scott klepesch's List: Alternative Schooling

• I'm in, where do I sign up - scott klepesch on 2011-05-10

• We really need to begin to rethink the school space on every level. And I think it could be doable, provided, as you suggest, the mentoring “teachers” the kids get connected to are there to learn for themselves and to become part of the process. I know I play with the words more than I should, but what if we assembled a “learning staff” rather than a “teaching staff,” a group of adults who are experts not at content but at learning, at personalizing the process for each individual child? And generalists who can not only help point them in the right direction regardless their need but motivate them to dig deeper and harder when the going gets tough.
• but briefly Josie said the kids get narrative reports from teachers, do performances and self-assessment, and that all seems to suit everyone just fine.

• For example, in the first trimester a student’s heroic journey might involve trying to help Winston Smith, a character from George Orwell’s famous novel 1984, stop media manipulation and people’s perceptions of reality. The second semester might involve saving history from the impacts of a time travel machine that has just been invented. And the third trimester could find students facing a world where nature runs unchecked by man or technology and kids must learn to survive.
• In all of these narratives, students are the protagonists, working their way through tasks, challenges and projects to build standards-based skills. They’re working together to solve this big, complex problem, and at the same time they’re learning the content and skill mandated by the state of California.
• To create the sense of belonging that the Epic team feels is so crucial to a strong learning culture, students are grouped into “houses,” like in Harry Potter. Each student is on his or her own individual hero’s journey to finish middle school, but houses are integral to many of the games that are part of everything at the school. For example, houses might compete at lunch time over who can produce the least waste. Or, members of different houses might have to solve challenges focused on building their social and emotional skills, a core part of the curriculum.

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• hen Sam Levin was a junior at Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington, Mass., he realized that two things were in short supply at his school: engagement and mastery. He also noticed that he and his peers were learning plenty of information, but not much about how to gather or create their own data. And he noticed that students were unhappy. So he took it upon himself to design a school where students would feel fully engaged, have an opportunity to develop expertise in something, and learn how to learn.
• “The idea was that it was for students who could manage their time well, were looking for something more than the traditional program, and had a passion for learning,” says Powell, who served as the group’s primary adviser. Academic performance didn’t matter — the group included straight-A students as well as students who were failing many of their classes. The group was fairly diverse in other ways, too, with the students hailing from a range of blue-collar and white-collar family backgrounds.
• They explored math, science, social science and literature topics that interested them, choosing one question each week, researching it, and presenting their findings to the group. They also chose books to read, discuss and write about in some form; worked on a semester-long individual project on a subject that excited them (the only requirement was that the project require effort, learning and mastery); and collaborated on a three-week-long group endeavor (they decided to make a video about education and their project). They were responsible for giving a final presentation about their project, which helped to give them a specific goal to work toward.
• . “It was really risky, because we didn’t know how colleges would interpret this on a transcript,” Powell says. “But so far we’ve had only an overwhelmingly positive response,” including from highly selective colleges, such as Oxford and Williams, that have accepted graduates.

• Malik enjoyed many of his regular classes and sees this program as a complement rather than a complete replacement for them. “For a lot of subjects, like chemistry, it’s good to be taught by someone, so the structure of the class helps. And in social science, it’s good to be introduced to ideas by someone who understands those ideas really well.” But The Independent Project offers benefits that aren’t available in an adult-led classroom, he adds. “It really establishes an idea of what self-motivation is. There is critiquing, but it all comes back to you. That’s really valuable.”

   

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