I remember the early days of Prenda, when we were struggling over what to name things. One funny one was the word microschool itself—seeing the few institutions calling themselves microschools at the time, and noticing they looked pretty similar to traditional schools, but with maybe two classrooms and 50 students, I thought we might need a different word. So I tried on the name “nanoschools,” going another greek prefix down in scale, all the way to the atomic level.
It took exactly one conversation with my wife to realize that the name wouldn’t work. Simply too nerdy for most people, and lacking the organic, natural feel of “microschool.”
Another nomenclature question we had in those days was what to call the adult in a microschool?
Through years of experience running an afterschool code club, and confirmed during that first semester running a microschool, I had the beginnings of a list of things the microschool educator would not do.
For example:
Don’t lecture. I remember getting excited about some basic computer programming concepts, standing at the front of the room with a whiteboard marker, even inviting volunteers to come up for interactive demonstrations. But despite my best efforts, I lost most of the class, who either already understood the concept or lacked so much foundational knowledge they couldn’t follow. Reading this in their eyes, I realized I had become the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoons: “waa waaah wah waah waah waaaaah…”
Don’t withhold acceptance. Of course this seems obvious, but I learned it the hard way. Kids would show me their coding projects and, in an effort to help, I started dishing out constructive criticism and helpful feedback. But I quickly realized they didn’t hear me that way. In a deeper part of their neurology, these kids were actually looking for a signal that they belong in this environment, that I as the grownup held them in positive standing. When I gave feedback in those moments, I told them they don’t belong. (I later learned that there is a way to provide helpful feedback, but it’s complicated and nuanced and personal and messy, and basically impossible when you’re running a large class.)
Don’t do administration. This may be informed by my personality and inherent aversion to routine organization, but I felt like I lost many opportunities to help learners progress because I was stuck in a form or spreadsheet. While administering the details helps hold a system together, it does not help a child love learning.
There are many other things to add to this list, but we’ll leave it alone for now.
Given the differences in goals and activities, we did not want to call microschool educators teachers. Instead, we decided to follow the Montessori convention and call the adult educator a guide. I’ve had the great fortune to work side by side with hundreds of microschool guides over the years.
You may be wondering: “Don’t teachers in traditional classrooms spend a lot of their day delivering lessons, grading papers, and entering data into systems? If they don’t do these things, what do they do?”
I’m glad you asked. We know that guides are different than traditional teachers, and there are typical teacher activities that guides do not do. But then what does a guide do? Watch this video for some comments on the topic. I’ll be writing more about this in coming weeks.
