The following is an excerpted message from Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the author. I am constantly thinking about how best to describe what ASCEND is all about. Here is an example of what I want students to be able to say… Read more School is a place where…
The following is an excerpted message from Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the author. I thought about our discussion the other night at Alfy’s when I was reading this passage from Earl Kelley’s In Defense of Youth (1962): We must have teachers who… Read more Growing citizens in our schools…
The following is an excerpted conversation between Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, and Beth Ha, board member of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the authors and has been lightly edited. Jim: Good morning, all. I am reading a book of Gandhi’s writings and was struck by… Read more Practicing nonviolence in our schools
The following is an excerpted message from Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the author. I was thinking about this: even though we are all physically connected in our schools and community, we don’t always feel connected. As I walk by hundreds of students and… Read more Giving the gift of listening…
The following is a message from Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the author. I know I’ve shared this with you before, but I was again moved by this quote from John Dewey’s Creative Democracy — The Task Before Us, written in 1939 on… Read more Schools as “gift nurseries”
The following is a message from Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the author. I ran across this today in Dennis Littky’s The Big Picture: Over the course of three decades watching kids walk into my schools, I have decided that I want them… Read more The real goals of education…
The following is a message from Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the author. Here are a couple of very thought-provoking excerpts from Earl Kelley’s In Defense of Youth (1962) — highly recommended! They point the way towards some potential projects and experiments we could… Read more Earl Kelley on standards, grades, and student voice
The following is a message from Jim Strickland, founder of ASCEND, on the Marysville ASCEND Mailing List. It is reposted here with permission from the author. I was thinking this morning about the basic assumptions about education and learning that we take for granted. Because these assumptions are considered “common sense”, we don’t even imagine… Read more Challenging basic assumptions
