- "Transformational outcomes" determine learning experiences. The curriculum helps students reach these global outcomes: responsible citizens, productive workers, self-directed lifelong learners, creative healthy individuals, and problem solvers. In practice, one sees few textbooks or worksheets in these schools. The outcomes are achieved through powerful learning experiences within and beyond the school walls. The curriculum tends toward thematic interdisciplinary approaches using problems of interest to students and persistent life issues. Examples of themes or interdisciplinary approaches: time, power, immigration, conservation. Such topics can be used at almost any grade level.
The strategy that makes this approach successful is to engage the students and use their questions and ideas. For example, students wondered what happened to a student who suddenly disappeared when he was arrested and sent to a detention center. This led to a study of juvenile delinquency with such topics as: crime, justice system, causes, etc. During the study students interviewed policemen, probation officers and a judge, watched a courtroom trial, conducted a mock trial, surveyed parents and others, gathered statistical and other data, created charts and graphs, and made presentations.
- Learning experiences feature modern learning principles and practices. The learning experiences are child-centered, life-centered and brain-based, that is, compatible with the power of the brain to assimilate and organize learning. Students have many burning questions, some of interest to all of their age group and some to just a few. To the degree schools work with those interests in a safe, nurturing environment, students will work assiduously to get answers. The teacher who only uses textbooks misses the learning styles of many students and even worse limits the topic to a dry and compressed content. We must recognize that students have powerful brains eager to make sense of the world and possess personalities eager to establish and test their skills and knowledge in a variety of settings. Many approaches characterize this view: Foxfire, Expeditionary Learning, experiential learning, project-based learning, problem-based learning, active learning, learning by doing, etc. Too many schools persist in steady diet of separate subjects, formal rows of desks, teacher as presenter and correct answers to questions. To be sure, there is a place for direct teaching and skill training, but it's not the whole diet. We find that our students learn enormously from community service, shadow experiences, helping senior citizens, internships, community research and hundreds of active, real life activities.
- We embed assessment into daily student work by observing projects unfold and how well students handle themselves in many kinds of activities. Teachers check for understanding continuously as students work. They look for progress along a set of outcomes from the broad-based transformational outcomes to specific skills and knowledge acquisition. The results of student learning play out in real activities such as reports, presentations, action research, the kinds of questions raised and the range of answers generated. Some outcomes can be checked against normed tests and community established standards though these have to be recognized as only a small part of the school's goals.
- Each learner has a personal learning plan (PLP) for recording interests, strengths, goals, activities to reach goals and progress toward goals. We almost have an electronic version ready to make the process easier. Each learner has a personal advisor who meets periodically with the learner and the parent to review the PLP. Students are not only directly involved in the development of their learning plan, but also in decisions about the school program. Their ideas increase the pool of creative thinking for problem solving and their school service responsibilities lighten the work load for staff. In this sense, students are a wonderful resource to the school.
- Teachers as "facilitators of learning" are provided support staff to increase productivity. Our schools use the model of an educational assistant paired with a teacher. Both are facilitators of learning. Instructional staffs agree to three fundamental roles: teaching, advising and participating in continuous improvement, both professional and school-wide. Each staff member has a professional development plan.
Staff development runs about 20 days a year based on individual professional growth plans. We spend about 3 percent of the budget on staff development in contrast with a normal district expenditure of 1/4 of 1 percent. Each instructional staff member has a discretionary sum (currently $1,000) for attendance at workshops and conferences. Creating new schools requires a lot of heavy lifting and support mechanisms to sustain change. These include an appropriate staff, staff stability, assurance of continued funding, site decision making, feedback on progress for continuous improvement, and rewards and recognition. People make a program work!
- Decision making is decentralized. Stakeholders make key decisions about program, staffing and budget. Many districts tout their site-based decision making program. Mostly, these programs are a joke. The test of these school-based management plans is to ask if the school staff and parents control most of the program changes, staffing configuration and the total budget. If little decentralization occurs, little accountability can be assigned.
In our programs, the facilitators of learning (instructional staff) make curriculum decisions, budget decisions, hiring decisions and are accountable for student learning outcomes. Decisions are data based and checked against outcomes and results. Parents are actively involved through participating in their child's conferences, sharing their skills and experiences, reinforcing learning at home and participating on decision making boards and committees.
- We reallocate or redeploy resources. For example, far more is spent on instructional materials, instructional equipment, field trips and community-based learning than in most schools. To accomplish this we spend less on staff. There are various ways to do this. We have differentiated the staff to a large degree and raised the student to teacher ratios, which, of course, is heresy in most quarters. Still, our student to adult ratio is low. We also consider a broader range of people as staff. These include parents, community resource people and students themselves.
- Maximum effective use of technology empowers learners and staff. All staff members have computers. All computers are hooked in a school wide network and to a fast Internet line. Staff routinely uses most of these programs: word processing, Email, spreadsheets, Internet, desktop publishing, graphics, multimedia, and other programs. Part of the staff development time goes for technology training. The student to computer ratio is less than four to one. Large technology expenditures, such as computers or rewiring a building are capitalized over time; that is, money is borrowed for major purchases and paid back over several years from the budget. We earmark about 8 percent of the budget for technology.
- Partnerships with other units of government, public and private agencies, early childhood programs and post-secondary education integrate use of community resources and reduce fragmented services and duplication. This is a difficult area as schools tend to work alone by hiring their own expertise. Today's students and families have more complicated needs than at any time in the past. Families have changed dramatically. Most parents work. The prevalence of controlled substances, medical problems and family support system needs can be better met by involving the "army" of private social service agencies, governmental units and contracted individuals available in most communities. We're making space available for dental chairs in one of our schools, an office for a community social service person twice a week in another and we open for parents to drop off their children before school and have programs for after school. Our schools run year round (220 days a year) and longer hours to better meet the needs of today's families. Our elementary school holds regular "family nights" where children and parents join for a pot luck dinner and fun activities.
