The Rockaway College Concept Paper: Design of Rockaway College-The Venture School

Rockaway College is divided into two major units, Rockaway College School and Rockaway College.  The Rockaway College unit would house three “Schools”:  The Venture School, The Lower School and The Upper School.  The Venture School holds the outdoor adventure based personal growth intake program for the secondary education of the Lower School and would consist of two “Venture Crews” each within their own self-contained “Crew Bay” and each of about twenty-five adolescents. 

All youngsters entering secondary education whether coming from Rockaway College School or from other elementary schools or having yet completed a secondary education program, regardless of age, are required to enter the College’s secondary education through The Venture School.  The Venture School would utilize an outdoor adventure program to strengthen emotional healing and wellness in those coming from Rockaway College School and to undertake the emotional healing and wellness necessary for those newly enrolled in the College unit.  The outdoor adventure program is also tasked to cultivate in each youngster the cooperative self-directed habits upon which the Lower School’s education rests. 

Indeed, the learning culture of the College’s secondary education centers on the synthesis in each student of habits of cooperation and of self-direction where adolescents are enabled to help each other to uncover and to explore native intelligences, to enhance skills, to achieve individual learning objectives and to grow in social-emotional aspects of personality while exercising natural inclinations and individual differences to self-select what is learned, when learning happens and how what is chosen is learned.

Beginning the unique cooperative self-directed manner through which secondary education is undertaken immediately upon entrance with the number of youngsters completely unfamiliar with this way of being, of working, as would be the majority of yearly incoming population, would set all students, and thereby, the school itself, for failure.  Youngsters new to the cooperative self-directed secondary learning culture would continue to operate the way they did in their old schools even with modeling from entering Rockaway College School children.  Engaged in a system as foreign as The Lower School’s and operating through prior patterns, they would sabotage their own and other’s personal and educational outcomes.  More, new students from neurologically alien school worlds would be entering with feelings of failure and low self-esteem. 

Indeed, youngsters new to the College’s secondary education need time to unlearn old behaviors created in response to their prior environments, to learn new ones in response to the need to live within their new environment and to recover emotional balance from the trauma compliance with their former neurologically alien school developed.   And youngsters coming from Rockaway College School would need time to integrate themselves with their new schoolmates in a new learning environment.  A transitional time, a transition program, is required.  The Venture School and its outdoor adventure program provide all students entering The Lower School a way through which to adapt to their new school environment. 

An additional benefit of the Venture program would be to give the twelve to fourteen year olds time to socially-emotionally mature so they can be ready to fulfill secondary academic responsibilities.  Furthermore, the program would give adventure staff an opportunity to understand the unique social-emotional and learning characteristics of each student and to undertake through an individual staff-student mentoring-required of all staff and venture students-any compensatory work necessary for them to be prepared to accept secondary academic study.

The Venture School creates play in the outdoors, camping, hiking, backpacking, canoeing, rafting, skiing, biking, etc.  Through these play opportunities the outdoor adventure program would concentrate on team, trust and cooperative community building and move youngsters along in three developmental phases.  

As Venture Crew, the first phase, youngsters would have self-selected opportunities to directly engage the natural world, to learn and apply outdoor skills, to enhance physical strength, endurance and dexterity, to acquire knowledge about nutrition, meal planning and preparation, and outdoor personal health and safety, and to explore multiple aspects of Botany, Geology, Forestry, Zoology and Environmental Science.  The Crew Bays would be constructed as prepared environments where learning stations await self-directed engagement with the materials and activities put in the way of the Crew.  Cooperative Leaning structured activities-which can be initiated by either a staff or a Crew member-would be offered for those who feel inclined to acquire outdoor knowledge that way.

As Venture Leaders, the second phase, youngsters would undertake leadership roles in the running of the cooperative program as the Venture program is community run.  The third, and final, phase would introduce students to the cooperative self-directed inquiry project based academic structure of the Lower School and to the Learning Specialists with whom they would be working during their residency in the Lower School.  During this phase each student would select a Learning Specialist mentor-all Learning Specialists would be thoroughly versed in the cooperative self-directed academics of the school and in the unique social-emotional and cognitive styles of the school’s population enabling them to assist students in maneuvering through the channels of the academy.  Also the third phase student would begin working with a mentor and other secondary education students to develop the focus of first learning experiences in The Lower School.  Each Venture Crew member would proceed through each phase and out of the program at his own pace and in her own time. 

Each of the two major units of this institution would form its own general community for the purpose of making policy for the unit as a whole.  Thus, as was detailed prior, Rockaway College School would combine its adult staff and its students in a single General School Community to propose and to decide on policies governing the Rockaway College School.  Likewise, the Rockaway College component would combine its staff and students in a single General Schools Community to propose and to decide on policies governing the Rockaway College unit.  Organization of the Rockaway College General Schools Community governance emerges as the Lower School is established, as this represents the bulk, two-thirds, of the general community of the Rockaway College element.  Also at that time an institution-wide General College Community policy governance structure would be established to propose and decide on policy affecting the global institution of Rockaway College School and Rockaway College as the inception of the Lower School represents most of the constructed institution and, thus, the institution would be in need of a unifying community governance structure.

At each School, The Venture, The Lower and The Upper, a general school community policy governance structure would be established.  Thus, the outdoor program staff and the adventure Crew students would combine to form the General Venture School Community.

Policy such as criteria for entering the third phase and passing out of the Venture School into the Lower School would be a General Venture School Community governance issue decided upon inception of the Venture School, but would have to be then maintained and/or modified by the Rockaway College General Schools Community. 

Venture program-wide community prerogatives to be decided by the General Venture School Community would include identifying and selecting types of outdoor and indoor activities, planning, preparing and scheduling activities, resolving certain budgetary and equipment selection issues.   Issues critical to health and to safety, especially as they pertain to outdoor activities, would be the responsibility of program staff and would be closed to community decision making.  However, such issues would be properly overseen by both the Rockaway College General Schools Community and the General College Community.

The Venture program Crews would have their daily Morning Meetings to organize their school day and to settle any immediate governance issue pertinent to their Crews.  And the General Venture School Community would have a weekly meeting to propose and to resolve program-wide issues.