Reflections from a One Room Schoolhouse

The end game for this vision is to create a short video that points up the importance of teaching and learning in the oldest objective learning environment in America "The One Room Schoolhouse."

Standing outside on a cold winters day looking through the window of a one room schoolhouse with the bright morning sun behind me, I saw my reflection in the schoolhouse windows and in that reflection I witnessed my soul’s ambition.

While simultaneously observing my reflection I began to see through it into the schoolhouse beyond. It was only then that I began to imagine a scene that had taken place countless times previously inside that schoolhouse.

This time school was in session circa the early 1900’s. There the older children were busy helping the younger children work through their math and reading problems, while the teacher tended to the fire in the potbellied wood stove. They’d been doing this since the school was started in 1849.

I closed my eyes and shook my head as though to clear any misconceptions of what I was seeing. Continuing my imagined gaze through the windows: what I saw really made my heart leap, although it shouldn't’t have come as any great surprise. For in it’s linear progression, as the natural course of learning is wont to do, the same group of students were again inside busy and animated, except this time it was present-day and they were taking part in their creative endeavors, connected with their peer’s all over the world.

They were utilizing real-time video conferencing and having lively discussions regarding a variety of subjects. Taken by what was a very captivating scene I journeyed inside and sat down. Observing that here were students from at least a dozen countries working together using advanced digital communications tools to attempt to solve some of the most complex societal problems and globalized economic challenges. These young student-scientists being not constrained by previous agreements and conventions, were free to convene all the empirical knowledge previously gathered and then to set about to freely interact with their peers from all corners of the globe solving a variety of natural and man made problems.

Sitting there mesmerized by what my eyes and heart had found I was brought from my reverie by what appeared to be a 5 year old child that handed me a virtual head-tracking helmet. She then explained the helmet would allow me to interact in virtual-reality with a student-designed Virtual Studio Laboratory taking place at the Michigan International STEM Center.

Additionally, if I selected the GREEN-STEM Center there were also a number of outdoor interactive real-world Alternative Energy projects (Wind, Water, Solar) that I could participate in. Whenever it was appropriate and applicable I could project my virtual-self so that unfettered communications and interactions could take place in real-time on scene. I was to the point of overwhelmed when the announcement came, that it was lunchtime. So bidding adieu to my virtual classmates we broke for lunch.

After partaking of a great lunch harvested from the schools greenhouse and fish ponds that the students designed and maintained, we then reconvened and the children felt it was time to have History class (probably for my benefit).

This class was a clarification of what they found had been missing from society from about the 1950’s thru 2008 when education in the United States had finally caught up with the 21st century. The open, honest and yet deep journey of discovery the lesson purveyed was one of great soul searching during and after the realization that America was no longer number one on the hit parade in the world order.

We discovered that the greatest vision the people world-over attributed to America was that it was founded on the belief that god created all men equal and America existed in people’s minds with the belief that the intent was to hold these truths to be self evident.

Somewhere along the way as an outcome of the industrial revolution, people became cogs to benefit a machine mentality and America foundered for some time. She foundered until enough people began to place an emphasis on creating real and relevant learning environments that transformed all of the pent up creative-drive of the populace and through a new agreement placed an emphasis on working collaboratively to identify and support the "Natural Capital" resources we have left on the planet.

This of course started with our children and their livelihoods, hence the need for improvement of educational opportunities that benefit all mankind and not just the bottom-line of a few disconnected stakeholders. The planet found out through these children that we are all stakeholders and it is in our best interest to work together or perish.