educA+ion OUTSIDE the box

Ready for the lesson I am Glynnyale ( written on chalk board) Welcome

“I am teacher, counselor, and behavioral therapist now full time BLACK LIVES ACTIVIST! I have decided to quit my job teaching in the traditional institution and stepped OUTSIDE the box. Guiding students on a course of a lifetime with travel, service and complete mental commitment, I help facilitate transformations that have given me new life. Who knew that getting outside the classroom is where I would become a principal of endless possibilities for developing minds.

I work with children of all ages engaging in the stories of our neighbors for books and writing books with life experience.”

So now that we have the introductions out the way now we can get into talking about the why education outside the traditional western parameters of learning is not the ONLY method to enhancing the brain of our youth. Keep in mind I strongly believe as an educator taking any child of any ethnic background from a wild range of social circumstance will benefit from embracing some of if not all of the things that I will go over in EDUCATING OUTSIDE THE BOX, NONTHELESS this if for my babies! There is a virus attacking the world, this all inclusive, fence riding, scared to commit to our personal interest, afraid to miss out on 1 like or offend that person who to be honest doesn’t care about you! Well I have been vaccinated; let me tell you this is a vaccination I STAND for girl! You just love yourself and trust yourself you forgive yourself and allow yourself to be differently beautiful its self care on a whole ‘nother level. Girl it is good, like I can tell you I AM BLACK and taking an interest in the success survival and advancement of BLACK is ok, better than ok it is the most important thing I can do for me. All that to say this blog is talking directly to BLACK PEOPLE! I invite all and anyone to read and learn however the message, research, statistics and perspectives are specifically targeted to a black audience.

For Us By Us (picture of me/or kids in fubu gear) this might be a perfect place to say I thought FUBU was awesome…lol…Throwback!!!!

I saw this quote “ the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one” –Malcolm Forbes

So my focus as an educator is to open the mind of any and all people I come in contact with. This brings me to what I noticed while in the classroom, I found myself teaching and preaching caged, restrictive, learning styles. Sit in your assigned sit, don’t move, don’t talk, DON’T, STOP, NO, you need my permission to ____________fill in the blank_________. How do you open a mind in four walls with an instructor that is paid to say no? If that is not enough lets also run drills that emphasize this place IS NOT SAFE. I won’t go into a NOT SAFE tangent right here but fee free to check out my other blogs because I will rant and rave about school NOT SAFETY and some fun science about the amygdala. 

Speaking of science remembered when you would do an experiment and you would have a controlled groups and an experimental group. Controlled group means you CONTROL for the independent variable or in other words you CONTROL for CHANGE. So in the case of teaching inside the box (traditional western education in a classroom with bells, set lunchtime, bathroom breaks, standardizes testing etc.) your CONTROLLED  group where the scientist aka teachers have to CONTROL for change in 20 plus students for 180 days give or take for a duration of 13 years not including higher education. If you are like me your thinking no wonder we see an extreme drop out, suspension, truancy rate and what about the literacy rate and yes these educational discrepancies are 80% higher in the minority population don’t believe me do your research … 

Leaving out the controversy and complications of the lack of Black representation on all sides of education even when this is “fixed” CONTROLLING for the complex multi-dimensional lives a human is far past ambitious (which is why I believe teachers should be the highest paid occupation) because knowing how wild this request is I WILL ADMIT THERE ARE MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF SUCCESS STORIES. Yet even if and when this works what exactly is being learned, and I am not even talking about those students who remember the text book versions of school, but I am asking if we have by default suggested the LIFE CAN BE CONTROLLED that CHANGE is a variable that can be CONTROLLED.

So because in my experience the answer is NO and as a African American citizen learning to navigate, adapt, and maximize my resources in my NATURAL ENVIRONMENT learning early that I cannot control the conditions of life it is essential to teach in and with the REAL WORLD, the uncontrollable ever changing world.

“…it’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”- Albert Einstein

Curiosity is invited to the learning environment when you have to explore how constant change causes unlimited ripples to the outcome making the learner a value to the results. I love being the messenger to my children that they MATTER their input is a major factor. I have opted in for the experimental group addressing, trauma, disorders, poverty and more head on not in any way suggesting that those social issues get left outside the classroom door and when you sit at your desk you are now somehow absolved from your truth. What happens when you teach children to embrace these variations of them, teach them how to use it, encourage them that their story has given them a different point of view and they need to learn to use those glasses like a microscope? Now instead of all the time wasted trying to “fit in” to the box and losing those students who decide they won’t even try you take the box away and welcome the world as the inclusive place it really is I am one of those crazy people who believe the earth is round.(do a big globe period) not square. ( do a square globe period)

An essential part of learning  is gaining understanding which is probably why unschooling( add link with definition) is becoming a popular approach by given the student the choice learning becomes a welcomed experience where the student is actually seeking information.

“…study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in” – Leonardo de Vinci

I believe to bring desire back to the learner we have to welcome the world back into the classroom; who they are, what they are interested in and taking the learner into the world to rub shoulders with real people working to impact simple results in there intimate world. The student must BUY IN to learning and it is a much known saying ‘people buy from who they like, know and trust!’ How can we have our students BUY IN to learning about the world if we keep it from them? We need them to LIKE, get to KNOW and TRUST the world they live in and that cannot happen if we lock them in a classroom and CONTROL all the beautiful change the world offers. Alvin Toffler said “the illiterate of the 21^st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” To me that sounds like the illiterate are those who cannot change or worse those who fear change, education was suppose to free the mind and instead it seems we have found a way to build a prison for the mind at all ages.  The bell rings the doors lock and the testing begins and now our children become addicts of approval working only to be deemed ‘better’ than someone else. Working hard to isolate and ostracizes the same person we were once taught to love and protect. What happen to “love thy neighbor.” Now our children will cheat, steal, and even kill to be JUDGED ruled the best unable to judge or make a ruling of their own about themselves. Something is wrong.I can attest to the real world and how self evaluation is critical because in the real world time requires fast thinking, mistakes and revisions, flexibility, patients. In the real world your neighbor is your ally, a teacher, a partner, a mentor if you let them. In the real world you are in the class of friendship, bureaucracy, sex. You are learning what hard work looks like and the test becomes your life and that of those you fall in love with. You find out you are indispensable in the outcome of you. When you are out of the box you used your innovation and apply yourself 100% because that IKEA table doesn’t put itself together on its own and an F is no longer an option. Failing in the REAL WORLD is not losing your chance at student of the year; failing means you go to sleep hungry. If you have ever been hungry you realize quickly your try, your effort, your participation makes all the difference. 
Once out of the box you engage, thank GOD batteries are INCLUDED!