Jeff Lackney of School Design Studio facilitated a month long series of design workshops with students and teachers from West High School in Madison, Wisconsin aimed at creating smaller learning communities within the large 2,000 student school. This process was one of many activities involved in a planning grant awarded the school in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Education.
Imagine a School was a dramatic performance created by high school students from Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver that opened CEA’s symposium “Getting it Right for Adolescent Learners” in 2006. Find out what adolescents are saying about their experiences in high schools and what schools would look like if we “got it right”.
Read more about/order the DVD of this student performance, or read an article by Kathy Gould Lundy exploring the creative process of the actors and teachers involved in the project
When a dozen or so educators from Indianapolis traveled to Reggio Emilia, Italy, several years ago to study the famous constructivist approach in that city’s preschools, they came back prepared for more than project-based teaching — they came ready to decorate. Last fall, the group offered elementary school teachers a classroom makeover in the Reggio Emilia style, and Sharon Olson, a teacher at Winding Ridge Elementary School, immediately volunteered. Their decor strategy was based on the idea that to take ownership of their learning, children must own their learning space.
Laurie Chancey spent her childhood immersing herself in topics of her own choosing. She was never forced to learn something simply because tradition and/or society said it was necessary. No one was looking over her shoulder to make sure she was learning the “proper” subjects.
She enrolled in college when she was eighteen, and graduated summa cum laude three and a half years later. Laurie is a bright adult, but her IQ is not why she did so well. She spent her life learning to learn and it’s something that now comes easily to her.
