If you've ever peeked at my blog, you'll know I enjoy thinking about ideas of alternative educational styles. My thesis for now is there's probably some untapped potential in this realm, yet I'm unsure how this can be realized. Not a great thesis, I guess.
Many folks, especially bitcoiners, hold traditional education in contempt, not least because of its a system rife with contentious political affiliation. With private schools and with post-secondary, the challenge is cost.
Achievement Unlocked (AU) takes a non-traditional approach to schooling, as written about in this Less Wrong blog post. I believe this to be a good thing and I'd love to see more convergence from altEd activists and bitcoiner circles.
What AU is doing aligns with the ways in which I generally think about how these problems can be solved, so I find it both inspiring and intriguing to see how others approach education in an age increasingly characterized by political fragmentation, bureaucratic bloat, and a distrust in governmental authority that is endemic in most western "developed" countries.
Achievement Unlocked (AU) is a small private school in Brooklyn that serves students in 1st-8th grade that have struggled in other schools. AU has a neurodiversity positive environment, reflecting that many but not all students are neurodiverse. AU is not a school that turns kids away who have had behavior issues nor is there any specific diagnosis that they are looking for. They really seek to serve students for whom other schools, both public and private and often both, have not worked. It is so worth scheduling a conversation with them if you are interested but unsure your child would fit there.
There's a reward based system at play here I found to be intriguing as well.
They help students proactively figure out how to make something happen and solve problems. Another example is they also have a system in which students are always earning chances to make "reasonable," (easy to earn), "less reasonable" (harder to earn) and "unreasonable" (very hard to earn) requests. A reasonable request might be staying indoors for recess or spending 5 minutes in the quiet room. An unreasonable request might be "the whole school doesn't get homework for a day." Students earn these by doing well, helping others, and accomplishing tasks. To earn an "unreasonable request." students have to do something quite challenging like memorizing the periodic table or beating the school director at chess. This way students are constantly learning about advocating for themselves and what is reasonable to request. My son LOVES this system. Homeroom teachers also regularly help support and prime students for social interactions and choices they might make throughout the day. For example, my son's homeroom teacher always thinks with them about what they want to do at recess and how they can accomplish it, which has really helped him.