Educational Approaches
What will children learn?
At Free We Grow your child will learn all sorts of things.
They’ll learn how to move their bodies and trust in their bodies.
They’ll learn how to be at home outdoors across the seasons.
They’ll learn about materials; leaves, wood, metal, stone, soil, water, and they’ll play with these materials a lot.
They’ll learn about plants and animals.
They’ll learn how to use words and express their ideas.
They’ll learn at their own pace.
They’ll learn how to collaborate and share and express boundaries and respect others’.
They’ll learn how to fight – for what they believe in.
They’ll learn how to navigate conflict.
They’ll learn how to listen and just how much attention they’d like to command.
They’ll learn that others think differently to them.
They’ll learn how to rest and slow down and read and daydream.
They’ll learn how to build and fold and measure and observe and describe.
They’ll learn how to plan.
They’ll learn how to initiate and follow and encourage and celebrate.
They’ll learn how to mourne and how to say goodbye and how to welcome and celebrate.
They’ll learn what they’d like to learn.
Inspiring Educational Approaches
Free We Grow draws inspiration from many educational philosophies, approaches and practices. Here’s a collection of some which have inspired us.
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Agile learning centers are small learning communities which use a set of tools to support self directed learning and intentional culture creation. ALCs are rooted in a subsoil of trust and a set of 9 principles including amongst others, infinite play, visible feedback and relationship. You can find out more about ALCs here: https://agilelearningcenters.org/
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Over the last few centuries, the process of mass schooling has systematically sought to impose a set of implicit and explicit values on what is learnt and how it is learnt. The school system prioritizes certain forms of knowledge over others, for example which languages are more important to learn, valuing being sedentary over movement, valuing mind over body or sharing a narrow, white and eurocentric version of history.
The school system, and in particular the examinations system has also colonized humanity by defining success. The experience of learning becomes a competitive one by default, shadowing other forms of knowledge creation and collaboration.
We are interested in actively challenging these systemic tendencies. This is done by making space for a rich and diverse emergent curriculum, refraining from measuring progress and examining children, and curating the space with resources which reflect more diverse ways of knowing.
Inspiring organisations working in this field include the Ecoversities Network and Shikshantar Andolan.
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Democratic education is a broad term which denotes an educational space where young people and adults have equal power in shaping their learning and culture creation. It tends to go hand in hand with self directed education. Often democratic settings use voting as a means of decision making. At Free We Grow we see our roots as based in the tradition of democratic education but are moving towards a more consent based practice. You can find out more about democratic education here: https://eudec.org/democratic-education/what-is-democratic-education/
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See our section on Nature Play here!
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Place based learning values local places, communities, heritage, culture, environments, landscapes and stories as fundamental to children’s identities and sense of self. It recognises that direct connection to place forms a foundational relationship, and that it is through meaningful relationships that we learn. You can find out more about place based learning here: https://promiseofplace.org/
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Project based learning is the default learning style that happens at Free We Grow! This is because children are interested in events, ideas and things, and it is through exploring real world interests that they are able to delve deeply into topics. You can find out more about Project Based Learning here: https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl
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Sociocracy is a form of governance which enables all members of a community to have a say and shape culture, not through majority rule voting, but rather through consent based decision making. At Free We Grow we circle, which simply means going around the circle to hear everyone’s views. We use a tool called roundspeak to structure our meetings and make decisions. Both the children’s meeting and the holding team meeting operates based on roundspeak principles. You can find out more about Sociocracy here: https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/
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Unschooling is a way of home education where children are trusted to learn through living. Unschooled children can take part in any number of activities and pursuits, driven by their own curiosity. “ Children who are unschooled learn the way most adults learn – out of a sense of curiosity and necessity” (Unschooling explained – Faire of the Free Child Podcast). It is in essence a liberatory practice which at its core challenges assumed and inherited power dynamics, considering the formatic nature of child-adult power dynamics as a basis for other oppressive social norms.
Spaces of Engagement
Free We Grow is inspired by the idea that the best way to learn and grow is in the real world, and hence we have adopted a structure which reflects the spaces where any human will spend their life – namely at home, visiting, hosting, and collaborating. These spaces are not fixed in place and time but are fluid and interweave.
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People spend time at home. Home feels familiar and safe, where you have the time and space to explore your interests, and where you have clear and direct agency in shaping your immediate environment and the agreements that bind you with those you share a home with.
At Free We Grow, Dacres Wood is our home space. The woodland, pond and outdoor space forms an integral part of what happens in the home space and how the children use their time. This includes observing, playing, exploring, climbing, building, running, making, doing and being. The children also have free flow access to the indoor space where they can use a growing array of resources including arts and crafts materials, books, games, construction materials, woodworking tools, science lab kits and a basic kitchen.
In the home space children decide how they want to spend their time. On a day to day basis this takes the form of play and individual or group activities. Facilitators and children can make offerings for home space activities. During the daily meeting, children share their plans for the day to invite collaboration, or ask for help if needed. The meeting is also the forum in which our rules of engagement are established and where issues are discussed. It is an active forum where our culture is formed and where the children are the leading agents in its formation. At the meeting, decisions are made by consent using a tool called ‘roundspeak’. Ad-hoc issues which emerge during the day are resolved through talking and mediation.
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When we’re not at home, we’re out; and being out in the world we come into contact with other people, places and environments, things, knowledge and ideas. The visiting space is inspired by the idea of pilgrimage, where people walk away from what they know to discover something new. Leaving Dacres Wood and spending time in the neighborhood, visiting local amenities, exploring the local environment, and going further out into London and beyond, is a key part of life at Free We Grow and enriches our emergent curriculum. Children and facilitators can propose forays. Visiting places within walking distance of Dacres Wood can happen on an ad hoc basis, and we usually also organize at least one bigger visit per half term. Visits relate to children’s interests or can be proposed by other members of the community and can include visiting other nature reserves, museums, libraries, parks and even friends’ houses!
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As we go out into the world, we also receive! At Free We Grow, hosting guests forms part of our culture. The children can invite family members and friends and we also seek to invite visitors who can share their passions and interests with the children. Occasionally, when children’s interests are technically specific, we reach out to our community to see if friends are able to support the children with their enquiries. Examples of this have included learning how to box, how to do architectural drawings, or how to build a brick wall. As we are based in a nature reserve there are also many reasons why people may want to visit for their own interests. Hence we aim to embrace these genuine interests by hosting artists, ecologists, conservation volunteers and people interested in how Free We Grow functions. As hosting can have an impact on the stability of the home culture, this space is developed gradually and always consensually.
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The Buzz Space is the space for collaboration. It is an intentional space designed to facilitate interest driven group or whole community projects. A buzz project can be initiated by a conversation between two community members, who decide to bring an idea to the meeting, propose a project, and find collaborators with whom to work. For example, when the idea to have an end of year show was suggested at a meeting and agreed, a Buzz board was created through which the program was arranged, the roles were allocated and the logistics were managed. Or when the cost of a proposed trip was prohibitive, the children together organized a stall, prepared crafts and snacks to sell and raised over half the cost of the trip, allowing it to take place. Sometimes the children become interested in a theme or topic, and regular classes can be arranged via the buzz space. For example, weekly first aid lessons and Arabic classes and lunchtime history and philosophy sessions have been organized through the Buzz space.