The Orchard School | Director of Middle School Blog "Child-Centered Progressive Education"
The following short is from Neila A. Connors’ oddly titled book If You Don’t Feed the Teachers They Eat the Students! As the title suggests, food is a common metaphor throughout the text.
“Envision the following scenario: Your friends have invited you for dinner and have made all the arrangements to dine at a new establishment in town. You arrive at the restaurant fifteen minutes before your reservation and notice everyone standing outside. Someone from the restaurant is barking directions at the customers, explaining that they may not enter for another fifteen minutes. It is rather chilly outside but you do as you are told. At the designated time, an unhappy hostess opens the door and shouts further directions. Everyone immediately rushes into the building, frantically pushing and shoving. Upon entering you immediately notice the stark, drab atmosphere with “Do Not . . . “signs displayed everywhere telling people what they cannot do. The walls are a grayish white-yellow, and the paint is peeling. The windows are clad with ragged dirty shades. The facility is in need of a thorough and detailed cleaning.
A waiter comes to the table to review the list of unacceptable behaviors and explains that you have only forty-seven minutes in which to consume your pre-selected dinner, as other diners are waiting for your table. You may not use the restrooms during the time you spend at the table. Immediately your food is delivered - some of it unrecognizable, some not. As you dine, trying to enjoy the experience, your waiter continues to inform you of the remaining time at the table. As your time nears the end, other diners begin to hover over your table. Anxious for their seats. At once, you are given the bill and told it is time to depart from the table.”
In many ways Connors’ story is a reminder of the industrial process of educating students. In a child-centered school, we (Orchard) wrestle with our own imperfections, but we are not the institution described above.
I was reminded of the Connors’ dining story recently while interviewing the candidates for the position of Head of School. While it would be inappropriate to relate too much of the dialogue, it is not over sharing to say the definition of progressive education was a much talked about topic by all involved. For me, progressive education implies getting and staying, as far away as possible, from the industrial dining experience described above. It is keeping children at the center of both your planning and execution of education.
I was reminded of the Connors’ dining story recently while interviewing the candidates for the position of Head of School. While it would be inappropriate to relate too much of the dialogue, it is not over sharing to say the definition of progressive education was a much talked about topic by all involved. For me, progressive education implies getting and staying, as far away as possible, from the industrial dining experience described above. It is keeping children at the center of both your planning and execution of education.
Some years ago, when teaching down in North Carolina, I was at a school with frequent variations in the schedule. I developed an in-class tactic called a “question day.” During a question day, I allowed the students to ask any question they wanted, assuming it was appropriate and not intended to ridicule the activity itself. Classes ultimately came to look forward to such moments, and now, twenty years later, I still get messages on Facebook from former students about question days, the ensuing dialogues, and what it sparked in them.
The spirit driving the day was simple, I almost always come to class and tell you what you need to know. How about we reverse the whole thing? What do you want to know? At first it was silence. No such invitation had ever been extended, and the idea of wasting time on some tangent not part of the upcoming test bothered a few students. The business proposition of formal schooling was being violated. “How do fish breathe, and don’t say ‘gills’?” was an early question that actually stumped me. Teaching specific volume to seventh graders took some careful pondering. “How do dreams work?” “Why do we sleep?” “When I see red, do you see the same red as I do? Or do you see yellow or something else and call it red?” “Did cavemen get cavities in their teeth?” “If you drop a penny off the Empire State building, will it go through your hand if you try to catch it at ground level?” “Why did the South fight so hard in the Civil War? Didn’t they know they were the bad guys?” “How do we know the dinosaurs lived 65-million years ago since you said carbon dating doesn’t go back that far?” “The tree in my yard weighs like 100 tons, where did all that stuff come from?” “If the leaves turn their true color in the fall, then why did they all need to be green in the first place?” “Why do people have different color skin?” “Why doesn’t the earth fall into the sun or why doesn’t the moon fall down to the earth?” “Why do we die?”
The spirit driving the day was simple, I almost always come to class and tell you what you need to know. How about we reverse the whole thing? What do you want to know? At first it was silence. No such invitation had ever been extended, and the idea of wasting time on some tangent not part of the upcoming test bothered a few students. The business proposition of formal schooling was being violated. “How do fish breathe, and don’t say ‘gills’?” was an early question that actually stumped me. Teaching specific volume to seventh graders took some careful pondering. “How do dreams work?” “Why do we sleep?” “When I see red, do you see the same red as I do? Or do you see yellow or something else and call it red?” “Did cavemen get cavities in their teeth?” “If you drop a penny off the Empire State building, will it go through your hand if you try to catch it at ground level?” “Why did the South fight so hard in the Civil War? Didn’t they know they were the bad guys?” “How do we know the dinosaurs lived 65-million years ago since you said carbon dating doesn’t go back that far?” “The tree in my yard weighs like 100 tons, where did all that stuff come from?” “If the leaves turn their true color in the fall, then why did they all need to be green in the first place?” “Why do people have different color skin?” “Why doesn’t the earth fall into the sun or why doesn’t the moon fall down to the earth?” “Why do we die?”
Kids have amazing questions when you let them lead you. Unlike the industrial model, it can become a snarled mess of objectives. You need to keep your feet to operate in an environment where the students are the center.
One of the best metaphors I have found for middle school is the estuary. An estuary is the mouth of a river where it flows into the ocean. A place where a river transitions from a state of freshness, growth, linear flow, and teeming potential to a state of incredible depth, saltiness, and hyper-competition for survival. It is, at times, a place of freshwater, with young, new life flowing into it. Then, inexorably, seeming to obey forces that are not even of this world, tides of change bring a saltiness, overwhelming the freshness, and cause the organisms to adapt in preparation for a life in a vast saline sea. There the organisms are destined to face tests and struggle for success. The cycle repeats.
Estuaries are easily recognized as the most important habitats on planet earth. Over 60% of our species live alongside them and are sustained by them. They are also among the most fragile, ill-understood, and mismanaged of our essential resources.
That is middle school. Someday our charges will flow out into a salty world and be expected to survive. Some are eager, some less so. It is a beautiful, ill-understood mess. Not enough salt and they are underprepared, too much salt too fast and they suffer. It is one of the most important transition phases in human development.
One thing that most attracted me to Orchard Middle School, and that I continue to love about this place, is the eyes-wide open, non-apology for not being freshwater and not being salt water. We are charged to understand and to be both.
Read Jamie's previous blog, "Orchard's Cole Values."
Learn more about our middle school program!
One of the best metaphors I have found for middle school is the estuary. An estuary is the mouth of a river where it flows into the ocean. A place where a river transitions from a state of freshness, growth, linear flow, and teeming potential to a state of incredible depth, saltiness, and hyper-competition for survival. It is, at times, a place of freshwater, with young, new life flowing into it. Then, inexorably, seeming to obey forces that are not even of this world, tides of change bring a saltiness, overwhelming the freshness, and cause the organisms to adapt in preparation for a life in a vast saline sea. There the organisms are destined to face tests and struggle for success. The cycle repeats.
Estuaries are easily recognized as the most important habitats on planet earth. Over 60% of our species live alongside them and are sustained by them. They are also among the most fragile, ill-understood, and mismanaged of our essential resources.
That is middle school. Someday our charges will flow out into a salty world and be expected to survive. Some are eager, some less so. It is a beautiful, ill-understood mess. Not enough salt and they are underprepared, too much salt too fast and they suffer. It is one of the most important transition phases in human development.
One thing that most attracted me to Orchard Middle School, and that I continue to love about this place, is the eyes-wide open, non-apology for not being freshwater and not being salt water. We are charged to understand and to be both.
Read Jamie's previous blog, "Orchard's Cole Values."
Learn more about our middle school program!
