Prepared: What Kids Need for a Fulfilled Life

by Diane Tavenner

The impact of these economic changes reverberated. The solid American option of living off the land and farming was quickly disappearing, replaced by industrial and high-tech farming and global competition. You had to finish high school. What’s more, since it became much harder to get a good job with the skills built in high school, it was no longer sufficient to just pass—one had to do well for the chance to go on. And so began the nuclear arms race for college admissions. The highest priority became not to graduate, but to get accepted to a good college. The standard formula required good grades, good test scores, and lots of activities and extracurriculars. Be the same as everyone else, only better.

These projects aren’t relegated to the wee hours of the night before they’re due, and look nothing like a poster board with hastily written paragraphs and home-printed pictures. The final products are high-quality presentations, models, simulations, websites, campaigns, building plans, and businesses. Projects aren’t dessert—they’re the main course.

While it sounds a bit like study hall, self-directed learning time is fundamentally different. What the student is working on is driven by the overall learning objectives from the projects, but the day-to-day learning is driven by goals set by the student in consultation with his or her mentor. So perhaps a student’s goal by the end of the week is to master a particular math concept. The self-directed learning time teacher knows that, the mentor knows that, the math teacher knows that, the student knows that—because all of this information is available in a snapshot through the platform we created. The student can choose to use their time to work toward that goal or another goal.