Welcome to this week’s issue of Traversing, as always if you find this newsletter to be interesting, if it helps to inform your thinking about progressive education or if you think it might help others, please subscribe, share it with your friends and neighbors and share your comments and questions.
To Start a School Part I
Tomorrow, I have a meeting with someone who asked me about starting City of Bridges. They have a vision that draws on Progressive ideas and ideals, they too are striving to envision a more humane way to be in the world. I have been thinking about our meeting tomorrow and it inspired me to share some thoughts in the next few issues.
Before I share my thoughts, I want to acknowledge the community of Progressive educators who helped me along my path. In this case, I am not referring to the educational philosophers who inspired me like Paulo Freire, John Dewey, Nell Noddings, bell hooks, Myles Horton, Deborah Meier, Ted Sizer, Dennis Littkey, A.S. Neill, Rudolph Steiner, Maria Montessori, etc. Although they all shaped my views and I will talk about them all later in future issues.
Instead, I want to acknowledge and appreciate the people at schools who I spoke with as I started City of Bridges High School. The teachers, students and administrators who shared their journeys, who opened their schools to my visits and often shared documents, plans and ideas that helped me move from vision to reality. Therefore, thank you to the students and staff of Youth Initiative High School, Stone Independent School, The Putney School, Springhouse Community School, One Stone, The Hartsbrook School, The Academy of Thought and Industry, MC2 and The Circle School, who all took time out of the busy work of learning to welcome me and help me on my journey. The Progressive Schools family is one of the most supportive and generous communities of which I have been a part.
It may seem like the place to begin when starting a school is with a mission statement, or an enrollment plan or with a development plan, or how do you raise the money! But as I have thought about the conversation that I am going to have tomorrow, I remembered an experience that I had as a doctoral student, (I have already sung Antioch University’s praises) when I had the opportunity to complete a case study of The Circle School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
During my work on the case study, (which I am happy to send to anyone who wants to learn more about the school), I was introduced to Gleicher’s formula. This formula, as revised by Dannemiller and Jacobs (1992) is D x V x F> R. In this formula change occurs when “…the product of dissatisfaction (D) with the present situation, a vision (V) of what is possible, and the first steps (F) towards reaching that vision are greater than the resistance to change (R)” (Dannemiller and Jacobs 483)[i].
The Circle School’s initial creation was a response to the dissatisfaction with the options for schooling in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the early 1980’s. The vision for the school was established and plans were made to take the necessary steps to overcome the resistance to change. This process was again repeated when the school transitioned to implement a model that was in line with their initial vision. The Circle School also embodies the reverse of Gleicher’s formula in their continued success, the strength of their vision and its articulation through practice have enabled them to achieve satisfaction with in their community, which is in continual resistance to the dominant structures of education.
The founding of City of Bridges High School also met the criteria for the revised Gleicher’s formula. The dissatisfaction with the current secondary school options in Pittsburgh, with a vision for a humane Progressive learner centered educational community combined with the first steps to reaching that vision were greater than the resistance to change and also in all honesty greater than the fear of failure in making something that was not yet there. As some of you know, some City of Bridges students are completing a class this week called Utopia in Literature and History, and one of the Big Ideas of that class is that no one creates a new community or a new institution, if they are satisfied with the ones in which they currently exist. Any new idea, community, experience arises out of dissatisfaction.
In the equation above, the Dissatisfaction is clear, you either have it or you don’t, the Vision is necessary, if you don’t have one, start there, but the murky part are the First Steps, next week I will share my experience of first steps,
(Keep in mind, I am not, nor do I claim to be an expert. I am an educator and I founded a humane, learner centered Progressive high school. I have had some success in my contextual situation, but I cannot say my experience is universal or transferable)
Instead for the remainder of this issue, I would like to share the observations of founders of The Circle School, who have decades of time to examine what enabled them to continue to bring their community to vision to life. It is important to note that the founders were very clear that they believed that the founding a school was a fluid process, not bound by time. It was an ongoing exploration of beliefs as manifested in the world. [JW1]The school continually shapes itself and moves through time interacting with reality as a community and individuals. [JW2]
The founders of The Circle School felt that there were three leg[JW3]s of a stool which had allowed the school to sustain itself and grow over the time, and each of these legs depended upon taking the time in the beginning to deeply understand the vision for the school, through both theoretical and practical manifestations.
(One of the founders also noted that a fourth phantom leg also exists, which although not discussed at length is important to note. The fourth leg is that of circumstance, for although many things can be controlled, life also presents many unplanned events, some of which are positive and some of which are negative. The three legs of the stool are necessary but the fourth leg can either offer great support or it can collapse an institution.)
Leg Number One
The first leg [JW4]is that the school holds some philosophical beliefs that are valid and successful in the real world. Any institution cannot exist separate from the larger world. The beliefs of The Circle School were established during meetings around kitchen tables in the early 1980s. They defined the school as theory but also as that theory intersected with real life situations. The group of founders explored how their belief system would hold up under specific real world circumstances.
Leg Number Two
The second leg of the stool is articulation, the conscious elaborated expression and the externalization of belief. Due to the innovative model of the Circle School they put forth a great deal of effort in explaining the school and how it understood teaching and learning. The school has and does produce numerous documents for the public, including multiple descriptions of the school, its history and philosophy. Intentional articulation, allowed the school to present a more polished explanation of itself to the general environment of the Harrisburg as well as the educational establishment of the state of Pennsylvania. Their external communication allowed them to create their own narrative and justification for their existence as a real school in the context in which they found themselves.
Leg Number Three
The third leg of the stool is the people. The founding members of the school who were interviewed all recognized that the mix of people that were involved in the founding and ongoing success of the school fit together to meet the needs of the organization, they noted that, “One was someone who, when given a task, can ‘do it to perfection’. Another was able to relate to other people and successfullt share this ‘wacko’idea.’ A third was the organizer and the fourth had the ‘business acumen’.” This combination of founders from the early inception of the school possessed a set of talents and personalities which were essential to the founding and sustained success of the school.
In the eyes of the Circle School the strength of the three legs of their stool- philosophical beliefs that are valid and successful in the real world, articulation[JW5], and the sustained presence of a core of people – allowed them to not only start but more importantly sustain a successful radical model outside of the traditional and progressive schooling formats.
I am happy to share the case study with any readers in its entirety and please join me for Part II of To Start a School next week, when I share my own lessons learned from starting City of Bridges.
People, Places and Things
In this section of the newsletter I share people, places and things that have inspired and taught me valuable lessons about rethinking learning.
I thought about sharing one of the schools that I thanked at the start of this issue, but I it seems like it makes more sense to devote an issue or two for the discussion of my collaborators in the Progressive education space. Instead, I want to share something that a number of the people who inspire me were a part of, The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). The coalition was founded in 1984 but a group of educational reformers after Ted Sizer published the groundbreaking book, Horace’s Compromise. It grew to be a group of schools and educational organizations striving for a new vision for education in this country.
CES developed a set of 10 Common Principles, which could be adopted by any school in order to become a part of the Coalition. These principles have shaped my work dramatically since I was introduced to them more than 20 years ago.
They are:
Learning to use one’s mind well
Less is more: Depth over coverage
Goals apply to all students
Personalization
Student-as-worker, teacher-as-coach
Demonstration of Mastery
A tone of decency and trust
Commitment to the entire school
Resources dedicated to teaching and learning
Democracy and equity
If you have spent any time at City of Bridges, I bet you will see them in action. Ted Sizer passed away in 2009 and the Coalition of Essential Schools ceased operations in 2016.
Maybe it is time for a new coalition.
See you next week!
[i] Dannemiller, Kathleen and Robert Jacobs. “Changing the Way Organizations Change: A Revolution of Common Sense.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 28.4 (1992): 480-98. Print.