Stand up and deliver...or not?

Imagine a school where the kids don’t come to school half the time. At any given moment, half of the school could be out in placements as interns and the other half of the time they would be in classes working on material that is meaningful for them? I visited just such a school today in the Bronx. (it cost me $30 by cab to get there and only $2.25 to return by train, but I had to walk miles to find a booth where I could buy a $2.25 ticket. Obviously a conspiracy by the cab companies to get fares!). Anyway back to the story.

It was the only such school in New York State until this year and the school is located within a larger school on the top floor. To get into the school, by the way, I had to walk through more security than the airport and ultimately had to empty my pockets because the machines were ringing so loudly. I also had to go back because I forget (or did not know) that I had to sign in. No wonder so many American kids are taking home schooling. It certainly felt more like a jail than a school and in fact I found that part very disturbing. When a fight broke out in the cafeteria at lunch time, 25 ‘peace’ officers were called to the scene I was told, even though I was eating my lunch peacefully upstairs.

I think the school I visited is doing well. When the school had 4000 students before it was transferred to a number of smaller schools, the drop-out rate was 75%. Now, apparently, 88% of the kids graduate in the small school I visited today and more credit to them since many are from broken families, all are of some ethnic minority and are disadvantaged in some way. I was very impressed with these statistics and even though many do fail, probably more would and did fail in a stand up and deliver type of classroom.

What I saw was a very good understanding on the part of the students about what they were doing and why. Even though they were all working individually they were able to articulate what their learning goals were, the due dates for assignments which they established themselves and what the performance criteria were that they were going to be graded on. They were all working on what they considered important at the time, whether it was mathematics, primary source material in history or the importance of their own ethnic minority in founding New York. In addition, they all had to do a major assignment for the internship site they were doing which got them to reflect on their own learning. I won't bore you with an analysis of what worked and what could be improved in the school but the important story for me is not what was successful about this school or what was not successful, but rather the fact that we can and should be creating a wide variety of schools for different kinds of kids and should not be restricted in our own thinking to what we grew up with ourselves. I do have the opportunity in my present job to do some wonderfully creative things and hopefully will since we do have a brand new school we can take anywhere our imaginations will allow us.