Changing the way parents help our public schools (a book)
Who are you?
Jessica Zou
What is your project?
My book is to answer this question that I heard from Seth [Godin] three years ago: what is school for? I chose to solve this problem because of my 8 and 12 year old sons and all children in public schools. I agree with Seth wholeheartedly on this: unless we could agree on the answer to this question, it’s challenging to know what to do next.
The change I’m seeking to make is this: changing the ways parents help our public schools.
I’m exploring what I have experienced in our local neighborhood school over losing the art program, the differences between studying and learning, the differences between studying environment and learning environment, if we agree that children needs learning as well as studying, how we see status games and the reward system, understand the power hierarchy in school and the scarcity mentality behind it, how they show up differently in a learning environment like Akimbo, understand the purpose created for the current public school system and the possibilities of what the purpose can be, and what parents can do to advocate for all children and help our public schools to be better.
Can we see some photos?
Where can we find your work and see your work in progress?
I would love to be able to say that my book is nearly done, but it’s not. Writing it has been a challenging and rewarding experience. I’m getting closer on ch 8 and 9 to hand them to my editor. It takes longer than I thought, but stress and anxiety are not helpful at all. So I am working with deadlines and tension.
You can see some of my excerpts here.
