An open letter to young teachers
I’m in the race for D3 County Commissioner. My platform is Self-fed 2030, that we’ll grow our own food. I’m proposing Self-fed 2030 Clubs form at each school.
Your students will be our county’s best self-fed planners. They live in theta brainwaves, a world of possibility. Adults are in alpha, a stuck truck. There’s by no means consensus in the adult community that change is possible or worth the effort.
As I campaign, I’m lucky to have children constituents. They don’t need to know if an idea is red or blue before they know if they like it. They don’t lose even a second trying to figure out if Self-fed 2030 is left or right — their team or not their team, their channel or not. It doesn’t occur to them to make local food independence political. They don’t have to weigh out how it would effect their bottom line. Shame they can’t vote.
I asked a kid on the bus about starting a club. We talked like adults. She’s a sixth-grader. I watched her assemble ‘self’ and ‘fed’, two words she knows, to form a new meaning.
Self-fed describes a closed-loop system. A self-fed economy is shaped like a circle. A zero-waste system is self-fed.
Some adults say Self-fed 2030 isn’t real. They are disturbed we’re making something up without permission. No child yet has discredited or disqualified themself by having a tantrum and opposing the selffed concept.
As I campaign, I attempt to connect with each adult’s inner-child.
My current education bookshelf is John Holt’s “How Children Fail,” Herbert Kohl’s “36 Children,” and Jean Liedloff’s child development classic, “The Continuum Concept.” I’m happily re-reading these books as “green schoolyards” funding is coming to Taos.
In the late 1970s, schools were about to become farms. Kinesthetic, experiential, deductive learning, on one’s feet, outdoors in fresh air, working in groups, all this was considered the future for education. The 1980s turned school to standardization at desks, memorization and tests.
A school farm requires no government subsidy. It’s not a program and can’t be cancelled. It’s self-fed. Food is grown and eaten. Kids, planting, growing, harvesting, cooking and composting are educated in health and abundance, learning math, history, science, language and arts in context.
Each SF-30 Club’s discussion should start with how the school becomes self-fed by 2030 for $3 million. Next, plan a campus that’s self-fed by 2028 costing $2 million.
Plan for 2026 completion with a $1 million price tag.
Club members will soon be ready to plan for the infrastructure and capacity to be self-fed by 2025, at only $100,000.
What’s the plan for Self-fed by 2024 with $10,000?
Self-fed can be taught to students, K-12. The youngest student clubs should conceive a $0 plan, the deadline left to them. (A second-grader is not likely to talk about 2050!)
Please organize clubs according to coopetition. Coopetition balances cooperation and competition with documentation.
Teacher as documentarian is a relatively silent role. Film the casting scenes: member outreach, students joining, membership taking shape. Clubs should have 8-12 students.
The first job of a club is to become two clubs. Increase membership until there are enough students for the formation of a second club. Coopetition needs two teams, cooperating on a common goal while competing against each other on ideas.
If the whole school wants Self-fed 2030 Club membership, that’s very impressive. Launch as many clubs as needed, each with 8-12 members and its own faculty advisor/camera. Work separately. Never have a big meeting. Have the big meeting at the end: the victory party scene.
My next My Turn will describe the games and contests coopetition uses to balance competition and cooperation with surprising results.
I sometimes feel I’m giving too much, compromising uncontrollably, living too selflessly in the name of cooperation. Or, I feel oddly locked in competition with a teammate on a project. I know I’m not imagining it, an intense contest. We’re working together, barely communicating. Are we even being productive? How do I fully value all that cooperation and competition have to offer, when to do which or how much of each, and what about the other person’s needs, and what about in groups…?
Coopetition alleviates this anxiety to maximize benefits in group work. The rules coopetition offers are in the form of games and contests. The goal is to make scenes, to make a good movie.