Specifics, Details, and Current Plans

What exactly are we talking about?
Our school will be have a child-led curricula with a project-directed focus.  "Child-led" means students will decide what they learn and when they learn it, both on a month-to-month and on a minute-to-minute basis.  "Project-driven" means that the teacher will provide resources, mentoring, and encouragement for students to delve deeply into their authentic interests. 

Our school will serve students in Kindergarten through fifth grade in a mixed-ages setting.  We plan to rent space from another organization, such as a church, service organization, or community group.

The general schedule for each day will be decided by the lead teacher in collaboration with students, other teachers, and classroom helpers.  The teacher(s) will help students formulate their educational plans and follow through with them, in addition to documenting their progress.  It is intended that each student will be involved in both a large group project and one or more individual projects at most times during the school year.  The daily schedule will reflect that intention.

Our school intends to follow the District 205 calendar.  As such, the school year will be 180 days, and the school day will run 8:15 AM to 3:00 PM.  Due to the flexibility of the child-led approach, however, families will be able to use their discretion in determining how closely their children will adhere to the schedule.  (For example, you may elect to leave school earlier in the afternoon twice a week in order to participate in an extracurricular sport.)

Our tuition will be between $5000 and $6000 a year, with the possibility of tuition discounts for classroom assistance.

Based on preliminary numbers, we will be able to open with a full-time teacher with a minimum enrollment of 14 paid students.  With 14 to 20 students, we will be able to hire one full-time teacher.  With 21 to 30 students we will be able to hire two full-time teachers.  We will be able to hire an additional teacher for every 10 paid students.

FAQ

Why do you even need a school for this?  Why not just homeschool?

Many families, for a variety of reasons, cannot or do not wish to homeschool.  Our school will be a resource for those families.  More importantly, however, certain skills can only be learned through practice interacting with a diverse group of other people: how to lead, how to follow, how to be a good citizen, how to disagree constructively, how to empathize, how to fight fairly, how to rally support to a common cause, how to communicate clearly in the heat of the moment, how to help without taking over, how to mentor, how to teach, and many others.  A mixed-age classroom provides an ideal environment to support children in learning these skills.  

Won't the kids have to learn Common Core at some point?  Isn't starting late going to be a handicap?  

The short answer is "Yes, and no."  Because the school only intends to serve children through fifth grade, students will be exposed to Common Core in junior and senior high.  However, the delay in introducing Common Core will be a benefit, rather than a handicap.  Common Core was created by back-mapping.  What this means is that a small group of people decided on a list of things that a high school senior should know at graduation.  They then divided that list into roughly equal sequential pieces and distributed those pieces backwards across the grades.  You already know from watching your child learn to walk and talk that kids develop at different rates and that development happens in fits and starts, rather than in a steady linear way.  This is a particular concern in the early grades, when children are not developmentally ready for the tasks Common Core requires.  Our students will learn to learn, which will prepare them to learn Common Core starting in junior high.  With a firm grasp of his own learning style, your child will be able to learn Common Core concepts more quickly and without the stress of tackling developmentally inappropriate tasks.

How will kids learn to read, write, and do math?  Don't you need curriculum for those things?
In an environment that supports, celebrates, and encourages learning, children will learn the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy because they are foundational to any interest the children could pursue.  In order to deeply study any subject through a long-term collaborative project, a child will need to count, add, subtract, divide, multiply, think spatially, think sequentially, follow instructions, find resources, research through books, observe carefully, respond through a variety of mediums, study resource materials, communicate verbally, work collaboratively, memorize important facts, and a host of other skills.  This is true whether the project is cupcakes, Legos, dinosaurs, or baby dolls.  For examples of projects and the skills they teach, check out pbhkids.tumblr.com.
However, if a child appears to be struggling in a given discipline, the teacher can certainly mentor the child to come up with a plan for improving her skills in that area.  If agreed on by both the teacher and the child, pre-packaged curriculum could may be part of that plan.

Do you have other questions?  Would you like to get involved?  Contact us!

The Big Idea

It's time to rethink education in the United States. 

It seems that every ten or twenty years there's a new trend in elementary education, but they all seem to be "same song, another verse." Every trend re-works the basic ideas that 1) Schools are factories for math and literacy, 2) Every child needs to learn the same things in the same ways at the same times, and 3) If we could just find the right combination of benchmarks, curriculum, standards, methods, and tests, every student would come out of the school knowing everything "important."

What we need to fix education in America is not another set of standards, and it's not another round of tests.  We need a paradigm shift.  My friends, the purpose of education is not to give the student all the information she'll need to know for the rest of her life. Rather, the purpose of education is to teach the student to learn, so she can continue learning everything she'll need to know for the rest of her life.

How, then, do we teach learning?  It's clear that there are many different learning styles, and each child's way of learning may be unique to him or herself.  It's also clear that pre-packaged curriculum, even if it is excellent at teaching its subject, does not teach the process of learning itself.

To teach learning, we first need to step back and recognize the entire four step process of learning.  Learning is the IDEA:  1. Identify the goal, 2. Decide on steps to reach the goal, 3. Execute the steps, and 4. Assess whether or not the goal has been met.

Maybe you've heard the old saying, "He who cuts his own wood is warmed twice."  The wood cutter is warmed first by swinging the ax and again by burning the wood.  The child who controls every step of the IDEA learns twice.  He learns whatever he's focused on learning, and he also learns how to learn.

Why do children need to control the IDEA?

Twenty years ago, there's no way my parents could have guessed two of their four children would become computer programmers.  We have no idea what the jobs of the future are going to be.  Because we don't know what jobs there will be, we can't predict what knowledge will be important in 20 years.  What we do know is that our children will need to know how to learn whatever they need to know for their future jobs.

Giving children control of their own learning might seem risky.  Ultimately, however, it's the surest path.  In an environment that celebrates, supports, and encourages learning, every child will learn the fundamentals of literacy, math, and social skills.  After all, we call them "fundamentals" because they are at the foundation of every kind of learning.  In an environment that celebrates, supports, and encourages learning, every child will also learn how to set goals, prioritize between good plans, study a subject deeply, problem solve, manage his productivity, and assess his own work.  Those skills will serve him well on any path his future takes.

What's the plan, then?

I propose a school.  A child-led, project-directed elementary school.  Are you interested in joining me?
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