An Interview with an Author of The Attic By Tom Veatch, Of Liz Hunter Table of Contents * Introduction, Significance * Pre-history * Planning * First Year * First Hire * First Graduate * Program of Influence * Lessons * Introduction, Significance Tom: Why would anybody be interested in the Attic? Liz: I think it's if they want a child-centered education. Tom: What does that mean? Every education is child centered, one hopes, on the other hand every education has to be tolerable to its professional teaching staff so it's not child centered at all. What are you talking about? Liz: I guess what I'm talking about is intrinsic motivation instead of extrinsic motivation. Most schools are about, you do this assignment you get a grade, you get a gold star, you are compared to your peers. To me that's not child centered. The paradox is that you can educate children without grades, without the rewards, without the punishments, and they end up being far more motivated about learning. Without the competition. If you want to know more about it go read books by Alfie Kohn such as No Contests No Rewards, since the Attic was based on a lot of his educational philosophy. Child centered doesn't mean that the kid just does whatever they want. There is structure, there are expectations, but they are not done as a threat but more like this is what we're all doing. The kids are in charge of their own homework, they do it because they want to be in the group they are in. If you don't do your homework you can't participate in the group because you're not prepared. It's a very active learning environment. At all ages, actually. Tom: Sounds it is a reward and punishment but it's a social participation reward and a lack of social participation punishment. Liz: That's not exactly it. You establish structure from a pretty young age, based on child centered practices such as choice, autonomy, developmental appropriateness, and understanding that a child naturally does have a love of learning. It's like a birthright. There's never been a child who is not curious and inquisitive and asking questions and doing experiments. Tom: Seems pretty gendered. Aren't the girls more motivated by the social rewards and punishements, and the boys more intrinsically curious, so both get their participation but from different motivations? Is that bullshit? Like I mean if you deschool a girl, you're holding out these rewards of participating in your group and she's pulled toward it. Liz: I think everyone is socially motivated to some extent. It is like being part of a family. Attic kids are almost like siblings. Yeah you want to be a part of a group, I think that applies to boys and girls. There's a gender difference, when it comes to, like in a normal classroom girls are the quiet good ones, often, while boys are the rowdy ones, often, and I think if that type of girl came to the Attic as a 5 year old where the child was just trying to please the teacher, and a boy who was having trouble being part of the group, they'd both be encouraged the other way. At the Attic of course your relationship with your teacher is a relationship, it's not a power thing, it's more of an authentic relationship. I'm not explaining it very well but, you know we've had children come to the Attic who are a little older and been in public schools for a while and they've both shut down and it doesn't take the boys that long to open up. They're free to run around if they need to go outside. The Attic really tries to follow the developmental needs of kids. And some kids really need to be outside. For a while we were trying to figure out a better developmental model for middle school, and the best we could come up with was they should just not be in school for two years, the girls should just be with their peers and boys should just be outside (with their peers). But my point is that you've got these shut-down kids that come in thinking they've got to do it the right way, and that's not really language we use at the Attic. Is this the right answer, isn't what we value: we value the process. Those more scared, I guess is the word, little girls, are encouraged to do what makes sense to them and even flout the structure a little bit like maybe not do their homework one night or a while; it's not like they have that much homework when they are younger. And it's not only along gender lines, we've had plenty of scared boys who want to do things right but you just kind of encourage, you encourage them. If they are having a hard time being part of the community you just allow them to not be part of the community, and trust. I remember one little boy he would go downstairs and be under a table or in a small closet, for a couple hours. Because he was dysregulated and that's what he needed. Parents can see that and freak out, when they're in another school, or at the Attic the teachers have to coach them and give the kid what they needed, but the Attic's child-centeredness knows that kids have these developmental stages. This kid ended up being one of the most outgoing, socially-motivated teenagers you've ever seen and he's in an honors program at a college, and noone would have guessed that he had been an angry withdrawn six year old. It wouldn't be tolerated in a regular school and the Attic has flexibility to provide that to kids. Tom: Sounds like a disability friendly environment. Liz: Well the Attic staff isn't formally trained to support kids with disabilities. If someone really has a learning disability then the Attic isn't a good fit for them. But if you're a kid that's not reading at 5, 6, or 7, that happens. A teacher might say go get that checked out and see there isn't an underlying disability. But trust that kids are on their own developmental timeline, we've had a lot of late readers at the Attic, gave them time, then suddenly they are reading chapter books and Harry Potter at age 8. But it also means understanding what literacy really is, you surround them with print, with picture books, you read to them, you're tolerant and encouraging of emergent spelling and where they are, it's not like in my daighter's 1st grade class where after you read a certain # of books you got to pick a prize and a lot of the kids weren't reading. And I asked the teacher is it okay if I read to her and the teacher said Sure. And we logged all these books, and Laura got the marbles and got these nasty looks from the other kids. Another parent said Really? And started reading to her child to get the marbles. (Is that what it's about? No. -- Alfie Cohn --) But with time, what if they don't want marbles any more, and they just stop reading. Because they're not extrinsically motivated any more, and the reward was the point. I can't tell you how there were a few kids that were always the focus of teaching team meetings: they weren't participating in the community, they weren't doing their homework, had a laissez faire attitude toward all their classes, they weren't motivated, some of these grew up in the Attic, too, but kids would come in from public scchool and say What we don't have to do homework? and not do it. But then there would be a huge turnaround in high school. Most of those kids are college bound and that was a huge focus of the school, supporting the high school seniors, especially, as they went through the college application process, and the Attic kids ended up doing very well in college admissions and scholarships because they were very self motivated. They did have their own path, a path of their own choosing. This is too much, Tom. There's way too much here. Tom: That's why this is just the introduction. But talk about the significance of it. Liz: It was a small group of Moms who came together because they wanted something better for their kids, we see that, and we want something better, so we're going to buck the system. From early on we decided we're not going to make it being in your seat for 180 days, we're going to have 84 days of school make a year. We had no idea; we did an experiment with our own kids and it ended up succeeding beyond our wildest expectations. We decided at the begininning we only wanted a 3 day school week and a 4 day weekend because the off time was as valuable as the school time, to pursue your own interests or if you needed a lot of down time. And we had a lot of breaks so we had a four month summer, you know a full week off at Thanksgiving, 3 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks in April, 1 week in February. You know family time was really valued. Tom: Sounds like a home school cooperative. Liz: Yes, it was at first; We actually structured it that way but then we wanted our values to stay put over the years and not change due to the population of the school, if that makes sense, so we became a non-profit instead. Like in a cooperative you vote who you want to be head of school and you can change the curriculum and we wanted to keep our curricumum strong in the way we thought was best for kids. Tom: What made your curriculum strong? Liz: Well, it was really developmentally appropriate. Kids were placed into groups based on where they were, actually, like for math their actual understanding of logical concepts, all the kids had an extensive math assessment to understand where to place them mathematically not just paper and pencil but working with objects. So one item was, Write down the fraction 7/12 and give them a collection of buttons, Can you show me what this means? And some would draw the numbers and the bar and the 12, and you'd get an understanding of what these kids mean. Some would put seven in a line and then 12 buttons, which is not what 7/12 means. We'd do things like conservation of number, and conservation of perimeter and conservation of area, and can you show the different operations of fractions using unifix cubes. For example 1/2 + 2/3, it's one thing to know the algorithm for fractions, that's how they teach it in school, some kids will get it, many won't, because it was taught as a social skill instead of as a mathematical logical skill, and for that you really do need objects to work with to get a sense of number. Tom: Tell me more about what made your curriculum strong. Liz: It was child centered. You really need to have choice. So there was always choice embedded in the curriculum. It emphasized self-direction. It was developmentally appropriate, that's what I'm getting at with the math assessments. If you were struggling and you didn't have a sense of number or fractions, you would be put in the place where you actually understand it, so the academic groups are multi-age, roughly the 5-7 year olds, the 9-11 year olds, you can be a little old for your group or a little young for your group but as long as academically you fit in the group, that would be the arrangement. No, you can't put an 8th grader with an 8 year old, so we'd figure something out with that child, like maybe we'd do some tutoring twice a week with an Attic teacher, that's a part of it. Liz: "School for kids with disabilities", that's not fair, what do you mean by that? A boy that doesn't want to sit at a desk, is that a disability? Tom: Yes, I'm oversimplifiying for public consumption. Sniff test type thing. Liz: I don't think most people have an idea of what kids need at different ages. Kids need to play. We'd have a number of recesses during the day and the kids would get out there and play, football and tag. It's been woefully neglected, in the regular schools, they are cutting out recesses and giving them masses of homework, so you go to school and sit for seven hours and come home and sit for three hours, that's not healthy for a kid, a teacher telling them what to do, that has nothing to do with a kid's motivations but it's just doing what's expected. Tom: Are you saying that childrens' motivations are naturally coaligned with their level? Liz: What do you mean by that? Tom: Like a curriculum that's 100% play could produce pretty good results. And a supportive but sparser and deeper type of curriculum with a lot of play around the edges would be optimal, because the kids' motivations are naturally coaligned with their level so let them go play, do what they're motivated for just freely plus also give them a little oomph and structure so they really get things deeply and can go far, within their developmental stage. Liz: That's not quite it because consider, say Primary, and the Outdoor Prechool which the Attic developed recently, that's all play time, they might have a singalong. Primary might have math, science. Math is selecting a kit of tangible objects, and the teacher is skilled in asking questions, Tell me how you sorted it?, Can you sort it a different way? That's just one thing. Is this ant closer to that tree or this other ant, What if it goes around the lake this way? And the child is very engaged and knows what they know and the teacher is skilled in challenging them up to the next level. I remember when I taught literacy to the kids, they had a dictionary and they're searching for things starting with that latter, and they'd get a sticky note and make a word bank with words from that dictionary. Some kids couldn't write very well but they could go on a word hunt and draw and a parent would read to them and even if they weren't writing they could put a few pictures in and there weren't any work books, it was organic and child centered, it was their work. Two kids a day could tell their story with a group and a kid would be in the author's chair and everyone would be asking them questions. Tom: So they are supported socially in maintaining interest and carrying out curiosity-driven projects at their appropriate level. Liz: Like "sciencing" would be, choose your kits, for example here's the dropper kit and, Do what makes sense to you. Would you get the same answer next time? So they're doing all this science work with all their own questions. Those kits are K-12 and we just used them K-4 maybe, but they are very rich, scientists are asking the same questions today. And so in math, and science, and literacy too, they are finding a quiet place to work, so as a teacher you're structuring having a quiet place to work for them and them being engaged in their question, and you can have partner work too, and there'll be time to tell others about it later. So it's structured but it's all play. We'd see you want to keep using your DAP kit but it's time to read now so put that away and we'll do more tomorrow and let's get our books out. Some specialized schools are set up that way, where it's just play. But we thought that having some academic structure is a good thing, and I still believe that it's a good thing. -- Watching the 2020 fundraiser video:-- Tom: These kids are like little baby graduate students. Liz: Exactly. And see the Attic hasn't changed, which is nice. Tom: Tell more about the significance of the Attic, for the kids, the parents, the families, the community, the wider world. Liz: I think it just shows what's possible in education. We have this really limited view of what education is and what's out there is not what's best for kids. The Attic supports them to meet their authentic potential. Healthier kids mean healthier families mean healthier communities. Also there's something about fear there. It's not fear based learning. All the kids are celebrated. The kids are accepted for who they are. Of course there are friend groups but there aren't... Tom: Like an abusive scapegoated child situation would not be tolerated. Liz: Kids sometimes do come from public school pretty traumatized and I'm remembering this one, she sat by herself for a year and she ended up doing super well. She had been very passive, but now is very self-directed. You asked Significance? I think that's very significant. It's significant one child at a time. It impacts all of the families. Tom: One could say that while standard American K-12 is basically modelled on Prussian military schooling modified for the purpose of industrial-era factory worker education, whereas the Attic is modern knowledge-worker education. Liz: I mean it's a model ... it's an expensive school, I sometimes had a math group of two kids or four kids, the biggest was eight but I had someone in there to help me with it. It's very accepting and encouraging of all. Tom, you and I did well in traditional school, so you might think that the Attic is for kids who struggled in traditional school but that's not so, there have been some truly brilliant kids that came through the Attic and would have done the IB and AP and stuff but because they got to choose their educational path in a more authentic way... Tom: they, it's just like a truer, higher aim for a longer and more satisfying life of achievement. Authenticity has more value than just subjective pleasure, it's better for everyone because it's deeper and because everyone else gets to be more authentic too, and because real achievement isn't just checking off the boxes in a curriculum when you're building out a new world that hasn't been invented yet. It seems like it would be a good school for inventors. Liz: It's a good school for anyone, Tom.