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.