OC Teachers Take Their Learning to Other Schools

In 1977, when the OC program was brand-new, and for a number of years thereafter, we shared the excitement and the work, both as parents and as teachers. We are now living in different states, working in very different kinds of schools. Judy is a high school principal in a large public high school in Washington State. Mimi is a fourth-grade teacher in an independent school in South Carolina that is associated with a major school-restructuring initiative (the Coalition of Essential Schools). In our efforts to contribute to reform in our classrooms and schools, we find that we are returning, about 20 years later, to the basic philosophy that directed our OC experience. In many ways, what we learned in the OC, both in terms of instructional practices and in terms of change processes, is giving us the confidence we need to proceed in our new settings. Personal experiences and the general principles of the OC—along with increasingly compelling research about how children learn that questions the way schools are traditionally organized and how we think about curriculum and instruction—have helped us organize and promote new programs on both sides of the country. The changes we are working on are not simple ones. We are looking at ways to integrate across disciplines, combining English, physics, and history into an integrated block. Instead of chopping school days into isolated blocks of time, we are exploring ways of lengthening these blocks of time and trying more flexible schedules. We are looking at designing work for children that covers fewer things in greater depth, through more focused inquiry. Believing that children will learn better if they can make connections, we seek ways to challenge students not just to memorize material but to apply it as well. We are working to make it possible for individual students to carry out research and to present their work before a critical audience. These changes have the potential to challenge the sacrosanct purpose of most schools: to prepare students for the next level and to get them into colleges.

Decision Making in a Learning Community

As a principal, I know that it is never easy to bring together a diverse group of people of different ages, backgrounds, and philosophies to make decisions, even about the most mundane issues. When parents, teachers, and administrators join together to make decisions about the education of their children, it takes commitment, patience, flexibility, perseverance, and a basic belief in the strength of collaborative decision making for the learning community to function smoothly. This basic belief in the strength of collaborative decision making forms the essence of the OC as a learning community. Before becoming principal of Washington Elementary School, which houses both the OC program and the traditional school for neighborhood children, I had taught for 13 years and been an administrator for 8 years in a variety of settings. I viewed myself as a believer in and practitioner of collaborative decision making. I had a fair amount of experience working with diverse groups, including students, parents, and boards of trustees. Never, however, had I encountered a group of parents and teachers who had a stronger sense of “community” or deeper implicit beliefs as to how their program should function. This may sound as if decision making in the OC was rigid—which was not the case. It was only that over the program’s 13 years, many of its beliefs and processes had become so intuitive that as a newcomer I sometimes had a difficult time understanding how decisions were made and who the ultimate authority was. I was principal of the OC for four years and never discovered “the ultimate authority.” During that time, I did discover that common understandings regarding the importance and value of dialogue, communication, and participation served as threads that formed the fabric of the program. Here I discuss some issues that arose regarding decision making and how they were handled by the community. Notice that I did not say “how they were resolved,” since one of the things I learned while working with the OC is that often simply processing or dialoguing about the particular issues brought about closure.

Becoming an Adult Member in a Community of Learners

I thought it would be relatively easy for me, with my six-year background of high school teaching and tutoring of math and physics, to co-op in the OC classroom with my first-grade son. I was both right and wrong. Indeed, my teaching experience and professional knowledge as a graduate student in child psychology helped me design activities suitable for first- and second-grade children. However, in terms of philosophy of teaching and organization of learning activities, my experience with traditional schooling was more harmful than helpful. My previous experience prepared me for delivering a lesson to a whole class or an individual. I was used to controlling children’s talk, which was supposed to be addressed only to me, and my students had learned early on in their schooling that they could talk legitimately only to the teacher and only when it was allowed by the teacher. The teacher was supposed to be the director, conductor, and main participant in classroom interaction. In the OC, I was shocked to discover that this traditional format of instruction was actively discouraged by teachers, co-opers, and children. This kind of teaching was not supported by the children in their interactions or by the classroom structure, with its small-group organization, children’s choice of groups, and nonsimultaneous rotation of the children from group to group. However, I did not know how to teach any other way. At the beginning of the school year I planned an activity that I called Magic Computer. It was designed to teach the reversibility of addition and subtraction as well as reading and computational skills, and it had worked beautifully with first- and second-graders in the past. The activity involved moving a paper strip that carried “computer commands” (“Think of a number. Add five to it. Take two away from it,” and so on) through an envelope with a window, to see one command at a time. The commands were designed so that addition and subtraction compensated for each other; therefore, the last message was “You have got your initial number!” The children’s job was to discover addition and subtraction combinations that cancel each other out and write them down on the paper strip, line by line.

Becoming a Cooperative Parent in a Parent Co-operative

Over the years that I spent as a co-oper for my three children in this parent co-operative school, I gradually came to understand the philosophy and become part of the structure of this learning community. It took a long time for me to grasp the underlying principles—the “common thread” that weaves through the practices of this community. An understanding of the principles gives participants a basis for knowing what to do, but at the same time, it seems that participating is essential for finding the principles. When I was a new co-oper, my career as a developmental psychologist was largely unrelated to my activities in the classroom. My choice to send my first child to the OC, over a decade ago, was based on the suggestion of a colleague in the psychology department at the University of Utah, who said, “Just think of all the research you can do in the OC!” and talked me into coming to visit his daughter’s classroom. At the time, although I liked what I saw for my daughter, I could see no way that I could make use of the OC as a research site—it didn’t connect with the way I was studying children’s learning. Over time, though, what I learned from the challenges of seeking this program’s principles of learning, in order to participate in it, has transformed my research and scholarly work. It opened my eyes to this way of thinking about learning, which I believe can contribute to advances in developmental and educational research and theory. The program philosophy is apparent in my 1990 book, Apprenticeship in Thinking, though at the time I wrote it I did not recognize the depth of its influence in my work. A key question that perplexed me as I struggled to understand how to participate in a community of learners, as a parent new to the OC, was how adults and children can collaborate in learning. This is a puzzle to many parents as they enter the program; it is also a classic issue in the fields of developmental psychology and education.

Respect from Respect

Because the adults and kids respected each other, I was excited about learning and felt appreciated in the OC. Teachers treat kids with respect, and parents learn to respect kids’ ideas by observing the kids and teachers in the classroom. Lots of people might wonder why co-opers need to learn, since it’s the kid who’s going to school. If the parent has never been in the classroom and the kid says, “We’re doing kid co-oping, and we’re making marshmallow houses,” a parent might say, “What does that have to do with school? Are you learning anything from making marshmallow houses?” The parent might not notice that their kid is learning about angles, architecture, how to make a structure that stands, and being creative. But when they see what their kid and other kids do around the classroom, they get more confident, and they respect the kid more and learn to respect the kids’ ways of learning. Adults learn to respect kids’ ideas even if they don’t agree with them. They can respect a kid’s idea and express their opinion and what most people think about it and why—rather than saying, “You’re wrong.” An outsider who comes into the classroom and sees kids discussing history might think, “There’s only one right answer, and that’s the teacher’s, so don’t debate about it because it wastes time.” It’s important for kids to be allowed to express their ideas and opinions, because that makes them really think about the topic and makes them more comfortable taking a different stance on something. They can learn about subjects by listening to other people’s opinions, too. In the OC, the teachers trust people to help each other. They know you can learn a lot from each other and from teaching others. The kids learn to understand and respect the adults who help them by leading activities in kid co-oping. Kid co-oping teaches them what it’s like to be in the co-oper’s place and how hard it is to organize a group and keep people interested. Then the kids treat the adults better because they have learned what the adults go through.

Caring Conversations

One thing that characterizes the OC is the respectful way OC teachers talk with kids. When two former OC teachers who had moved and now teach in different schools viewed a videotape of one of them teaching, the other was struck with how, after many years apart from each other, they still talk to kids the same way. Respectful conversations happen in the OC and in other schools where many exceptional teachers reach out and make connections with students. An OC teacher recounted an event that illustrates the contrast with other ways of interaction: . . . When a junior high school counselor came to register the kids in my room for junior high the next year, there was not an available table where she could sit with a small group. So I said, “Just a minute, I'll get you a space.” I asked a few kids who were working together at a table if we could use it for a while and then they could have it back. We teased each other a little and then the kids packed up their supplies and moved to work on the floor. The counselor said, “Is that how you talk to kids usually?” I said yes. She told me that in her school adults didn't treat kids like that at all— “There's hardly anyone who would have fun with kids, or even ask them for the table.” I was so stunned, I asked her what she would have done in that situation. She said she would have told them to just “move out, I need the table.” So there would have been no conversation. I asked her if that was the way the whole school interacted with children, and she said there was one person who talked just like me, and it turned out to be a former OC co-oper who now teaches there. . . . If the classroom structure allows conversations, people can learn to converse with respect. Children themselves can play a role in helping adults communicate with them.

Creating Curriculum with Children

Children are natural learners, curious and inquisitive, wondering why and who and how. They thrive in an environment that allows curriculum to emerge naturally, with support from other children, co-oping parents, and teachers, around their needs and interests. They are quick to express opinions, offer suggestions, and invent projects. They are an incredible natural resource, and in a community of learners, they contribute to meaningful, exciting curriculum. In a community of learners, everyone has a part to play in supporting the learning process. Children help plan and develop curriculum and are expected to be active participants and responsible learners. Parents support projects and activities with ideas and guest speakers; they teach and present curriculum. The teacher supports both children and parents in their planning, organizes and facilitates all the learning involved, and is ultimately accountable for curriculum development and content. Each role is valuable and part of the whole—more than the sum of the parts. Curriculum can be built by the community together, making use of children’s interests and experience as a key impetus. Such curriculum builds on individual and collective interests to weave together instructional interactions that support and inspire learning by: . . . • Seizing the moment to build on interesting ideas that emerge in classroom discussion . . . . . . • Recognizing that children have their own learning agendas that can provide motivation and the “way in” to learning about all kinds of other curriculum areas . . . . . . • Supporting units of study that often emerge as a group process, as people become interested in each others’ interests and build on each others’ expertise . . . . . . • Using resources of all kinds (with little reliance on textbooks) . . . After exploring these points, I will discuss how the classroom structure and the teacher help create such an emerging curriculum, and the question of what the children learn. Curriculum is all around us, just waiting to happen. This is frequently referred to as “teaching to the moment,” or “seizing the moment.”

Seeing the Big Picture

When someone walks into our community of learners for the first time, his or her initial impression is often one of chaos. How can you tell what anyone is doing? Why are those children under the table? Who is watching the ones in the hall? The range of activity may include a lone reader curled high in a loft, an animated group involved in a dice game, or several students in elaborate costume refining the dialogue of their latest play. A visitor may also be hard put to identify the teacher among the four or five adults scattered throughout the room. That suited gentleman on his knees by the computers? The guy in jeans and T-shirt at a table, laughing with five children over a storybook? The woman in a flowing skirt sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by young mathematicians intently measuring their row of brightly colored cubes? All look equally engaged with the students—no one is sitting at the desk in the corner! If the visitor pauses more than a moment or two, however, at least one of the adults (and, most likely, several children) will excuse him- or herself from the group and approach the newcomer: While from the outside it may seem impossible to detect much of anything, once you're in the know—on the inside—the slightest variation in activity is immediately apparent. All well-run classrooms, regardless of educational philosophy, have a highly developed internal structure that is invisible to the uninitiated, consisting of the philosophy and practices that help participants determine expectations for themselves and others. These are the “cultural” guidelines—surrounding subject matter, group discussions, playtime, and so on—that allow students to settle into a familiar pattern and free them to explore their learning. This internal structure determines how children learn with their teacher, each other, the parents, and the materials they use in the classroom. It's the structure that sets up boundaries for communication, outlining when and how students relate to one another during the day.

An Orientation to Principles-in-Action

As mentioned at the beginning of this book, the key principle for learning as a school community is to build instruction on children’s interests in a collaborative way—learning activities are planned by children as well as adults, and adults learn from their own involvement as they foster children’s learning. Children are natural learners as long as they can be deeply involved in activities which they help to devise and for which they see a purpose—”minds-on” activities. At the OC, children participate in setting their learning goals and deciding how to use their time and resources, with the aid of the adults. Discussion, conversation, and enjoyment are a valued part of the learning process. The children learn not only the academic subjects but also how to make responsible choices for their own learning and how to solve problems ranging from mathematics and writing to interpersonal frictions at recess. The children learn to lead others (including adults) in school activities and to build on their own interests at the same time that they contribute to the learning of others in the classroom. Much of the day is planned flexibly, to build the curriculum around student contributions, staying open to the serendipitous “learning moments” that naturally emerge as interested people discuss ideas and issues and organize projects for children’s learning. Small groups of children work at an activity with a parent volunteer (a “co-oper”), the classroom teacher, or a child who has organized an activity for the others. Most children stay with the same teacher for two years in blended grade-level classes, creating a supportive classroom environment in which people of differing skills and interests contribute to each others’ learning and learn from teaching others. The children plan their day, choosing among some required activities and some optional ones. The whole class also meets several times each day for planning and for whole-group instruction connected with the learning activities. The principles of learning as a community are not easy even for seasoned teachers and co-oping parents to summarize, since they are generally enacted in everyday situations rather than spoken.

A New Teacher Learning to Share Responsibility with Parents

When I enrolled my son in the OC, the aspect that most excited me was the opportunity for my husband and me to be involved in his educational life; we had a view of education that incorporated the family as an integral part of the learning experience. When a job opened up for a kindergarten teacher in the OC the next year, I was eager to apply. I espoused the philosophy of the OC and saw teaching in the OC as a way to try new things that I had not been able to in my eight years as a special education teacher. I knew that I would love teaching in a program with this degree of parental involvement. My experience as a parent in the OC made me feel that I had a good grasp of the logistics of including parents and how they would work in my classroom. I had not realized how much my training as a teacher in a traditionally organized classroom would affect my ability to truly integrate a different philosophy of teaching and to work with parents in my classroom on such a regular basis. The expectation of how my classroom should run stemmed from my traditional training, which led me to believe that the teacher should be completely in control of what happens in the classroom. I began my new teaching position with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation. I would have the parents of my students there watching my every move! As I began to learn how to adapt to this scary thought, it became clear to me that I had not anticipated the amount of adult interaction that would occur on a daily basis. The suggestions, encouragement, decisions, criticism, complaints, and praises that are a natural part of teaching suddenly occurred on a scale that I had never experienced before. As the kindergarten teacher, I found it especially hard because many of the parents were new to the OC as well as new to kindergarten. They were learning how to be effective in the classroom as well as feeling anxious about how their young children were getting along in their first school experience.