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!