City and Country School: Manhattan

City and Country School is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. A pioneer of the progressive school movement, it now encompasses seven brownstones and a swath of shared backyards in Greenwich Village.

Caroline Pratt, an early advocate for school reform, founded the school in 1914 as an alternative to “the [inherent] repression of formal education.” Now, a century later, the school continues to impact childhood education world-wide. For example, unit blocks, now a staple in most early childhood classrooms, were designed and implemented as a learning tool by Pratt. She was a wood-worker herself, and began her career as an educator teaching woodworking to children in settlement houses. 

I began my visit in the VIII's (eight-year-old's) classroom. The school has a long history of referring to their "groups" (classes) with Roman numerals. The term "group," instead of "class," connotes the sense of collaboration and community that the school aspires to instill.

The teacher was guiding her students through a vocabulary and sentence structure game called "Mix-up Fix-up." Children create a sentence including a proper noun, suffix, a plural, and two of the words under study. The children were busily crafting their sentences onto strips of paper with pencil, and after the go-ahead from their teacher, finished them with marker and cut the sentences into puzzles, each piece a word or punctuation mark.

The twelve children were moving freely around their airy and light-filled room, gathering materials, conferencing with the teacher, comparing notes on their understanding of the assignment. It appeared that the students felt very at home in their room, and had claimed ownership of the space. Work that they had created covered the walls and counters. There was a wonderful degree of individualized attention and care, which is possible in schools that are able to keep class sizes small.

As I walked into the V's classroom, I heard a small, reedy voice with perfect pitch and articulation, singing a song I couldn't quite place: "So many times it happens too fast... don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past...." Until she got to the chorus and the five other children at her table joined in: "Oh it's the [beat] EYEEEE of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight, rising UP! to the challenge of our rivaaal...." Their teacher jumped in to gently ask them to reflect if perhaps their singing was at a volume that might disturb a neighbor's work, and they agreed to turn the volume down.

The largest group of children was at the singing table, three others colored on the whiteboard, and another group of four worked in a massive "Block City" which occupied most of the carpeted half of the classroom. Their teachers told me that they had relaxed the academics somewhat and given more time for children to work and play freely, as it was just a few days before the winter break.

The unit blocks form a core part of their work. On Mondays, the children generate ideas for buildings as a group, and choose building partners. Instead of having to clean up at the end of each day, the children's creations stay for the week, becoming more complex as they expand.

One of the Vs came over and distracted me from the Block City by asking, "Can I make you something?" She led me to the singers' table, which was covered with cardstock, paper, scissors, and colored masking tape,  and proceeded to quickly put together a pouch-like item out of paper and tape. A handful of children were busily making paper-dolls and other items; I noticed that their Block City was full of signs, creatures and objects made from paper and cardboard.

Two boys had made elaborate sword-like shapes, another a spyglass, and one girl had a set of nesting pouches (matryoshka doll style). A few girls were collaborating on a pile of wrist bands and fake money for the ice rink in Block City. Another had used a wooden bock shaped like a person to trace, cut out and fashion perfectly sized outfits.

I loved the open-ended nature of this work and all of the freedom the children had to make their own toys.

The teacher sounded three chimes: stop, look, listen. The children flew through cleanup and gathered in front of the board for the lesson. I left them to it, and met up with the cheery and charming Director of the Lower School to hear a bit more about the ideas behind the work I saw in the classrooms. I learned that research on early childhood education at City & Country School was instumental in the creation of the national Head Start program, and the school continues to play a role as a research institution. They actively invite visiting educators (such as myself) to observe, and host training programs such as "Block Connection," which trains teachers to use the unit blocks across curriculum.

The feedback they hear about their graduates is that they are confident about who they are, they are excellent collaborators, they are passionate about social issues, and they are unafraid of speaking with adults. It was clear from my visits to classrooms that children are treated as equal partners in the learning process, and it follows that they would grow into self-confident and articulate young people. 

Further delights:

• Beginning with the VIIs, children are given a half hour daily to read for pleasure in the school's library. This tradition continues through the end of children's stay at the school
• The backyard had its own outsized collection of unit blocks for the children to build life-sized creations during outdoor play.
• Each group, starting with the VIIIs, is responsible for a job that helps the school run. Nine-year-olds order, price and sell classroom supplies, eight-year-olds operate the school's post office, and thirteen-year-olds write, edit and produce a school newspaper.

Caroline Pratt's ideas about authentic student work and open-ended learning materials are shared by many modern educational reformers. Small class sizes are critical to allowing this type of dynamic, responsive learning environment. As we as a nation struggle with school reform, we cannot neglect this basic and critical need.

Flying Deer Nature Center: Visit to Central Park

Flying Deer Nature Center is a wilderness school and empowerment program based in New Lebanon, a few hours north of New York City. The teachers work with students of all ages (young children through adults) to teach wilderness skills, and nurture a "deep connection to nature, self, and others." Pono (the school where I'm interning), had booked a day in Central Park with the founder of Flying Deer, Michelle, a talented and experienced educator. It was magical.

Michelle introduced herself as "Dandelion," and told us all that we would all soon have nature names as well. Plants and animals can choose humans to speak to, she told us, to ask for protection and care. After sharing some of the beautiful natural materials she had brought, she began a story. A little girl, after sitting by herself for a long time in the woods, had a mouse come to her and tell her that the Willow tree had chosen her.... Would she now look after Willow trees everywhere, care for them, and teach other people about Willows? She would!

The children practiced walking silently across a stretch of the park to a tree with a young woman sitting beneath, a cluster of turkey feathers fanned out in her hands. She introduced herself as Willow, and I saw in the faces of my students the magic of a mythological creature come alive. She gave each of them a feather, and told them that she was going to teach them how to enter the magical forest. (One student turned to me, eyes big: "An enchanted forest!!").

After being taught the proper way to enter the forest (wait until everyone's gathered, then run, howling like wolves, underneath the bridge that led from the grassy lawn into the wooded area), we began a trip off the beaten path. Following the dry creek bed down a slope, the kids were challenged with some balance skills, and I was reminded of the research I've read about the importance of giving children uneven surfaces on which to walk-- the expanses of smooth, inorganic surfaces that most of us spend our lives walking in straight lines don't work the fine balancing muscles, among other things.

Michelle shared a legend of How Fire Came to the People as she began to gather materials to build a small fire. After a crow carried a piece of the sun down to warm the people, the ball of fire rolled around looking for a home before the cedar tree offered to host. The redness of the wood reminds the people of the fire inside.  She built a small "nest" of little twigs, lined with cattail fluff and bits of bark, and showed the children how to use a bow wrapped around a dowel to create a small coal. After carefully transferring the coal into the nest, Michelle asked the children blew on it together until it burst into flame, then placed it into the teepee structure of larger twigs the children had gathered.

We waved cattails around like magic wands, painted faces with dark red chokeberries, cut bamboo canoes and floated them down the stream. We made a giant circle to ring a tree, were given nature names by a "magic hat" hidden by our guides in the forest, and practiced our balance, walking on an enormous fallen tree.

At the end of the day, our host gave each child an acorn to remember the day and dubbed us the "Red Oaks." We all shared our favorite moment: "My favorite was building the bridge over the stream!" "My favorite was building the fire." "My favorite was playing in the dirt!" One of my students told Michelle that she could have an acorn as well and be a part of the Red Oaks.

Before we left the forest, we gathered in a circle and called out our new nature names. "Bumblebee!" said Bumblebee. "BUMBLEBEE!" We all cheered in response. "Robin!" "ROBIN!!" "Red Clover!" "RED CLOVER!!" The kids were a pile of giggles by the end of the go-around.

We gathered our things and walked back toward the tunnel. One of the children asked Michelle why we needed to howl to enter the forest. Michelle paused, then, "It's the magic words to get into these magic places!" said Wild Blueberry, with certainty. Riding the bus back to Pono, the children looked like wild things: faces stained red with chokeberry juice, cattail fluff clinging to their clothes, red windswept cheeks. So much happiness and magic this day.

I'm so enjoying all of the learning that comes out of outdoor education programs. There's so much for children to learn & experience, and all of it by default full of meaning (as opposed to textbook learning that is often terminally divorced from real life). 

Schools of Well-Being

I've spent this past week at a loss, attempting to write about my visits to various wonderful places, while this five-part piece in the New York Times on a homeless 11-year-old girl is all I've been thinking about. While I have intentionally been using this blog to reflect mostly on what I see that's positive and inspiring, I feel called to share a little about why I left public school, and where I see this project fitting in to the necessary transformation of public schooling toward holistic centers for healing and well-being.

In the last few years, I had many students whose home lives were in various states of chaos. I had multiple students who were homeless, or between housing. I had students who had witnessed family members and loved ones killed by gun violence. I waited for ambulances with students: one who had had her arm torn open by the teeth of another student, another who had shredded his hand, punching through the window of my classroom door in a fit of anger. I brought in clothes, food, and offered my support emotionally before and after class. I carefully watched my wording in phone calls home for students who I was worried could suffer as a result of an angry parent. I agonized about how to validate and honor the emotional turmoil of my students in crisis, without derailing lessons that held daunting curricula and learning targets.

I tried to refer some of my students to specialists, but help was hard to come by. In my first school, the lone psychologist had a caseload of over 2,000 students, and spent all her time administering assessments and classifying disabilities. There was no time for remediation. The same 2,000 students shared one social worker who was in our building part time, and in another school the rest of the week. She was essentially a crisis counselor, meeting regularly only with children who were on suicide watch, or in the first few days after a violent episode. Students with chronic need, anything less than a crisis situation, received no support. We had one amazing social worker to ourselves, not through the city, but through a nonprofit program called Teen RAPP (Relationship Abuse Prevention Program) whose office was constantly swarming with students. Her organization's budget (and her job) was written out of the mayor's budget every year, and reinstated after a demoralizing and exhausting annual fundraising effort.

Charter schools, while I think well-intentioned (at least, the nonprofit versions), are taking the students whose parents are organized enough (or empowered enough, or connected enough, or educated enough) to enroll their children in opt-in programs, while those students of highest need become more concentrated in public schools. The schools in which I worked had a huge proportion of students with special needs (over 30%-- city average is 16%). Charter schools, though admitting students on lottery, also have the freedom to expel students who have learning or behavioral difficulties, which may be another part of the reason for this incredible gap in who is taking care of our most needy students.

The fact remains: our most vulnerable students, like Dasani, require on average more care, more resources-- more money, to put it bluntly, than students who come from more stable households. Right now, public schools are set up such that the children of wealthy people get the most resources, while the children of parents with next to nothing, like Dasani's, get little. We must restructure our public school system to offer children the support they need to achieve their potential; to attend to all of their needs, recognizing that academic success can only occur once a child's more basic needs are met.

I'm now spending my time in schools that recognize the importance of caring for the whole child. This is the only way that I can bear the responsibility of influencing the lives of young people. I hope so fervently that I can use my knowledge and passions in helping transform public schooling into schools of well-being, one day.

Read the article. It's one of the best I've read. Dasani, an "Invisible Child."

The Brooklyn Free School

The Brooklyn Free School began 10 years ago as the first democratic school in NYC in over three decades. Now, various expansions later, the school has taken over a 5-story brownstone in Clinton Hill. The approximately 60 students are divided into five groups. Each group has an advisor (adult support) with them: the 5-7 year olds, 8-9, 10-12, and high school (a younger and older group). While certain activities happen in these groups, such as morning check-ins, mostly students move freely around the building.

Our tour guide, a poised and articulate 13-year-old, told us that while "there are many things that are [her] favorite things," her very favorite is the democratic process. As the students outnumber the staff more than 2 to 1, students have a tremendous amount of power to shape the school. Students sit on the hiring committee, and student voice is central to every part of the functioning of the school. There is a whole-school democratic meeting weekly on Wednesdays; a circle with all 60 students and staff, chaired and planned by students. The high school has a separate meeting on Mondays, and the 10-12 year old group just decided to start meeting on Tuesdays. Students also call meetings spontaneously to solve problems, propose ideas, etc. 

As we walked in, we passed a high-school group's morning check-in: circled up, they were planning their day. Each group checks-in until 9:15, when scheduled classes begin. The classes run in seven week cycles; at the beginning of each, students are encouraged to participate in "shop intensives:" sample the classes, and make a commitment if their interest is piqued. Classes are open to the entire school, although some tend to draw students in a certain age range if they are highly specialized.  

Most of the day is broken into 45 minute blocks in which students have two to three class offerings to choose from. Classes offered this cycle with high schoolers in mind include: 2D Art, Shakespeare, Math Hour, Math Games, Self-Defense, Savory Cooking, Kendo, Video Gaming Workshop, Drawing, Film Analysis, WWII History and Literature, Role Playing, Essay Writing, and Scientific Inquiry. Although students are encouraged to take part in these scheduled options, they always have the freedom to choose whether or not to be in a class. Older students especially will make use of their time working on independent projects with adult guidance as needed.


On the second floor are the two youngest classes, and the first stretch of their day is free choice. The gym (a large open room) is also on that floor, so wriggly young students have lots of access to a place where they can move freely. Each class had access to both a room for more academic work, and a loungy area for meetings, socializing and games. Our host had told us to expect a "rumpus;" young children being young children, and it was. Children were everywhere-- dancing to an advisor's guitar in the gym, giggling through the hall, clustered around the new pet (after months of discussion, they decided on a bearded dragon). 



The 5th floor, contrastingly, is open to students only for scheduled classes or when accompanied by an adult, and held the quiet of intense group focus. The Shakespeare class had begun, and 11 students ranging in age from 10 or so through 18, sat around a large table with the advisor. They were reading Othello, and had stopped to discuss the line, "we then have done you bold and saucy wrongs." One student asked the class what they thought Shakespeare meant by the word "saucy," which prompted a rowdy debate. They settled on, "it's kinda like a really eloquent 'my bad.'" I noticed that their advisor's language was entirely question-based, eliciting students' thoughts as opposed to giving answers: Are there any questions about words? What do you think? Why is [that word] there? 

At the end of the morning, a senior joined us. She left a traditional school three years ago, in search of something different. For the first three months at BFS, she felt overwhelmed with not having hours of homework and compulsory classes, and mostly sat and read books. (Democratic and free school enthusiasts jokingly refer to a "detox period"). However, after a few months of sampling classes and experimenting with her freedom, she began to commit to classes and pursue independent studies with advisor support. Before coming, she told us, she had never had exposure to philosophy, and now she takes it every year, and plans to continue her study in college. The atmosphere of self-directed and enthusiastic learning is contagious. "You find yourself here," she concluded. 

More goodies: 

• Every Friday is set aside for field trips and work outside the school building.
• Students have access to homemade meals every day. With supervision, students are also able to use the school kitchen for projects.
• What's possible with mixed-age and -ability learning: a high school students who is struggling with reading fluency has begun to regularly read aloud to the youngest students. Such a wonderful, mutually beneficial learning exchange! Apparently the kids look forward to her visit, she gets tremendous positive feedback, and practice reading in a low-pressure, positively-reinforcing environment.

One of the other educators on the tour asked our senior, "How do you and your parents know that you're learning, since you don't have tests?" It struck me, now that I've visited many schools that do not test or give grades, how absurd this question is (and yet last year, I imagine it would not have stood out). As adults, when we learn something new, we don't feel the need to test ourselves; we are aware of whether or not we've learned. When I lived abroad and learned Portuguese & Spanish, it was self-evident that I was learning. I think testing to determine knowledge should be the exception, not the rule (I see the point of testing, for example, in judging whether aspiring motorists have memorized important traffic safety laws). What do you think? I welcome a counter-argument!