaboratively, we are learning to be the best us.


You won’t see a worksheet at Anastasis. We use iPads.  That isn’t to say that we ONLY use iPads, in fact, you’ll often see us building, cutting, pasting, writing on a whiteboard/chalkboard and even paper.  We do a lot of blogging, a lot of reflecting, a lot of Evernotting, a lot of cinematography, a lot of discussing.

Every morning we start with a 15 minute walk outside together…as a community.  We invite parents and siblings to be a part of our morning walk. Occasionally we have the dogs join in on the fun.  After the walk we come inside as a whole-school for a time of devotions. Again, this is a time for us to build community, to foster the culture we want for our school.  Families are invited to join us every morning.  We always have at least one family and, many times, multiples.  We pray with each other and for each other. We have hard conversations and funny conversations. We think together and challenge each other.

Matthew West joining us for devotions!

Our inquiry block is a time for hands-on transdisciplinary learning.  This is my VERY favorite time to walk through classrooms.  It is incredible to see the joy in discovery.  It is incredible to have a second grade student with dyslexia discover an app to make stop motion animations, teach himself how to use it and proceed to stand up before 7th and 8th grade students to explain how stop motion works.  I wish I could bring you all through the building during this time.  Every time we have a visitor the students pause long enough to describe what they are doing, the learning that is happening. I often have to pick my jaw up off the floor. These kids are amazing.


We have no curriculum. At all. Zip. What did we do instead? We hired the very BEST teachers we could find.  We gave them a base level of skills that we wanted students to have- an outline if you will.  We used the Common Core Standards as our baseline.  We don’t use the standards like most schools do. We use them to make sure that our students have the building blocks and foundations of learning in place.  And then we let our students and teachers GO. The standards are not a weight we are tied to, they are the underpinnings that make it possible for us to soar and take our learning anywhere.  When you look at the Common Core standards they are pretty underwhelming.  I’m glad they are! They provide us with just enough momentum to propel us forward and then off we go on a journey of learning!  We also have our big inquiry questions in place.  From there, we go where the learning takes us, bunny trails and all.  It is pretty fantastic.  Today one of our primary students came out to see me and said, “Look at this boat I found in this new library book. Can I try to make it?”  My answer: “Absolutely! What materials do we need?”  Together we made a list of all the materials I needed to pull together for him.  Tomorrow he will build that boat he is fascinated with and find out if it works the way he has planned.  That is learning!  Tell me what boxed curriculum allows time for that to happen? None. That is why we don’t have it.

In the afternoons we have more “content” area subjects (i.e. math and language arts).  In the primary grades this means students building the skills they need to support their inquiry.  In the intermediate grades this means honing those skills for better communication and more thorough inquiry.  Again, we don’t work from a boxed curriculum. We find the lessons, approaches, and materials that work for the individual student.  Sometimes this means working with manipulatives, sometimes it means exploring measurement outside, and sometimes it means using an app.  It changes daily based on the needs of the students.

We have mixed age level classrooms.  We do this for a lot of reasons.  Most importantly, it is good for older and younger students to work together and learn from each other; it is vital that a child be able to work at their developmental level and progress as they are ready to; and it deepens inquiry when students with different perspectives work together.

Once every five weeks we invite the parents to join us for Parent University.  This is a time for us to help parents understand this new way to do school.  Detox, if you will.  It is a time for us to show parents what best practices in education look like, why grades aren’t all they are cracked up to be, why play is important.  It is a time for us to think and laugh together. It is a time to get questions answered.

Also every five weeks, we hold a “Meeting of the Minds”.  This is a parent/teacher/student conference where we all get together and set our road map for the next 5 weeks.  Students write goals with the help of their teacher. They have ownership over what they have done the last 5 weeks and tell mom and dad what they have planned for upcoming 5 weeks.

Every Friday we have a learning excursion or an opportunity for an “Anastasis Serves”.  Learning excursions are field trips all over the place that help students start to recognize that learning doesn’t just happen when we are at school.  Learning happens everywhere we are and, if we are paying attention, all the time.  Anastasis Serves is a time for our students to give back to the global community.  Sometimes this is a door-to-door scavenger hunt for donations, sometimes this is learning about orphans around the world, or packaging cookies and letters to send to our troops.

We don’t do grades, we do assessment all day every day while we learn.  We don’t do homework, we pursue our families and passions at home.  We don’t do worksheets, we do interesting (sometimes frustrating) work. We don’t do boxed curriculum, we do on-demand learning.

We do mistakes. We do community. We do collaboration. We do messy. We do play. We do fun. We do technology. We do learning.

How do we do all this? We have a 12 to 1 student teacher ratio (or less).  We have incredible students, parents and teachers.  We have stinking smart board members who are invested in our success and trust our judgement calls.  We set our tuition at $8,000 (per pupil spending in our district) to show that even though we are private, this can be done in the public schools.  We started with nothing…well almost nothing, we had dreams.  There was no capital raised, no fund-raisers, no huge donation. We started the beginning of the year at $0 and put blood, sweat and tears into it.

This is not to say that we have it all figured out, that all of our students are perfect, that all of our staff or families are perfect. We are perfectly imperfect as every school is. We have days when the kids are BOUNCING off the walls, we have disagreements, tired teachers, stressed parents, a founder who has occasional melt downs (that would be me), students who need extra love and support, tight budgets, parents who demand different, scuffles, sniffles and band-aids…lots of band-aids.  There is nowhere else I would rather be. No other group of people I would rather work with. No other students whose germs I would rather share. This is my dream.

There are moments throughout the day when I am stopped in my tracks by the realization-this is my dream.

Educational Framework: Input welcome!

I am currently working on a website for the school (Anastasis) I am starting.  This is a different model than most parents will be familiar with so I am finding myself working on ways to flesh out just what learning looks like in this new model.  One of the pages I have created is titled “Educational Framework”.  I would love your input on the descriptions below as well as the graphic.

The framework below illustrates the educational approach of Anastasis and the synthesis of:

Inquirers: The combination of child, teacher, mentors, family, and friends in pursuit of a question.

The Cycle of Inquiry: The cycle that lead learners use to facilitate learning; inquire, investigate, plan, customize instruction, collaborate, construct meaning, create, evaluate, reflect and revisit.

Academic Content Areas: Nine areas are explored to help learners achieve standards and developmental benchmarks; language arts, social studies, science, mathematics, physical awareness/health/play, spirituality, social/emotional learning, arts, and global citizenship.

Learning Habits/Disciplines: Distinct habits and disciplines are assumed by the students as they approach learning. These disciplines support and assist the learning process.

Technology: Technology permeates learning in this blended learning model. Students use technology to build: functional skills, effective communication, collaboration, ability to find and select information, critical thinking/evaluation, cultural/social understanding, eSafety, and creativity.

Learning Genome: The Learning Genome makes it possible to customize and personalize learning for every student by taking into account; the student profile (interests, passions, developmental levels, learning styles, abilities, etc.), the school profile (resources available), the individualized learning plan (created by lead learner, student, and parents), Standards/benchmarks/scope and sequence, and tagged curriculum.

In addition to the graphic above, I have created an animation of the same graphic.  In the animation, each section builds on the previous section so that the graphic is revealed in manageable pieces.  The audience for the graphic is parents so I am trying to keep educational jargon to a minimum.

I realize there is a lot of information on the Graphic but really want to paint a picture of what I am referring to under each heading…I don’t want to assume that parents will fill in those blanks on their own.

So, what do you think? Suggestions and recommendations are welcome!

Happy Thanksgiving! – Anyone have a Donor’s Choose Project?

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends!  For those of you who won’t be celebrating with us in the States, let me assure you that I will eat a piece of pie on your behalf 🙂

This week has been relatively quite on iLearn Technology as I wrap up projects, start some new projects, and get ready for the holiday.  Just because I have been quite here doesn’t mean that I have been slacking; here is what I have been up to:

  • The Community of Learners Dream Team– my first post on the Cooperative Catalyst blog.
  • In October, I joined @adambellow of edutecher.net in his Change the world campaign.  You can read more about that here: EduTecher Change the World post. I am cheating and calling it a day early so that I can post the results and not have to worry about it tomorrow.  From October 1 to today I have had 54,656 absolute unique visitors to iLearn Technology (according to Google Analytics). Truly amazing!  That works out to $546.56.  Now, like Adam I had to cap my contribution at $400 (teacher who is not employed makes even less than a teacher who is!).  I would love to use my contribution to fund some teacher Donor’s Choose projects.  If you have a project on Donor’s Choose that you would like funded, please leave a comment below.  If I get an overwhelming response, we can put it to a vote.  If anyone would like to donate to help reach the $546.56, or would like to match in any way, please leave a comment.  Help me to fund projects and dreams that will change students lives and make learning a richer experience!

I am truly thankful for all of my readers, you all encourage me regularly!  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Seedlings Podcast: Show 98

Last Thursday I joined the team over at Seedlings for their 98th podcast. You can listen to the recording below to hear me talk about the history of iLearn Technology, more about my post on Dreams of Education: When Hunches Collide, and my dreams for #twitacad.  Thank you to Bob, Cheryl, and Alice for having me!

Seedlings @ Bit by Bit Podcast: Show 98
November 11, 2010

Links from the show:

“Geek of the Week” Links for 2010-11-11

Chat Transcript from EdTech

#Twitacad Twitter Academy: Starting a School

There are some things, that when presented to you in life, you want to run away from.  In my experience, those things I want to run away from, are often a window into my future.   My immediate reaction is to resist, but in the end, as I get more comfortable with the idea, I end up embracing it with passion.  Over the past 3 years, I have been approached by different people, in different walks of life, to start a school.  The first time conversation headed in this direction I was intrigued and, if I’m honest, totally terrified.  What do I know about starting a school?  I continued the conversation because I love talking education and learning and thought I might learn something in the process.  Last year, my mindset about starting a school began to change.  I can’t pinpoint exactly what caused that change, maybe it was being in a private school and realizing that even there, education isn’t what it should be.  Sure there are more resources, money, involved parents, more freedom, but education is still being done the same way it has been for nearly a century.  We have tools and resources at our disposal that would make customizing education a much easier task than it was even 20 years ago and yet the direction we are heading in is to standardize more and individualize less.

Somewhere in the span of a year, I decided to really take this on.  Even if the end result wasn’t a school, I wanted to really intentionally re-imagine education.  I wanted to re-imagine what a school is.  I brought together a few teachers who share my passion for education and learning and a passion to improve education.  Two of us decided to pursue what it would take to make our ideas a reality and start a school.  We brought an entrepreneur into the mix who has no background in education but knows how to build a business.  That may seem like a strange thing to do, but we both felt that an outside perspective is needed.  Sometimes we are too close to education to get a clear view of the possibilities that exist because we can build up walls that are unnecessary.  The three of us are coming to a place where we are ready to invite more voices into the mix.  I would relish your input in the formation of this school.  This is your opportunity to help shape education!  I think the best way to ask for that input is through Google forms.  I will be throwing out Google Forms with questions about education, learning, school design etc. over the next few months, I hope you will help out when you can.

First I should give you a 10,000 foot view of what we are looking to accomplish.  I don’t want to give away too many details just yet because as I am asking for input, I want it to be separate from our ideas and biases.  We are looking to create a replicable school model that could eventually take the place of public education.   Right now it is our feeling that public education is beyond tweaking.  Education needs a major overhaul and re-imagining.  To try to do this within the current system is going to be slow at best.  We want the school to be free for everyone (tuition-free) but private (not government-funded).  I will post more later about our ideas for how to accomplish that.  The focus of the school will be building up a community of learners.  I will be adding more details and fleshing this out for those who are interested in later posts.

With this in mind, I would love your help with the first round of questions.  If you can take a minute to help out it would be greatly appreciated.  This first Google form focuses on the learning environment.  Don’t feel like you have to answer each and every question, answer those that you have an opinion about or are passionate about.

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You may be wondering what the title of this post is all about… about a month ago @cybraryman1 and I came up with the idea of Twitter Academy, the ideal school created and shaped by educators on Twitter.  As I progress with this project, I will be using the hash tag #twitacad on Twitter to follow conversations and progress.  Please feel free to add to that conversation by adding #twitacad to any of your tweets.  @cybraryman1 has started a page on his awesome site for Twitter Academy.

Friday Recap

It is a beautiful Friday in Colorado, the beginning crispness of fall is just breaking through the summer heat.  I hope you all had a wonderful week.

Here is a recap of what I have been up to when I’m not blogging here:

Cost of NCLB Testing Info Graphic ($5.3 billion is TOO high)

Lately I have been wondering about how much state testing costs us.  There are a lot of costs involved in standardized testing.  In addition to the cost of administering, grading, and recording the test, there are other less tangible costs such as the impact on learning.  Curious, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone had info on how much testing cost (I was coming up empty in a Google search).  A few of my PLN sent me a link to Stateline.org where I found this:

I knew the numbers would be high, but this is shocking. All of that money per state for testing.  I started wondering what else that money could have been used for and sent out another tweet, this time asking what one thing teachers would want in their classrooms if money was no object.  The info graphic above holds the results.

The info graphic is based on the following numbers (links to data sources):

iPod Touch 4 $229

iPad $499

Average cost of children’s books $21

Soccer ball $10

64 Count Box of Crayola Crayons $5

Exercise ball (to use as chair replacements) $20

Price/square foot for school addition $222

Paraprofessional Salary/year $26,000

Violin $340

I don’t know about you, but every one of those items above feels like a better use of money.

Image links: Pencils, Exercise ball, iPod Touch 4, iPad, Soccer Ball, Crayons, Violin

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President Obama’s 2010 Back to School Speech

President Obama is giving his 2010 Back to School Speech today at 1PM ET.  This is an opportunity for the President to speak to students about the importance of education and encourage them as they start back to school.  Last year the President petitioned students to remember that “Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.”

The speech will be offered with live streaming from CNN and WhiteHouse.gov.  I am also offering live streaming below: