Substitute School

substitute school

in loco parentis more and more gets taken literally; so school, always a supplement to parenting, is becoming in many cases a substitute for parents. Breakfast, lunch, counseling, all manner of care-taking are all necessary and praiseworthy, but less and less is learning even the ostensible activity taking place there.

"most natural and perfect to generate after its kind..."

so let this be in loco school, where learning can happen for those who want to learn. To midwife, rather than generate, and nurture metaphorically rather than literally. Though they say, too, 

"teach a man to fish..."

it could even be in a school, in that physical place, but it could be anywhere, anytime you do your night fishing.  Anywhere learning is for something more than a grade or a test score--for recovering lost time, self-rewarding, yet pointing far beyond itself--

For those who sit in school on their phones looking for they know not what.
For those who missed out when they were in school, and know it. (Remember when web pages would automatically start playing background music?)
For those who find learning interesting, including teachers who miss getting to actually teach.

in loco resources:

podcasts, live discussion, background, context, tutoring, languages, books, games, links, jokes, apps

opportunities:

jobs as subs

volunteering, mentoring, reading aloud

internships

partners, etc.

about:

a substitute teacher myself, this is one of the projects I work on while students are working on theirs 

some of our teachers:

Hamlet: king of infinite space, were it not he had bad dreams

--reading before bed; sleep, dreams, unconscious and awareness

Pascal, sitting quietly in a room

--imagination, religion

Voltaire, tending his garden

--outdoors; atheism

Lincoln, little remembered 

--Euclid and the Bible; public service; depression

Rousseau, discoursing

--Saying and doing

Whitman, teacher of athletes and children

--Freedom and expansiveness

and Dickinson, a thing with wings
--Solitude and restraint

Plato, on music and gymnastic, games

Toni Morrison, playing in the dark

and Marilynn Robinson, the other greatest living American writer

Montaigne's daughter?

Montessori, following

--self-directed (Piaget)

Pullman, repeating responsibility and delight

--telling stories