Wednesday, August 5, 2020

THUMB NAIL SKETCH OF A DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION SCHOOL EXEMPLAR

Here suggested in general description is an exemplar of a Democratic Education school of four separate, sequential micro-programs, an Early Childhood, a Primary Education and a Secondary Education and an Early College.

 

Internal Built Environment

Physical space is perhaps one of the strongest transmitters of collective expectations in beliefs, attitudes, personal and interpersonal behaviors, and among the most consequential in either obstructing or assisting learning to the individuals occupying the space.  Moreover, for those with heightened sensitivity to light and sound, such as in Autism Spectrum Disorder, the very acoustic and illuminating properties within school spaces can greatly interfere with or encourage healthy activity and development.  

 

Thus, an exemplar would construct its internal learning spaces specifically to convey a home hearth sense of caring, security and relaxation as well as conveying an artisanal, imaginative, inventive and productive impulse: such would be as a warm, artist’s-studio loft. 

 

A loft environment would provide subdued general lighting, except in such as wood or metal working shop lofts and other spaces where safety requires brightness; both subdued and high intensity spot lighting would be employed over specific work stations, again with the exception of shop and other spaces requiring brightness.  Sound-reducing walls would be found in all lofts. Each loft would provide its students a sheltered quite space with subdued and spot lighting.  Common areas and offices would be as subduedly lighted as safety permits with work stations and desks spot lighted and as sound-reduced as possible.

 

Exemplar School Governance

A Democratic school would have a “Board of Trustees” securing the full funding of the institution and overseeing the global arrangements of management systems and policy formation and implementation, even in a public system. While the Board would be comprised of adults willing and able to proactively support the Communitarian-Libertarian, democratic nature of the institution and thus enthusiastically fulfill their obligations to the institution, it would of necessity have a sizable plurality of students assuring student body decision making at this level of the organization, 

 

A Democratic school would employ administrators to accomplish the executive functions of the institution as a whole under specific, democratic guidance of the sole school-wide policy determining body, the “All School Council”.  The Council organizes the common elements across the institution into a coherent educational establishment. And, among other duties, the Council oversees and coordinates program determined policies and management decisions, supervises and evaluates learning and psychological wellness systems, operates the school’s Restorative Justice Systems, oversees budget and business management structures, and sets, monitors and evaluates physical space and learning material needs against the school’s Mission.  Voting membership in the Council is to comprise an even balance between Secondary Education and Early College program students on the one hand (Early Childhood students are relieved of this self-governing obligation) and administrators and instructional staff on the other.  The Council would meet bi-monthly-more often when needed-forms committees to set meeting agendas and do its background work.  It operates by consensus where consensus means that all who vote can live with decisions not that all necessarily favor any. Meetings are always open to any member of the school community.

 

Each program, a kind of micro-school itself, organizes and maintains its functioning through weekly gatherings called Program Meetings.  Program Meetings assure coherent, successive progression of social, emotional and cognitive growth in students in each area of schooling responsibility by, among other obligations, setting, evaluating and supervising learning and psychological support systems against Mission goals and recommending to All School Council alterations needed to better meet goals, setting advancement criteria and benchmarks for passing from one level to another and out of school, identifying and setting rules and expectant behaviors consistent and inconsistent with  norms of the school, operates its Restorative Justice System, as well as working to resolve any and all immediate learning and behavioral issues.  Each program’s Meeting forms committees to set agendas and to accomplish its background work.  Votes taken in each Program Meeting are by consensus where consensus is defined as all who vote can live with the decision not that all are necessarily for any. 

 

Only the Early Childhood exemplar excludes its students from its Program Meetings while all instructional staff would attend. 

 

 

 

The Earl Childhood Program Exemplar

The Early Childhood exemplar would heterogeneously group students within several self-contained ungraded, mixed aged prepared lofts. These prepared environments would provide exposure and access to the widest concrete-kinesthetic knowledge in practical life materials, activities and play sets, sensorial keys and experiences of nature, of people, of art, of music, of language, of math and measurement, also in toys, such as building blocks, dolls, cars, trucks, planes, rail roads, as well as in other items such as sand and water tables.  There would be provided areas intended to stimulate and accommodate free, imaginative play as well as free individual and group physical play.  Specific engagement with the materials and the activities of the prepared environment would be wholly up to each child. 

 

The program focuses attention on individual child psychological and physiological development:  especially on autonomous self-regulation keyed to social-emotional, executive functioning and interpersonal behaviors, and on appropriate growth in gross and fine motor movement and in overall body capacities.  Staff would uncover individual student psycho-dynamic, psycho-social and neurocognitive baselines enabling mentor counseling and situational assistance points of departure and continued directed support. 

 

Direct instruction of subject content is not intended, but loft staff would be free to cooperatively aid a child or children to gain understanding when either requested by a student or students or when staff initiated intervention is granted agreement by a student or students.  A loft staff member or a student may offer to lead small group activities for voluntary participation.

 

A permeable border between Early Childhood and Primary Education would be set moving students who have gained program self-governance-determined advancement benchmarks regardless of age into the Primary Education program.

 

The Primary Education Program Exemplar

The exemplar of Primary Education would heterogeneously group students within several self-contained ungraded, mixed aged prepared lofts.  These prepared environments would provide exposure and access to the widest subject knowledge available in a school up the ladder of abstraction from the concrete-kinesthetic to an appropriate abstract in learning stations centered on the general areas of Literacy, Language, and Measurement and in specific areas of Earth, Space and Life Sciences, History and Geography, Music, Preforming and Visual Arts, Digital Sciences, Wood Working, Agricultural Science, Home Arts, and Athletics.  It would provide for free play with materials such as puzzles and games, costumes and theatrical makeup, paints and crayons, newsprint and paper, and in performance spaces, and indoor and outdoor playgrounds.  Specific engagement with the materials and the activities of the prepared Primary Education environment would be wholly up to each child. 

 

Direct instruction of subject content is not intended, but loft staff would be free to cooperatively aid a child or children to gain understanding when either requested by a student or students or when staff initiated intervention is granted agreement by a student or students.  A loft staff member or a student may offer to lead small group activities for voluntary participation.

 

Student subject knowledge acquisition of an exemplar Primary Education would be individual and emergent rather than being uniform and mandated:  the course of topic learning over an entire residency would emerge unique to every child as they engage the vast subject prepared environments through distinctive neurology, abilities, interests and communication styles.

 

However, a goal of Primary Education common to all children would be the development in each in their own way of competencies in receiving, processing and communicating written, oral and graphic information, including mathematical information, allowing each to comfortably accept secondary education.  These objectives would emerge over time from student-mentor negotiated agreements, situational student-staff cooperative assistance and individual student effort and would be based on felt student need to gain additional tools to explore more of the subject filled prepared environments than through mandated mastery on or before a time or an age certain.  

 

The program would focus attention on strengthening autonomous self-regulation, executive functioning, social-emotional management, and in developing behavioral habits of cooperation, Primary Education mentors would counsel for personal psycho-dynamic, psycho-social and neurocognitive development and subject seeking, selecting and learning issues while situational assistance would focus on individual student self-regulation, interpersonal behavior and neurocognitive functioning issues

 

A permeable border between Primary Education and Secondary Education would be set moving students who have gained program self-governance-determined advancement benchmarks regardless of age into the Secondary Education program.

 

The Secondary Education Program Exemplar

The Secondary Education exemplar would have students within an ungraded, mixed aged single setting developing high quality deliberative concrete through high abstract thinking, manual skills, oral and written language competency, habits of cooperation and subject topics of interest.   Mentoring and situational assistance would help individual students to retain and to further build autonomous self-regulation, Ego strength and psychological well-being, as well as aiding in subject seeking, selecting and learning issues.

 

Inquiry Project Based Learning would be a preferred learning structure.  Students would engage the vast knowledge world open to them through individual or cooperative small group inquiry projects. Projects would be developed, implemented, presented and feedback given through participation in Subject Lofts, i.e., richly resourced subject-area prepared environments, where members act together to achieve individual or common project objectives and where Loft members through demonstrations and presentations share the knowledge gained by their projects. There would be a number of Subject Lofts inhabiting their own spaces and facilitated each by at least two Learning Specialists: They would cover areas such as Outdoor Education, Physical Science, Mathematics, Social Science, History, Geography, Letters, Fine Arts, Music, Performing Arts, Foreign Language Arts, Electric, Electronic and Digital Sciences, Carpentry/Woodworking, Metal Working, Agricultural Science, Home Arts, and Athletics. 

 

Secondary Education students would initiate all inquiry projects rather than rely on staff directed assignments. Prior to the start of each and every inquiry project, students would consult with their staff mentor, the learning specialist most appropriate to the possible project and fellow students in the Subject Loft most relevant.  Having decided on an inquiry topic, students would outline the project stating an inquiry question, the methods to be used to answer the question, the product the inquiry intends to generate and the criteria for project success in the form of performance assessment rubrics, i.e., qualitative statements describing specific standards against which students can self-assess and others when requested by a student can employ to evaluate a student’s work.  In completed form, students would present the project plan to both the student’s mentor and appropriate Loft learning specialist and then begin the project.

 

A student may request the Loft group within which he/she is working to evaluate a project at any stage of its undertaking using the student’s own criteria for success rubrics. Mandated formal evaluation of completed projects by staff is not intended: however, individual students may request a formal assessment from any staff, especially from the student’s mentor or the learning specialist of the Loft in which the project was undertaken.  Students and their mentors would be obliged to save project proposals, project products and any evaluations for portfolio construction demonstrating student work and satisfaction of advancement criteria.

Occasionally there may be a need felt by students or observed by the learning specialist for direct instruction of project skills or of assessment methods or of common subject content or of other information.  In these cases, a student, a group of students or the learning specialist would call a narrowly targeted, short duration Loft seminar for student voluntary participation to fill the need.  Also, a learning specialist may work singularly with a student on specific skills or subject content when requested by the student.  If a learning specialist sees the need to work singularly with a student, he/she may offer, but it is ultimately the student’s prerogative to accept or reject the offer.  There may be felt a need by students, especially, or by the learning specialist in a Subject Loft to gather students together for facilitated conversations on topics of interest.  Here a student, a group of students or the learning specialist would offer for student voluntary participation a narrowly targeted, short duration special seminar.

 

A permeable border between Secondary Education and the Early College would be set moving students who have gained program self-governance-determined advancement benchmarks regardless of age into the Early College.

 

The Early College Program Exemplar

The exemplar of an Early College would have students within an ungraded single setting. 

Young program scholars would have opportunities for deep, cooperative, scholarly inquiry into questions of curiosity, interest and passion within the customary semester terms September to June, as well as great many occasions to enhance oral and written language competencies, and to if chosen, work through physical materials to explore learned concepts in the Secondary Education’s Loft shops.

 

The program’s mentoring focus would provide sensitive feedback on self-actualizing young scholar decisions and to counsel when self-regulation conflicts arise. While immediate situational assistance is not formally included at this level, Early College instructors are free to offer assistance, but it is ultimately a student’s prerogative to accept or reject the offer.

 

Development of inquiry course offerings would be an immediate and a vital obligation of the Early College’s self-governance structure; however, a “Great Question” Liberal Arts approach might be preferred.  An example of a Great Question might be:  “How did the eighteenth century European belief against Superstition and Fanaticism affect the construction of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment?”  This Great Question would describe and analyze the development, meaning and effects of the European Enlightenment belief in Rational Religion and in the dangers of Superstition and Fanaticism on the framing of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

Other Great Questions might be:

How does Dark Matter Matter?

How can one render unto Caesar when Caesar is wrong?

Why is the child mother to the woman?

Is reality really real?

Can Spacetime truly bend?

 

Completion of program self-governance-determined graduation requirements would grant students a high school diploma, an Associate of Arts degree, and, if desired, an opportunity into a four year college as an upper matiiculant to complete a Bachelor’s degree..  The course of inquiry in the Early College would be wholly the choice of individual students.  But, if students choose to continue with formal study and to transfer to a Bacheloriate program after graduating from the Early College, they would work with their mentor to structure their study to satisfy general university core requirements.   

 

There is intended to be no formal assessment of Early College student subject content learning either during or at completion of courses.  However, the program’s self-governance structure might consider the expectations of the world beyond the exemplar’s walls requiring some demonstration of accumulated knowledge when it considers requirements for advancement and for graduation.  With such decisions in hand, Early College student-staff mentor conversations must, as much as possible, unfold in students a clear understanding of program self-governance-determined criteria and satisfaction of criteria for advancement and for graduation.  Also, these conversations should unfold agreements between student and mentor on the progress of satisfying criteria and an agreement on the constitution of complete satisfaction of criteria allowing the student to graduate. 

 

In the ideal world, a Senior College into which Early College graduates would enter along with young adults from other institutions would be established moving students onward within The Communitarian-Libertarian Hybrid frame to complete their undergraduate education.  However, this outline provides education only through an Early College.

 

Students in each program would live and work well together proceeding at their own pace and cooperatively working with their staff mentors, immediate instructional staff and schoolmates to satisfy community determined criteria for advancement to the next program level and, ultimately, to graduation from the school having taken from the store of human knowledge through a school that which is of interest, of passion, of felt need fulfilling the promise of a Democratic Education.


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