Refounding Education: Creating Safe and Enchanted Learning Places

Book excerpt: Every learning space should be a safe, inviting, and enchanting environment. Every learning space called a classroom should be safe physically, emotionally, socially, and academically. It should be a place where every learner has the opportunity to become everything they were created to be. This book explores ideas about teaching and learning that allow these magical places to be created. Often students come to our learning places starry-eyed and curious but leave wondering who they are. They need learning places that celebrate their worth, that build on their curiosity and desire for exploration of their world. They need learning places filled with positive energy, where diverse thinking and diverse problem-solving methods are valued, where they are safe to disagree, where they are accepted and loved. They can grow in a learning space that has heart. Learning spaces change our lives. This book is an amalgam of ideas gathered, practiced, and lived over seven decades of passion for learning and teaching and the creation of these safe and enchanting learning spaces. It is about the magic that learning can be. It challenges much about our monopolistic education system. It offers ways to reach new horizons in learning as we tap into the deep well of the human spirit and potential.