Week 9: Modeling

Where we are:

Model class complete! Last Tuesday, we had the fun and engaging opportunity to give our peers a glimpse into our educating philosophy. Though effective feedback highlighted some areas to tweak before our final presentation, the session was by-and-large a proof of concept.

Here are some of our notes from the model class:

-Research was an effective exercise. Students seized responsibility for the material exactly how we wanted them to. Better still, they enjoyed the experience of becoming an expert in a given era. 

-One practical consideration we need to make moving forward is that of time: even in a 75-minute class, the time required to research and then process all the information before dialogue proved longer than expected. Perhaps our final class model will involve students bringing in research they conducted outside of class. This way, time can be more effectively spent on making connections and asking questions with instructors in the room. 

Also, we've been productive in preparing for our meeting with administrators! We have more clarity on our administrative structure, which now includes executive and financial positions, grade deans that move up with a given class, one college counselor, and an advising staff. Advising in particular received a lot of attention in our dialogue today. On the whole, students will have very close relationships with their advisors. Ideally, there will be room for two types of academic advisors:

First, academic advisors who will help students navigate the catalog of interdisciplinary courses to grow scholarly interests into passions. This program will include regular face time with students and advisors to check up on classroom engagement and satisfaction.

Second, social advisors will fill the role of conventional human development instructors as well as steward students through the challenges of adolescence. Meetings with these advisors will be based in frankness and honesty in order to ensure that students are comfortable asking questions about growth that occurs outside the classroom. 

Finally, we established a framework for discipline within the school: a small judiciary committee will determine punishments for offenses before an administrator approves punishment. This system models that of Mr. Bracker's previous school.

Questions to consider moving forward:

What does life after an EdCo education look like? Is an EdCo education ever really over?

What does the college process look like for students in our school who don't want to attend our affiliate?

How will our preliminary presentation outline link our philosophy with its implementation?

Week 8: Definition, Description, Resolution

This was an exceptionally productive and fun week! After essentially completing the scaffolding of our school, the past seven days allowed our group to delve into creative work: we wrote course descriptions for ten hypothetical classes, we wrote the plan for our model class, and we were able to finally sort out some lingering financial questions with a new tuition model.

Course Descriptions

2. The History and Application of Modern Mathematics
1. Students grow to understand the evolution and implementation of modern mathematical concepts through the study of their discovery, use of period tools, and historical perspective on significant works.
3. The Philosophical Impact of Physics
1. At its furthest understanding, the study of Physics calls into question many of the fundamental intuitions humans have about the universe. This class examines the impact of physics on the world’s philosophies of meaning. By exploring discoveries, missteps, and misunderstandings in Western and Eastern science, students gain insight into the entangled world in which we live.
4. Mathematical Understanding in Music
1. This course examines the mathematical concepts behind music. Unlike a traditional music theory course, MUIM takes a broad view of the development of key musical instruments, artistic movements, and musical perception among audiences.
5. Art as Political Power: Key Movements in Asia, 1900-1945
1. Art History, writ large. Taking a specific view of the world of Eastern art before and during the World Wars, this course encourages students to observe and analyze the artistic commentary on the tumultuous half-century leading up to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
6. Starter great books program (interdisciplinary history)
1. This is a tie in with our university partnership–basically students will read classic books that define a given era and analyze their historical context. Perhaps taught all 4 years?
7. 150 Years Later: The Civil War and the American South
1. We’re in Virginia, right? Why not try some some in-depth study of the civil war using the rural equivalent of City of Angels’s Urban Labs? Students can visit battlefields and re-enact the carnage! Perhaps the farm/student labor can serve as a metaphor to teach the economics of slavery. We’ll also read later southern literature and get a sense of why the war is crucial in understanding modern American democracy.
8. An American in Paris: French Language and Culture
1. This course is an immersion experience where American art movements are examined in a french context. Literature topics can be centered on the Lost Generation, music classes can analyze France’s strong affinity for Jazz, and more! Basic principles of the french language are taught through a relatable cultural lens so as to make them more accessible.
9. The Dog as a Symbol (or should we call it “The Dog, A Dog, My Dog”?): 
1. Mainly a literature-based course with discussions of society and history, focused on how the dog is “man’s best friend” and what that means, etc. Also involves interacting with real dogs! !
10. Biology and Evolution of Weird Animals
1. Teaches basic biological knowledge through an interesting focus: really weird animals that you’d think wouldn’t exist.

Our Model Class

The model class will consist of an introduction, an independent research exercise, and group assembly/discussion. Our model course, entitled Theology & Philosophy in Agrarian America, 1492-1960 is an interdisciplinary American Studies/History class, though such a distinction is more technical than observable for the purposes of this class. All sorts of paths will be explored and all sorts of lenses will be used to approach a better understanding of the following question: "How does an individual's experience of theological and economic forces drive their political association with a larger community?"

Our New Tuition Model

This is a small change, but we're switching to a pay-if-you-can model with regard to room & board. Everyone will be offered full tuition scholarships, and families that are able to pay for their child's accommodations will be asked to do so.

Week 7: Curriculum

We started the week by setting our group's own progress check.
Where we are: Pamphlet
Where we want to be: Rough weekly schedule, Course ideas, Big focuses in curriculum, Extracurriculars
How we will get there: class/google doc

First, we nailed down some basic details we've been discussing for a while. The student body will total around 100 students (25 per grade), and we will be a boarding school. The decision regarding tuition and room and board charges is still up in the air, but we will do our best to provide financial aid and be need-blind in admissions.

Regarding the schedule, we decided that school will meet 5 days a week and students will take 4 classes at a time. Wednesdays will be lighter days: field trips instead of classes, more project time, etc.
Extracurriculars have yet to be fully explored. For traditional sports teams, we will have to send students to nearby schools as we don't have the size or the resources to spare for varsity sports.

We had a lengthy dialogue about the focus of our curriculum and overall program at our school. The four-year high school program has a progression from collaboration and collective responsibility to individual growth and independence. This sequence manifests through year-long projects, where younger students work in larger groups with more teacher guidance and eventually transition to designing and carrying out completely individual projects as seniors. It manifests through work on our campus farm, another main aspect of the curriculum. The farm will have useful animals and crops that provide food for the dining hall (since we are a boarding school). Students are required to work on the farm all four years, and farm chores break up the academic days. Older students are able to specialize and help train younger students. The progression is also represented very concretely in our desk system: desks, which are fixed in classrooms and take the place of students' study spaces at home (since dorms are for relaxation, not homework), are shared in 9th and 10th grade and individual in 11th and 12th grade.

We also wrote out several possible courses that EdCo would offer and brief descriptions of each course. In practice, courses will be always changing and designed by the teachers who will teach them. Our courses are interdisciplinary, and we emphasize finding interesting takes on traditional material in order to make it more engaging for students. Classes also include hands-on learning to avoid the monotony of classroom studying.

All in all, it was a productive week!

Financial Details and Paraphernalia

Where we are:

Over the past week, we have continued the dialogue with an emphasis on reconciling the financial feasibility of our school with our educational philosophy. Although we had initially settled on a full scholarship for all members of our student body, in recent discussions we have begun to consider opening room and boarding fees to be payable based on each family's financial situation. We do want to maintain free tuition for all students to ensure a level playing field and eliminate any sense of hierarchy in the student body. We believe this will greatly benefit the social and academic dynamic of our school. Our group has synthesized the pertinent information for students and parents of applicants to Virginia EdCo in the form of a flyer. The flyer includes our Mission Statement, a section describing the main features and facilities of our campus, the core principles of our curriculum, a Q&A section, admissions policies, our natural education programs, flat figures (by the numbers- student-teacher ratio, size, etc.), and our mentorship opportunities. 

Notes on my meeting with Keith Huyssoon if they interest anyone, some financial obstacles...Feel free to comment with questions and I will gladly clarify. 

tiered tuition 1,000 5,000

Fundraising - annual funding, appeal to all families (average gift recommended) 

Endowment-invested for the long term, corpus principle, lead donors

Expenses by Type: Total Cost approx. 30 million

Financial Aid 12.5%

Facilities/Operations 11.9% 

Instructional 7.8%

Administrative 4.95%

Salaries/Benefits 62.9%

Poly Upper School: 55 faculty/admin. to 375 students includes performing arts, outdoor education, not athletics

market startup 

donors, blend endowment supports 10% cost of school, annual fund 10% cost of school, 80% charge tuition, find donors, build endowment 

10 people about .. 

Outdoor educational programs, athletics, and arts  psychologists, support, 

credentials 

60,000-90,000

Facilities and operations, 

8-10 adults with broad skills, backed by one leader, professor, possible tuition cost if we admitted 6/7 students per grade, about 25 students in high school after 4 years, $65,000, 75-90,000 each or if you have zero to start $150,000, graduate students + 25,000 additional annually for outsourced, facilities leased from university??? 

210,000 + if university supports program, 30,000/year professors x 3 professors, 2 admin at 80,000, 100,000 additional costs, 

350,000 (6 students) with significant support university, and professors

500,000 annual cost (25 students) → 20,000 tuition to fully cover WITHOUT any initial funds 

coming in… 

seed money up front, donors, transition costs, stability, fundraise 

Theoretical endowments: 

10 million dollars at 5% 500,000 year 

2 million dollars, invest at 5%  

Where we are going:

In the coming weeks, we will structure the daily schedule within the parameters of our educational philosophy. We will also write and outline course descriptions, and specify the extracurricular opportunities available to our students. 

How we will get there: 

We will continue collaborating and communicating via the GoogleDoc. Our editing process entailing an email chain has been rather successful thus far, and we intend to continue implementing this method.

Week 5: Get Affiliated!

Before spring break, we continued an effective dialogue that began on the google doc. This dialogue mainly centered on the issue of tuition, one we had been tentative to probe. Tuition maintains a healthy cash flow which could ensure the stability of our school. Charging tuition has a heavy cost, however; doing so would place EdCo among the many independent schools who risk perpetuating elitism by compromising values for dollars and cents. So, we collectively decided not to charge tuition for the majority of our students (as little as possible, really) in order to more fully embrace the pool of potential students.
Refusing to charge tuition puts our school at a disadvantage from a practical standpoint. The interest accrued from our sizable assets may be sufficient only if our school remains small. Fundraising from wealthy donors will prove essential in replenishing our operating cost. Our lack of cashflow may mean we affiliate with another larger institution–perhaps a nonprofit or university. But, as I will outline below, each of these consequences that seem like compromises actually support our fundamental philosophy that is the core of our school.
First, a smaller student body enhances our ability as educators to ensure that each of our students can thrive. Since interpersonal feedback and customized curricula are both critical to the conception of EdCo, having a small student-to-faculty ratio ameliorates multitudes of potential logistical headaches. Moreover, with a smaller number of students our culture of abundance becomes much more feasible. With smaller class sizes come a smaller number of high-caliber, well-paid faculty. We can also afford to admit more at-risk youths and those of lower economic strata. In instrumenting this policy we plan to begin as a high school and then open a middle- and lower-school at later stages to gradually implement a broader no-tuition system.
Second, we plan to affiliate with an institution of higher education to facilitate our mission and establish an economy of mutual benefit. A board of trustees from that college or university provides a pool of education- and social justice-minded donors that might be interested in supporting us. Furthermore, collaborating with students and faculty at both undergraduate and graduate levels expose future educators and policy makers to the benefits of experimental education. An affiliation also helps solve some practical issues like facilities management and maintenance. Ideally, through this partnership enrollment would be guaranteed at the institution in question, thereby eliminating the external pressures of the "college hunt."
As a proof of concept regarding this second point, we plan to explore connections with Occidental College in Los Angeles, a liberal arts college that considered administrating a high school within the last decade. Occidental has many administrators and trustees that can give us clarity on our plans and the process of affiliating with a university. Once we establish a connection with Oxy, an affiliation with a school with graduate programs in education (UVA, for example) will seem more legitimate.

Below are some hard facts we came up with this week that will shape the profile of our school:
-High School (25-35 kids)
-Roughly 20 faculty (starting salary around 60K)
-As much as half or two thirds of our starting assets invested and accruing interest
-80%+ student body financial aid recipients
-Sports/arts programs in tandem with college/university offerings
-Board of trustees of affiliated institution

Week 4: A Shape Emerges

This past week has brought many new ideas and a lot of clarity to the project. First of all, the class settled on the "Sweet Briar" model of funding. As we're well aware, the organization representing each school will receive the facilities, grounds, and remaining assets of Sweet Briar College, a small liberal arts school in rural Virginia. Using that scenario as a mold, each group can tailor their creations as they see fit. This week, our group took that newfound freedom and ran.

First, we were able to talk with our Lower School Director, Ms. Paula Martin. She gave us details of the financial concerns of running the Lower School, and gave us guidance on the specific dollar amounts required to run programs and activities like field trips. We plan to stay in contact with Ms. Martin and reach out to Keith Huyssoon, C.F.O., for more information in the future.

We next focused on developing a feedback process for our students and their teachers. All feedback, quarterly evaluations included, will be conducted via in-person, one-on-one conferences. Students will come prepared with a short written paragraph on their engagement and thoughts on the previous term, and the teacher will use this document as a guide to talk with the student about areas of progress and areas of potential growth. Similarly, our group discussed the possibility of extending this model into faculty evaluations, though no consensus has been reached. A model prompt appears below:

As an institution of education, we feel that feedback is an essential part of the growth process. As such, we seek to create an environment where feedback can occur openly and without judgment. A direct conference can inform both student and instructor about what is most effective or ineffective within the given curriculum. Prepare a paragraph to bring to your conference so that you feel you can adequately voice all of your significant class experiences and opportunities for growth.If your engagement was the ultimate goal of the class and your instructor, how close to this goal would you say we came?

After diving into a discussion about grade division, we agreed that a typical LS/MS/US split seemed best for our school, with some room being left for changes around fifth, sixth, eighth, and ninth grades. This will be developed further as we do more research into the efficacy of existing divisions.

Our final conversation of the week revolved around wealth and representation of wealth in our school's model. In striving to create a culture of abundance, we hope to give every student access to the financial resources to engage their interests. Regardless of wealth background, we will work toward the goal of financing every student's needs and interests. How we get the money to do this is another story, but preliminarily we supposed that an innovative group of board members (technology industry folks, academics, etc.) might be able to fund an initiative.

Week 3: Practical concerns

This week we had some dialogue about finances, curriculum, and administration. We also chose a template name for our school: Education Cooperative (EdCo), which will most likely be modified by location once that has been chosen.
We were all quite busy over the week, so our dialogue was mostly focused on decisions made in Monday's class and will continue for Week 4. In our original brainstorming about the curriculum, we had mentioned a focus on the outdoors and sustainability. In light of the class decision to grant each school up to 3200 acres of land, we will definitely incorporate gardening and other outdoor activities. We feel that learning in and about the outdoors can only benefit our students. As we move forward with a more definite daily schedule, we will build in outdoor time.
We have decided that due to financial concerns, we will need to charge tuition for our students, but we have not yet discussed how much it will be and what financial aid might be available. We plan to research costs of comparable existing schools in order to create a budget.
Our dialogue regarding the administration focused on transparency and student involvement. We are still considering where transparency might not be appropriate and to what extent students should be involved in administrative decisions.

Week 2: Expatiating Details

Where are we?

Building on the foundation of core values that we outlined last week, our group has discussed in further detail the manner in which the essential tenets will play out in the context of our school. We have narrowed down several aspects of the format of our simulated class, leaning towards a younger age group for our trial (Lower or Middle School), and a curriculum centered on the application of our methods of instruction in the realms of math and/or music. Our group also conferred in regards to administrative characteristics of our school, and is currently engaged in dialogue about how to give students a greater voice in the shaping of school values. We are still honing the specifics of financial management (deliberating between private and charter), the formation of a student-based judiciary committee, faculty hiring and evaluating processes, and school rules.

Where are we going next?

As we continue the dialogue and clarify the administrative and financial basis of our school, we will start to form committees and procedures that function effectively within the system. We will also develop an outline for our trial class including a lesson plan as well as demarcating broader goals for student takeaway.

Week 1: Mission Statement

Where are we?

Our group is united in its values–all members have had a chance to share what we would like our school to instill in its students, as well edit the contributions of others. We have now assembled a list of core ideals that will permeate the structure of our institution as we move forward. 

Furthermore, we have built a rough outline in which we explore potential programs that would promote such values. This outline includes some sample programs that introduce founding principles into the curriculum–these include potential feedback mechanisms, extracurricular activities, and an emphasis on local community engagement. 

Finally, we have drafted a mission statement modeled off Poly's. This statement represents a more condensed version of the core tenets that have guided our work. It also speaks to the impact we would like our school to have on the world. Read it below!

How did we get here?

Throughout the week, we have engaged in dialogue to shape the core principles of each group member into a cohesive whole. This began with casual conversation and then coalesced into a google doc in which each of us shared our vision of the school in an organized fashion. Each group member had the opportunity to edit the mission statement & curricular outline as it was created. After deliberation, we all agreed that we could ensure that the philosophy of our school would be best implemented in a K-12 format. We immediately agreed on most of the procedural elements of primary education. Having decided as a group that we would also offer high school education, we adopted most of the principles provided by Ezra in the previous week's brainstorming class, with an important note that all curriculum be strongly grounded in the values inculcated in lower school.

Where are going next?

One area for growth is attaching our school to an established philosophy. Does our institution align with the values of Plato? Or perhaps Milton? Maybe just our own? How might this contrast with conventional pedagogy?

Looking forward, we also want to begin to make real-world considerations for our school (How many students? What are our hours? What will our food options be like?) and incorporating them into a philosophy. Overall, there's a lot to be excited about!

Mission Statement:

The mission of our school is to foster growth of ideas that sustains a love of learning for a lifetime. ((To foster lifelong curiosity and inquisition)) As an institution of education, we are dedicated to the maxim that all of our students deserve the freedom to shape their own individuality through an exploration of the humanities, the sciences, and the arts. We emphasize community engagement and encourage cooperation and service to others. We structure our curriculum so that all who leave our halls will embrace the plurality of life rather than its limits. In this way our school is prepared to embrace a more just and vital future.

We strive to instill in our students:

Knowledge of the past, perspective on the present, expectations for the future

Personal/Communal/National/Global sense of duty

Lifelong love of learning

A sense of obligation to protect our planet and its people