If you could design your ideal school, what would it look like?
I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, and it’s kind of depressing to actually talk about it because it makes me think about the fact that I’ve never done it. But I’ve always felt that it would be really cool to have a school that had two teachers (covering at least five class disciplines English, social studies, math, science, world language), around forty students (sure I’d love twenty, but I’m trying to be realistic), and a bus. We would just go wherever we wanted and learn about whatever we were learning about as a group or as individuals were studying on their own. We wouldn’t be tied down to the classroom and we could learn in all kinds of different ways. Our world would literally be our classroom, at least the world within a driving radius of where we pick people up. So if we were studying, marine biology, we would drive over the mountains to Santa Cruz and explore around in the tide pools, possibly go to Monterrey Aquarium. There would be times where we wouldn’t be traveling, but we would find places to work and use internet hookups to do research and perhaps go to libraries, but we would never be bounded by the classroom walls or the larger school schedule.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Raul C. Rodriguez on -
You are on to something professor except that I believe some of our students are already using their communities as their lab, doing their own experiments, doing their own research on topics of thier choice. The experiments may not be about the outcomes in the standards binder, but some students are out there learning, researching 24/7, at least those that are involved in athletics, community service, clubs, etc. There are kids that spend all afternoon on the streets: at baseball practice, running around with the wannabees, casuing trouble. The sad part is that there is no teacher with them to guide them or steer them from trouble. The students become "street smart" from all they learn. I only wish they could become "book smart" as well. By the way, if you get the school started let me know; there is an old school bus for sale dwon the street.
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Permalink Reply by Margie L. Wilson on -
If I could design my ideal high school, it would be an international school in the USA. Students from all over the world could go there to learn English. All of the teachers would be immigrant-friendly, ESL certified, of course, and very highly qualified to teach their particular content areas to foreign students.
I imagine that refugees from many places would attend in order to obtain a strong background in English for, say two to four semesters, before going on to learn at a more traditional high school. At that time, they'd transfer to another high school with a language center that assists them in merging with the main stream population of students.
Unfortunately, I can't design this school, for it has already been created. I teach there: The International Newcomer Academy of Ft. Worth ISD. It's an oasis for foreign-born students in a parched world that lately doesn't seem to welcome foreigners.
Currently, my students number 60, in four classes: two beginner and two intermediate. They're from Burma, Korea, Honduras, Egypt, Thailand, Iran, Nepal,Vietnam, and several places in Africa, and Mexico. It's not a melting pot, for they retain their identities rather than melding into an unidentifiable blob. I'd call it more of a toss salad, of a sort. Although I know Spanish, I try not to speak it in the classroom, thinking it unfair to many who don't speak that language for me to translate for only the Hispanics. My prayer is that the economic situation of our country doesn't lead to funding cuts for such innovative schools as ours.
http://schools.fortworthisd.net/education/school/school.php?section...
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Permalink Reply by MIchael Gerber on -
It sounds amazing, but ironically, the school you describe is everywhere but the school itself. Mere travel restrictions imposed by liability alone.... don't get me started.
I taught in Thailand for a year, and they are way more relaxed about that stuff. I got to take kids into the city or jungle pretty freely. We even went elephant riding (they interviewed the mahouts). Would that I could take my American public school classrooms with that kind of freedom.
Michael Gerber
mrfisch.com
'The cartoon, as a medium, is like the classroom as a venue. Both are enriching cultural institutions eroded by greed and myopic social prorities. It's almost comic'
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