a first step...assumptions (2010)

Because every journey begins with a single step, the process of plotting a future for our school district must begin with people sticking their necks out and outlining a vision. One's thoughts will set off new thinking in another, and multiple plans will ultimately yield their best aspects into one course of action. The final course will be perfect to no one, but might combine the wisdom of many into a workable blueprint.

In that spirit alone, I want to throw some ideas out there. I plan to come back to this often with revisions every time someone else's insight breaks past my overgrown ego to show me a change that seems desirable.

My dream plan grows out of my own biases, assumptions, out of things I've read and experienced. Wherever possible, I want to identify those premises and demonstrate how my proposals grow from them. I welcome challenges to my assumptions as well as challenges to my logic in moving from those premises to concrete proposals. If a proposal seems to come out of nowhere, it should not stand unchallenged until it can be demonstrated as a direct consequence of an assumption. At that point, a valid counter-proposal might be seen as arising from a competing assumption, and we can discuss the benefits and liabilities of each proposal on that more basic level.

At the risk of being pedantic, here are some of my basic assumptions:

1. Children learn in a multiplicity of ways, each from a different "best teacher," each under different circumstances. A district built to serve all must provide a variety of experiences and a diversity of adults accessible to students. The worst situation or teacher for one might be the best for another, so only together can they become the best school. A one-size-fits-all curriculum, or one teacher to a class will always fail a significant proportion of children.

2. Smaller schools serve children better. This has become so obvious in educational research that large urban schools now seek to improve by breaking themselves into significantly smaller sub-structures. What is lost in "economy of scale" is more than gained in students finding a niche where they are known, cared for, and nurtured. This cannot happen in a larger school, where it is all too easy for a student to remain anonymous.

3. Teachers are human and cannot be asked to perform super-human tasks, such as being all things to all people. Most teachers who are worth the name stretch themselves to the limit. Anything "new" put on their plate can only replace something else which must be taken off. An exhausted teacher is no help to anyone, and eventually will be lost through burn out or resignation. Even before burn-out, an overworked teacher sets a bad life-example to his or her students.

4. The schools that are most successful are those most closely connected to their communities. As children are removed from their communities either geographically or emotionally, they do not perform as well in school. When parents and extended families are involved intimately in schools, both schools and children are enriched.

5. A community unable to educate its young locally soon dies. Rural communities in particular rely on schools to act as social centers and magnets for family activities. The presence of this social center is as much a benefit for those without children as to families of school-aged children. Indeed, many rural communities have little else.

6. Large schools can sometimes provide more academic variety, but that advantage is fast shrinking to insignificance as technology is opening means of connecting students with specialized interests or abilities across wide geographic areas. Arguments that were important in passing the Sinclair Act 50+ years ago hardly hold water now.

7. The best motivator is interest. Students can be coerced into retaining facts for short periods, but long-term retention cannot occur without interest.

8. Children learn best from other children. Children also learn best from teaching other children, since one cannot ever claim to understand something until successfully teaching it to another.

9. Grouping children only according to age is unnatural and counter-productive. Unnatural because it is the only place children will ever be confined to the company of only those of the same chronological age, and counterproductive since emotional and intellectual age is not the same as age in years. Besides, if children learn best from each other, 99% of the possibility of this is eliminated by single-age groupings. Where can the 8th graders help the 4th graders? Where do the 1st graders get to look up to the 12th graders?

10. When schools are moved from, or isolated from communities, children are cut off from many of their natural teachers: the grandparents, the trades(wo)men, the shopkeepers. Successful schools all over the country are encouraging mentoring, interning, and apprenticeships, but for that to succeed all these older folk must be accessible to the children. Making those connections happen not only permits the children to learn skills in context, but fosters students' feelings of ownership and connection with their communities. This is particularly vital in rural areas, which tend to lose large proportions of their children as soon as they are old enough to leave home.

11. Parents and communities cannot retain control of curriculum and local culture if schools are removed geographically. When that happens, control is passed to distant surrogates who neither know nor value the children, nor care one fig about preserving the values of the community.

12. Schools are vital to the economic health of their communities.

13. Parents cannot provide adequate emotional support to their children if they cannot visit the school or their children's teachers frequently. If children are removed from the community, or especially if multiple children in a family are split between geographically distant schools, parents are stretched too thin to give their children their best.

14. A coordinated curriculum matters little, except to creators of standardized tests. Even in a single classroom, children take away widely divergent lessons...always only what they are ready to learn. The most successful classroom is one where there is a solid connection between children and their teachers, and the teacher is as excited about his/her teaching as about watching children grow. This never happens if the teacher is scripted, but frequently happens if teachers are left to their own devices.

15. It matters far more to have teachers who can teach than to have teachers who are experts at their subject matter. A teacher good with children but new to a subject area is far more effective than an expert who has no gift with children. Some of the best teaching in any school happens when both teachers and students are learning together, since the concept of the teacher as purveyor of knowledge to passive students is not only outmoded, but never did work anyway.

16. The time when students could learn all they had to know passed at least 10,000 years ago. Our best hope is to help children find lifelong excitement in learning, and develop the skills to always find the information they need when they need it. Fortunately, that is easier to do now than ever before, in big and small, urban and rural schools alike.