Greetings Eddies!

I drafted today's "Trend" segment late last week, praising the New York Times for it's honest reporting and hard-hitting question in a magazine article, "America's Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?"

Then, yesterday, they published a guest essay titled, "Home-Schooled Kids Are Not All Right."

Three weeks apart, two very different perspectives.

We're working on a more detailed response to the new piece, collecting stories from our community about what open education truly looks like (stay tuned).

But in the meantime, let's talk about whiteboards.

Let's dive in.

THOUGHT: The Whiteboard Exercise‍TREND: 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 31‍TOOL: Writey the Whiteboard

After being homeschooled his entire life, Isaac Morehouse's 16-year-old son said he wanted to try traditional school.

So Isaac got out a whiteboard and ask, "What do you actually want?"

His son listed it out:

They mapped the options - homeschool, unschool, private school, public school - and tried to answer one question: where will you get the most of what you want? His son decided to try public school it for a semester. After that, he dropped out to work full-time.

What about college?

"My hope," Isaac said, "is that by the time they're that age, they don't need me making decisions for them."

Watch the clip | Full episode on The Minimalists Podcast

Last month, The New York Times Magazine published "America's Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?" 

The short answer to the title's question: yes.

The longer answer: The article traces how No Child Left Behind and Common Core narrowed what counts as "normal" - more testing, more accountability, less recess, less play. By 2016, only eight states required daily recess in elementary schools. The track got narrower. More kids didn't fit. And we called it a disorder.

The article even quotes Peter Gray saying something almost identical to what he said recently on the OpenEd Podcast:

“What’s happening is, instead of saying, ‘We need to fix the schools,’ the message is, ‘We need to fix the kids."

Read the full NYT piece

Math problems. Spelling words. Mapping your teenager's desires to help them decide their future. A whiteboard handles all of it.

Meet Writey. The peel-and-stick whiteboards that go anywhere - wall, desk, door, fridge. A 2x3 board runs about $30. Repositionable, so when your homeschool room becomes the guest room becomes the office, the whiteboard follows.

Founded by college students who couldn't find a whiteboard to collaborate on. Now backed by Mark Cuban. 

No mounting hardware. No drilling. No commitment. Stick it up. Use it. Move it.

Shop Writey