The Rockaway College Concept Paper: Design of Rockaway College School

Rockaway College intends to construct small school environments providing humane ecologies greatly enhancing teacher-student and student-student interactions.  They would also provide beneficial surroundings for successful learner-responsibility-centered approaches to knowledge seeking, acquisition and use, for cooperation of students in helping each other achieve individual personal and learning objectives and for decentralized school community self-governance.  Additionally, the intimate nature of Rockaway College School and the lower elements of Rockaway College would permit highly focused attention on individual student social-emotional, learning and communication needs.

Rockaway College School holds the Early Childhood Program in a unified Pre-School/Kindergarten and the Primary Education Program in the Elementary School.  The Pre-School/Kindergarten early childhood program would consist of one whole group of about twenty-five children ages 3-5.  The Elementary School Primary Education Program would be offered in two separate self-contained class areas each of about twenty-five students ages 5-11. 

Rockaway College School children would engage in whatever free, self-organized, unstructured imaginative play the environment supports for as long as they wish.  As Neill points out, “Childhood is not adulthood; childhood is playhood and no child ever gets enough play.”  (A.S. Neill, Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood.  Edited by Albert Lamb.  New York:  St. Martin’s Press.  1992. P. 32.)  While that stands well for all children, play is of greater importance to the bright neuro-diverse population of this school as play develops self-regulation which is of greater concern with this population than with most others.  As Berk, Mann, and Oga conclude: “Imaginative play provides a firm foundation for all aspects of psychological development.  Rich opportunities for make-believe, sensitively nurtured by parents, caregivers, and teachers, are among the best ways to ensure that young children acquire the self-regulatory skills essential for succeeding in school, academically and socially.” (Laura E. Berk, Trisha D. Mann, and Amy T. Ogan, ”Make-Believe Play: Wellspring for Development of Self-Regulation”, Illinois State University, http://udel.edu/~roberta/play/BerkMannOgan.pdf.)

Additionally for this population play allows the necessary sensitive observant teacher tasked to mentor these children to recognize the particular needs of individual youngsters so the teacher/mentor can effectively work with each youngster to help the child help him and herself to become mindful of how he and she engages the world and to be empowered to work through those characteristics to have the best opportunity for schooling success.  Indeed, to borrow from Perry and Landreth:  “It is generally recognized and accepted by authorities in the field of child therapy that children’s play can be a window to understanding children’s experiential and psychological world.  Children express their world through play in…open…and profound ways, and the [necessary sensitive observant teacher can be] called on to translate those play behaviors in ways that help not only him- or herself but also others to understand the psychological needs of the child.” (Lessie H. Perry and Garry L. Landreth, “Diagnostic Assessment of Children’s Play Behavior”, in Innovations in Play Therapy:  Issues, Process, and Special Populations, 

Garry L. Landreth, Ed., New York:  Brunner-Routledge, 2001, p. 155.  Accessed through http://books.google.com/books?id=CAAu6e3MvzQC&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=play+therapy+as+a+diagnostic+tool&source=bl&ots=kri9jwVQze&sig=sEQgT5HU19aAoGeoJTiG_mAF82E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=l_tQT_72NsqI0QGGooXRDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CIsBEOgBMAU#v=onepage&q=play%20therapy%20as%20a%20diagnostic%20tool&f=false

The early childhood environment, then, would be a play world centered on psychological and physiological development, self-regulation keyed on social-emotional aspects of personality and appropriate growth in gross and fine motor movement and in overall body capacities.  The unified Pre-School/Kindergarten would be filled with Montessori practical life materials and activities, sensorial materials, manipulative toys and games, wooden blocks and puzzles, sensorial keys and experiences of nature, of people, of art, of music, of language, of math and measurement, it would also be filled with age appropriate non-Montessori toys, like dolls, cars, trucks, planes, rail roads, as well as items such as sand and water tables.  There would be provided areas intended to stimulate and accommodate imaginative play as well as individual and group physical play.  Play with the materials and the activities of the prepared environment would be totally up to each child. 

The primary program would provide for play as well, but its intent on developing learning skills necessitates environment preparation supporting such development.  Thus, the Elementary School would be filled with materials like Lincoln Logs and blocks, toys and puzzles, costumes and theatrical makeup, paints and crayons, newsprint and paper, etc. There would be performance spaces. There would also be indoor and outdoor playground equipment.  But there would also be Montessori readers, charts, timelines, lab manuals, models and arts materials.  Further, there would be set the academic learning of Montessori materials organized in Learning Stations centered on Literacy, Language and Measurement and in discipline areas of Earth, Space and Life Sciences, History and Geography.  And then, as Neill says, “…when a child has played enough he will start to work…”. (Neill, 1992. P. 32.)

Subject content learning of the Elementary School would be individualized and emergent rather than being uniform and mandated:  the course of content acquisition over an entire residency would emerge unique to every child as they engage the Democratic Montessori prepared environment through their distinctive neurology, interests, abilities and communication styles.

However, a goal of the primary program common to all children would be the development in each child of competency in receiving, processing and communicating written, oral and graphic information, including mathematical information, through as many neurologically compatible channels as each child is capable, allowing each to comfortably accept secondary academic study.  These competencies would emerge through the negotiated curriculum process of student-mentor and would be based on student need to gain additional tools to explore more of the prepared environment than through mandated mastery on or before a time or an age certain.

Classes in the usual sense of mandatory, teacher-directed, whole group learning are not intended to be part of the education program of either the unified Pre-School/Kindergarten or the Elementary School.  In-school learning during the school day in the Early Childhood Program would be through self-organized individual and group play with elements of a prepared environment.  In-class learning during the school day of the Primary Education Program would be engaged through the student choice of one or more of three ways:  through self-directed independent or self-organized small group engagement with the materials and activities of the prepared environment, through small whole group teacher initiated and student voluntarily accepted cooperative topic study and/or through self-initiated one-to-one instruction.  Additionally, students would have the opportunity if they so choose to work with teachers on activities of teacher interest as helpers not as students. Outside-school learning during the school day of both programs would be engaged through the student choice varied field trips.  

In both programs the role of the teacher is to facilitate learning, growth and maturation, rather than directing it.  And in keeping with Montessori’s Method, it is incumbent on teachers to closely observe each child to determine his and her needs and to change the environment putting in the way of the child elements able to meet the observed needs.  Additionally, teachers in both programs would be obliged to undertake small projects of personal interest inviting curious youngsters to help out as assistants, not as “students”. 

The student population of Rockaway College presents social, emotional and cognitive challenges to the self-directed learning at the heart of Rockaway College School.  In both the Early Childhood and Primary Education Programs youngsters would work closely with teacher-mentors to develop and maintain social-emotional and cognitive awareness and to work on compensatory strategies to achieve developmental goals.  If there is a need, The School would have access to a suitable child psychologist, or a list of mental health professionals, to which The School can refer individual youngsters.

Evaluation of student growth in both programs would rely on informal teacher assessments rather than planned announced, or surprise, assignments and testing.  Teachers would be continuously observing progress in social, emotional and cognitive realms and would be obliged to construct written observational reports for each student, as well as keeping activity logs and portfolios.

Children have the capacity to fully participate in the governance of their schools and, thus, it is the intention of this paper to propose an integration of staff and students into communities responsible for policy governance at the program, the school and the institution level.  However, all administrative governance remains the prerogative of the professional staff.

Each major unit of this institution would form its own general community for the purpose of making policy for the unit as a whole.  Thus, 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. 

As each program in The School is established, a policy governance structure will also be established for each program.  Because the developmental age of the unified Pre-School/Kindergarten precludes Democratic/consensus policy making participation by the children, the staff will be the principal policy makers for the program.  However, a staff/student program policy making structure, the General School Community will be established as the Elementary School becomes operational. 

Policy such as individual benchmarks of social, emotional and cognitive growth youngsters would need to exhibit as they progress through The School programs as well as graduation requirements students would need to meet to pass out of the unified Pre-School/Kindergarten and into the Elementary School and out of the Elementary and on to The Venture School of Rockaway College would be General School Community decisions.  In the unified Pre-School/Kindergarten, as the developmental age of these children has yet to have developed an inner, conscious, deliberative voice, school community decisions would be undertaken by the early childhood staff at inception of the program, then maintained and/or modified by the General School Community when expansion to the primary program is established.  In the Elementary School, policy on what constitute individual progress benchmarks and graduation requirements would be a General School Community governance issue on inception of the Primary program, and then maintained and/or modified by the General School Community as experience warrants.  Each student would satisfy benchmark and graduation requirements and pass out of the programs at her own pace and in her own time. 

Similarly, expectant behaviors consistent and inconsistent with the norms of the School’s environments as well as the means by which inconsistent behaviors are resolved would be full General School Community obligations and would be a high priority for the initial communities to constitute with any modification coming from subsequent communities.  Daily issues of policy governance are the responsibility of the program community where the policy is enacted and is to be resolved by that community.

The community meeting is the structure meant to provide governance. The unified Pre-School/Kindergarten and each Elementary School class would have Morning Meetings to organize each school day by circulating important information, eliciting from students and staff activities the class ought to know about so those interested in participating would know and could decide which are of interest, and to settle all class governance issues through dialogue, negotiation, consensus building and democratic voting.  School-wide governance issues would be discussed and resolved through the once weekly General School Meeting.