Kids are our future.

Guys, could you imagine that the school principal looks like Bruce Willis and that he is able to hold attention of the more than 400 small children? I also couldn’t. Until we paid a visit to Jefferson elementary school. The principal Chad Lund devoted to us 2 hours of his time and showed us around the school, brought us to the lessons and answered all our questions.

We started our journey from the morning awards ceremony which takes place every month. 

This encourages pupils to develop the best parts of the personality. During this ceremony pupils got certificates for being reflective. (Could you think of getting such certificate in Russia? I can’t as we are concentrated more on marks and behavior).

As we were explained that the school follows th IB program. Read more on official web page of IB program or in wikipedia

The point is that the education is transdisciplinary, teaches kids how to think and find solutions, what seems extremely useful as life is about it. Also the education is really connected to real life.

After this award ceremony we joined a yoga class (can you imagine that?) and the principal explained to us that usually they start their day with doing some short morning exercise. It activates your brain.

Then we visited a reading lesson of a second grade. We spoke with one girl in Russian and interacted with kids. After that we visited the fifth grade.

Children were very open, answered our questions, asked their questions, showed their books, works, shared their dreams (“I want to be a professional yo-yo or basketball player” said one guy. At this moment I remembered this TED talk ;)). We even were interviewed by kids for the school radio. Kids have smartphones and laptops, but to my question if they like to be online – facebook, games etc – they said that they prefer playing outdoors and communicated with each other in the real life.

We have the stereotype that in general Americans are not very smart. (the stereotype itself is not very smart) But so far I have the opposite opinion. Both adults and kids show high level of intelligence and great thinking abilities.

And what I really like there are a lot of motivation posters all aroung schools.

That’s all for today. I need to go jogging. Ocean is waiting for me ;)