Elements of the Vision

I have a vision of how schooling can become learning for most kids.  Maybe one day I can articulate the details into a plan.  Maybe one day someone will care with me to try and make it happen and reframe our imagination about the purpose of school.  Here are some elements of what I’d like to see schools become in our society:

Revisited Timeframes – The workaday world runs 8am-5pm, so schools are a good childcare system for this.  If schooling were learning, we wouldn’t be bound by the 8:30 to 3:30 routine.  Why don’t we go until 5 already?  Most teachers don’t work just those hour anyway, so let’s erase the divisive summer breaks, extend the days as needed, and create schedules that allow for more participation by the community.  Science has shown that high schoolers function better in evening and night hours, so let them sleep in and learn later.  Do all students need to be in school at the same time?  Can we work in shifts to serve better?

Fluid Rosters – A teacher student ratio of 1:30 may be economical, but what if we considered our charges to include all of the kids in our building.  Many of us do already.  Let’s melt the class lists into one school list that allows us to flow children by skill set, not merely age or grade level.
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Blended-Experiential Learning – To support the first two concepts, let’s reduce class sizes temporarily throughout a school day (or look into shift work concepts).  Kids could spend part of their learning time guided online where ratios can be larger, or on site in experiential learning environments like nature, athletics, fine-arts, or project-based groups.  Thoughtfully planned thematic teaching could relate these team-based experiences back to individualized instruction in smaller classrooms.

Portfolio Assessment – Grading practices get so much press.  What’s the report card scale…now?  How subjective is it?  Did we confuse rigor with rigidity?  Let’s make solid rubrics together, in age-appropriate language, and teach kids early to build their own portfolios of work showing their progress and mastery of standard skills.  This can be done with counting or naming letters all the way through statistics formulae or literary dissection.

Dream with me.  What are your wild ideas for creating preK-12 learning?