Annotated Index of Rockaway College Project Posts

The blog publishing of all I have in mind for my Democratic Education Rockaway College, serving the spectrum of gifted and talented, most especially the Twice-Exceptional, has resulted in quite a few posts.  To help better locate posts of greater interest I thought to add an annotated index of posts.  So, here they are.  The dates seen as the lead index attribute are the date a post was published.

2/16/12 “Rising Out of Bereavement Through My School Project”-tells the story of how it came to be that I am again working to make the dream of my school, Rockaway College, a reality, of how I discovered Democratic Education, the organizing principles of the school, and of how my Democratic Education school project came to be.

2/23/12 “Defining Democratic Education”-gives a concise description of the development and principles of Democratic Education.

Mr. Christopher Quirk, Director of Easton County Day School, graciously allowed me to work closely with him on a proposal for a sustainable education community during 2011.  Part of this collaboration centered on a K-12 school.  The following four posts represent the arguments set forth in that proposal for a vision of the school which favorably argues for Democratic Education schools generally, and my Democratic Education School particularly.

2/28/12 “Knocks Against the Way We School”-concisely critiques current schooling demonstrating the harm and the hurt visited upon children, especially those that fall outside the narrow band of mainstream compliable.

2/28/12 “Mindfulness and Empowerment:  The Twin Pillars of A Different Path in Education”-argues that formal learning structured differently than the current means by which children are schooled would not allow the harm and the hurt of contemporary schooling, that the cultivation of Mindfulness and Empowerment in each child are the twin pillars of the altered schooling structure, and that Democratic Education engenders Mindfulness and Empowerment and represents the altered schooling certainly capable of working for those not fitting into the current system.

2/28/12 “The Democratic Education System”-describes how Democratic Education works.

2/28/12 “Democratic Education Curriculum and Summation”- describes an integrated interdisciplinary curriculum emanating from the consequences of our digitally saturated society and from the Democratic Education structure’s need to provide students discrete contextual content, as well provides a summary of the arguments defining an altered schooling structure that would make it impossible for the problems of conventional schooling to take root and its conclusion that a Democratic Education school is such an altered schooling structure.

3/1/12 “The Gifted Talented Disabled ‘Tail Ends’ of the Curve” -identifies a student population ignored by almost all varieties of schooling and who is intended to be the classification of student this Democratic Education school will mainly serve.

3/4/12 “The Need to Attend to the Twice-Exception-The Need for Rockaway College” -argues for the need to attend to this population which also demonstrates the need for Rockaway College.

3/4/12 “Following the Neurology Meets 2e Educational Needs”-shows how working with the neurology of these youngsters instead of against it, as would Rockaway College, would meet psychological and educational needs of this population.

Rockaway College would be established through two major units, Rockaway College School and Rockaway College, each housing unique programs providing the spectrum of gifted and talented, most especially the Twice-Exceptional, an integrated sequential progression in social, emotional and cognitive growth.  Rockaway College School would offer an Early Childhood Program and a Primary Education Program.  Rockaway College would offer an outdoor adventure personal growth intake for the Secondary Education Program, a Secondary Education Program and an Early College.  These educational programs employ learning models synthesizing Democratic Education principles and neurologically based approaches to the learning predispositions of the schools’ intended student population.  Because they represent wholly new models of learning, it is incumbent on the school concept to explain them.  The next two posts accomplish this task.

3/5/12 “Concepts Informing Rockaway College Learning Models”- describes the views informing the learning models used in each of the five programs of Rockaway College. 

3/6/12 “The Learning Models of Rockaway College”-describes the models themselves.

During 2003-2005 I collaborated in a Democratic Education school development group.  It produced the successful concepts of the Brooklyn Free School and a failed submission for a new, small New York City public school.  Experience on these two projects provided me the opportunity to develop the outlines of Rockaway College which I put down in a Concept paper.  Over the intervening years, as I developed my own expertise in Democratic Education principles and practice and in gifted and talented psychology, especially, of the Twice-Exceptional, I refined the concepts and re-worked the paper accordingly to the point that the following posts are my current Concept and that which I know will work for the children, adolescents and young adults of the spectrum of gifted and talented being ill-served or completely ignored by almost all contemporary schooling.

3/7/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Introduction”-provides the purpose of the paper and of the school project, a Mission Statement and a general design outline of the school's components.

3/8/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Student Population”-assigns the Twice-Exceptional (2e) to the project as the main classification of children, adolescents and young adults intended to enroll and to grow through the programs of the school; describes 2e in conventional characteristic terms, argues against this way of viewing and suggests an alternative perspective.

3/9/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Stand Alone Service for this Student Population”-argues against appropriate school construction for service to the Twice-Exceptional being formed by a general education population, or by inclusion or pull-out mainstream classes or variants of the mainstream such as multi-age classrooms, rather it argues for an affinity environment composed solely from the spectrum of gifted and talented within an environment allowing development in a child's own way and in a child's own time rather than in an environment of standardized child psychology and behavior.

3/10/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Design of Rockaway College School”-outlines the grouping, the purpose, the learning environment, the way learning is to happen and the Democratic Education governance structures of both the Early Childhood and the Primary Education Programs of Rockaway College School.

3/11/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Design of Rockaway College-The Venture School”-outlines the grouping, the purpose, the learning environment, the way learning is to happen and the Democratic Education governance structures of the School’s outdoor adventure secondary education intake program.

3/12/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Design of Rockaway College-Lower and Upper Schools”-outlines the grouping, the purpose, the learning environment, the way learning is to happen and the Democratic Education governance structures of both the Secondary Education Program and the Early College of the Rockaway College component.

3/13/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Addendum-Administrative Governance”-While the school communities govern almost all the policies of Rockaway College in its parts and in its whole, administrative governance is completely the prerogative of the professional staff.  This section details the administrative structures and professional staff roles and responsibilities.

3/15/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Addendum-Design Implementation”-describes the Team approach taken to establish the components of The School and The College, and suggests an optimistic time and task line for roll-out.

3/16/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Addendum-Design Staffing”-details positions necessary to staff components of The School and The College, and describes responsibilities and qualifications for these positions.

3/17/12 “The Rockaway College Concept Paper:  Addendum-Design Interior Spaces”-details space requirements for designs of both The School and The College.

3/17/12 “Quick Overview of Rockaway College Design”-provides a concise description of the entire Rockaway College Project, including Mission Statement, intended Student Population, Need Statement and School Designs of Rockaway College School and Rockaway College.

3/19/12 “An Annotated Index of Rockaway College Project Posts”