Ira Socol is Senior Provocateur and Learning Environment Specialist at Socol Moran Partners LLC. He is a co-author of Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools with Pam Moran and Chad Ratliff.  

 

Ira presents nationally and internationally on the need to radically change the four technologies of school – time, the division of students and content, spaces, and information and communication tools – in order to give all students an opportunity to succeed. I was lucky to have a selfie with Ira at SXSW EDU. Enjoy Ira’s journey.
 
Your Background
I started my journey in education in some problematic ways. School was never my favorite thing. Classrooms are not my favorite places. The structure of school never really worked for me. I started out in an urban setting outside the Bronx in New York, the first city north of the Mason-Dixon line to have a Supreme Court desegregation rule. I went to a K-6 elementary school that was a huge place of 1200 students with 5-6 classes that had 30-36 students in each grade level. It was a place where teachers had a lot of independence to try a lot of things.
Even though I didn’t have a particularly good time in that school, I also knew a lot of people were trying to find solutions and new things. I deeply appreciated that and wrote a novel a long time ago that includes part of that in the story. The failures I experienced were not the fault of educators not trying.
The Drool Room https://www.amazon.com/Drool-Room-Ira-Socol/dp/0615165443/
 
What it was like for you as a student
I was lucky enough after middle school to end up in a brilliant alternative high school that was created by some local teachers in New Rochelle, NY. Neil Postman who had had just written Teaching as a Conserving Activity built that then was called a “School without Walls”. There were really no requirements credits, we had to take the NY Regents exams at the end of a required class. Other than that, we were able to learn on our own, with another, with a group. How we got the knowledge base was entirely up to the student. What I learned is that it put a lot of pressure on you. Teachers would say if you don’t want to do it that way, then do it another way. That forces you into a lot of adult thinking and makes you really process things.
This school graduated 99% of its students and sent 95% to four-year colleges. This was way above the other high schools even though it was made up of kids who were failing or because the school was not working for them. Many of the graduates have led pretty successful lives. The school existed for about 18 years until the conservative crackdown
How being a New York City Police Officer led to Technology
I studied studio art at Michigan State University and then came back to Brooklyn, NY in the mid-1980s to study architecture. The area in Brooklyn at the time was going through the most difficult time that was incredibly violent and a dangerous place. It was the neighborhood in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/06/great-schools-3-profession-without.html
One of the things I did to help pay tuition was security tours around the neighborhood for incoming freshmen. In doing that, I met a number of officers from the 88th precinct. From talking to them, I found a way to contribute every day to society as a man in his twenties wanting to have an ability to make an impact. Being a NY police officer was an immediate impact job.