Creating the Schools We Want
A group of us met at Russ Vernon-Jones’s online Educational Change Workshop at the end of July. Our topic was “Creating the Schools We Want Using the Current Crisis.” The following were some of our thoughts:
- Value everything about being young and childish. Regard this as important, not as something we are afraid of and trying to stop as adults.
- Make school more fun.
- Remember that playing is a valuable form of human expression.
- Help young people recover their curiosity and joy in learning.
- Create learning communities in which everyone is listened to a lot. For example, students need to heal from having been in a system in which they’ve been taught to put their innate curiosity aside and instead follow a regimented curriculum. We need to be able to hear students say, “Nothing,” when we ask them what they are interested in.
- Discontinue the national exam; discontinue end-of-grade testing.
- Give lots of training and support to teachers.
- Reimagine the curriculum based on what is truly important: human beings, being together, not being greedy. Center students and student interests; make the learning relevant.
- Change how students demonstrate what they know. Have students decide how they show what they’re learning.
- Give students opportunities to use the COVID crisis to “reinvent” themselves, to build resilience and resourcefulness.
- Help students stay centered when the whole world and the adults around them are becoming “unmoored,” anxious, and sick.
- Support (and learn from) young people as they figure out how to connect with each other and deepen their relationships.
- Let students feel good about the importance of their relationships. Help them listen to each other and support each other’s well-being.
- Have smaller class sizes. Think about what one human adult actually has attention for.
- Change our relationship to rules.
- Make our safety and well-being a collective project.
- Use the whole first month of school to build community and help people get connected. Make this an explicit part of teachers’ jobs.
- Have one adult thinking about just a few young people, including all their needs—for food, physical and emotional safety, supplies, academics, and so on. Help students navigate the system and figure out what they want and how to get it.
- Change how we think about parenting so that parents have time (and money) to be with their children. Pay parents for the labor of parenting.
- Ask repeatedly, “How would we transform society if we really cared about young people? How would we change things?”
Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of educational change
(Present Time 202, January 2021)
Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00