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You
are here:
A New Place to Learn
For a long time I have dreamed of a place to learn that has it all put a place where teachers and students learn with joy and success. It makes use of the best teaching and learning practices, all of which are in use somewhere, but not all in one place as far as I know. My dream goes something like this: Enter a community learning center that does not resemble the old factory-model schools with their egg-crate classrooms and 9 to 3 o'clock days, broken into bell-punctuated periods. Nor is it utilized in the same ways that traditional schools were, leaving them dark in the evenings, on weekends and holidays, and for three months during the summer. The center opens at 6:30 a.m. for the day-care and latchkey program, and is open through the evening for adult education and worker training classes. Many of the facilities, such as the information and technology, arts and crafts, and recreational areas, are open around the clock, on weekends and holidays, and in the summer.
Each student has an individual learning plan which is reviewed every six weeks, or sooner if the need arises. The plan is developed collaboratively by the student, advisor/diagnostician, and parents. The advisor remains assigned to the student throughout the school years, unless he or she changes location, in which case an electronic record equips an advisor in the new location with background information. As soon as the student has achieved the goals on the learning plan, he or she can move on. If the goals are not achieved as planned, new ways of learning the information or skill are explored.
In this center, the primary classes are ungraded, making it possible for children to succeed in learning at their own pace without experiencing failure if they do not learn to read or master their math facts by a predetermined time. It has been found that most children will be able to succeed in these tasks by the end of grade three, if they have opportunities to learn through their strengths while they are developing their other abilities.
Students are grouped in three or four-year age spans, taking into consideration cognitive research related to human development and brain growth patterns. Because of the flexible configurations of learning groups, it is possible to place students with special needs in small groups, without adding to the number of staff members. All students have opportunities to learn in both large and small groupings.
Students are often grouped in larger units for some classes that span several periods. In these classes, students are often clustered in learning teams, in which everyone is responsible for each other's success in learning. Many of these students reinforce their own learning by teaching what they have learned to younger students. Older students are able to take advanced courses at the community college or university near the center. Some specialized or advanced courses, for which too few students have registered to make it possible to staff a teacher with that expertise, are offered through interactive, distance-learning technology.
Students also have access to the entire community as an educational resource from which to gather information, participate in apprenticeship programs, and do volunteer service learning. The latter is a requirement for graduation, with a variety of choices for placement including hospital volunteer work, museum docenting, Head Start assisting, tutoring, or environmental work.
At the heart of this center is a large, well-equipped information and technology center that is used for adult training programs during the late afternoons and evenings. During the weekends, it is open to all members of the community; the fees they pay supplement the center's budget.
This info center has mainframe computers which feed software and databases into the P.C.'s in the clusters, and are utilized by teachers for record-keeping and storing data on the learning profiles of students and their progress recorded in technological portfolios of student work. (These records are accessible to students and parents at any time.) The info center has an extensive library, compact-videodisc players, CD-ROMS, and other forms of interactive technology utilized to provide up-to-date information from any database or network, and to enhance the learning of any subject. Many of the programs adapt not only to the learners' needs, but also to their unique strengths, learning styles, and perceptual modalities. The info center also links this center, through a computer network, with other learning centers in the state as well as throughout the country and other parts of the world.
The recreation area, similar to those formerly operated independently by the Park Department, is an important part of the center. It focuses on true physical and emotional education, keeping records of improvement in physical fitness and health as a result of individually prescribed, but collaboratively planned, regimes of exercise, sports, and nutrition.
During one afternoon a week, when all teachers (or learning facilitators, as they are called in this center), have inservice classes and collaborative planning time, recreation specialists, artists, and community volunteers offer a variety of classes and activities for the students. For a small fee, the gymnasium, arts and crafts facilities, theatre, auditorium and meeting rooms, swimming pool, tennis courts, playing field, and fitness center are all accessible to the public in the evenings and on weekends. Scheduling is all done electronically.
In one area of the center are branches of health, welfare, social service, and cultural agencies that attend to the needs of students of all ages. The agencies have found that by decentralizing their services and by utilizing technology for communication and record-keeping, their overhead expenses have been cut. Some students are able to pay for the services, but those who cannot are provided what they need, as recommended by their learning facilitators. Because of the mobility of many of the students, an electronic record is kept of their needs and progress and is accessible to their new learning facilitators when they change locations.
In another area are the offices of the small businesses that are owned and operated by the learning center. These businesses offer opportunities for students to learn in a workplace setting, making it possible for many more students to be successful at learning. The businesses include some of the same programs that have been piloted in traditional schools, such as food preparation, child care, and publications, but students may also develop their own businesses in response to unmet needs in their own community.
These businesses differ, however, in that the students earn credit (as well as some stipends?) as they work/learn and the financial profit goes into the center's budget. Students all are required to work/learn as part of their individualized educational experience. They may be part of a landscaping and environmental service, a small restaurant open to the community that offers low-cost meals for senior citizens, a day care program, and a secretarial and printing service. Many of the senior citizens who come to eat at the restaurant stay onto help in the day-care program or tutor students with special needs.
The learning center offers a variety of the most innovative and well-researched teaching-learning opportunities including applied Theory of Multiple Intelligences, constructivist teaching, accelerated learning, cooperative learning, arts in education, multimedia technology, service learning, integrated, thematic curriculum, and thinking skills programs that are integrated throughout the curriculum. Assessment includes some standardized testing, but is done primarily through portfolios of student work, projects, exhibits and demonstrations, dramatic productions, videotaped interviews, and learning logs. The data from these assessments are continually used to improve instructional practices.
The basic skills include language arts, history, geography, science, mathematics, the arts, foreign language, and life-skills, with special attention to the ethical, international, and multicultural context of education. Because of the age-span of individuals participating in the center's operation, there is little problem with discipline. Motivation is high as students recognize that they are part of a dynamic group in which individuals of all ages are continuing to learn. All students are responsible for keeping the learning environment clean and attractive.
This community learning center has been created by a collaborative group of representatives from all the stakeholder groups, including teachers, school administrators, students, parents, business people, social service professionals, and members of the community at large. This group also has responsibility for the management, supervision, and evaluation of the center, using Total Quality management principles. These include a collaborative, non-hierarchical structure and ongoing evaluation of the results of the program in regard to the academic progress of students, financial stability, and responsiveness to community needs. An effective feedback system guarantees that the results of the evaluation continually affect the planning and operation of the center.
The students who attend this center know how to use their strengths is productive ways, are motivated to learn, and take responsibility for their own learning. They move on to become lifelong learners who have open, flexible minds, know how to work both independently and cooperatively, know how to access and process information, understand how to apply what they have learned ethically and responsibly, and have the skills to learn and unlearn and relearn in this time of increasingly rapid change.
Can this place exist outside of a dream world? If it has not already come into being somewhere, I believe it will some day.
Copyright © January 2000 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.
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