Hackschooling in M13 | by Noah, Tama, Breea and Eve

This term we’ve learned to hack our class. Hacking isn’t just about hacking a computer, it is also about changing something to improve it. We have hacked our class to improve our learning.

We have changed mostly everything in our class!

On the first day of term, we watched a clip on youtube called ‘Hackschooling’ by a boy called Logan La Plante and we asked, What is School? What is it for? Why?

We answered, school is for learning! We talked about the ways we learn: reading, writing, spelling, maths, inquiry learning. There are lots of other learning areas but those are the main ones.

At the start of the term Amy had moved all the desks around before she told us about changing the clase. We are changing M13 physically and mentally.

The physical changes are things like the desks. We had a big sort out and tidy up and decided which furniture we didn’t need any more. Now our class is a lot tidier than it used to be. Some people decided that it would be easier to have tote trays under their desks. They made a design and asked Avie, who was very happy to help.

Then we talked about changing how we learn. Kids have more control in this class, which makes learning a lot easier.

To make decisions about our learning, now we have Class Hui once or twice a week. During the week, people think about what we should discuss in our Class Hui and if they think it’s suitable, they write it down on the board, on our agenda. In a Class Hui we usually choose a subject we want to discuss and then we talk about it. The person who wrote up the idea starts the discussion. They say why they wrote it down and then they say what they think. We have a Talking Mouse to control the discussion. People take turns to add their ideas or make suggestions. If they disagree they have to say why and then we have two (or more) options for a vote. I think the Class Hui really controls our class and what happens to stop it from going haywire. It really changes our learning into a bigger, deeper level because we’re making the decisions about how we learn so we feel more responsible. We don’t always put things up about our learning; sometimes it’s other things like peer mediations or problems we’re having with friendships. Sometimes people interrupt because they have a lot of things to say. Usually the kids wait for them to stop so that the person with the Talking Mouse can speak.

We decided that children could start running the workshops for Reading, Writing, and Maths. We made two posters: Workshops requests, and Workshop offers where you could write down your name if you wanted to run or participate in a workshop. This has worked well because we’ve been doing it for a few weeks now. Kids have been listening to the children and are better understanding the subjects. For example, last week we had lots and lots of maths workshops on Mayan Numbers, Geometry, skip counting and more.

We encouraged Amy to give us an independent contract because we felt that in our free time we should still be doing learning. We also wanted to make decisions during the day about when we learned what we learned independently. So far it’s going quite well because children are always trying their hardest to get it finished and if we have a good reason for not getting it finished, Amy will always accept it. This week at our class hui we made some suggestions about how to change the independent contract. There were some cons for some people. Some people thought that there was too much on the independent contract; some people thought that there wasn’t enough time to do it and a lot of people agreed. We decided that we should have fewer Must Dos by creating a Should Do section. Should Do is something (obviously) that you should do but if you don’t get time or you have a good reason for not doing it, it’s okay.

Another way kids run the class is to ring the bell and say,

1.     It’s too noisy

2.     Has anyone seen my…?

3.     The noise level’s getting too high!

4.     I have a tip for you…

… and many more things that kids would say.

The bell’s quite useful because it’s a lot easier for children to get other children’s attention. They respond quite well to the bell. At first some people just rang it for the joy of ringing it and saying odd things but then we talked about it at our hui, we discussed the bell and we decided that we should only ring it if we have something that really needs to be said.

We like running our class this way because children have control of what they do. It’s helped us to be more mature and independent. The independent contracts support our independence and the fact that we’re running our class supports our maturity. I think the votes control the hui in a good way because we have to accept the decision and we don’t complain.

We’re getting more creative by the second, in our learning!