Live and Learn New Mexico!

I get up early in the morning, make myself a cup of chai, and watch a show on Netflix. Sometimes it's just a good mystery, like Murdoch Mysteries , sometimes it's a great new drama, like Madam Secretary (although that show only reinforces my hatred of corrupt political systems. I'm being redundant -- take out "corrupt" in the last sentence.) This morning, I watched half of Hacker Wars , and I learned a lot. I understand better the motivations of many hackers who question how our country operates. They are imprisoned for putting the information out there, and for hacking into systems in the first place. One guy in the movie said it right -- once upon a time, if a hacker hacked into a major corporation's emails, he would have been hired by that company. That would seem a very American thing to do. Instead, if someone exposes vulnerabilities in systems today, he is arrested. Doesn't sound like an American thing to do, does it? I guess it is, though. I...

This is an updated post from a while back. I'm re-posting it in the hopes that more people will read it and join L&LNM in the XQ Super School Challenge . Below are the questions we were asked and the answers we submitted in the Concept phase, which was approved to move on to the next steps of the challenge. LIVE AND LEARN NEW MEXICO! SCHOOL CONCEPT Q: A bold and compelling idea will be at the center of our school: what is your idea and why does it have the potential to transform high school learning? A. L&LNM hopes to serve the whole state of New Mexico by using the technology available to make communication across distances easy and by using technology our young people use. We will use the internet as much as possible to run the program, communicate across sites, and plug into professional development and learning opportunities for staff, faculty, students, and parents. At the local level, in each town and village we serve across the state, we will have site...

They are talking about road rage on the radio, and I'm trying to fill out the XQ Super School Challenge concept form for submission November 15. One question the form asks is what kinds of learning experiences our students will have. We will be a project-based learning school. Each community we serve will have a team of teachers, students, parents, businesses, nonprofits, interested residents, etc. to identify, research, and propose solutions to community and/or world issues.  One example I've spoken of before is Bosque Farms. If we brought back the dairies to that community and produced our food locally, cutting out mega food producing corporations, would we alleviate the global warming problem? Would we bring jobs to our communities? We could take the same project approach to the road rage problem in Abq. A learning team could research the problem, describe it, propose solutions, and then maybe try them out and report on their success.  L&LN wants to do this!! I...

I had planned to blog about the first meeting of the L&LNM XQ Super School team today but something happened on my way home from the meeting last night, not to me but to a four-year-old girl sitting in a car on I-40. Road rage is a serious problem in Abq. It has been for a long time. I used to yell at other idiot drivers back in college until people started shooting at each other from their cars. So I actually decided a while back that I was going to be a courteous driver, which allows me to let go of the road rage. But the rage continues and for those who have guns in their cars, it's too easy to just grab the gun and shoot at another car. And then a little girl gets killed. I have been crying all night. What the hell is wrong with Americans? We talk about guns like they are toys!!! No one ever seems to see the reality of the violence surrounding them. When I heard about the little girl getting shot in her car, I said something about stricter gun laws and the response ...

Last week was quite an exciting week. It really makes a difference to tap into a system that is already in place, and backed by funding , rather than try to build a system from scratch. The timing of the XQ Super School Challenge is perfect! Just when I was forced to start thinking about how to get support for my ideas about learning, there it was! In a matter of days I accomplished what I couldn't in the past year since starting L&LNM. I now have an XQ team of 13 members and an initial meeting scheduled for tomorrow evening (10/20/15). I know of 3 besides myself who will be attending but I've been posting about it on Facebook and inviting people. Will anyone show up? I've asked for an rsvp to liveandlearnnm@gmail.com but don't want to discourage walk-ins so I'm a little nervous. I need to be prepared. I put together PowerPoint slides to help me stay on track at the meeting and to use in case others show up. I also need the presentation in case the medi...

After all this time trying to reach people through Facebook (it's been fun and informative--don't get me wrong), I sign up for the XQ Super School Challenge and invite others who are signed up to read my blog and join my team if they like what they read. Six people have joined the team. Wooooo hooooo! On top of that, I had more Blogspot page reads in a single day than ever before, and someone started commenting on the posts. Another woo hoo is in order...woooo hoooo! It makes a difference to have a system like the XQ challenge website already in place for start-ups like me to benefit from. I'm working with another team member to set up a time for our new team to meet face to face but in the meantime, we can be working toward the first goal, which is to come up with an idea for a super school and submit it by Nov. 15. We will use a flipped classroom approach and get much of the preliminary work done online before we meet in person. We can then use meeting time to conti...

I received an email a while back about the XQ Super School Project, signed up on their website then promptly forgot about it until I got a second email on a day I was more receptive to the information. Now I'm super excited to try to meet their challenge . I figure I'm off to a good start with the ideas I have for running an adult education program. This challenge is for the high school level but if we are redesigning high school, do we even need to label it as such? I mean, many of the principles of adult ed apply to the high school level. In other words, the first thing we need to do is get rid of grade levels defined by age. I've been soliciting ideas from my daughter, Kelsey, who is in college now. We agreed that project-based, problem-solving learning is the way to go. Work on real-life issues, incorporating math, writing, critical thinking skills, etc. into the experience. Don't divide a day into seven or eight classes that separate subjects as if they have no...