As our school population continues
to grow, our facilities become more confined. As much as we would like to
expand into a larger complex, this is not an option. In order to handle the increasing number of
students within our finite space, we need to start exploring different
ways to manage our building and deliver education. We’re finding that this is a timely discussion
because we’re already engrossed in dialogue about wholesale change in
education. Hopefully, the need to change because we have to will not only allow
us to accommodate more students but will force a change that will make school
more relevant for our students.
It is widely accepted that the
future of education will be vastly different than the current model. One option that seems to be part of this
future is “Flexible Scheduling”. We are
already seeing students embrace alternative forms of education within the
confines of the current system. They are investing heavily in distributed
learning courses, summer school, and night school. Recently, we polled our
students and found that many indicated that they would be interested in
pursuing a course outside of the traditional day-school bell schedule. This
tells us that students are now more conscious than ever before about owning their
“learning time”. Is now the time to make
a wholesale change in how we deliver education? Let’s use the pressures on our facilities
to create a better way to deliver education.
We’ve heard over and over again
that our current educational system is really the remnants of an industrial revolution
model. It’s served a purpose and had its day. Isn’t it time we move past our
fears of change and make decisions that we will better serve our communities
and students? Is our community of parents ready to move past what they’ve
always known?
Recently during our course
selection assemblies, we engaged students in pointed discussions about how they
want to manage their own education. We’ve
been telling them that they must own their education and thus take an active
role in deciding what to take and how they want to take it. Some of the
questions we’ve been asking include:
- Would you prefer to take a class at 7:30 a.m.?
- Would you prefer to start school later and take classes that go into the late afternoon?
- Do you prefer an independent study model?
- Do you want to do school part time so you can either work or do other activities the other part?
- Is there a specific course you want to take outside our current schedule?
What we’re seeing is that some of
our students are finding it difficult to fit into our current traditional model
of education. This discussion begs the question: “Why have we been fostering a
system that demands our students learn our way? Isn’t this concept
fundamentally flawed? Shouldn’t we be asking our students, “What way do you
learn best? Or, “How do you learn?” These are exciting times! We are not sure
what change is coming our way but we are extremely excited about the way we’re
challenging what we’ve always known.
Identify the stakeholders… Trust the process… Trust the people…
No comments:
Post a Comment