School nostalgia: we all have it for something
Ask yourself if what you loved about school was intrinsic to school
My grandma was a teacher with an open classroom and I went there when our school holidays did not coincide. Since her classroom was first through third grade I got to go there for a long time.
Classroom design in Sweden is based on the open classroom model with a comforting nod to its 70s vibe, and my own open classroom for second and third grade. Basically any learning I did in school I did in an open classroom. I am an independent learner. I am unable to listen for long periods of time. And I wanted to have the ability to cheat when a test did not interest me.
I wonder if my sons would have been happy in school an open classroom setting. There’s a dicsussion between 1970s school refugess about open classroom experiences at Apartment Therapy. There’s a piece on Bloomberg about how teachers in open classrooms weren’t trained properly. I can see how that was true. In my open classroom the second graders were all ahead and the third graders were behind and that’s not actually a good mix. By the end of the year the teacher stopped the curricula and we just sang folk songs and grocked things.
My high school debate team produced an crazy number of billionaire tech founders, tenured professors and judges. The only other group that comes close to them are the kids in my second grade classroom.
As I write this, I just realized that my most fond memories of school are when I was surrounded by kids who were fascinating. And forget the whole topic of this post – you don’t need an open classroom or closed classroom or whatever classroom. You need to help your kids find other kids who are fascinating.
I feel lucky I got to be with those kids in second grade. I remember learning something interesting from every single one of them. For example, KT Graves told us second graders we should take a test for contractions instead of study contractions because you just put an apostrophe for the vowel. Tory Platt told us Puff the Magic Dragon was about drugs.
I think the most disappointing to me about school is I encounters all those amazing kids and I had so little time to talk with them in school.
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