A Far Better Mousetrap

Over time, during the two years of weekly work on the School for Democracy, I found I was learning far more about organizing human relationships through school structure than I thought I would contribute by what I had done on my own before being invited to participate in the NYC Democratic Education school start-up group.  However, the one area I believed I knew better than anyone was the NYC new, small school application process and the criteria for successful application to be one of the City’s new schools.  My role in the group, as it turned out then, was the gadfly challenging SFD concepts I thought the City would find unsupportable.  I do not think folks in the group were all that happy with me when I spoke; so, I tended to shy away from speaking all that often.  And when I did pipe-up with some objection or other, Jerry Mintz countered with arguments assuring every one of the acceptability to the City of our Democratic/conventional education synthesis solutions.  In the end, it would appear my understandings trumped Jerry’s enthusiasm.  Nevertheless, engaging as the gadfly required me to rather quickly develop a near expert level understanding of Democratic Education relationships in learning and governance systems and their expressions in structure. 

I learned quickly and became well conversant, although later work with other Democratic Education school projects would deepen knowledge in every aspect of intrinsic motivated learning communities. Nonetheless, my own version of self-directed learning positioned me well when in mid-2005 as the group was disbanding I began full time work shaping-up my Democratic Education school concept for Twice-Exceptional children in preparation to take it to my local community for start-up.  I took six months committing the project to writing.

Nearing the end of its writing, I thought the project to be taken seriously, especially, by parents and donors, required a formal sounding organization.  So, since I figured the school would be sited in Rockaway around where I lived and include an early college program, I named the school Rockaway College and christened the organization the Rockaway College Project.  And I listed me as its Director.

To give readers a flavor of the school, I’ve included here an excerpt from the Executive Summary of a White Paper about Rockaway College I penned in March, 2013.  The concept has undergone a few refinements since I completed the original proposal but by and large what is read here is what was then penned. 

Elevator: Rockaway College when fully established would form an interconnected early childhood through early college institution constructed in five highly supportive responsibility-based programs in two small private, independent Democratic Education schools for the bright neurologically diverse, especially for the Gifted in cognitive areas other than conventionally structured academics, the Talented in human expression and the Twice-Exceptional-also called Gifted Talented Learning Disabled-providing them learning environments developing affective health and cognitive dexterity.

Executive Summary: The Mission of Rockaway College is to cultivate in all its students a solid psychological foundation for future growth and a cognitive deftness for adaptability to life’s challenges by providing its students a highly supportive Learner-Responsibility-Centered education.

Rockaway College Project proposes constructing five sequential, highly supportive, responsibility-based programs in two small private, independent Democratic Education schools for the bright neurologically diverse ages three to nineteen.

The highly supportive environment centers on psycho-cognitive, behavioral and social supports being through student-staff and, if necessary, mental health professional, counseling. All students of the targeted population, the full range of Gifted, Talented and Twice-Exceptional, especially the Twice-Exceptional, need the supportive service of deep mentoring relationships with those thoroughly versed in the unique social-emotional and cognitive styles of the school’s population, in the negotiation between native inclinations and credentialing decisions and in the individual intrinsically motivated self-directed and cooperative Democratic Education culture of the school to assist students in maneuvering through the channels of the academy and to help them help themselves to work through their natural inclinations and individual differences to achieve schooling success and healthy personal growth. Each child, adolescent and young adult in every program would be required as a condition of attendance to be mentored by a program staff member for as long as he or she is in residency, and if necessary be counseled by a mental health professional.

Responsibility-Based program construction is through Democratic Education as taken from Yaacov Hecht which grounds itself in certain views on child development and learning and on organizational governance fully allowing the play of this unique group’s social, emotional and cognitive dynamics to best grow them to be healthy, happy, responsible and self-actualizing.

All children, Democratic Education maintains, have different gifts and talents which powerfully drive individual knowledge seeking, acquisition and use without the coercion to do so and without the severe negative effects of forced behavior visited on children attempting to comply with demands in opposition to their basic inclinations, instincts, drives, capacities and innate curiosity. Indeed, the child’s individual neurological construction, abilities, interests, reflective capacities, communication style and rate of social, emotional and cognitive growth provide daily opportunities in Democratic Education constructed schools for individual responsibility, self-selecting what is learned, when it is learned, how what is chosen is learned, the scope and depth of learning chosen and the duration spent on individual aspects of learning ultimately creating a high quality individualized and emergent rather than a questionable uniform and mandated course of study for each over a term and over a school residency.

As it turns out, the student population of Rockaway College possesses powerful drives to know at times in narrow directions and other times in broad directions and the reflective capacities to highly self-direct, to take full responsibility for their course of learning. Democratic Education structured programs such as those proposed in Rockaway College would provide the necessary working flexibility satisfying these youngsters’ innate capacities without the negative psychological impacts other approaches to formal learning develop in them.

Organizational governance within Democratic Education is school self-governance where adults and children of the learning community have equal voices and equal decision-making powers on questions open to community decisions providing the opportunity for children to take full responsibility for and full ownership of the collective goals of the community, truly learning to be Democratic by being Democratic.

Rockaway College Project would construct its programs within two schools, Rockaway College School and Rockaway College. Rockaway College School, to be developed and established first, would house an early childhood program and a primary education program; Rockaway College, to be developed and established in time for the initial graduates of The School to continue their formal learning within this structure, would hold an outdoor venture intake program for secondary education, a secondary education program and an early college program.
 

The ungraded Early Childhood Program in The School would develop the regulation of children’s social-emotional dispositions and cultivate their natural learning instincts through engagement with a toy enhanced Montessori prepared environment for mixed ages 3 to 5. As well, Rockaway College School would include the ungraded Primary Education Program integrating a Montessori prepared environment for mixed ages 6-11, an inquiry freedom of an Open, Democratic Classroom and a cooperative norm based form of community governance continuing executive functioning self-regulation and social-emotional management while developing competency in neuro-compatible Literacy and Expression and cultivating topics of interest.

Rockaway College would house The Outdoor Venture Intake Program for Secondary Education, The Secondary Education and Early College Programs. The Intake Program would offer an ungraded personal growth outdoor education experience within a cooperative norm based community governance for mixed aged students new to or having not yet finished secondary study to uncover and develop social-emotional and cognitive strength awareness, to adapt to the secondary education program’s cooperative self-directed learning culture and to cultivate topics of interest. The Secondary Education and Early College Programs like Bard High School Early College, in New York City, would combine secondary academic and junior college Liberal Arts education so upon graduation young scholars would receive both a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree and be prepared to enter a Bacheloriate program to complete their undergraduate education. The Secondary Education Program would offer ungraded mixed aged integrated interdisciplinary thematic study, individual project based learning and performance assessment through subject discipline cooperative learning labs within a democratic community governance structure providing high quality academic skill development according to the individual’s Neuro-Learning Style, along with the cultivation of topics of interest. The Early College Program would offer an ungraded mixed aged collaborative Socratic seminar course structure within a cooperative norm based community governance to engage deep, cooperative, scholarly study into questions of curiosity, interest and passion and to satisfy common core university requirements.

For anyone wishing to go into depth on this school, I suggest consulting the Annotated Index of Rockaway College Posts where I list concept paper sections I’ve posted on this blog.  The Index was posted March 19, 2012, and the sections were posted from February 16, 2012, to March 17, 2012.  I’ve checked and all of these posts are available under Archives.