Three years into this Macomber Center community of kids and adults, the staff decided to write a blog each week for the website - a blog detailing some aspect about this venture from each of our unique perspectives. What follows is a selection of these writings, revived as we enter our eleventh year together. Hopefully you will find them interesting and even informative, providing some insight into this awesome company of staff and children who spend their weeks interacting together on this lovely spot in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Teaching Classes at Macomber Center
James Style
Since I began working at Macomber Center in the fall, my responsibilities (in addition to heading up the Frisbee department, overseeing the Lego collection, and assisting in domino design) have largely been devoted to teaching a series of classes. This has been fun and challenging both personally (learning to teach kids of different ages in a unique, self-directed learning environment), and institutionally (working in concert with other staff to provide a framework for these semi-formal classes to take place in a way that respects the often informal nature of the center). With the year having just ended I have been in a more reflective mood, trying to figure out what worked and what did not, and trying to articulate everything I have learned.
Like any true insight in life this has mostly involved the long, tedious process of realizing the blindingly obvious. A good example of this was realizing that the definition of a class is not as obvious as it may seem, and that each kid often has their own idea about what a class is. How long is a class? How often does a class meet? Is there homework for a class? How does a class actually function? For kids who may never have been in a class before, and who are expected to take an active and independent role in their own learning, their ideas of what a class is and how it is supposed to take place may be highly idiosyncratic, not clear to others, and yet the subject of strong feelings. Failure to realize this can lead to confusion.
Of course, like the students, I have my own assumptions about what a class is. When these clash with student’s ideas novel situations can arise. Early on I realized that my own idea of a class - where a teacher writes on a whiteboard while students calmly and passively listen - was quite absurd. During class I was often either joined by several students happily writing next to me on the whiteboard or, in one case, asked to hand over the marker so the student could write on the whiteboard while I spoke. This was a little disconcerting as the whiteboard helps me focus and organize what I want to say, and yet it also makes perfect sense as it helps the students focus and organize what they are hearing.
Disagreement about the nature of a class can also lead to confusion. Earlier in the year, for instance, I noticed sometimes that what I was offering and had prepared was not what the class was expecting or wanted. When working one-on-one, these differences are easier to overcome because the class can be readily adapted to the specific interests of the individual kid (I can, for instance, relinquish the whiteboard to the student). In group settings, however, these differences can be trickier to overcome because not only is there the confusion between myself and the kid, but also between the kids themselves (maybe, for example, one kid is distracted by multiple people writing on the whiteboard). This is particularly true when leading classes with kids of different ages. Not only might each kid desire something different from the class or understand the material in different ways but their fundamental assumptions about how a class should work can be different. Of course, no one person is more right than any other.
How should we deal with this? Learning (and this includes teaching) at Macomber means being entirely open-minded about what a class is and how a class should function. It is not my role to tell the kids what a class is or how a class should function. More and more, however, I do view it as my role to challenge kids to be clearer about what they want a class to be and how they want a class to work. A class at Macomber is not a fixed thing either in my mind or in the kids’ minds; everyone involved has to take an active role in shaping it. Some kids can be very specific about what they want; others less so. In addition to asking important nuts-and-bolts-type questions such as “how long do you want to meet for?” and “how often do you want to meet?”, I want the kids to think about things like “what are the goals of the class?” and “how will we know those goals are being met?”. As the kids gain more experience with classes I want them to reflect more on what they want and how they can get it both individually and as a group. It is not as simple as getting feedback from kids about how I am doing as a teacher or how the class is going for them (though this is important too) but it is important for everyone to think about how we are doing as a class and we can improve.
It Takes All Kinds
Ben Draper
“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”
- Henry David Thoreau
Kids come in many different varieties. It’s remarkable how different even two siblings can be from one another. This is certainly the case with my own two kids. They vary widely in everything from their personalities and temperaments, to their likes and dislikes, to their individual talents and strengths. On the whole, we celebrate the diversity and uniqueness of children. It is the wonder and joy of having kids that we get to watch them grow and develop in surprising and unexpected ways. But once kids reach school age, parents and teachers often go to great lengths to help them adjust and adapt to life in the classroom, where every child is expected to do exactly the same work in exactly the same way for years on end.
The other day I was talking to one of the parents here at the Macomber Center. He told me that he and his wife came to a point with their kids when they could see that traditional school was not working. They decided they needed to make a change. This is what finally brought them to the Macomber Center. Referring to his son, he said, “We wanted to set him free to become his own person.” This really struck me. Not only does it go to the heart of what the Macomber Center is about, it is also the reason I love having my own son here. I never know on any given day who he will gravitate to, what he will be interested in, what he will take away from the experience, and where it will lead him next. This is what education should be about, giving kids the freedom and support they need to discover the world for themselves and begin to shape themselves as they move through it.
Traditional education is based on the opposite approach: it takes kids of every different stripe, with widely varying temperaments, interests, and approaches to learning, and subjects them all to exactly the same set of procedures, measuring them every step of the way, with the end goal of producing a uniform, standardized product. As people in the world of self-directed education like to point out, our schools were originally created for the purpose of supplying the industrial economy with workers who were already used to falling in line, taking orders from above, staying at one station for long periods of time, and focusing on the same tedious work, day after day. But these schools have long outlived their purpose, so it is no surprise that many parents in the 21st-century are feeling that traditional school is out of step with what they want for their kids. Schools were never designed to help foster those unique qualities that make one child stand out from another. In fact, school suppresses children’s unique talents and gifts in favor of strict adherence to a one-size-fits-all curriculum, and it promotes only those strengths and abilities that can be measured by standardized tests.
Allowing kids to be themselves not only makes for happier kids, it also happens to be the best way to prepare them for the future. I recently read a terrific new book called “The Gardener and the Carpenter” which reinforced this idea from an angle that I had never considered. The book is by Allison Gopnick, a leading evolutionary psychologist. In the book, she argues that the high degree of variability among individual children is a product of our evolutionary history and serves a very important purpose. Throughout our evolution, she claims, humans have had to face unexpected changes in climate, physical environment, and social structure, and so we have evolved to vary widely in our abilities and temperaments in order to be flexible and adaptable in the face of unpredictability and change.
“By varying what individual children are like, how they think and develop, and what they learn from others, all those children stand a better chance of survival when things change. As a result, we can expect a great deal of apparently random variability in the temperament and development of children and in the behavior of adults... From the point of view of evolution, trying to consciously shape how your children will turn out is both futile and self-defeating. Even if we humans could precisely shape our children's behavior to suit our own goals and ideals, it would be counterproductive to do it. We can’t know beforehand what unprecedented challenges the children of the future will face. Shaping them in our own image or in the image of our current ideals might actually keep them from adapting to changes in the future.”
If the diversity and uniqueness of children is an asset, particularly in today’s fast changing and unpredictable world, if it is something to be fostered rather than suppressed, shouldn’t it be a primary focus of education? It would stand to reason that the best sort of educational environment is one where kids are exposed to as many different adult models, as many different varieties of information, and as many different experiences as possible, in order to support the variety and variability of each child’s developmental course. In an age-mixed, interest-mixed community like the Macomber Center, kids are exposed to a much wider variety of possibilities then they would ever be exposed to in a traditional classroom where everybody is focused on the same material. Between the six staff, who all have vastly different interests, backgrounds, and personalities, and the kids, who range in age from five to seventeen years old, all pursuing their own various interests, the Macomber Center contains a tremendous variety of activity.
Just take this past week, for example. Mark helped some kids film a new episode of Space Thieves, taught some other kids how to play one of their favorite songs together on different instruments, and led a large group of kids in his wildly popular acting and improv class. James led a reading group, tutored in Latin, and played hours of gaga ball and back-and-forth tag. Amy gave Ben Rubel and me some voice coaching to help us in our barbershop quartet and she also hosted a Skype meeting for the whole community with an engineer from SpaceX. Dan helped one kid learn how to use a soldering iron for some projects he’s planning, helped someone else build a robot, and tutored some older kids for the SAT.
The Macomber Center is based on an idea that predates the industrial model of education, an idea that is as relevant today as it ever was in the past: The great potential within each of us lies not in our capacity to conform to an external standard but to discover our own unique set of talents and strengths and develop those as much as we can and learn to engage the world on the basis of those talents and strengths.
The Heart of Macomber
Sandra Dickie (Founding Parent)
I would like to address the idea that I hear expressed from time to time that there is no point in sending your kids to a place like the Macomber Center if all they're going to do is play video games all day, which is something that they can just do at home. For me, this misses the heart of what Macomber offers.
Whether it be music, art, cooking, science classes, walks in the woods, games of tag or four square or video games/screen time, the Center offers a chance to come together with others and experience different perspectives and share new ideas. An artist friend of mine (who works in a completely different field for a living) rented some studio space a few years ago. She did this, rather than set up space in her own home, so that she could be near other artists and gain insight, encouragement and companionship from them. At lunchtime at a homeschool program at a farm, everyone comes together and you either share a dish or wash dishes. By sharing a meal with a diverse group of adults and children, you are exposed to new foods, or foods prepared in ways you have not previously experienced. The same thing happens cooking or eating lunch at Macomber – it is simply lunch, but it is an amazing learning experience.
Board games, outdoor games and video games all have rules. But when playing with people outside of your family, outside of your immediate circle of close friends, you may learn new interpretations of those rules. Or you may be inspired to combine different interpretations and make a whole new game. Collaboration and inspiration are at the heart of most music and art – seeing and hearing new patterns, new ways of doing the same thing or perhaps something completely different. In short, playing around with ideas. And play, as most of us at Macomber agree, is key to all learning.
I really feel that the magic of Macomber lies in the fact that it is so much more than the sum of its parts. Any single person attending the Center could probably do what they are doing there at home. But the experience becomes so much more when it is shared in a supportive, open environment where there is no wrong answer and play and experimentation are encouraged.
This semester at the local university where I work there was a teach-in about a topic that has been in the news all year. Professors reported that up to one third of their students were unaware of the issue. These students tended to be from small schools, came to the university with a group of friends, shared the same interests and likes as their friends and because of the way news and ideas are spread on the internet, have never had to look at anything outside of their interests and perspective. This topic was simply not on their radar, so they were completely oblivious about it. In this age of Internet and screen time, there is more need than ever to get together in person and share experiences and knowledge. Macomber provides this and I feel fortunate to have it in our life.
CPR/First Aid Class
James Style
Sometimes I think of the Macomber Center as a version of a one-room schoolhouse, only updated for the 21st century. The shared open space has advantages and disadvantages. It can feel a bit crowded in the winter or on a rainy day with no quiet spot to escape to and no strict divisions between ages and temperaments, but it also draws everyone together, allows a real community to be built, and creates unique situations.
A CPR/First Aid class this week illustrated the positive aspects of our limited space. Fifteen members had officially enrolled in the class so we pulled back the chairs and tables in the main room to clear a large enough area for the class to take place. It was a beautiful day and at first the kids not taking part in the class were running around happily outside; however, as soon as we began moving the furniture around, it became clear to them that something far more interesting was happening inside. As the class began, I was amused to see that the “official” class was surrounded by an “unofficial” class, an audience of mostly younger kids genuinely fascinated by the spectacle taking place before them. In hindsight, it was not hard to see the source of their fascination. The instructor brought her own cool toys (CPR dummies, toy epinephrine pens, and an automated, talking defibrillator) and had set up a large monitor on which she played demonstration videos. In addition to listening to the information, the younger kids got to watch the older kids bopping along, 100 beats per minute, as they practiced their chest compressions and wheezing into the mouths of the bright plastic dummies. Fortunately, our instructor took it in stride, easily adapting to the setting, and happily answering questions and accepting answers to her own questions from anyone - “official” or “unofficial” - whoever wanted to take part was welcomed into the process.
I was nervous at first that the kids wouldn’t accept the boundaries of the class but I soon realized how absurd my worries were: of course the kids didn’t accept the boundaries of the class! But there was also no need for the class to be constituted by boundaries. They respected the attention of the other kids and they were genuinely interested in the material-- that was enough. It is difficult to describe how learning works in such an informal setting but it is also recognizable to anyone who has attended a successful seminar or meeting in a university or workplace. At such moments a lack of formality does not undermine the process but fundamentally strengthens it. Everyone is at ease. No one fears being called upon or asking questions. Laughter is not the product of the inattention but demonstrates understanding and comfort with the material and the setting. It is just a remarkable, healthy environment to be in. In our case distinctions between teacher and student, adult and child, “official” and “unofficial” student easily broke down. A group of people from the ages of 6- 62 all sat down on a beautiful day and learned the lessons of life and death together. It was actually fun.
The Macomber Center Rules
Ben Draper
When we started, almost five years ago, we didn’t have any rules at all. At our first few community meetings, we began to lay down some basic community norms--hang up your coat when you first walk in the door, put your lunch away when you’re done eating, don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink, no offensive language or aggressive physical contact, etc. All of these rules have one purpose: to promote the idea of a harmonious community where everyone feels respected. For the most part, this community runs pretty smoothly. Conflicts do arise-- as they do in any community-- but what’s unusual about the Macomber Center community is that it is up to the kids as well as the adults to find solutions.
In response to conflict we sometimes create new rules but try not to if we can help it. The few rules we have are not hard and fast, but more like community norms that we all more or less agree with in principle. These norms are flexible and open to interpretation, and there is a good reason for this. They are essentially social norms - don’t leave a mess for someone else to clean up, don’t offend others, don’t annoy or harass others, don’t be too loud or disruptive - and social norms are not clear cut, they are not hard and fast rules. Because they are social norms they are fluid and always shifting depending on the context. What is appropriate behavior in one moment, with one person or group of people, may not be appropriate in the next moment, when the people and context has shifted. While the community generally agrees with these norms in principle, there can be disagreement about how these norms work in practice. Resolving these issues through discussion is one of the primary functions of the community meeting and forms the basis of the community we have created here.
Another unusual aspect of our community is that there is no system of punishment for the breaking of rules and thus there are no “consequences” to deter people from doing what they are not supposed to do. So how do we “enforce” these rules? Well, we don’t. We want the members here to learn to adhere to the shared norms of the community, not for fear of punishment, but because they are important to the other members of the community and therefore important for each individual’s role in the community.
Learning to navigate this complex and subtle social terrain created by these norms is a vital part of being an individual here and one of the more important lessons of life for kids at Macomber.
Outside
Denise Geddes
Macomber Center - our building is for sure the center of our community. Games, conversations, cooking, meetings, lego constructions, writing, art work, classes, building with blocks, playing music, video games, meals, reading, computer work, making messes, cleaning up - all are part of our daily lives together. However, the vast outside that we have the great good fortune to be centered in is as much of who we are and what we do as the man-made physical structure that contains us.
A great deal of what happens each day takes place outside. These activities are almost too numerous to name, and certainly the learning that happens outside is far too deep and valuable and personal and far-reaching to quantify.
One expected category of activity might fall under the general "sports" label: four square, basketball, soccer, ultimate frisbee, fr'olf (frisbee golf, in case you are not familiar with that term) - all are played at some point by everyone at the Center. Certain ones, like four square, are played with passion and intensity every single day. Here might also be included the skateboards, bikes, rip-sticks, unicycles, and roller skates that all share space outside, and are used by experts and novices alike.
Stepping a bit away from this category, we get to the larger, looser one of "games" played outside by as many kids as can be persuaded to join in. This includes everything from capture the-flag and back-and-forth tag to knock-out and dodge ball. Events that traditionally take place inside migrate to outside when the weather is fine - math lessons, French horn duets, movie making, Tae Kwon Do, story reading, painting, chess games, flute and guitar playing, even card games, happen in the grass, under the blue sky above.
Then there are outside happenings that engage more of the physical surroundings, perhaps, than noted so far. The "secret place" and the "new secret place" are both lovely examples of this sort of engagement - wild spots on our campus discovered and explored, claimed and named by various aged kids. Places indeed unknown to anyone before them - places to spend whole days learning about how to invent and manage a community of your own imagining, figuring out what is important in the physical setting you have before you, trying out different ways to bring order to your space with the resources at hand. Thick old vines make wonderful swinging chairs, branches higher up in a tree are excellent perches on which to enjoy a picnic lunch, logs rolled into place become sitting benches.
Our outside space is bountiful. We have harvested quantities of Concord grapes growing wild in the places close to our building, making delicious jam from this largesse. Farther afield, a stand of old maple trees has given up gallons of sap to us for two seasons now, sap which has been boiled down to syrup over fires built with wood collected from the forest around us, and stored the previous autumn for that purpose.
Venturing further into the woods surrounding our building opens up another vast expanse of outside: rock climbing, tire swings, a trail cleared and marked by Eagle Scouts, ending at a fire pit great for a s'mores-making adventure - all there to be experienced and enjoyed. Many paths leading through gorgeous pine forest meet the edge of the Ashland Town Forest, another 570 wild acres to be explored if that is your passion. There, remnants of the Witch Caves inhabited by survivors of the Salem Witch trials of the 17th century can be searched for, or the more modern remnants of a Bel Air car of the 1950's era, discovered by some of our teens while exploring during our first year, may be rediscovered.
Outside is shared, of course, by a wide variety of wildlife, some more visible to us than others - we have been aware of many deer, too many Canada geese, a flock of wild turkeys, a fisher cat, groundhogs by the entrance gate, one awesome bald eagle in flight, many red-tailed hawks, a pair of red foxes, ticks, dragon flies large and small, bees, birds too numerous to name but in evidence all the day through by their songs, ladybugs, stink-bugs, toads, and one bumpy tree frog, to name a few who have shown themselves to us on various occasions. And to go along with the wildlife are the seasons - not much except for the very coldest of winter days stops outside from being used as a major part of life at the Center. Rain and wind, sun and mud and snow all become part of the vibrant, vigorous life of our members. I venture to suggest that this is a relatively unique privilege for kids today - to have the space and the time to freely explore the natural world in which we live, and to come to terms with information personally gained from spending countless hours outside.
Facing Difficulty
Ben Draper
As a staff member here at the Macomber Center and a parent of two young children, I often find myself getting into conversations about education with other parents outside the Center. I’m always puzzled by people who say that they didn’t pay attention in school, that they never learned anything useful there, and that the most important things they have learned in life were learned outside of school. What seems strange to me is not that these parents report having been bored and unengaged in school but that they always seem to follow it up by saying that school, despite all its failings, is a necessary evil and ultimately good for kids.
But perhaps this is not as much of a contradiction as I used to think. For many kids, school is often boring, difficult, stressful and even anxiety producing. And this seems to be precisely why parents feel it is so important. After all, what parent wants their kid to be sheltered from the tough realities of life? Life is difficult, it presents constant challenges, and we all want our kids to be able to thrive amidst the trials and tribulations out in the real world. This may also be why homeschooling has negative connotations for some people; they imagine that it means sheltering kids from the sometimes harsh social realities that lie beyond the security of the home.
In any case, all of this seems to be an acknowledgement that what kids really learn in school is not the specific subject matter that is being taught, but rather how to function within a rigid and unforgiving institutional structure. And this is why school is supposed to be good for them. But while this environment may be very difficult and challenging for many kids, it does not necessarily follow that it is therefore good for them. Not everything that hurts makes you stronger. If our real concern is that our kids learn to face difficulty on their own without a protecting parent standing by to mediate their experience and manage every difficult challenge, we need only think for a minute about what actual lessons kids learn in school to see that it is a false kind of preparation for real life. What the institutional structure of school encourages, above all, is obedience, compliance, and conformity. Kids learn to accept arbitrary authority and to passively and uncritically consume a pre-packaged curriculum without ever questioning the material or the way in which it’s delivered. They learn to depend on others to tell them what is important in life and to tell them what they need to learn and how to learn it.
There is a stark contradiction, then, between what we say is good for kids and what we say we value in adults. Increasingly, we hear about the importance of critical thinking, imaginative and creative problem solving, communication and collaboration, and self-motivation and initiative. School, as we know it today, is not designed to enable kids to exercise and strengthen these capacities. Quite the opposite. So, I think we need to be more specific when we say that we want our kids to be challenged and to learn to face difficulties. I would argue that what's important for kids, and certainly what I want for my own kids, is to learn how to function effectively within an unpredictable and fluid social environment, because this is the kind of environment where kids develop the skills they will need in an increasingly unpredictable and fast-changing world.
Along with the difficulties and challenges associated with learning how to negotiate and navigate within an unstructured social environment, kids in a self-directed learning community such as the Macomber Center have to learn how to confront the inevitable experiences of boredom, frustration, and anxiety. These difficult, fundamental human experiences can either be productive opportunities for positive development or they can be deadening, depending on whether one has the freedom and agency to respond creatively to them or whether one is limited and restricted by external forces, as in traditional school.
The experience, for example, of boredom and frustration can be one of life’s primary catalysts for growth. The expression, “If you are bored then you are boring” implies that boredom is an inevitable and fundamental experience that we all need to learn how to push through for ourselves. Furthermore, this pushing through will often tell us something essential about ourselves--who we are and where we might find fulfillment in life. But the kind of boredom that many children experience in school is not like this; it is the kind of difficult, unpleasant experience that is imposed from the outside, and which they are powerless to change. It is difficult without being challenging. A challenge is something that you can rise to and overcome if you are determined and resourceful. The only thing you can learn from the kind of boredom and frustration that school presents is how to endure unpleasant conditions imposed on you against your will. This may be a useful skill for kids to learn if we want to prepare them for a life in which they will spend long periods of time in environments which are stifling and soul-crushing.
Developing endurance can certainly be a good thing. When we set goals for ourselves, we often have to endure a lot of ups and downs, and sometimes long periods of difficult struggle, to see our goals through to the end. But learning to endure the status quo because we have no choice is different. A friend of mine, years ago, told me that if she had kids, she would definitely send them to traditional school even though she hated school as a kid. The reason she gave was that she wanted her kid to be able to tolerate the monotony of meaningless, tedious, busy work that school requires from kids. This way, the monotony of adult work would not come as a shock or a disappointment. Aside from being overly cynical, this kind of thinking can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
At the Macomber Center, kids encounter difficult and challenging experiences every single day. They have to learn how to make choices for themselves, how to battle boredom and frustration, how to deal with situations they find difficult, and how to resolve conflicts. Most importantly, they learn to challenge themselves and overcome their own internal obstacles. The adults at the Center help to create and maintain a stable, healthy environment for kids. When kids feel safe and secure, they are able and even eager to challenge themselves. They’re more likely to take risks emotionally, socially, and intellectually. They’re more comfortable outside their comfort zone, so to speak.
Anxiety, too, is an inevitable and necessary part of life. In a safe and supportive community like the Macomber Center, it is a natural part of development; it is a part of expanding beyond one’s familiar and comfortable habits of operating in the world and taking on challenges. As we know all too well, though, excess anxiety is a real problem for many kids in traditional school. Instead of helping to propel them to new heights, this anxiety very often becomes debilitating. It hinders performance rather than enhancing it.
At the Macomber Center, children are constantly playing games in groups of different ages and different skill levels. The role of adults is not to manage these complex, precarious dynamics, but to contribute to the game. They have no more power or influence in the games than any other players. Kids have to learn how to deal with all the other players, from the adults to the little kids. They have to learn how to play with kids who may older and more intellectually, emotionally, and physically more powerful than they are. Sometimes these situations involve difficult, conflicting personalities. But there is tremendous motivation to overcome the difficulties that get in the way because of the investment that each kid has in the game. Without genuine collaboration and the requisite skills of communication, problem-solving, fairness, and emotional resilience, these games would not be possible. Since the adults do not manage these interactions, when a child is playing unfairly or is bullying one of the younger kids, or is unwilling to put up with all the compromising and negotiating required, the game is over. The motivation and drive for these kids to play these games is so strong that they end up developing a remarkable level of patience and diplomacy--even self-sacrifice--in order to ensure that the game can go on.
If we really want our kids to be able to face difficulty, learn to challenge themselves, and to overcome obstacles, we need to let them take the lead in their own lives. When we talk about self-directed learning, we usually talk about kids being able to choose what they want to learn about and pursuing learning in their own style. Of course, this is an important part of self- directed learning. But the real heart of self-directed learning, more important than the particular interests the child is pursuing at any given time, is the growth, development, and thriving that begin to occur as a direct result of the freedom to direct one’;s own life.
Who Said Anything about "Innovation"?
Ben Draper
Several weeks ago, two PhD students came to visit Macomber Center. They were researching innovative practices in education and wanted to talk to me about our approach. Though I was happy to speak with them, I told them that there is nothing innovative going on here. These kids are doing what kids have always done; at least, that is, until the relatively recent invention of compulsory schooling. They are playing together, inventing games, exploring, and discovering new things. It is a beautiful and rare thing. But there is nothing new or innovative about it.
These days, there is a lot of excitement and interest in innovative educational programs. We hear a lot about how traditional school hampers motivation, curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking - all the traits that experts believe young people will need to thrive in an innovation-based economy. Some argue that the best way for kids to develop the essential "21st century skills" - collaboration, communication, and creative problem solving - is through free play and self directed learning. There may be truth to all this. But the reason we set Macomber Center up the way we did, where kids choose how to spend their own time, was not merely to train them for a future economy; rather, we wanted to create a rich, inspiring community, free of coercion and manipulation, where kids thrive in the present. For all the talk of "reimagining education for the 21st century" and preparing kids for the "innovation era", the importance of a happy childhood always seems to be missing from the conversation.
If there is anything innovative in what we are doing it has to do with the homeschool resource center model itself. It is flexible and adaptable. It has allowed us to grow and evolve according to the needs of the community rather than being restricted by rigid adherence to an educational model. This process took time; we have grown steadily and gradually, adapting to the needs of the community. As a result, the environment that we have created here is more interesting, dynamic, and vibrant than anything any group of educators, no matter how innovative, could have designed. This is reflected in many of the staff’s blog posts from this year which chronicle the day-to-day life at the Center.
When people talk about an innovative educational program, they usually mean that it has a unique way of shaping the lives of the kids who pass through it. What is innovative about Macomber Center is that it is shaped by the unique individuals who make it up. This is not to say that the kids at the Macomber Center are not shaped by their experience, they are. But it is not a one-way street. It is the kids as much as the adults who are creating the culture, and it is continually evolving to reflect the values, the interests, and the individual personalities that make it up.
