School Project Summary

(Up until March, 2016, I was working with the Queen's Borough President's Education Director on a brief presentation of my school concept to the Borough President.  The Education Director thought it was necessary for me to prepare a bullet-point paper from which to present and to leave for the BP's recall of the meeting.  The Project Summary posted here is the paper's final draft...It was anticipated that once the preparation reached its conclusion, the presentation would happen and it would be in such good order that the BP would recommend it and me to the Department of Education's office of new school development.  There, I would work closely with folks who would shape the proposal for acceptance by the powers that be in the City's DOE.  Also, I thought I could leverage the recommendation as a recruitment vehicle as folks I would approach would know that the concept was being taken seriously by the powers in the DOE.  With the eight or so people on a proposal committee, the project stood a good chance of actually happening.  It is hoped that with the start of '16-'17 school year, the BP's Education Director and I will continue where we left off in March.)

Project Summary for 

A New, Small Demonstration School

 for The Bright Neurologically Diverse

Formulated by Leo J. Fahey, BFA, MA, (ABD) PHD

 

For Whom: The Bright Neurologically Diverse: They are children, adolescents and young adults of above average cognitive capacity having neurological, social-emotional and/or developmental differences than what are expected of youngsters of the same age. This population is characterized by a broad asynchronous growth in social, emotional and cognitive aspects of personality making schooling success and psychological wellness within contemporary, cohort school settings difficult, at best, extremely problematic, at worst.

Proposed: a small-500 student-early childhood through early college learning institution constituted in five sequential programs housed in two administrative units: Early Childhood and Primary Education Programs are in one unit; Intake for Secondary Education, Secondary Education and Early College Programs are in the second. 

Location: Queens. 

Rationale for this institution: Direct public education service according to this population's asynchronously developing social-emotional, cognitive and talent characteristics continues to be absent in spite of New York City School’s Response to Intervention and Queen’s District 30’s positive contributions.  Consequently, emotional disturbance, underachievement and denial of equal opportunity for college, career and life readiness remain in almost all of this population.

Mission: to cultivate in all its students a solid psychological foundation for future growth, a cognitive deftness for adaptability to life’s challenges and a full capacity to work both independently and interdependently by providing highly supportive, whole-child, learner-responsibility-based, cooperative learning programs.

Means: By the effective synthesis of authentic Montessori, Democratic Education and Talent Development principles.

The major principles born of the synthesis are: 1) whole-child education integrating Head, Heart and Hand, that is, students growing through developmentally appropriate abstract (Head), intrinsically motivated (Heart), and manual skill (Hand) learning engagement; 2) mentoring, a close student psycho-cognitive, psycho-dynamic, emotional and learning objective support;       3) student intrinsically motivated, talent driven, self-directed and mentor negotiated learning-negotiating, especially, between strong intrinsic inclinations and necessary advancement/credentialing decisions; 4) individual continuous progress, that is, developmental and learning goals accomplished at one's own pace; 5) learner responsibility for the course of one's education; 6) school site community governance, a structured equal collaboration among students, staff and parents/caregivers.  

School Site Community Governance: Shared Decision Making through Consensus Process. There are proposed to be three interconnected levels of governance where staff, faculty, students and parents/caregivers come together in a consensus decision making process to organize, supervise and operate this institution: The Institutional Level, The Unit Level and The Program Level. The Institutional Level organizes the common elements unifying the two separate administrative unites into a coherent education establishment. The Unit Level organizes the particulars of each unit. The Program Level organizes the specific elements of these components.

The Programs fulfilling the Mission:

Early Childhood: Students develop early self-regulation of social-emotional dispositions and executive functioning and cultivate talent based learning instincts, self-efficacy, advocacy for others and appropriate language competency. 

Primary Education: Students develop competency in talent compatible book literacy, language competency, numeracy and subject topics while strengthening self-regulation, executive functioning, social-emotional management, self-efficacy, advocacy for others, and behavioral habits of independence and cooperation.  

Intake for Secondary Education: Students adapt to the secondary education program’s cooperative self-directed, talent development and school site community self-governance culture while developing/strengthening social-emotional and cognitive awareness driving self-regulation, self-efficacy, advocacy for others and behavioral habits of independence and cooperation.  

Secondary Education: Students develop high quality academic and manual skills, deepen language competency and habits of independence and cooperation, and cultivate talent driven subject topics.  

Early College: Young scholars engage in deep, cooperative study into questions of curiosity, interest and passion, greatly enhance language competency, and, as fully as possible, satisfy general core university requirements enabling graduates to receive a high school diploma, an Associate of Arts degree and, if desired, entrance into a college or a university to complete a Bachelor’s degree.  

Establishment Timing: Early Childhood is started first with Primary Education available for Early Childhood students in time for when they are ready. The Intake Program for Secondary Education is established in time for Primary Education students to enter when ready. The Secondary Education Program should be available for students to enter when they are ready and, likewise, the Early College.