Rethinking Education: Sharing School Reform Ideas and Education Reform Insights – an American Education Group Blog

A great illustrative video showing how hip hop can be used to “teach language arts, innovation, and (the) value of community.” Check it out at “Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education.”

We are proud of our schools’ continuing efforts to transform education. At our Fusion schools, all classes are taught one-to-one. This allows each class to be tailored to the student’s learning style and to ensure that mastery is achieved. Each child has a unique schedule, developed to accommodate the individual’s needs.

Check out our original Solana Beach location in the video below. And be sure to visit us at www.FusionAcademy.com to learn more.

Innovation in education is encouraging when it happens within one stand-alone school. But systemic innovation, particularly in the enormous public school system? That is truly inspirational.

New York City faced the task head-on in 2010, when the Department of Education (NYCDOE) launched the Innovation Zone, or iZone for short. As we read in the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s (CRPE) website:

NYC is one of the first districts in the country to try to scale up broad innovation. As they move to take the iZone to scale, district officials face daunting challenges in promoting true innovation within the massive bureaucracy of New York City public schools. Some of the problems are evident now; others are likely to emerge in the future. Over the next few years, how the district copes with challenges like the inertia of the status quo, risk management and accountability, and paying for scale will offer lessons for other districts who follow suit.

Schools in the iZone will formulate new models, based on student-centered mastery learning, with the support of network leaders and innovation partners. As pilot schools develop models that work for them, they will then help other schools transform. By Year 4, the goal is to have 181 schools and approximately 29,000 students benefiting from the iZone innovation. Learn more about this ambitious plan in the CRPE’s Working Paper.

Today, some questions for consideration and debate taken from the study guide we posted yesterday, the accompaniment to the Free to Learn documentary.

1. The perennial curriculum question is ‘what it most worth knowing’? Are there some things (skills/knowledge) more important than others? How do traditional schools answer this question? How does The Free School seem to answer this question?

2. Should children have a say in their own education and why? Should children/students play a more active role in school governance and control?

3. Does such a school structure as The Free School’s speak to the issue of youth alienation/disengagement/disaffection with the world? How so?

Be sure to check out the full study guide for even more thought-provoking questions.

In our post Democratizing School, we looked at the concept of free schools, in particular the Manhattan Free School, and we considered the comments of teens in response to the student opinion question posed by the New York Times, How Would You Do in a ‘Free School’?.

Now we have the opportunity to see inside one of the oldest democratic schools in America – The Free School in Albany, NY. Opened in 1969, The Free School is unique to the democratic school model in that it serves an economically and racially diverse group of students and is located in the heart of an inner-city neighborhood. A 70-minute documentary, Free to Learn, by Jeff Root and Bhawin Suchak, offers us an inside look at daily life at The Free School. Free to Learn is free to watch and even includes a study guide. If you don’t have time for the entire 70 minutes, it’s interesting to at least listen to the teachers’ initial interviews, from 11-14 minutes in.

The ultimate in child-led learning, the Manhattan Free School is a completely democratic school, run with equal-share decision-making, offering only student-initiated learning. Here students, parents, and educators work together to define the school and the environment, in which students can then choose what and how to learn.

Yesterday, The New York Times posted a student opinion question, How Would You Do in a ‘Free School’?, and invited students age 13 or older to comment. This follows the article about the school posted by Susan Dominus on Monday – Playdoh? Calculus? At the Manhattan Free School, Anything Goes. She describes the school and its roots:

At the Manhattan Free School, which opened in 2008 and follows a model that first gained fame at A. S. Neill’s Summerhill School in England, educators believe that students learn best when they direct their own education. Classes are held, but if a student wants to play video games or model with Play-Doh all day, so be it — even if that student is, say, 17.

As for the students’ opinions on this type of school, at the time of writing this post overwhelmingly students did not think they would do well at this type of school; particularly they assumed that anyone who went to this type of school would not succeed in college. It’s not often you are able to read uncensored thoughts from teenagers, so be sure to read the article and have a look through some of the comments. Most notably there seems to be a firm hold on the notion that school is actually preparing them for their future. And perhaps it is for some.

However, as one insightful commenter, Josh, points out:

There are lots and lots of graduates of these schools who have (gone) on to just as wide a variety of colleges and careers as traditional school students… they just might have been happier doing it.

A comprehensive list of democratic, or ‘free’, schools worldwide is available from the Alternative Education Resource Organization.

Understanding that age is not always the best predictor of ability, a new classroom “grading” is being implemented in some schools across the country. This methodology groups students by ability in a subject; they move “up” to the next level within that subject once they’ve mastered the level they are currently on. Teachers continue to provide group instruction, if needed, but most work is done individually or in small groups. Mostly the teacher is serving as a mentor and guide – working with the student to determine which part of the curriculum he or she should be working on.

This method, called the RISC Approach to Schooling, is a comprehensive, performance-based schooling system developed by the Re-Inventing Schools Coalition. As stated on the RISC website:

At the core of the RISC approach is a deep commitment to children—that every child will learn, that every child can meet high standards, and that every child can succeed in life. This learner-centered approach, driven by moral purpose and a system that unleashes students’ potential, gives every child, in any community, in any part of the globe, the best opportunity for success in life.

Utilizing a shared community vision, a standards-based design, effective leadership, and continuous improvement, the RISC approach engages children fully in the learning process, while teachers become mentors and partners in learning, similar to the Reggio Emilia approach. Children also must achieve a mastery level in each subject, similar to the approach taken by Fusion Academy and Learning Center, a group of AEG partner schools.

The RISC Approach to Schooling has so far been implemented in the Kansas City, Missouri school district; in the Denver, Colorado school district; in the Bering Strait School District in Alaska; and across six school districts in Maine.  According to the article Some Schools Grouping Students by Skill, Not Grade Level in USAToday, all participants have found this to be an overwhelming success.

The idea of child-led learning is a component of many educational approaches, to a greater or lesser degree. One of these that can be found in early and primary school education across the world  is the Reggio Emilia approach.

Started in the city of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, by Loris Malaguzzi, this approach has been gaining popularity since its inception, shortly after World War II. Essentially, it sees the child as a natural learner, one who is competent and imaginative, and so let’s the child lead the learning process with the environment acting as the “teacher” and the teacher as a resource and guide, there to share expertise with the child while also learning alongside him or her.

Given the importance of the environment, in a true Reggio Emilia approach great cares are taken to create an aesthetically beautiful space with lots of natural light and pastel colors. The arts, both studio and performing, play a large role in the learning process as does documentation of and reflection upon the childrens’ work. Parents are also extensively involved, as the child’s learning is seen as being based on relationships, with open dialogue between children and adults.

One of the benefits of this approach over a traditional school environment seems to be the actual physical environment, which is arranged to be a peaceful, joyful place of learning. The children are actively involved in deciding what they are learning, and how they are learning it, so are more likely to be engaged in the process. Furthermore, rather than formal assessments, student progress is determined through the documentation of student work, which includes pictures of the children “working”, their words written down as they talk about what they’re doing, and visual art such as sculpture, drawing, painting, etc. The belief is that reviewing this documentation together allows the child to reflect on the learning process, with the thoughts and emotions involved, and therefore to deeply learn.

As there is no formal certification to practice this approach, schools and teachers can start implementing these philosophies at any time. To learn more about the Reggio Emilia approach to learning in early education and grade school, check out the articles by Andrew Loh on Brainy-Child.com and by Rose Garrett on Education.com. You can also compare it to some other models on RecognitionAndResponse.org, in Finding Just the Right Curriculum.

Further to our post yesterday on how to move beyond slight changes in education, and really try something new, here’s the first look at an innovative learning environment for the early education years.

Forest kindergartens are a not-so-new type of preschool education that has experienced a resurgence in recent years, particularly with the notion of “nature deficit disorder” (a term penned by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods) becoming a trend in modern urban society.

Originally started in the 1950′s in Sweden and Denmark, forest kindergartens are generally aimed at providing 3- to 6-year olds a natural environment in which to play, explore, and develop their natural curiosity. The school is held mainly outdoors, no matter what the weather, and in all instances studied thus far, children thrive.

Most of the findings of success come from Germany, where there are over 400 Waldkindergartens - and growing. One study by Roland Gorges entitled Waldkindergartenkinder Im Ersten Schuljahr (written in German and so relying on translation) found that when children from German Waldkindergartens went to primary school, teachers observed a significant improvement in areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics, among others.

The practice is also gaining popularity in the Scandinavian countries, the U.K., and even the U.S., in places such as Saratoga Springs, NY. Some of the other benefits for outdoor learning are summarized well by the Woodland Outdoor Kindergartens in Scotland: benefits such as the increased opportunity for child-led play in a peaceful, stress-free environment.

It certainly seems like an enjoyable alternative to sitting in a classroom every day! Even if schools had to start with one day a week, or one morning a week, the positive benefits on attention span and stress level combined with the inspiration and exploration a natural environment invites cannot be overlooked.

Photo credit

With all of us focusing on education reform – from the government to the box office – are we really talking about what matters? It’s easy to get caught up in the conversation, reading the news and the various commentary outlets. But are we really changing anything?

I came across this quote from Tom Peters, from his book Re-imagine!. It reminded me of where we need to go. He says:

“I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers…creativity above fact regurgitation…individuality above conformity..and excellence above standardized performance….. And we must reject all notions of ‘reform’ that serve up more of the same: more testing, more ‘standards’, more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.”

It seems to me that all of this talk about “reform” is simply looking at a few schools that “work” and trying to replicate them. There is no real mention about how to shake things up, how to do them differently.  Education for the masses is not in question when it really should be.

How do we measure schools that “work”? Are the children who leave there just testing better or have they actually kept their childhood wonder and natural curiosity about the world we live in? Are they actually prepared to be critical thinkers, to continue learning and re-inventing themselves throughout their lives? If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the recent recession, if you cannot adapt, you will not succeed.

So let’s move “beyond reform”. And try something completely different. It will have to start small. Already there are interesting experiments happening around the world. We’ll look at some of them in the coming days.