]|[

We have a feeling that our joyful learning community will be as diverse and beautiful as the small towns, farms, swamps, sand hills, and pine-filled forests that surround us, but for all our differences, we will all have certain things in common.

• We all are suspicious of factory-style schools, and some of us had really terrible experiences in them. You may have been called names, or told you “couldn’t” do something, or excluded from something, or worse. You may even have a label that factory-model schools claimed would “help you get services,” but actually meant you were stuck in a room somewhere getting a second, third, or fourth-class educational experience.

• We all are looking for joyful learning. We want learning to be fun, and we want the “academic stuff” we learn to be connected with things we’re already interested in.We are all looking for a learning community. That doesn’t mean we want to do everything together, all the time! But it does mean we want to be part of an interesting, diverse group of people who are taking ownership of our learning and making interesting things together. We aren’t interested in passively sitting there all day, listening to a boring lecture or filling out a boring worksheet. (An interesting lecture? Is there such a thing? If so, that might be … interesting!)

• We hope we can create a joyful community ...maybe even a beloved community in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What will that look like and feel like? If you have a close, happy, loving family, picture that family … but picture it bigger, more diverse, and full of young people finding their life work and life mission. If you’ve ever been on an athletic team where growing and being a team were as important as winning, picture that team … but picture it playing a world-class game on a very different kind of field. If you’ve been in a play, a chorus, a band, an orchestra, or any other performing group where the performance and the fellowship were equally amazing, picture that … but picture a different kind of performance space and a whole different kind of “music.” And if you can’t picture any of these things? Picture the closest, happiest group of friends you’ve ever had … but picture them learning and growing together. Now picture yourself, your familly, and your children in that kind of a community!

• As families, we want to be part of the learning, too. We don’t want to do it for our young learners, but we don’t want to be excluded or kept out, either. We might even want to build meaningful things with the young learners in our lives! At Three Column Network schools, parents and family members aren’t “on the outside,” waiting for a parent-teacher conference day or a “bad news” phone call from somebody in one of those busy, important-looking offices. We know that parents are the first and most important learning guides a child can have, and so are grandparents, aunts, uncles, and the rest of the family. We want the whole family, not just the children, to be part of that joyful community we’re building together.