From now until December 15th, we will be collecting orders for freshly made, delicious, authentic tamales that will arrive just in time for enjoying during your Christmas celebration!

The tamales are available by the dozen for just $20. They will be ready for pickup on December 22nd and will remain fresh in your refrigerator until Christmas Day. (They can easily be frozen as well!!).

Please download our order form here and return, with payment, by December 15th.  (Cash or Check made payable to PEAK Cooperative Charter)

If you have any questions please fill out our contact form here or contact a PEAK representative.

Happy Holidays!!!!!

Although this is not what we hoped to receive today it will not affect our resolve to seek approval from the board. The recommendation from the district staff is only that, a recommendation. The board can still vote to pass the charter.

We’ve reviewed the board report with our consultants and feel we have legitimate rebuttals to each of the reasons for denial. We’ll be working this weekend to craft our response for the board meeting on Monday.

Which is where you can help us!

Board Meeting Monday

We need to have as many people as possible attend the meeting on Monday. If you can make it and have not registered online please book a seat on our events page or let us know via the contact page.

We’ll be making calls to everyone that signed the charter this weekend. if you can help call please let us know as well.

Send an e-mail

Please send an email to wearelistening@bousd.k12.ca.us before Monday and cc Chris Casey . We’re going to print out a copy of any letter sent and bring it to the meeting on Monday.

We’ve included a template below. Please feel free to add to the overall sentiment but be professional (no inflammatory or negative comments please).

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Dear BOUSD Board,

It has come to our attention that the Brea Olinda School District administrative staff has recommended to deny the PEAK Cooperative Charter School petition.

We feel that there are legitimate rebuttals for each of reasons for denial. We ask that you keep an open mind and listen to the presentation during the Special Board Meeting on Monday.

PEAK Cooperative Charter is a valuable alternative for our students and a way to help our educational system evolve to meet the needs of education in the 21st century

Please vote to approve the charter on Monday.

Thank You,

[Your Name]

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Our desire is for PEAK to be a united learning community. It’s only fitting that we have to pull together in this late hour to make this dream a reality. Let’s show not only Brea but the world what a group of passionate people can do!

Thanks You,

Chris Rodriguez
PEAK Cooperative Charter School

Below are audio recordings of our speakers presentations. The recording levels are a bit low so you may have to turn up your audio in order to hear the speakers.

We encourage you to share the recordings with the links at the bottom of the post!

Chris Rodriguez – PEAK Charter Design Team

Dr. Wendy Ranck-Buhr – Principal San Diego Cooperative Charter School

Lisa Berlanga – California Charter Schools Association

Dominic Roth – Multiage Alumni

Allison Kubo – Multiage Alumni

Michelle Carey – Multiage Parent

Penelope Pauley – PEAK Charter Design Team

The kids in Ms. Cadwell’s seventh-grade remedial math class at Egan Jr. High in Los Altos, California, are doing things differently this year. They solve problems at their own pace, using a computer program that gives them instant feedback, charts their progress, and rewards them when they get 10 correct answers in a row. Instead of listening to the teacher lecture about dividing fractions, they learn from short videos that they can pause and rewind. They progress very quickly — more than doubling their scores on an exit exam in just the first 12 weeks of this pilot project. Students earn badges for solving problems rapidly and accurately, and for working hard to master a concept. It’s “like a game,” says John Martinez, 13. “It’s kind of an addiction — you want a ton of badges.”

This is a great example of leveraging technology in education.  Khan’s program creates a safe environment where kids can experiment and learn at their own pace.

By adding rewards to the end of each lesson he is also making the process more of a game than a lesson.  While some might debate the validity of turning school into a “game”, as a parent I can tell you that children will engage in almost anything if you can make a game out of it.  It’s no different than the televisions you see in front of treadmills at the gym to help people stay in the gym.

But Khan’s method also speaks to the challenge of teaching a classroom of children at different developmental levels.  In an excerpt from his talk at TED Khan says:

by removing the one size fits all lecture from the classroom and letting students have a self-paced lecture at home, and then when you go to the classroom, letting them do work, having the teacher walk around, having the peers actually be able to interact with each other, these teachers have used technology to humanize the classroom. They took a fundamentally dehumanizing experience — 30 kids with their fingers on their lips, not allowed to interact with each other. A teacher, no matter how good, has to give this one size fits all lecture to 30 students –blank faces, slightly antagonistic — and now it’s a human experience. Now they’re actually interacting with each other…

So our model is learn math the way you’d learn anything, like the way you would learn a bicycle. Stay on that bicycle. Fall off that bicycle. Do it as long as necessary until you have mastery. The traditional model, it penalizes you for experimentation and failure, but it does not expect mastery. We encourage you to experiment. We encourage you to failure. But we do expect mastery.

Age is not like a clothes size.  All 5 year olds are not the same.  Kids develop at different speeds.  When you place standards and deadlines on something as diverse as human development you will have people that don’t meet the standard.

In a school system where teachers are overtaxed with large classrooms this is an interesting educational supplement that taps into kids inherent playful nature while giving them the freedom to move among lessons at their own pace.  You can see more of Khan’s talk at TED in the video below.  You can also learn more about Khan Academy here.

Fish don’t know they’re in water.

If you tried to explain it, they’d say, “Water? What’s water?”

They’re so surrounded by it, that it’s impossible to see.

They can’t see it until they get outside of it.

This is how I feel about culture.

….My culture isn’t in the center. It’s off on the edge, like one petal in a flower, like they all are. Not right or wrong – just one of many options.

We have built our education systems on the model of fast food. This is something Jamie Oliver talked about the other day.You know there are two models of quality assurance in catering. One is fast food, where everything is standardized. The other are things like Zagat and Michelin restaurants, where everything is not standardized, they’re customized to local circumstances. And we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education. And it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies…

…So I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.

And if you do watch the video make sure you watch the whole things.  Robinson closes with a great quote from W.B Yeates.

Charter schools are public schools that operate with more flexibility than traditional district schools. Yet, many people mistakenly refer to them as “private,” or say they simply don’t understand what category they fall into. We wanted to answer some of the common questions we have received about charter schools. So, we turned to James Merriman, chief executive officer of the New York City Charter School Center for some answers.

As a parent one of the things we have to do first is educate ourselves about the options that our there.  It can be overwhelming prospect, especially when it’s been so long since we’ve hit the books ourselves.

Thankfully we have the internet.  Everyday I find new sources and people who are out there sharing information.  We’ll definitely post things here as we find them.

And also remember that there are a lot of schools out there that you can tour.  We’ve found that people who are running charters and other educational alternatives are very open to sharing the knowledge they have.

The key is getting out there and starting the journey.  Good Luck!

Ms. Cushlanis, a secretary for the Galloway school district, complained to her boss, Annette C. Giaquinto, the superintendent. It turned out that the district, which serves 3,500 kindergarten through eighth-grade students, was already re-evaluating its homework practices. The school board will vote this summer on a proposal to limit weeknight homework to 10 minutes for each year of school — 20 minutes for second graders, and so forth — and ban assignments on weekends, holidays and school vacations.

Galloway, a mostly middle-class community northwest of Atlantic City, is part of a wave of districts across the nation trying to remake homework amid concerns that high-stakes testing and competition for college have fueled a nightly grind that is stressing out children and depriving them of play and rest, yet doing little to raise achievement, particularly in elementary grades.

Titled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, it is a fascinating discussion of the challenges that face our educational system as it attempts to prepare our children to succeed in our rapidly changing society.  What is even more interesting is how prophetic his analysis seems 5 years later.