An overview
Young people today face opportunities, complexity, and challenges of tremendous magnitude. Today’s young people possess a wealth of talent, strength, and perspective. They are powerful and poised to enter a tough, unpredictable world. They need support and guidance to embrace their unique potential.
We envision a young person moving forward into the future with head held high, with confidence and skill taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves and dealing with the challenges that arise. We are making it part of our life’s mission to help this vision become reality. We can do this. We know that helping young people requires an education ecosystem in which learning is lifeworthy;[1] it incorporates community, agency, and the world around us in personalized learning. A young person today needs us to re-imagine school as a learning community to which they contribute, practice leadership and empathy, and have a warm, safe, and lively place.
[1] David Perkins. 2014. Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World. Jossey-Bass
Latin “velle” means “to will” and “volare” means “to fly.” Both words conjugate to “volo” meaning “I will” or “I fly.” This is the name of the learning community we have formed – Volo Natural Learning Community, a place where young people engage their wills and learn to fly. Volo is a place where truly gifted educators connect with your children in extraordinary learning experiences. We focus on skills like creativity, self-efficacy, communication, compassion, and grit that will enable today’s young people to be the leaders and change-makers of tomorrow (whatever path they take). We take learning outdoors, incorporating healthy and vital experiences with the natural world.
We view purposeful learning as a choice of the learner, so our methods focus on inspiration, motivation, and relationships. Learning – which defines teaching – will include multi-age group experiences, working one-on-one with the teacher, and projects. A very low student-to-teacher ratio makes it possible to personalize learning opportunities. Play and exploration will be included as essentials. Experience and self-directed learning, with developmentally appropriate support, form the early basis for Volo pedagogy. No single printed or digital curriculum will be followed; rather we will draw from a variety of resources and the depth and breadth of our experience to meet the needs of the children. For more on the Volo curriculum see links below.
Assessments at Volo will include formative and summative evaluations. For example, we will seek to understand through observation and interviews how a young person is learning and feeling about writing. The well-being of the child is top priority. Summative assessments will primarily be portfolios in which students present their work. Standardized tests are not a default part of Volo, nor a focus for the curriculum.
Yes! “Hundreds of studies now bear on this question, and converging evidence strongly suggests that experiences of nature boost academic learning, personal development, and environmental stewardship. …Report after report – from independent observers as well as participants themselves – indicate shifts in perseverance, problem solving, critical thinking, leadership, teamwork, and resilience…In academic contexts, nature-based instruction outperforms traditional instruction. The evidence here is particularly strong… It is time to take nature seriously as a resource for learning – particularly for students not effectively reached by traditional instruction.
– Ming Kuo, Michael Barnes, and Catherine Jordan (Front. Psychol., 18 February 2019. Sec. Environmental Psychology. Vol 10)
“So when we look at reforming education and transforming it, it isn’t like cloning a system…It’s about customizing to your circumstances and personalizing education to the people you’re actually teaching. And doing that, I think, is the answer to the future because it’s not about scaling a new solution; it’s about creating a movement in education in which people develop their own solutions, but with external support based on a personalized curriculum.” – Sir Ken Robinson
We include them in a community that naturally uses math language often and well. We tempt them with riddles involving math. We celebrate successes and lean into times when they are curious about things that involve math. Over time they become more confident and curious and happier with math.
We know, care, and interact with each person and we engage in interesting learning experiences in which people learn at their own pace. We create environments in which every person is not trying to or expected to learn exactly the same thing. Our small ratio of students to teachers allows such differentiation. Individuals naturally learn at different rates in any setting. Facilitators have many tools to personalize learning in groups. Tools include questions, stories, and time.
We listen to them, and to the community, and we consider what can be seen of the future. We focus on what David Perkins (Harvard School of Education) called “lifeworthy learning” and big understandings. Lifeworthy learning means learning what has value to life. “Educators should ask themselves, Is the learner likely to have many opportunities to use this learning throughout life? Does it offer important insights? Will it affect the learner’s actions? And does it provide an ethical perspective?…for most students, “the fundamentals, robustly understood and widely applied, are what deliver the greatest payoff.” (D. Perkins, 2016. Lifeworthy Learning. Educational Leadership 73:12-17)
We design the Volo curriculum; in this we involve young people every step of the way. It is a personalized curriculum. We draw from many sources including textbooks, educational standards, specialists, and from broad and deep experience to do this. The Volo curriculum includes both orchestrated elements and an unwritten curriculum. The unwritten curriculum expresses itself in all that young people learn through experiences of play, service, community, and leadership.
Curricular choices are developmentally sensitive; in this we draw much from Montessori and Waldorf perspectives recognizing that young people develop at different rates and that learning environments do well to consider the whole human being.
Individual conferences provide opportunities for facilitators to ask questions, share experiences, and encourage young people. These conferences may include practice work, such as math practice, in addition to conversations.
Imagine that teacher you really loved, who changed your life — that person who brought learning to life; who loved learning with you rather than simply assigning work from a text book — that is what we are striving for. Our teachers already have reputations for being those kinds of teachers. Teachers — we call them facilitators — understand ways that people learn, recognizing that learning defines teaching. We value the breadth of connection that facilitators have with students; they inspire, support, motivate, question, scaffold, focus, care, protect, guide, and challenge students. On some occasions facilitators provide direct instruction, while often they ask questions and help young people to dig deeper, answer their own questions, and solve problems.
Facilitators often use the focusing activities of flow learning in which students engage in activities that move from awakening enthusiasm through focusing attention to sharing experience. We encourage teaching practices that focus on observation and experience as crucial for definitions of terms and smaller parts. For example, reading and hearing stories corresponds with learning grammar and spelling.
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