50 Rock Gypsies: The Adventures of a Girl Called "Fire Within" My own personal story of my life, written at the half-century -- a story-and-photo essay Lisa at half-century ... About the things that have intrigued me ever since I was very young:  Fire ... Existence ... Consciousness ... Art ... Freedom ... Learning ... ... About how my own passionately felt need for personal freedom has been with me ever since I can remember, never diminishing and instead ever increasing ... and how I have applied this feeling to envisioning the future: in re-conceptualizing social structures, and especially in transforming the physical and social architectures of learning.  People who have greatly influenced my life -- either by personal acquaintance or through their lives and work. It is quite striking for me to look back over the years I have been here and reflect on the people whose thoughts and feelings about living -- how they tread this Earth -- have become part of the fabric of my own mind and heart, my own life.

My Work with Children's Learning & Growing Children's Environments Project, UW-Milwaukee Architecture School, 1978-1981: a multi-award- winning team of architects and social scientists who developed design guides for children's' indoor and outdoor settings. Environmental education field trip program - 1986-1988   150 field trips in 2 years.  Maharishi School in Washington DC, where our son Matthew attended from 1984-1989, his ages 3-8. 6-yr-olds' field trip team, 1987 Afoot and light-hearted We take to the open road....   Matthew Lindberg-Work's Program of Personalized Learning --  an alternative to institutionalizing young people - - 1989-1999, his ages 8-18  Duncan, Matthew, Lisa, 1999 after high school graduation. visiting  Matthew's college, Maharishi University The early years of life are a particularly crucial time of exploration, a time for young people to both widely investigate the outer world and also to learn about their own inner selves. It is a time of life not well-served by being institutionalized.   This page is about how our family applied this spirit of living to our son Matthew's decade of personalized learning -- his ages 8-19, 1989-1999.  It was a full program of arts and sciences, including attending the Log Cabin Learning program, and doing extensive work on his own freely-chosen ecological projects. Monetary outlay for tuition for those 10 years was $500 -- total -- an average of $50 per year.  In comparison, current tuition at American public and private schools ranges from $10,000 - $20,000 per student per year -- which works out to be 200 to 400 times as much as we spent. Matthew graduated from Maharishi University in June 2004 with a Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry & Environmental Science, and with renown as a world-class whistler, performing in many concerts.  He is now passing on to high school kids his love of chemistry, physics, math, and ecology -- and eco-activism.

 

The Conceptual Foundation for My Approach to Learning and Living De-institutionalizing Education Into an Abundant Smorgasbord of Personalized Learning Opportunities Communities of Learning A New Story of Education for a New Century 6-yr-olds' field trip team, Maharishi School, Washington DC  High school environmental  education team, Log Cabin Learning      "The educational choices of the future will be much more varied, vital, and relevant in character, selection, and location than what is currently being offered. Most people -- even in their wildest imaginations -- can hardly conceive of the abundant smorgasbord of learning opportunities looming just over the horizon.  We need to set people free to create it." - - Nobel Laureate in Economics Milton Friedman (paraphrased), 1998.(3)   The ideas I talk about for creating Communities of Learning do not follow along the usual lines of discourse on education. I neither discuss nor champion any particular teaching method, style, or technique. Nor do I advocate for any specific educational component or program -- in a well-meaning (but mis-guided) hope of its having a system-wide, transforming effect. Rather, I talk about cultural evolution and social thought -- about how people think and feel about being alive here on Planet Earth : The impressions people form about how they think the world is put together How these images and stories become perceived as "givens," and comprise a society's worldview How a society both consciously and unconsciously embeds its worldview in its educational system, thereby reinforcing and perpetuating it   Our current general systemic transformation in the broad structure of human society requires a corresponding systemic change in conceptualizing our approach to learning -- and then in formulating our systems of education. This systemic change moves away from massive, centrally administered institutions with their lack of acknowledgement of and respect for individuality. The new story of education applies complexity science's whole-systems approach to create Communities of Learning -- focused around place-based activity hubs. These small, lean, dispersed, independent, self-organized Community Learning Centers avoid being parochial or provincial by maintaining continual, participatory connection with global happenings.

Finding Their Wings Stories about Young People and Their Freely-Chosen, Passionate Projects and Activities The stories in this project acknowledge, honor, and affirm the inner experiences of young people -- what they feel inside themselves as they passionately follow their hearts in their freely chosen projects and activities, fully engaged, living life to the hilt. It is from within the "slacker passions" of young people's "fire within" that the future is forged. The nature and character of this future the older generations have only the slightest clue.

A Feeling For Place -- experiencing delight in the physical world   How does the experience of delight in the physical world affect people's souls ... their entire lives...thoughts... feelings... relationships...learning.. work...?   There was a child went forth one day, And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day  Or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years . . . - - Walt Whitman

Spiritual Politics Series being gathered by the Lindberg-Work Family. . . a gathering of ideas, projects, musings . . . on how how people's decisions and actions in their outer lives can indeed reflect the deepest feelings from ones inner spirit. . . Each item is involved in the work to systemically change how we tell the human story : how we conceive of and act out this mystery we call life. Each is an aspect of the re-weaving of our cultural fabric to support this change so needed by our world at this crucial juncture in history.

Stories of Life Our lives consist of stories -- of both every-day and unusual happenings. Our stories reflect our souls' journeys. Our stories are worth telling, but can fade with time, like photographs. Telling our stories can help us make sense of our lives -- and of Life -- and can help bind people together. Capture them and give them as enduring gifts to yourself and others. 3 Generations of my grandmothers. Strum, Wisconsin, 1900.