on schools on boats.

Imagine teaching on a barge.  A barge.  No not because you are homeschooling your children as your family transports goods from state to state.

Imagine teaching on the kind of barge that facilitates projects that tackle erosion problems, social and community issues and aims to improve environmental conditions in your region, Southeast Louisiana.  

The rapid loss of land makes the region more vulnerable to storm surges caused by hurricanes, and Plaquemines Parish experienced severe damage from storms in 2005 and 2011.

“We literally have populations that are going to have to move,” Cochran said. “And America has really never done that.” (USA TODAY)

Check out the two minute video of New Harmony High School here.  It’s revolutionary!

Coming off Mother Earth’s Rebellion of 2017, it makes me think that schools like this, are exactly what we need.  

Like many metropolitan cities (though New Orleans feels far from metropolitan), we have a thriving arts scene here.  It’s the birthplace of jazz, a culinary paradise and just driving through the French Quarter or Bywater will make you feel like you're in an actual painting.  

We have one of the best creative arts schools in the country, NOCCA, and the middle and high school marching bands performing at Mardi Gras keep the crowds dancing hard in the moonlight.  

Money talks, though, and school funding comes from test scores, not from student-run urban gardens.  Unless your child has the privilege of being accepted to one of these innovative and thriving schools that kids absolutely love, then these things become extracurricular.  

Sticky, make it sticky they say.  Well if we want to make the curriculum sticky, then why not embed the core subjects into projects that matter?  

We don’t all need a 10 million dollar grant, like this cool school on a boat, but we do need the freedom as teachers to integrate the core content areas into learning experiences that matter to kids.  

So, until teachers have that freedom and as benchmarks and bubble sheets slowly swallow us whole, we will dream of a day when the testing obsession bubble pops...and our students won’t have to wait until once a year for The Science Fair.  

Thirteen years from now, I will send my daughter to a school like NOCCA or New Harmony High. And I will be that crazy mom that does whatever it takes to get her in.

By then though, I hope this kind of education is the norm...just how we do things in this country. Imagine the possibilities...

Power to the teacher!