The Palmer Park Preparatory Academy

At Palmer Park Preparatory Academy, teachers are gradually assuming administrative duties to become the city’s first teacher-led school. An extended day, part of the district’s reform policy, gives the staff time every afternoon to compare teaching strategies. And finally, a new, pilot schedule for 7th and 8th graders… [an] attempt to get concrete about the much-touted but often vague concept of “differentiated instruction” for students, especially for those who have struggled to grasp key concepts and risk falling further behind.

Teacher-led schools are a time-honored practice, particularly in some alternative private schools like Waldorf, and in the iconic one-room school house of the American frontier. But apparently they are one of the current “flavors of the month”, gaining fresh attention in the past year, with schools in California, Colorado, Minnesota, and New York being covered in the media.

As a parent, if I had had this option for my kids for middle school, I certainly would have taken a closer look. Regardless, I applaud them in two areas. First, in moving forward in our societal transformation from hierarchy to a circle of equals. Second in acknowledging (at least to a degree) that each human being learns at their own pace.

Prior to moving them to public schools, we had enrolled our two kids, Eric and Emma (now young adults), in a small private school for pre-K and through the early elementary grades. The school was staffed by the owner Brenda, an administrative person, and maybe a half-dozen teachers. Eric and Emma’s mom and I, as customers, had a lot of access to Brenda and our kids’ teachers, and they were open to listen to our thoughts on our kids, and were open to our suggestions on what would make the best learning environment for Eric and Emma.

Having a casual conversation to trade thoughts with Brenda and/or their teacher for a few minutes most days when I came to pick our kids up, I was totally spoiled by having access to the “education decision-makers” in my kids’ school experience. We discussed the things Eric and Emma were interested and not interested in, and how pragmatically to customize the school learning environment and methodology to best meet those needs. We would even bring Eric or Emma into those short informal discussions at times. Our kids, especially the more extroverted Eric, generally had their own thoughtful opinions on their school experience.

When we transitioned our kids to public school during the older elementary years, we were now interacting with the adult school staff within a massive district and state hierarchy. The school’s teachers and principal were for the most part more highly trained and skilled than Brenda and her staff, but it quickly became clear that the dynamic was completely different. Not only was the school much bigger than the little school they had previously attended, but the teachers and even the principal were not the “education decision-makers” we were used to dealing with (and had taken for granted).

First of all, access to the teachers and the principal was much more limited, and often (though not always) needed to be formally scheduled.

Some of our kids’ teachers were interested in discussing with us Eric and Emma’s personalities and proclivities, while others had a formula for teaching that they did not vary from and it was essentially “their way or the highway”, and our kids just had to go with the program.

But what was clear in dealing with all the teachers (and even the principal) on most matters of policy, classroom structure or teaching methodology was that they were just worker-bees following marching orders from higher up the food chain. Most of our kids’ teachers could not answer a question on their teaching methodology other than to say they had a required curriculum to teach.

As our son Eric in particular became more disenchanted with his school experience and began challenging his teachers when he felt the curriculum was boring or pointless, our lack of access to or a real relationship with most of his teachers and his counselor made it difficult to try and find solutions that worked for all parties. But even when we did get that access and develop relationships, many promising potential solutions were beyond the latitude of the teachers, counselor or principal to implement. Certainly customizing or differentiating Eric’s curriculum or learning environment was beyond the pale of these overtaxed, over-regulated and under-empowered adult school staff.

So getting back to the Palmer Park Preparatory Academy, though they still operate within a school district and state hierarchy, and have their marching orders, the school staff are at some level becoming “education decision-makers”, empowered to a degree to create an effective learning environment. For the kids attending the school and their parents, I have to think that this transition from hierarchical to more egalitarian school governance is a real plus.

When you are empowered and have real agency, you are looking for solutions and not on who to blame up the food chain. While many teachers I know blame administration or state mandates and regulations for not being able to optimize their school learning environment, the Palmer Park teachers took matters into their own hands…

The genesis of the changes occurred last summer, after a group of teachers at Palmer Park approached the district with the proposal to convert to a teacher-led arrangement, in which the school’s teachers take on the budgeting and management duties generally carried out by an administrator.

To make this work the teachers set up collaborative planning time at the end of every school day which lengthens their work day. But it was a trade-off worth having the added authority to customize their educational environment on even a weekly basis to better meet individual student needs. So I presume since the Palmer Park lead teachers are being trained in school administration, they will run their school without a principal, without a “boss” as it were. According to one of the lead teachers…

“It’s so much easier to move the kids and challenge them and address them when they need more attention.”

And in regards to the Palmer Park teachers’ effort to take steps to tailor the learning environment to the learner, I find it interesting that though the concept of “differentiated instruction” has been given lip-service in discussions of educational methodology for years, this fledgling effort to really implement it is framed as being highly unorthodox…

The concept appears to be relatively new to education as a whole. Only a handful of other schools, all in New York, have used data to create personalized student schedules, and none of them is currently teacher-led…

Interesting that, because there seems to be such synergy between teachers as decision-makers and looking at students as empowered ind

Discussions among those teachers homed in on how to boost attendance, keep students more engaged in their work, and minimize their frustration when they were struggling with lessons, said Ann K. Crowley, one of the lead teachers who will assume most administrative duties in the school… In consultation with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt officials, the teachers arrived at the idea of personalized schedules for all the students, varying on whether they need more-intensive instruction on basic concepts or are ready for more in-depth instruction. Using a data-analysis tool, the publishing group culled information from state, local, and classroom tests. Then the school placed students in one of three classrooms each in math and English/language arts with peers at the same level of performance.

Empowering youth to be “decision-makers” in their own lives is still the last mostly unexplored frontier of our society’s multi-century transition from hierarchical to egalitarian institutions. Most adults still think that children are… well… “children”, and (given the often pejorative use of that word) are generally considered incompetent to play a significant role in managing even their own lives.

But think outside that adultist box for a moment. Imagine what a learning experience it would be for say a middle-school student who was interested to participate in the administrative training that the Palmer Park teachers are getting, and then play a role in actually making the school day work. Does that sound ridiculous or transformative?

As school budget cuts continue and remaining budget is focused on maintaining teachers in the classrooms, could empowering students, side by side newly empowered teachers become the new flavor of the month?

In my dreams at least!

Self-government… is a powerful current that guides our lives at Summerhill and gives the community shape and substance. The meetings are not lame affairs overseen by benevolent adults, but are dynamic, animated affairs that put the running of our everyday lives well and truly in the hands of the community.

School “laws” are made at a weekly General Meeting held every Saturday evening when the school is in session. A separate Tribunal Meeting is held ever Friday afternoon to adjudicate any infractions to those laws and hand out fines and other consequences. Attendance at these meetings is voluntary, but they generally attract the adult staff and a cross-section of both the older and younger students. The meeting is chaired by a community member (generally a student) who has been selected at the previous meeting and another designate functions as the meeting secretary.

By prior arrangement with that secretary, any community member (adult or youth) can present a proposal to address creating a new law, changing or removing an existing law, or bringing a “case” against another student or adult staff member. The item is then presented at the appropriate meeting, discussed, and proposals for resolution or adoption are considered and voted upon. Within the scope of the meetings’ authority, decisions are binding.

According to Appleton…

I have always liked a quote by Polish educationalist Janus Korczak, from his book When I am Little Again, published in 1926. He writes, “You are mistaken if you think we have to lower ourselves to communicate with children. On the contrary, we have to reach up to their feelings, stretch, stand on our tiptoes.” This insight paves the way to an understanding of the very reason that self-government functions in a fairer and more competent way than an authority exercised by adults only. Children understand the emotional dimensions of each other’s actions more readily than most adults do.

A “jury of your peers” and “one person one vote” are foundational to our democratic tradition and simple statements of fairness and respect for the worth and dignity of every individual. I can see no reason why these powerful concepts are not applicable to youth as well as adults, at least within the cloistered context of a school. Certainly in the more limited context of camps for older Unitarian-Universalist youth I know that this approach works. A venue with a majority of youth and a much smaller percentage of adults can pretty much govern itself.

At Summerhill, according to Appleton, the typical ruling against a person who is found guilty of an infraction is a fine or a removal of certain privileges for a given amount of time. I find it interesting that Appleton doesn’t see this in terms of punishment…

We fine people at Summerhill, but we do not punish them. To punish implies a moral judgment, one that is meted out by goodness above to badness below. If children are able to handle their affairs in such a fair and rational manner, day in, day out, year after year at Summerhill, then why are they not allowed to do so throughout society[?]…

Appleton is associating “punishment” and “morality” (rather than pragmatic Golden Rule thinking) with the hierarchical control of one group of people by another. In the egalitarian governance of this school…

Just as there is an absence of morality and authority, there is also an absence of resentment on the part of the person who has been brought up. The conflict is rational and is not based on a power struggle, so the response is also rational.

So Appleton sites the example of a particular student who stole money from the school’s self-run “Cafe”. The student hears from his peers who work hard to keep the Cafe going that they are angry and feel betrayed, and the decision of the group is to issue him a fine and order him to build a new book case in the shop for the Cafe, but…

His insecurities are not dragged into the arena of the meeting. After the meeting no one is hostile to him. The air has been cleared. He realizes, even if just as a glimmer, that people accept him for who he is.

Adults do still play an appropriate and critical role creating “safe space” for youth, even at Summerhill…

All laws go through the community meetings except for certain health and safety laws and other laws that are mandatory in the eyes of the law of the land. The meeting could not, for example, decide that adolescent boys and girls could sleep in the same rooms. If it did the school could be closed down.

The director, Zoe Readhead (founder A.S. Niell’s daughter) has the final authority also to hire or dismiss staff, though she does take input from the rest of the school staff and the students. And though the meeting can recommend that a student be expelled from the school, again only the director can make that call. Interestingly, at the Sudbury Valley School, the equivalent community meeting does have the authority to hire and fire staff and expel students.

What I am reminded of in reading Appleton’s book is the transformative power of democratic governance and the full engagement and empowerment of every member of a community as a circle of equals rather than people within a “pecking order” of power and control. During the past 500 years democratic process has transformed Western culture, at least for adults. Why does it not make sense to bring this powerful humanistic methodology to play in the “safe space” of a any school? If democratic governance can empower people and facilitate building a country like the United States, why can’t we employ it to transform an educational venue?

Just like adults, kids want their lives to have meaning and make a contribution to the world now, not twelve, sixteen or eighteen years from now when they finish their education. Keeping our kids from contributing to the governance of their schools tends to keep them narcissisticly hyper-focused on themselves rather than participating fully in a larger community of peers, “youngers” and elders. I don’t think that is natural or healthy.

As an older youth I left absolutely no mark on or legacy at the large public high school where I spent four years. Though I came out of it changed, it seemed unchanged by, even unaware of, my tenure. But while I was in high school, I left a significant mark on the youth-led theater group, Junior Light Opera, that I participated in in a much fuller sense than I ever was able to do at school.

My own kids seemed no more than “teachable widgets” at the large public schools that they attended, and could have contributed so much more to those institutions if given the chance. Fortuitous for them, they both had the opportunity to get involved in a Unitarian-Universalist youth community that was willing to fully leverage their insights and energies.

From my own experience as an older youth and what I witnessed as a parent of older youths, I resonate with Appleton’s words describing the older youth at Summerhill…

Although there are adults who take active and powerful roles in the community, by and large the guiding light of community life comes from the older kids. They are, so to speak, the elders of the community. Many of them will have been at Summerhill longer than most of the staff, and have a much deeper understanding of its processes. The big kids are very powerful in the school’s self-government. They have strong voices in the meetings, drawn from their years of growing up through the school and an understanding of the younger kids, who may be going through phases that they went through themselves not long before.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda?

We still have a ways to go!

Most high school students feel bored and disconnected from school, according to a new survey of students from 103 high schools in 27 states. Begun in 2004, the annual High School Survey of Student Engagement aims to take a pulse on teenagers’ attitudes toward school and learning. But the latest results, released last week, show that students were just as bored in 2009 as they have been every year since 2006.

The study is “Charting the Path from Engagement to Achievement: A Report on the 2009 High School Survey of Student Engagement”, Conducted by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University in Bloomington. I think it is a critical bit of input into our needed effort to transform our education system in the 21st Century.

When presented with this sort of crisis, our public school systems tend to have very bureaucratic responses, with decision-making that emanates from a very high district, state or even (in the last couple decades with Goals 2000, NCLB and Obama’s “Race to the Top”) national level. That response is generally well within a “box” of hierarchical “command and control” top-down edicts that are generally focused on fine-tuning mandated curriculum, further scripting how teachers interact with students, and generally continuing a perhaps three-decade trend that disempowers teachers and students as agents of educational change.

Among the most disturbing findings of this study is that only 41% of the students surveyed said they went to school because of what they learned there. So why are the other 59% attending? Please really think about that… Why are the other 59% of students attending? What is their motivation for going to school?

Wouldn’t you agree that this study illuminates a very fundamental crisis in how are society is framing education and human development? I don’t understand why more people don’t realize that we are looking at our youth in school more as the raw material for creating a product rather than key stakeholders in a process. We are still generally caught up in the logic of hierarchical power-over thinking where well-meaning adults charged with stewarding youth feel they need to make all the significant decisions for those young people, or they are not doing their jobs.

I am particularly troubled by what I read about and see in most high schools (confirmed by this study), because I have seen a very different way of setting up a venue for the development of older youth.

An Alternative Approach for Older Youth

I have worked with older youth not as a teacher but as an adult facilitator of Unitarian-Universalist youth-led camps and conferences. We UUs are “process junkies” and we teach these group process techniques (which are designed to empower everyone to actively participate) to adults and youth. We empower our older youth (high school age) to program, staff and run their camps and conferences themselves, with minimal adult intervention.

A youth governing board is elected each year by all the youth attending the district-wide summer camp. That board meets quarterly and plans week-long camps and weekend conferences throughout the year. The board appoints youth “deans” to coordinate each event.

The dean(s) put together their youth “staff”, which collectively develops the camp or conference curriculum and programming, each youth playing a specific role leading the various programmed events, working as counselors or “chaplains” to informally handle individual issues, handling registration, managing the budget and money, and in some cases even providing the food. Programming can include adult or youth-led speakers and workshops, facilitated “rap sessions”, youth-led “worship services”, arts and crafts, dances, talent shows, hikes, and all the array of typical camp or conference curriculum.

This is all youth-designed and youth-led (other than say a particular workshop where an adult is invited to present and/or lead). Both my now young-adult kids had the opportunity to participate in these events as attendees, staff and even as “deans”. My daughter served on the youth board for two years, the second as the board president. She co-coordinated one of the week-long summer camps. My son designed and led several of the weekend conferences.

Just FYI, in case you are wondering or otherwise concerned, adults do attend these camps and conferences. To meet insurance regulations, the events have to have at least one adult on site for every ten youth. But the attending adults don’t run anything; they are basically there to be available in case there are significant calamities.

But even when a serious situation arises that calls for specific intervention, it is still handled mainly by the youth, with perhaps more significant adult participation than with the day-to-day stuff. During the week-long summer camp my daughter led, two of the youth campers were found to have violated the camp rules for sexual conduct. Over the course of two long nights without much sleep, my daughter, the rest of the camp youth staff and several of the attending adults met in long sessions with the campers who had broken the rules. They were heard out, the issues were discussed in depth, and the appropriate consequences were agreed to by the assembled group. The two campers were asked to leave camp the next morning and I recall were also not allowed to attend another camp for another six months.

I would like to testify to all of you the energy of empowered young people I am surrounded with at these events is so exhilarating and gives me such hope for the developmental possibilities of the human race. How capable we are if given the opportunity, even at the age where some people still call us “children”, to run our own lives!

Applying this Paradigm to Public High Schools

So I contrast my experience with empowered, highly capable UU youth with what I witness when I walk into a conventional high school and see how relatively un-empowered the kids are, how much of their potential for individual agency and wisdom and collective ability to problem solve and design and mnage an enriched environment is untapped and even suppressed.

I would suggest that at least some of these principles and methodologies for empowering youth be employed in high school environments to change the paradigm from youth as passive consumer and “product” of an educational process to active stakeholders in designing or at least managing their learning environment. Even though the curriculum and programming of a year-long instructional high school can be very different than a week-long camp or weekend conference, the fundamentals of governance and programming are essentially the same, and can be done by youth alongside adults, if not led primarily by youth with adults as consultants, mentors and subject-matter experts.
As I have noted before, there are schools that actually run using these kinds of youth-led principles and processes. Most notable in the United States, and a model for other such schools elsewhere in our country and others, is the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts. Though this is a “free school” with individual students setting their own curriculum, the democratic empowerment of students can be applied to any type of school, whether instructional (like most conventional public and private schools), holistic (Dewey, Waldorf, Montessori, etc) or “free”.

So I would suggest that conventional high schools confront the crisis that this study highlights by implementing regular egalitarian and democratic process into the high school program. Have facilitated discussions among the students about the issues of student engagement (or not) in school. Solicit suggestions and actually try all or some of the suggestions that gain consensus. Have students and teachers participate on the various governance committees within the individual schools and at the larger district level that manage these new initiatives and other suggested changes.

From my experience with the collective wisdom of the UU high-school-aged youth, I would suspect your typical high school class would be able to muster enough collective wisdom and “solutioning” to move the needle of student engagement at least some of the way in the right direction. Give this disengaged majority of students a third avenue of expression beyond checking out or acting out.

As children, most young people are told what to eat, what to wear, when to go to bed, when they can talk, that they will go to school, which friends are okay, and when they are to be in the house. Even as they grow older, the opinions of most young people are not valued; they are punished at the will or whim of adults; their emotions are considered “immature.” In addition, adults reserve the right to punish, threaten, hit, take away “privileges,” and ostracize young people when such actions are deemed to be instrumental in controlling or disciplining them.

So if you parse Bell’s paragraph, some of what he’s talking about is the legitimate role of parents, teachers and other adults to set limits and ensure kids take responsibility for their actions, have proper nutrition and an otherwise enriched environment to grow.

But like all human social endeavors, there are at least two profoundly different ways of doing things. One involves the “pecking order”, a hierarchy of acknowledged “superiors” using acceptable forms of coercion necessary to exercise power and control over acknowledged “inferiors”. The other involves a “circle of equals” (without categories of superiors and inferiors) where power is not defined as control over but facilitation of a group of people. To the extent that adults relate to young people (including exercising their legitimate responsibility towards them) within the “pecking order” paradigm; that is what is being defined as “adultism”.

The last 5000 years of human history is a parade of various “pecking order” forms of social organization – masters over slaves, lords over serfs, whites over people of color, Aryans over non-Aryans – all eventually repudiated (though not yet eliminated) by human culture as morally unsustainable and grave hindrances to human development. That these forms of social organization still exist, is a legacy of patriarchy, an ancient ideology of domination, which is still alive and well in the world.

Evidence that patriarchy is alive and well can be found in the fact the “pecking order” of men over women, though challenged by progressives throughout the world, is still conventional practice and official policy on much of our planet. The superior position of men over women is so fundamentally woven into much of human culture that the 19th and 20th Century efforts towards sexual equality have led, I believe, to much of the violent expressions of religious fundamentalism that many describe as the “ism” of “terror” today.

At the bottom of the patriarchal “pecking order”, still cloaked in general respectability and conventional wisdom, is the superiority of adults over young people. Just as for centuries feudal lords justified their indisputable authority over their serfs as necessary stewardship, adults today throughout the world justify their absolute authority over young people.

One justification of the “pecking order” of adults over youth is that it is transitory, that once young people are properly trained and come of age, they move from the inferior to the superior group (adults). But as Bell points out in his article, the impact of “adultism” is much more pervasive. Young people raised in a paradigm where they are the acknowledged “inferiors” and adults are the acknowledged “superiors” grow up to become adults themselves more willing to accept other “pecking orders” that still have power in the adult world, not the least of which are continuing racial, gender and sexual orientation inequality. Further, young people who internalize their inferiority to adults, can grow up to be adults who are more willing to participate in business paradigms of “superior” bosses and “inferior” worker bees.

We who believe in the progressive ideals of the inherent worth and dignity of every human being need to be cognizant of these vestiges of patriarchy and “pecking order” in the conventional wisdom of our relationships between adults and young people. If we adults continue to give ourselves near absolute power over youth, won’t this lead to increasing corruption and disrespect for our charges?

Think of some of the common statements that reflect the conventional wisdom of the superiority of adults, and when examined show that fundamental disrespect for youth and their developmental process…

* “You’re so smart for fifteen!”
* “When are you going to grow up?”
* “Don’t ever yell at your mother like that!” (yelling)
* “It’s just a stage. You’ll outgrow it.”

Most telling of all, in my opinion, is the oft hurled epithet, “You’re behaving like children.”

So this piece is just a brief introduction to the concept of “adultism”, that I believe is an important component of the remaining patriarchal infrastructure of our culture (and most others in the world). It is an infrastructure that I have made a continuing commitment to call out and urge all of us to move beyond so that we can all better go about our continuing effort towards the development of our species here on planet Earth.

See my next piece on Adultism at http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2009/10/25/the-dimensions-of-adultism/