Eight areas Marketplace Mission Learning Center (MMLC) Day School helps students improve learning

Eight areas Marketplace Mission Learning Center (MMLC) Day School helps students improve learning

Marco Island, Florida, June 14, 2019 School News 




1. MMLC unifies the areas of learning. Students learn that they “own” their courses. Students learn that the art, crafts, projects belong to them and begin to integrate these “arts” into one learning experience with their course work. The classroom with only five to seven students belongs to them so they take ownership and integrate everyday experience into their coursework and their “arts.” Students begin to participate in the discussions relating their courses, arts and environment. Learning comes together. Students work on human relations, mental hygiene and even ethical and moral values. The students gather around and begin to come to grips with the everyday life questions and problems.

2. MMLC reaches each student at his own level of experience. With courses, the student sets a pace, decides time and course to study, and plans the day and week to complete so many lessons With “arts,” students choose a project, develops a plan, executes the plan at their pace and integrates the project into their course work. With our classroom of five to seven students and one teacher, students daily collaborate with other students and interact with the teacher. Activities and applications within the capacity of all, daily offer each student the satisfaction of numerous successful experiences in communication. Enthusiastic participation becomes a criterion of the success of our lessons.

3. MMLC leds to better a student-teacher relationship. At MMLC the teacher acts as a learning coach. “How can I help you learn?” begins every encounter whether spoken or unspoken. Through a sharing of common experiences in teacher-student discussions, a better understanding and a spirit of cooperation develops. In a democratic atmosphere teacher and student shared experiences increase learning and build student confidence based on performance with measured competences. Teacher and student tackle lessons as a new adventure thinking together, laughing together, learning together.

4. MMLC improves the emotional climate of the classroom through coursework, the arts, the safe classroom, teacher-student and student-student interaction and the use of multisensory devices: activities, trips, firsthand experiences, and audio-visual aids. Students learn to avoid snap judgments, cynicism, arrogance, and easy generalizations by developing an awareness of differences, change, and multiple-causations. Removing tension from the classroom opens the door to a new freedom where students come to feel the joy of learning,

5. MMLC changes student behavior. Students learn to ask more questions, listen more attentively, evaluate sources of information more carefully, and read more widely and with greater interest. Students learn to examine their motives and act with a self-scrutiny that leads to changes in behavior in the classroom, at home and in the outside world.

6. MMLC stimulates wide, critical reading. Since the student learns to act as their own teacher, finding and evaluating sources becomes important. Every unit in every course has projects. With teacher approval, students can design their own projects. “Arts” projects often require research.

7. MMLC motivates written expression. Projects require written reports. Art and craft projects require descriptions. Our blogs and our podcasts need written material.

8. MMLC emphasizes maturity rather than competition. Students begin to feel their own individual growth and develop insight into their own problems as they discover they can understand problems that block progress. With the pressure of competition removed, students learn to enjoy and to encourage the progress of other students even when other students surpass their achievements. Interest in self-improvement and the harmonious inter-student relationship fosters a happier classroom for both student and teacher.

For more information about our school, go to MMLC

Why is Marketplace Mission Learning Center 9 to 3 a six hour school day and not a seven hour school day?

A Collier County high school day of seven hours holds classes from 7:10 - 2:05 with seven 50 minute periods and a staggered lunch/5th period. I posted the schedule below.

Marco Island, Florida, June 13, 2019 School News 

Period Schedule

1st 7:10-8:01

2nd 8:06-9:00

3rd 9:05-9:54

4th 9:59-10:48

5th Lunch 10:48-11:23 and 11:28-12:17 and 10:53-11:42 and 11:42-12:17

6th 12:22-1:11

7th 1:16-2:05

A student who took five classes would spend 50 minutes per class times 5 for a total of 250 minutes in class. However, my 31 years of teaching mostly 11th grade in a public school taught me that it took me three or four minutes every period to take attendance and get the students settled and begin the lesson, and I know students prepared to change classes in the last three or four minutes of each class because they only had five minutes between classes. With the settling down and preparing to leave and the passing classes and the lunch period students lost over 100 minutes of learning time. We should reduce the total instruction time of 5 times 50 minutes - 250 minutes to 43 minutes times 5 classes - 215 minutes. The student will have study hall, but rules restrict the student to only activities allowed in the room; no talking, often no computer, no arts or crafts with only quiet desk work.

In Marketplace Mission Learning Center (MMLC) students do not change classes, do eat breakfast/brunch/lunch anytime they choose and if they keep up with their coursework may move to another workstation such as the 3D printer, the art table, the sewing machine, the iMac to edit video or work on photos or ToonBoom cartoons. The student may take an Arduino electronic kit back to their desk or a loom, or the Proscope microscope. The student may take the podcast recorder into another room and record a podcast. The student may conference with another student to propose, plan and/or execute a joint project. I expect MMLC students to complete five or more lessons, quizzes, projects and/or tests a day with 20 or more per week. Certainly six hour school days offer enough time to meet this goal. Their online coursework allows them to login and work when they choose. Our coursework, Ignitia, has a quiz for every lesson, but if a student struggles with a lesson I expect them to go to outside sources such as MathTV and Khan Academy and YouTube to learn from other teachers. I expect MMLC students to learn to learn their own way. The internet library presents their lessons in so many ways. They command the world internet library from our MMLC classroom. I offer encouragement and instruction, but I strive everyday to achieve my goal to develop self-reliance and competence through actual accomplishments. To grow the student must feel and come to live the self-reliance and self confidence. Our name says “Marketplace” because everyone must enter and survive and thrive in the marketplace; “Mission” because everyone should do everything as a mission; “Learning” because MMLC strives to develop lifelong learners and “Center” because together with you the student, with your parents, with your fellow students and with me, we will start here in the center and create our world.

So 9-3 sounds fine to me. What do you think?

For more information about our school, go to MMLC

Use the scientific method

Use the scientific method

Marco Island, Florida, June 11, 2019 School News 

In school by 7th grade we studied the scientific method. In high school we took Biology, Chemistry and Physics. But did we learn the scientific method? No! We learned about science, principles, theories, about the great scientists, but not the day-to-day application of the scientific method. We could have learned to apply the scientific method to our own lives day-by-day by practicing the scientific method on our daily lives, but that application was not part of the curriculum.
The scientific method gives us a tool to solve problems. Businesses use a variation of the scientific method to solve business problems. Both methods listed below start with discovering a problem, then move to clarify the problem, then move to develop experiments (countermeasures) to address the problem, then measure the results of the experiment (countermeasures), then draw a conclusion (confirm the results of the countermeasures) and then add the confirmed results to our known knowledge.

Apply the scientific method to your day-to-day decisions like buying a car or getting a car repaired, going out to eat of eating at home, buying groceries. Apply the scientific method to big decisions like should your child go back to the same school in the fall or go to another school or stay home and be homeschooled. To your child at five, one year is one fifth of their life.  One fifth of your life at 35 is seven years. Your child at 12 percieves a school year as a very long time. Compulsory school looks a lot like prison in that you have to go, they order your around and restrict your behavior and even control your learning down to even how you learn a lesson and a subject. You may think and even say to your child that I have a job where I have to go to work, and they order me around, but the job is not the same.  You can quit (I like the to use "Fire your boss"), and look for another job. You can do that today.  Your child has no such option at school.  In fact, if your child quits the school, legal issues may arise.

Does your child have a school crisis?  See my article "Does my child need triage?"
Meanwhile start applying the scientific method to your day-to-day activities.

Scientific Method

1. Make an Observation.
2. Identify Variables.
3. Form a Question.
4. Design an Experiment.
5. Develop a Hypothesis.
6. Conduct an Experiment.
7. Observe and Measure Data..
8. Analyze the Data.
9. Draw a Conclusion.

Business Method

1. Clarify the problem - What really is the problem?
2. Break down the problem - What are the pieces of the problem?
3. Set targets - Develop countermeasures by observing symptoms, gathering facts and analysis. How can we address the problem and identify our targets?
4. Determine the root cause by asking: What?  How much? By when?

     5. Develop countermeasures

     6. Implement countermeasures

     7. Confirm results of countermeasures processes

     8. Standardize the countermeasures processes to sustain the gain

Use containment, corrective and preventive action

Notes: Universal principle - “vital few and trivial many” and Pareto’s Principle or 80/20 Rule - 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results.

PDCA - Plan, Do, Check and Act

For more information about our school, go to MMLC

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Private School

The decision to enroll a child in a private school involves examining and evaluating some of the following issues:

Student-teacher ratio, individual attention, parental involvement, academic issues, program balance, class size, teacher dedication, innovation and the potential for innovation, teacher training and experience, productive climate culture, achievement expectations, assessment issues, discipline issues, educational leadership, monitoring/evaluation, student autonomy, co-operation/consensus, orderly climate, high expectations, opportunity to learn, time on task, homework, cooperative learning, feedback, reinforcement, differentiation/adaptive instruction, classroom and school safety, school climate, school policies, community environment, classroom resources, parental and school shared educational philosophy, character education, core values, leadership development, computer skills, technology, online classes, a Moodle site, life skills, reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy, social scientific literacy, social responsibility and spiritual growth.

All of these are important.  Three issues encompass many of the above list:  smaller class size, no bureaucracy, and a high level of parent involvement.

Smaller classes - Students are more confident and teachers are more relaxed which make for a less stressful environment. No two children learn the same way. There is no "one size fits all" solution to education.  With smaller classes teachers get to know their students, match student learning styles and needs to lessons and have more time to address individual questions and concerns.  

No bureaucracy - Parents, students and teachers share the common goal of providing the most effective education to the students. With a bureaucracy comes authority based decisions, division of labor, explicit rules and impersonal interaction. These conditions create a perceptual discrimination and aversion to change. In a small school parents and students interact with the teacher to develop decisions based on common goals.

Parental Involvement - Private schools are built around open communication between parents and teachers. Private schools create a community that directly accountable to both students and parents.  

The Office of Innovation and Improvement of the United States Department of Education published a 52 page booklet in 2007 titled Choosing a School For Your Child. First, write down five things that are most important to you as you consider the choice of a school, and then take the following four steps:

1. Consider your child and your family.

2. Gather information about schools.

3. Visit and observe schools.

4. Apply to the school(s) you choose. 

This printable free book is also available on the Department’s Web site at: http://www.ed.gov/parents/schools/find/choose

Marketplace Mission Learning Center on Marco Island, Florida offers a 9-3 day school for five to seven students in a safe, quiet environment.

For more information about our school, go to MMLC

8:52 AM 5/4/2015

Lee Horton, Marketplace Mission Learning Center's four year Art teacher, loaned me a copy of the movie,  "Julie & Julia" which I watched yesterday afternoon.  Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell give outstanding performances in this story by Nora Ephron. The mission the frustrated office worker, Julie Powell, sets for herself is to make all 524 recipes found in Julia Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and blog about the experience. The movie parallels Julia Child's struggles to learn French cooking and to write and publish the famous cookbook with Julie Powell's struggles to make all 524 recipes in one year and blog about the experience.

How do you help students come to see life as a set of missions?  How do you help students come to see the power of the mission engine in your life and how life changing setting missions can be?  This movie may be a first step.

Mission and vision statements differ.  Mission statements are written in the present tense, define a purpose and set primary objectives. They are short, clear and powerful. A vision statement defines your purpose but focuses on goals and aspirations in uplifting and inspiring ways. A vision statement may be the same throughout a lifetime.  Julie Powell set a mission statement that defined a task - make the 524 recipes and blog about the experience and defined a time frame to complete the task. What emerged from the experience was that Julie Powell began to develop a life changing vision for her life.

Are you thinking about pulling your child out of public school?

More than 150,000 people have read Lynne Rigby's letter addressed to Florida Governor Rick Scott and the the Seminole County school officials.  If you are questioning your child's education, please read this letter.  A mother of five children aged 4 to 16, a college graduate and a kindergarten teacher, Lynne Rigby discovered the profound disconnect between success in the classroom (A's and B's), success with homework, never struggling and a low score on the Discovery Education tests. Her happy, third grade son was now suddenly pulled out of his third grade class and sent to remedial programs because of his test scores. The disconnect is the validity of the test and the test's connection to the curriculum.  Now the elephant enters the room - Common Core.  Won't it be wonderful argue some politicians, some college professors and test and teaching material producers if all students in the United States in the same grade are on the same page learning the same material every school day.  Workbooks and worksheets day after day dedicated to grinding out some myth of accountability measured by tests. 

A documented study concluded that if state and national testing were eliminated, some school districts could add 20 to 40 minutes of instruction each school day and in more competitive school districts students could gain an entire class period of instruction each school day.  Additionally, school districts would have $100 per test taker to purchase other services and goods to improve student learning. See Problems With Standardized Testing from education.com for more information.   

Marketplace Mission Learning Center (MMLC) offers a one room classroom for seven students with the teacher of the online course work in the classroom.  MMLC offers parents who wish to homeschool access to 180 courses for grades 3-12.  Instruction on using the course work and support are a text or phone call away. With 40 years of teaching over 5,500 students, Mr. Hill is available to address your education questions and concerns.  

Kayaking on Smokehouse Bay by the Esplanade on Marco Island, Florida