CREATING LIFETIME LEARNERS: 10 Educational Myths Discovered by Mistwood School

By Marsha Aden-Wansbury and Julie Dorman

In 1980, two young mothers joined forces to create a positive hands-on learning environment for their three daughters and their friends and Mistwood Center for Education was born.

At Mistwood, each child was valued for their individual development and interests—always with a focus on love, kindness, respect, and trust in children's natural love for learning.

Over more than forty years, many lasting friendships were forged and many valuable lessons were learned. Here is the story of their remarkable educational experiment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Azalea Art Press
• Release date: Jul 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781943471638

Book preview

Copyright:

Azalea Art Press

Sonoma | California

© Marsha Aden-Wansbury

& Julie Dorman

2022.

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-943471-63-8

Cover Art | Linoleum Block Print

by Julie Dorman  | 1980

Dedication:

To our three daughters

who opened our eyes to see each moment

as wondrous and each person

as individual as a work of art.

And to Marsha’s son-in-law, Jamison,

who suggested we write this book.

C o n t e n t s

Can You Imagine by Scott Simmons

Part I:

We Did What?

Chapter One

What Were We Thinking?

Chapter Two

Meeting John Holt

Chapter Three

Mistwood School

Part II:

Dispelling the Myths

Chapter Four

The Myths:

1.  Reading Must Be Taught

2.  Playing is Separate From Academic Learning

3.  Basic Academic Skills Must Be Taught Early

4.  Children Need to Be Well-Rounded

5.  Children Who Do Better in School Are Smarter Than Their Peers

6.  Giving Too Much Help Makes Children Dependent

7.  The More Hours in School, the More One Learn

8.  Children Need to Be Socialized Early in School

9.  Values of Ethics and Self-Worth Are Second to Academic Excellence, or Better Left to Parents

10. Teachers Being Trained or Expert in Their Subject

is More Important Than Teachers Loving Their Subject

Part III:

Final Thoughts

Our Intentions and Wishes

Appendix I:

A Note on Reading Specialists

Appendix II:

Where Are the Students Now?

Appendix III:

Index of Poems by Author

Appendix IV:

A List of Favorite Books

from Marsha’s Literature Classes

for Middle School and Junior High

A Special Thank You

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Contact

A picture containing outdoor, person, ground Description automatically generated

Authors

Marsha Aden-Wansbury and Julie Dorman.

Can You Imagine?

Can you imagine a place where

everything is at peace?

A place where everyone gets along with

everyone else?

A place where you don't have to be cool

to fit in?

A place where people don't contradict

you for who you are?

A place where everyone is equal?

Can you imagine this place of second

chances?

Can you imagine this place of

prosperity?

I can.

But you don't have to imagine, you can

see it.

This place we call Mistwood.

—Scott Simmons, age 12, June 2006

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Mistwood Center for Education Buildings

Bayside, California.

P A R T  I

We Did What?

A group of people writing on a chalkboard Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Students in the Mistwood Classroom.

C H A P T E R O N E

What Were We Thinking?

Tides

tides going out

tides coming in

collecting shells

collecting seaweed

giving water

to the tide pools.

—Astaria Holland, age 12, June 2007

When Marsha was in sixth grade, she became aware of the many students who did not like school. They were bored and negative. They couldn’t wait for recess. She had always liked school, all the subjects and the teachers. She felt bad for the teacher standing in front of children who did not want to be there. Right then and there she remembers thinking, I never want to be a teacher!

She saw her teacher trying to reach students who wanted to be anywhere but in class. It was pointless! Only a few students wanted to listen to the teacher or do the assignments. Coercing children into studying what they were not interested in seemed futile. Later she realized how meaningless it was to assess them at that time on how well they performed. And that assessment might very well have followed them for years!

Why were these children unhappy with school? One has to ask oneself, How would it feel to a child to sit in his seat hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and be asked to do tasks for which he was not ready developmentally or for which he had no interest? That student might even be ready developmentally by middle school to learn some academic subjects; but chances are, over the many years of undue pressure, he has lost his spark for learning. Surely this affects the child’s self-confidence. It gives him the false impression that he is unable to learn or that it is difficult for him to learn. He ends up not understanding what true learning is. He is not given the chance to realize that he is learning all the time. All each child needs is to be given the opportunity to learn what he is capable of, interested in, i.e., what his development is ready for. Then it is joyful and effortless learning!

When Marsha had her own child, she didn’t know if or when her child would be as interested as she had been in traditional academic work. She didn’t want to risk having her daughter be in the same position one day as Marsha had witnessed the bored and unhappy students in her sixth grade class. She wanted her daughter to feel good about herself and be happy with whatever her interests or learning pursuits were. She wanted her to pursue learning at her own developmental level in her own time and pace.

Julie, a mother with two young children, had similar concerns and needs for her children. She too wanted a place where her children learned what and when they were ready to learn, a place where they were joyful!

We both were determined to find a school which would honor the vast differences we saw in what and how our own children learned. Neither one of us could imagine our children in a classroom where every child at the same age was required to learn the same predetermined skills. Assessing children on those skills would be worse yet. We did not want our children to judge their self-worth by such assessments.

We wanted our children to be acknowledged for whatever skills they had mastered. We wanted  their interests to be valued. We wanted them to know they didn’t have to have all the skills someone else had and that they were fine just the way they were. We looked for a school that respected their natural development and their uniqueness as individuals.

Finding a school which instilled kindness was equally important to us. We looked for teachers to be kind to children and children to be taught to be kind to each other. We thought children trusting in their own development would more likely be understanding about any differences they saw in other children. They would be kind to others with differences in development, personality, race, religion, gender, or any other difference. We saw this as building an important foundation or compass for children in interacting ethically within the community at large.

We never found a school in our area that fit our requirements. We agreed we must create a school ourselves. So that’s what we did! Thus began Mistwood Center for Education.

Our school was founded in 1980 in Eureka, Humboldt County, on the North Coast of California, starting with just the preschool.¹* In 1983 we founded our grammar school, students in kindergarten through sixth and later through eighth grade, and with the occasional high school student. We started with eleven students. As other parents felt the same urgency to address their children’s unique needs, our school grew. In the ensuing years we averaged forty to fifty students.

The Redwood Tree

A thirteen-year-old redwood tree

stands firmly.

Its branches all point up,

embracing the sky.

It stands there,

feeling the wind, rain, and sun

ever pounding on

and around its being.

It feels the birds chirping,

the cars rumbling.

It feels the feelings of those around it.

It is always there,

offering comfort and wise words.

It is there.

It lives.

It is.

—Sylvan Arevalo, age 13, November 2004

Ode to the Redwood

I

like to climb

up your branches

and build forts in your

stumps. You give us fresh

air to breathe. Birds and

squirrels live in your tops.

You can be up to two-

thousand years old. I think

we are

very lucky

to live

in the

Redwood

Forest.

—Sky Korejko, age 11, December 2012

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Humboldt County Redwood Trees

C H A P T E R  T W O

Meeting John Holt

Author of ten books on radical school reform and homeschooling, John Holt is considered the Father of Unschooling. After Marsha read Holt’s book Instead of Education, years before she had her own child; she felt no need to read any of his other nine books. She was convinced. She could not unsee or unthink what he observed and concluded. He taught in many classrooms and observed many classrooms and schools. He visited schools and institutions throughout the world.

One of the most memorable descriptions Marsha read in Instead of Education was that of public infant schools or primary schools in England. Another unforgettable depiction was that of a neighborhood, after-school, recreational, and academic program in Denmark. In both these examples, children were allowed to learn in their own time and pace what they were interested in learning. Holt’s conclusion was that children did not need to be coerced into learning. When children were free to learn in a rich, stimulating environment; they were happier, and they learned naturally. After Marsha had her own child, the strongest factor leading her to the same conclusion as Holt’s was simply experiencing her own young child’s learning naturally every day.

In the spring of 1983 just before we were to launch our K-6th grade elementary school, we asked John Holt to come to our community. He agreed to come give a talk to interested parents and teachers in the community at large. We thought it would be so wonderful actually to meet John Holt. We looked forward to seeking his advice and encouragement before we established our elementary school. We knew our ideas on how to run a school would surely be considered radical by our community.

Holt did come to our area and give speeches and workshops at our school for our North Coast community. At the time of our meeting with John Holt, his work was required reading in college education degree programs. And as it turned out, the largest percentage of people in Holt’s audience throughout his weekend seminars at our school consisted of public schoolteachers.

However, Holt was not optimistic about our chance at success in running a school based on his ideas. He said to us, The kind of school you are trying to do won’t work.

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Left to right:

Marsha, John Holt with his cello, and Julie

April 1983, Eureka, California.

Holt’s view was people who could afford to send their children to a private school were mostly those in professional careers. More than likely they wanted to be assured their children progressed in education on a predictable schedule following a known and prescribed curriculum. They would consider that to be a path to success for their children. They would not feel comfortable with our system which would not assess progress along the way nor expect certain skills at specific ages. In other words, people who could afford it would not choose to go to our school. Conversely, many parents who sought an alternative education for their children were probably not able to pay the tuition. We figured this was why Holt started encouraging homeschooling or unschooling through his Growing Without Schooling Newsletter. He no longer encouraged people to start radically alternative schools like ours.

Nevertheless, we were determined to try and run an elementary school based on Holt’s ideas. That was how we wanted our own children to be free to learn. That was how they were already learning from birth up until this time at ages five, six, and seven.

We went ahead and opened our elementary school in the fall. We did not have a readymade label describing the kind of education we were offering. We did not have a set curriculum nor academic expectations on a timeline. Explaining our system to prospective parents and answering their many questions required us to sit and talk to each prospective parent at length.

Soon after we started that fall, we received a call from parents who were medical professionals. They had recently moved to our area from another state. They wanted to enroll their five children, ages four to twelve.

They had met John Holt at a lecture in the state where they were living. Disappointed in the lack of choices in alternative schools in the town where they lived, they were looking for a solution. When they told Holt of their concerns about their children's education, he said, Go see Marsha and Julie in Eureka. That's when they decided to move to Humboldt County. To say the least, we were ecstatic and very grateful to John Holt for sending such a supportive family with five children.

For the next few decades we enrolled both many families with little means and many families with greater means. They were each supportive to us in their own ways, according to their means and their talents. We appreciated those parents who told us that although it was difficult for them to pay the tuition, they made it their first priority.

John Holt died in 1985, just two years after we met him and started our elementary school based on his philosophy. We only wish that we could thank him today, many times over, for the ideas he inspired in us. And we would love to tell him how our school did succeed using his ideas!

A picture containing person, indoor, floor, bowed instrument Description automatically generated

John Holt at Mistwood School

playing his home-made portable cello

just before introducing his weekend seminar

on education reform to teachers

in the Humboldt County area, April 1983.

Candle

I sit and wait for somebody

to use me. A flaming match

lights me. I am glowing

I light the room. I feel

hot wax dripping. I slowly

melt.

I grow shorter every day.

I am a puddle of wax now.

But I was important.

—Lillian Terra, age 9, June 2007

Snowman

I sit here as

s  n

        o          f l

w          a

k

e

s

                              drop

I vanish in the summer

as the sun shines hot.

But I won’t be gone for long.

—Astaria Holland, age 12, June 2007

C H A P T E R   T H R E E

Mistwood School

Our Human Rights for Children

The 1959 United Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of the Child includes rights for each child to have protection, education, healthcare, shelter, and good nutrition. At our private