Guest 

Mara Linaberger

Founder & COO, Microschool Builders, LLC Dr. Mara Linaberger believes that each of us has chosen to be here at this moment in time for a specific reason—that we are each on a mission that we choose for ourselves. And that figuring out what we love, what we're good at, and how we can be of service is the engine we need to fuel a lifetime of joyful learning. Mara also believes that school often slows down or stifles that excitement for students. So she is on a mission to create a global network of 100 microschools in the next 20 years—to harness education toward helping amazing children to develop their highest potentials while making learning fun again! Mara is a life-long educator, author, technologist, artist, ballroom dancer, and musician, having spent 25 years in service as a public school educator, teacher trainer, and administrator. Completing a doctorate in Instructional Technology, she went on to earn a Superintendent's Letter of Eligibility in Pennsylvania. Launching Mindful Technology Consultants in 2013, she continues to train teachers at the masters level on the use of digital portfolios as alternative assessments and on bringing mindfulness practices into the classroom. Mara is the international two-time best selling author of HELP! My Child Hates School and The Micro-School Builder's Handbook. Mara currently lives in Harmony, PA, with her husband Michael while she travels far and wide, directly supporting clients in her global Microschool Builders programs.

https://www.facebook.com/mara.linaberger 

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzqdwPI1kFylYq19kQ1F18g 

https://twitter.com/mlinaberger 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maralinaberger/

Show Notes

Jenna says that she thinks many listeners of the Rogue Learner podcast are interested in knowing more about alternative and progressive education models, but who aren't able to homeschool, may be interested in looking into microschools. She asks Mara to give an overview of microschools for the audience. Mara says that many people would characterize it differently but she sees it as the reinvention of the one-room schoolhouse. It's usually a parent or educator who decides they want to work with a small group of students in a community. In most cases, micro schools have multi-age groupings, lots of self direction on the part from the students, more time outdoors, more time for field trips and hands-on projects. You can picture it as a one-room schoolhouse with technology, the ability to communicate with others and collaborate beyond our communities, and the ability to travel. They are really a great alternative for many kids. Jenna says it seems like a good alternative for people who want to build something different for students that is easier than creating a school which can accommodate up to 600 students. 

Mara mentions that the word micro school was coined in 2010, but is not a new idea. She says Montessori, Reggio Emilo, Waldorf, and Sudbury are all labeled 'alternative education', but she thinks that word is loaded because they can be seen as schools which parents send their kids to when they're getting into trouble or they just don't fit in. She says that micro schools do accommodate those kids, of course, but there are plenty of other people who are looking for smaller, more personalized, more community-based, gentler, kinder, slower micro schools. 

Mara says she's seeing an influx of parents who are choosing micro schools with  kids who are highly sensitive, diagnosed with adhd, gifted, kids with learning deficits or challenges. In the smaller learning environment, she says it's a lot easier to meet the needs of each individual child as opposed to the public schools which sometimes serve hundreds of students. 

Jenna points out that the one thing schools can provide is a sense of community, however in public schools the number of students is often so large that it's impossible to feel connected and valued as an individual. She says that's where micro schools can fill a need, the need for community. It would provide a space where you can focus on the wellbeing of the child, not just tests. 

On the topic of testing and assessment, Mara says that it's not used to measure the value of a child first and foremost, but unfortunately children adopt this type of thinking. They think an A means your good and a C means your bad. What an A means, is that you mastered the content and a C means you haven't mastered the content and it should be used as a guidepoint for the teacher. It lets the teacher know whether or not the way they taught the content was good for the student. With micro schools, there is less emphasis on assessment because the facilitator/guide/mentor is with the child all day everyday in most instances and can observe the progress of the child without formal assessment.  They can organically assess whether the child is attaining knowledge. In many micro schools, children will show what they've learned by putting on a show for the community, keeping portfolios, or videos. There are so many ways for kids to demonstrate what they know, tests are just one of them. Unfortunately for many kids now, tests create a personal sense of worth and value which is not what they're intended to do. 

Jenna says she agrees and points out that with unschoolers and homeschoolers, we are organically observing our children's growth over time. It's easy to see how they've acquired new vocabulary or are reading at a higher level. If proof is necessary for some reason, it's easy to acquire it without formal assessments. 

Mara says that some of the micro schools she works with are required to give formal, standardized assessments because of the state they live in, however the way that they approach it is as a celebration of how far the students have come. She says that in most cases children grow even further than what they would be expected to in a public school after a year, so the kids feel some sort of validation from their approach to learning.

Jenna says bureaucracy is there and sometimes there are gatekeepers. She says she likes how Mara flips it around, and uses tests as a celebration of all you've learned rather than a valuation of the child's worth. It's not used to measure a child up to anyone else's standards, it's more of a look at how far the child has come. 

Jenna asks how Mara got involved with micro schools. Mara says that eight years ago she was working as the director of staff development, technology integration, new teacher induction, and data and assessment for a local school district. She thought that by moving up into administration, she'd be able to help change education and make it a sainer place for students and educators. At the end of her first year, a new superintendent was coming in and the budget was not balanced and so Mara's position was eliminated. It was the first time she realized that she was dispensable. She looked for employment elsewhere, but came to the realization that she couldn't reenter the public school system. She set up a consulting business and did some teaching online, but she also began to investigate the system of education because she was curious about how she could have been part of something that didn't really value the skill sets she brought and was so easily cast aside. She started questioning what she could do with all of her experience now and knowing that education really wasn't designed to create autonomous, happy, well-adjusted learners. It's designed to create workers who can follow the directions they are given, knowing that that's not really working for kids anymore and won't work for us in the future because of how rapidly our planet is changing and requires a very different kind of 'worker'.' It requires someone who can think autonomously, who can be creative, and come up with solutions for problems. 

Mara actually had dreams about one-room schoolhouses and she got curious about that. So she investigated that further and discovered they were still a thing. She read some books written by people who were running them. She went to visit one of them off the coast of Maine and actually got hired to open the school for three students. She stayed for three months before resigning due to the extreme isolation the island had from the mainland.  While there however, Mara got to experience how a community of well-intentioned citizens could run a school even with a limited budget. She then wrote a book about making better school choices for your kids, and that led to her writing about how people could go about opening their own school. That book has grown into a full-blown business. Mara now has seven clients who have opened micro schools, which are networked together. She has six new clients who will be opening schools this fall. Mara says her vision, for the work that she's doing, is to help people who want to get a small school open as a viable business that will pay the owner well and offer real value back to the community of learners and the community in general. Her hope is that all of the owners can work together and collaborate, so the kids are getting a global experience while at the same time still being grounded in their community.

Jenna says she loves the vision and can see how these schools will be popping up everywhere because she sees a need for them, especially for the teen population. In her own experience, she's found that her kids are yearning for a place to meet up with a constant community of people on a day to day basis. Jenna says she sees how this could really work together with home education to create a real turning point f