Since I love writing observations, I thought I would write about the picture I have in my mind of a day in the life of our new school. I imagine the day starting around 8:30 the way our day care day begins. The parents and children arrive and the teachers and other children and parents are there to greet them. Kids of all ages are part of our school, so some are able to walk or take the bus or ride their bike or scooter to school. Those kids park their vehicles outside and come in on their own. Everybody has a place for their stuff and the first job of the day is to get organized and say hello. Then kids begin to do the things they do, whatever their morning routine. Some will go outside (older kids will be able to use the yard without a grown-up, younger kids will be able to find an adult to keep an eye on them when they want to be outside), some will talk with friends or parents or teachers, some will begin building, drawing, painting, playing a game, reading a book. Some kids might work on a computer, checking the news of the day, or investigating something that interests them, maybe playing a game that others will join, or answering an e-mail. In the early morning, teachers will have arrived ahead of the children to prepare for the day, tidying up from the day before, getting materials and plans set for the day, and talking with one another about this and that, observations and questions about children, about the space and routine, about challenging behaviors or kids needing direction, about the weather and scheduling and administration and what is coming in the short and long term future.
Once everyone has arrived and done their morning greeting and routine, projects or field trips will take shape. A group of kids might conduct a science experiment, do a cooking or art project, fix or build something, play, pretend, or organize a game or work in the yard, make music, sing, or dance. Some days a group will read and act out a book, or someone will write a play for us to perform. Other days a group might meet to read a book and discuss it, or work at math or handwriting. Some days there may be an outing to a park or a library, a museum, a historical site, or a local business.
If there is a large yard around our school kids will go in and out at will. If not, we will be near a park or open space and we will organize a way to get kids there and back with teachers. No matter what the outside space, the children will play ball, run, jump, climb, play games and sports, look for bugs, dig, and dance and pretend. We will find ways to swim in the summer and to sled in the winter, to ride bikes and scooters, and to skate and hike and go on other adventures outside whenever we can.
Midmorning, or as kids are hungry, we will enjoy a healthy snack, sometimes one that we make together, other times something easy kids can prepare and serve at the table. We will have lunch and snack in small groups and take our time with our food, enjoying the tastes and textures, as well as pleasant conversation as we eat.
Parts of the day will be boisterous and energetic, other times calm and focussed, still others restful and reflective. Children will have soft furniture for relaxing, tables and ready access to materials for projects, places to work or relax on the floor, dedicated space for some things like art or cooking or dancing or music or quiet reading, and structure and rules that make sense and support individual freedom and group responsibility.
Some children in our school will likely read at 3 or 4 or 5 while others will likely solidify their reading skills closer to 10. Because so many things will be valued in our school, kids who read earlier or later will not be considered out of sync, but rather will be developing on their own path. Kids will spend their early years developing their physical coordination, their playful sense of story, their musical and artistic talents and their social and emotional skills. As they grow, children will be surrounded by a variety of people of different ages engaged in what they love and this passion will be contagious. Children will see their friends laughing and smiling as they learn to write the names of their family and friends, they will see children dancing with abandon, playing drums with intense focus, drawing day after day until they are satisfied with their pictures, then trying something new, building towers and lego creations and book shelves that first fall apart and then take shape, looking for bugs and learning about the nature around us through the seasons, asking questions about why and how things work and figuring out the answers through observation, experimentation, conversation, and research.
Children will also learn to work with people of different ages. Older children will read to younger ones, younger ones will make the older ones smile. Human development will be vivid in all it’s glory and idiosyncracy and psychology and sociology will be easy to study for those who are observant and aware.
I picture teachers and children knowing one another for many years, growing up together and learning to live with the challenging and endearing pieces of all the personalities in the group. I imagine many languages being spoken at drop-off and pickup by the families, and as many as we can manage being spoken and read and written and sung throughout the day. I picture many traditions and cultural ways of being influencing the way our group takes shape, the ways we interact with one another, the sorts of food we eat, the holidays we celebrate, the songs we sing, the ways we care for one another, and the ways we live and learn together.
In my wildest of dreams, our school is open to anyone who wishes to be there. We turn away no child whose parents cannot afford tuition. The local districts send students to us because they know their students will thrive with us and we offer an alternative that is important for many kids. We are welcoming to children with special needs and find ways to help them to meet their potential in as normalized a setting as possible. We find ways to make our school meaningful for children through to adulthood and to send our members on to happy, productive lives where they know how to sustain relationships, work, and pleasure, learning forever.
December 16, 2008 at 12:50 pm
this sounds so nice in so many ways. i have two wonderings though…one is about the teachers coming in early to get the place in order. Wouldn’t it be a better learning experience for the kids to be in the habit of having end of the day jobs that keep the place in order? It seems that developing responsibility to others is as important a task as learning about one’s self. Not to mention the skills that come along with the tasks. And then there is the fact that kids need to learn to quickly do job routines in order to find their way to productive paid work as they get older.
Other point is about the kids learning to read toward 10. I wonder about this. The overwhelming majority of kids learn to read by the middle of first grade. This has been the case for decades, if not longer. The ones who don’t are either struggling with bilinguality, cultural deprivation or learning disabilities. At least this is what I have always understood. Wouldn’t those kids who are not reading ‘on time’ be needing support in the process of reading? I don’t know if this is the case or not, it is always what I have heard, and read and learned.
Having raised one child with minor, though really significant learning disabilities I remain struck by the intense work that I had to do for years in supporting him in a traditional school. I wonder if he would have learned these skills on his own later, as his brain matured all on it’s on as well as with the variety of experiences he sought out.
But I wonder about not reading. Will it just happen at or by 10? Or does such a child need more intense supported teaching? And aren’t there many other challenges that this type of child needs in order to move forward and be able to take on the educational challenges that are out there? And I don’t mean MCAS. I mean really organizing their work, moving forward to the best of their intellectual abilities.
And here I come back to thinking about myself. Same or extremely similar ‘learning disabilities’ as my son. Back in the 50′s I was thought to be a lazy, sloppy underachiever. As a result I never got a college education. I was way to disorganized, defeated and confused about how to do it.
My son is in engineering school. Quite a difference, and some of it is the intense support he had mostly at home to keep up with his peers in school.
I often think that if his son, or grandson inherits the same brain it will be understood in a more sophisticated way, and the child will be allowed to develop with even more significant support. Something along the lines of what you describe, but with the addition of people who are very sophisticated in seeing where the ‘lags’ are and how to support that growth within the context of what the kid is interested in doing.
This kind of sophistication in teaching is important. I don’t know if it can be there for kids who have significant learning or organizational issues. I would worry that many such kids would show up at this school, eager parents in tow. Parents who aren’t able to bring a sophisticated understanding of educational development, and as time goes on kids would lag further and further behind.
How have other schools talked about this issue? How have kids come out ready to work? Work is a vital part of an engaged and fully lived life. Even for the independently wealthy. Even for those who struggle in grade school.