What Future Do We Want?

It is much too nice of a day to be behind a computer screen, but here I am - and if you are reading this today... well there you go!

Before I encourage you to wrap up your screen time and get outside, I hope you'll read on briefly - there is a lot happening, and more on the way. 

Over the past few weeks, I have been lucky enough to listen and learn with many of you - youth and adults - alongside others across Vermont and beyond. Virtual conferences, webinars and focus groups have proliferated, and dialog about "the future of education" is as electric as it has ever been. VTLFF has always been focused on this topic, and it's exciting to see how others are joining the conversation and work of transformation. There's a need and an opening - let's lean into possibility!

Here are some of the provocative questions being shared across webinars, virtual summits and forums: 

  • What happens when we organize our schools around people not topics, centering relationships, personal and community well-being as the focus of learning?

  • What happens when we  organize learning in multi-age/multi-ability bands, rather than being segregated by age?

  • What happens when we organize teaching & learning in teams, supporting each other in interdisciplinary areas of inquiry & expertise?

  • What happens when we tear up the timetable, supporting learning any time, any place?

  • What happens when learners work at their own pace, investigating projects of personal, local, cultural or global relevance?

  • What happens when we provide frequent, authentic & meaningful feedback through self-reflection & from peers, educators, parents & community partners?

  • What happens when we let go of letter grades & grade point averages and fully embrace personalized, proficiency-based reporting?

  • What happens when we intentionally balance digital technology with physical activity & connection to nature as integral parts of learning?

  • What happens when equity literacy is as central as language, numerical or scientific literacy?


I hope you are finding ways to engage with these questions, putting your ideas into action, and sharing with others. 

“We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” Howard Zinn

Recent Highlights and Inspiration

Cultivating Pathways to Sustainability
Earlier this week, students and educators from across the state re-grouped to share projects and learning they have been engaged with since launching together in September. It was a powerful and inspiring event!
Click here for a glimpse at what gives CPS participants hope
Click here for the Cultivating Pathways Planning Kit - a teacher/learner project-based, remote-learning curriculum and planning resource
Click here to check out the SDG Academy - a teacher/learner curriculum resource from Orleans Elementary educator Kyle Chadburn. (Link to Kyle's YouTube intro)

Power Squared Summit
One week ago, over 100 youth and adults gathered to connect, share and inspire. Entirely planned and facilitated in youth-adult partnership, P2 is an exemplar of what co-creation of learning can be!
Check out the Summit Website for videos, resources and inspiration!

VTLFF Survey Results
A few of weeks ago, we asked the VTLFF network to respond to a series of questions about what we can learn from school closures this spring. Here are a few highlights from the responses:

  • Equity: We need more of a focus on this issue regularly, always, and not as a response after it happens; it needs to be built into the system.

  • Wellness: Focus on social emotional and physical wellness; focus on access - i.e. food and technology, transportation and adult support.

  • Engagement: Focus on individual questions (learner-centered); place-based, project-based, meaningful learning; focus on transferrable skills

  • Communities: More holistic involvement of families; more real world conversations that acknowledge complexity of life, emotions, pain, suffering, competition, what success means; more community-based, community-building (and healing) learning

This feedback helped shape our most recent grant application and will be essential "grist for the mill" in upcoming Common Circle planning dialog.
Please feel free to add more thoughts - we'll keep the survey open.

Upcoming events and opportunities

A New Way Forward: This is the second in Education Reimagine's series of virtual summits. The first was fantastic, and well-represented by VTLFF partners. This summit will feature a Vermont learner-led, interactive breakout session focusing on their Harbor Freight Fellowship pre- and post-COVID and conversations around integrating connections to the trades in participants' home settings.

Burlington City and Lake
invites you to an extraordinary VIRTUAL art exhibit for extraordinary times
TIME - NATURE - PLACE - HOPE
Wednesday, May 27 from 5:00 - 5:30 pm
Featuring artwork by students in the Burlington City & Lake Semester, a program of Burlington High School and Shelburne Farms in partnership with artist Mary Lacy and Soapbox Arts
Join the webinar-style event hosted by BCL students at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87075297313

Vermont Educator Forum
Access to Learning and Support for Our Most Vulnerable Students
Thursday, May 28, 2:30-3:30 PM
A teacher-centered conversation hosted by the Great Schools Partnership.

Thinking of Summer...

Education for Sustainability Immersion - Online
Monday, July 13, 2020 to Friday, August 7, 2020
This Shelburne Farms/UVM course is action-oriented with an expectation that participants will create an EFS portfolio that includes an EFS Action Plan, an EFS unit or project design, and a Sustainability Ethics and Values Statement.