Ideal School

What does the ideal school look and feel like?


Rachel: Ideal school - students feel beloved in their school. Have relationships in the school (teachers, parents, other students). Less transactional, more community focus. Picturing an elementary school. What are ages, etc? Class sizes? Ability to explore having groups of students stay with one teacher. Schoolhouse model. As opposed to graded system with different teachers. Keep teachers with students for more years, so students know class etc along the way. Amalgam of montessori and home school. 

Phil: About age groups. If a boarding school, what can we get? If we can get at kindergarten, then let's do it. Get them educated as early as can. Small ratio, community orientation, "communing" with other students. Multiple years of teachers, good. Like to talk about the role of the teacher in the classroom. The role of teacher is dependent on the philosophy. If it's to inculcate the habit of learning, teacher is a guide not a sage. Teacher is not an authority figure. Students must take an active part in their own education. Allows students to excel in their own interests. Inquiry based education as opposed to graded content system.

Phil: Our school: interest based, engaged education -- without the Montessori guide-less model. More structured than Montessori, less structured than PS 89.

Waldorf - a viable alternative school system based on anthroposophy 

John: going back to community -- you have a school where kids are excited about being there, eventually the students will be involved in tutoring, teaching, engaging other students in projects, meal prep, working together as a team -- the culture develops as a side effect of the structure. 

PB - a well run school is like a happy family. 

Rachel: I know of a school in New Hampshire that does interesting things despite demographics, like immersion Chinese, cricket, etc. 

Phil: I'm committed to making a new school, not copying an existing one. Don't know of any school based on Deweyian education. Is about being a good person and citizen as well as knowledge gains. Don't know about you, but education system did not prepare me for real life. 

Tessie: How to fix a flat, plunge toilet, change an electrical fixture. 

Rachel: Some of that is luck of the draw. Not everybody gets the parents that will teach you this kind of thing. 

John: These kids can grow up to be that kind of parent. 

Greg: One of teh things we could do for math education is to focus on using the computational tools we have -- instead of teaching students how to do the integral, teach them how they can use modeling an integral (using a real world problem) and then have computational tools to do teh integration, then analyze results.Any real world math problem breaks into : understanding, modeling, solving, and analyzing. We currently teach step 3. Dewey's steps: admitting/recognizing problem; hypothesize; test; revisit as necessary. Ties heavily into inquiry-based education 

Jess: Other than the anthroposophy influence, I've been very impressed by the Waldorf model. There are a lot of good parts to each educational system. We should see what bits work and what bits do not and go from there. No point reinventing the wheel. 

Jess: My greatest hope is that we can find a way to have a school that I would be proud for my child to attend with few if any reservations. 

[These were our initial comments on the subject.]

SUMMARY: We want a well-rounded educational system that does not just teach facts but also instills an awareness of the environment and community, as well as enabling students to develop executive function skills. They will become knowledgeable, practical, wise, compassionate, and nurturing individuals if we succeed.