Linda F. Nathan

After two years in full-time academia, I am back in a school. It feels right. Labor Day and the ritual of children returning to school are, once again, part of my daily world. I am the newly appointed Executive Director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship (The Center). This nonprofit was originally developed by Diana Lam, retired Executive Director of Conservatory Lab Charter School (CLCS), and the school’s board of trustees.  CLCS serves over 400 students from pre-K to 8th grade on two campuses in Dorchester, MA. The Center, while affiliated with CLCS, has its own independent board and a mission that is still evolving:  

The Center for Artistry and Scholarship (CAS) is a nonprofit organization that fosters and mobilizes creative, arts-immersed schools where students are making and doing, teachers are asking how and why, and schools are engaged in their community.

So what will I do?

One of my first assignments is to share and promote two exciting rich academic models being used by Conservatory Lab Charter School, while continually improving the education provided to the school’s 450 students. I am back where it matters: at the intersection of arts and academics, where I can see every day how when a young person tries to do something really difficult—like learning to play the violin—their worldview and their sense of self truly changes. Words like “growth mindset,” “grit,” and “perseverance” are being used so frequently that they have almost lost their meaning, but in this setting I truly see each day how working in an ensemble to learn challenging music can transfer to feeling successful about oneself. “El Sistema-inspired” is the way CLCS describes its music program.

Conservatory Lab Charter School’s orchestra program is inspired by El Sistema, an international music program. El Sistema’s philosophy is based on the idea of music as the vehicle for social change: that the pursuit of musical excellence teaches students to strive for quality in all areas of their lives.  While many El Sistema programs are after school, Conservatory Lab Charter School infuses El Sistema into the school day.  I look forward to telling you more about the program and how this program could be used in other schools.   

El Sistema was founded in 1975 by Jose Antonio Abreu in Venezuela to affect social change through intensive, ensemble-based music education. Through a system of “nucleos” in poor and underserved neighborhoods, over 400,000 young people are involved in orchestral and choral music programs. While I was at Boston Arts Academy, I had the opportunity to visit El Sistema in Venezuela and witness first-hand the remarkable way it uses the teaching of musical excellence to help young people strive for excellence in other parts of their lives. As Abreu says, “the orchestra is the only community that comes together for the sole purpose of agreeing with itself.” The idea of the orchestra as a democratic institution is indeed unique in the classical music world, and I look forward to helping define and codify, along with various independent research teams, how El Sistema works in daily practice in the United States. I would love to see many more schools adopt this orientation towards learning music.

I get to witness on a daily basis how a school pours itself into project-based learning by using the EL (formerly Expeditionary Learning) curriculum and processes. I was involved in the early years of EL’s development, so it’s wonderful to see that it has survived and thrived through the past decades of high-stakes testing! There is nothing easy about project-based teaching and learning. It requires a great deal of skill and training on the part of the faculty, but Conservatory Lab is determined to be a place where risk-taking, experimentation and deep learning (to use the new term du jour) are valued as much as high scores on tests. Some of Conservatory Lab’s most famous expeditions can be found here

The school’s principal is Nicole Mack, one of the most clear-headed and talented individuals I have had the honor of working with.

She and her team have already led some great professional development sessions to help teachers become immersed in whole brain teaching and learning and that all academic teachers understand what it’s like to learn to play an instrument.  What a great place to teach!  Watch a video of the teacher orchestra here!

Another area of focus for the Center (and for me) is the Perrone Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership. I am thrilled that the first cohort of the Perrone Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership began in August and represents emerging leaders from Citizens Schools, Hudson High School, Cambridge Public Schools, Conservatory Lab Charter School, and the following Boston Public Schools: Boston Arts Academy, Boston Latin School, Charlestown High School, Edwards Middle School, Lila Frederick Pilot Middle School and the Mary Lyons Pilot High School.

Carmen Torres co-directs PSI with me, and in her “spare time” she also is the head of Student and Family Support at Conservatory Lab. One of our earliest activities with our students was to immerse them in artistic thinking. We wrote and performed a blues anthem that reflected our emerging leadership journeys.

It has been a dream of mine to honor two of my most important mentors, Vito Perrone and Ted Sizer, by developing a program that reflects their lifetime of work. Here are the leadership competencies we hope to develop in our students.

Both Vito and Ted were passionate about the ways in which schools and communities were connected and, while neither were known as arts advocates, both acknowledged in their writing the importance of creativity in student learning. PSI prepares emerging leaders from both education and not for profit worlds to integrate three distinct lenses. We describe the lenses this way:

1. The Artist: utilizing creativity, design, risk taking and experimentation to solve problems. Through the arts, one persists, refines, and considers many different approaches.
2. The Educator: informed and driven by experience in and research on powerful, engaging, and sustained learning; drawing upon a deep knowledge of child and adolescent development; and applying a profound understanding of the learning process to prepare students for academic and personal success.
3. The Community-Based Organization Leader: employing a culturally competent understanding of the needs of youth and families in a given community to engage effectively in a dynamic collaborative process of community growth and development. What is (or is not) happening at home can have a profound effect on a student’s health and learning.

Another evolving program of the Center is the Creative Schools Project. Here is where we hope to share “best practices” of various schools that put arts in the center of teaching and learning. Since Conservatory Lab is our “lab” school we will start there, and share stories of successes and challenges from the classrooms. Stay tuned! Hopefully many of those posts will come from former students and colleagues of mine—both from Boston Arts Academy and other places.

I want to encourage you to help us think through what CAS can become. Seth Racine has joined me to help give shape to the Center. We both feel that this new organization can play an important role in the national and international debates about what matters in education today.  Write us, come visit and challenge us!

Below, check out some photos from when the mayor came to visit Conservatory Lab! You can see more and learn about his visit here.

Always at this time of year, I think about the many thoughtful ways teachers and students in schools honor Thanksgiving, or “Dia de la Accion” in Spanish. (I like the Spanish term: Day of Action since it reflects much of the way I think about this holiday).

For many years when I was co-director of Fenway High School, after having a Thanksgiving breakfast with students, faculty would gather with Vito Perrone who was a Lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education. We would have a “Thanksgiving retreat” with Vito in which we would discuss some of our most intractable problems. We had made it to Thanksgiving. Something about getting to Thanksgiving without losing hope seemed more powerful than the phrase we often heard, “crawling towards Christmas.” Vito always helped us see that even as we felt our problems were unsolvable, our questions were getting better. He would remind us that we were thinking better and more creatively together, and that we would continue to make a difference in the lives of young people. We would leave those annual gatherings feeling stronger about facing our classrooms after the short break, and more re-assured that we could use one another to grapple with the complex array of student issues we faced everyday.

When I founded BAA, we began a new tradition that also revolved around a Thanksgiving breakfast with students, and then transitioned to a Thanksgiving play that the faculty would perform for the students. It was often a silly rendition of a fairy tale but stylized to match the times. In later years, various teachers would write an original play. The point was to amuse our students before sending them off on a holiday break which for many signified tension, trauma and sadness. In addition, it was a chance for the entire faculty to collaborate together on crazy and fun project while displaying an array of artistic talents. After the play, and the hugs and goodbyes for students, the faculty gathered in a large circle and individually gave thanks. Although we sometimes had to remind individuals not to speak in paragraphs, the chance to share a “thanksgiving” thought with colleagues was a powerful way to mark the end of the term. Faculty often thanked colleagues for a specific action; sometimes teachers gave thanks to their own “home” family or thanks for their health. The specific thanksgiving mattered less than the fact that we gathered annually in this way.

My thanksgiving message is to all teachers and leaders who work diligently every day with students in school and classrooms. Your job is incredibly difficult. It cannot be measured by test scores. You do not get told thank you nearly enough. Thank you for all you do for young people and their families. As Vito would say, “I know your questions are getting better.”

Old Havana

How do we really ever understand another person and her struggles? How can we ever walk in another’s shoes? How can we truly tell another’s story without also telling our own?

I went back to Cuba this year because of my friend and colleague Margarita Muñiz. I made a promise not to forget her: To share her story and her legacy; to ensure that future educators knew of her fight for equitable and excellent bilingual education. Margarita’s story would be told through film with two colleagues. Veronica Wells graduated from BAA almost ten years ago and is now an independent film maker and actress. Blanca Bonilla, also an excellent documentary filmmaker, was one of my first theatre students over 35 years ago. She works as BAA’s Director of Admissions. We went to meet Margarita’s Cuban family. We wanted to better understand her upbringing, her sudden departure as a Peter Pan “orphan,” and the reality of Cuba today.

Yet I have returned to Boston feeling that Cuba told me a story about myself. A story of loss and love and friendships that ended too soon. I went to tell Margarita’s story, but Margarita’s story became mine.

The team!

Margarita was the principal of the Rafael Hernandez School in Boston for at least three decades. She became a community icon, in part, because of her fight to keep alive bilingual education in the 1970. The Hernandez, which was conceived and founded by a group of Puerto Rican activists, was one of the first bilingual schools in the United States. It quickly became one of the most popular and successful in the Boston Public Schools.

Margarita Muñiz

In 2011, just days before Margarita died after a long battle with cancer, the Boston Public Schools voted to found the first bilingual high school in Boston. In honor of Margarita’s many accomplishments, it was named: Margarita Muñiz Academy. Margarita gave herself to her school and her students and, in the best way she knew how, to her family. She was exacting, demanding and critical. She didn’t accept disagreement well from adults, yet she gave her students many opportunities to grow and learn and make mistakes. She could also be enormously kind, accepting and generous. As we learned in our travels, she missed her extended family with an aching poignancy that we hope to capture on the screen. Listening to her cousin read Margarita’s holiday cards made me wish desperately that history had not been so cruel. Margarita was not like some Cubans in the United States who had nothing good to say about the revolution. She rarely engaged in conversations bashing Cuba’s politics. Margarita just missed her family. Terribly.

Outside the house in Cienfuegos

Margarita’s Aunt Rosario opening the gate to the house in Cienfuegos.

Margarita’s gift to me was the opportunity to return to Cuba and discover her story in all of her complexities — good and bad. Ours was a journey filled with questions and confusions about what we were observing, listening or learning about.

In learning more about Margarita, Cuba helped me confront my own past and my own losses. I had not expected that. Perhaps that is how Margarita was generous with me. Cuba shone a light on my belief that we are all tied together in this life and in this world. We are here on this earth for such a short time to take care and honor it and learn from others. To act with kindness and generosity at the same time. Not always easy.

Cuba was kind and generous to us. And enormously complex. Margarita gave me the gift of Steve Blossom, friend and co-trustee of her estate. He allowed us to tell Margarita’s story. Veronica and Blanca brought extraordinary sensibilities to the work. The trip would not have been possible without their film-making abilities and depth of compassion and understanding. They helped me understand what makes a story compelling, even when painful. Both of them understood the range of emotions I felt as I met Margarita’s family and interviewed them. Gently and carefully they peeled back the layers of Margarita’s life through their questions and camera shots.

Margarita’s cousin Rebecca and her daughter Laura

Oops! A little rana or frog which Laura tells me is good for keeping out the bacteria. There is no running water here.

Interviewing Margarita’s 90 year old aunt in the back yard

Margaritas uncle curing his own tobacco

Cuba told me that my story IS the story of the many friends I have loved and lost. Cuba reminded me about the importance of family and the wonderful and loving family that I have. I ached to return home. All three of us did. We compared our own family stories and learned of one another’s passions and idiosyncrasies. We laughed together.

We also learned the beauty of being DISCONNECTED from cellphones and computers since Cuba has little internet and it is costly. We listened and connected to ourselves and others instead. No texts or news to distract us. We knew little of the outside world. Still, the Cuban people passionately desire to be part of the world wide web and to learn and communicate freely.

6th grade graduate in front of a portrait of Cuban national hero José Martí

Cienfuegos

Old Havana

We made friends. Wonderful friends who were also interested in Margarita’s story, and in us. They processed the many layers with us—explaining why a family would send their daughter to an orphanage in Louisiana thinking they would never see her again. Our Cuban friends helped us understand why Margarita might have presented herself as much more upper class than she actually was. And Margarita’s family helped us understand the many connections between Margarita’s family of birth in Cienfuegos and the Claflins, her “adopted” family in Boston, specifically Belmont. The Claflin family owned the sugar plantation where Margarita’s family worked and where she grew up.

It was the Claflins who eventually helped Margarita’s parents leave Cuba and be re-united with their daughter, Margarita, who had spent about five years in a Catholic orphanage and school in Louisiana. The Peter Pan program, run by the Catholic church and probably the CIA as well, ferreted young children like Margarita out of Cuba and placed them in Catholic orphanages across the United States to “save” them from the “savages” of Communism. Most parents believed that they would never again see their children; hence they called them “Peter Pan orphans.”

Nancy, town historian, in front of the sugar plantation main house where Margarita’s parents worked.

Felix’s sister Maria Antonio outside her school.

We met the historian, Nancy, from the hamlet of Soledad, location of the sugar plantation “big house.” The many connections between Boston and Cienfuegos still support a warm sister-city sense, even though worlds apart and with the passage of almost 70 years. We learned so much from these people: Margarita was given an award at BU as the alumna of the year in 2007. Her mother worked in the registrar’s office at BU, many years after working as the governess for the Claflin children in Cuba.

With Alicia Alonso, founder of the National Ballet

The music, the dance and other arts are of enormously high quality. We saw a fabulous performance of the National Ballet, yet noted with dismay the very few Afro-Cuban dancers. We met Alicia Alonso, founder of the National Ballet and still the company’s director at 94. She is legally blind. In fact, she danced for many years blind. She comes to work every day and all decisions still go through her.

For eight days we tried to learn the story of a complex and complicated Margarita from an even more complex and complicated nation. We walked through streets of Havana that felt like a movie set from the 1950s. We rode in cars older than I am; we met taxi drivers with doctoral degrees in history and engineering.

Cars are not always a reliable form of transportation in Cuba

Great rides in “almendrones” or almond cars – the very old cars that are so well maintained and serve as a taxi system.

Corner of the cretins, or idiots, in the Museum of the Revolution depicting Batista, Reagan, and both Bushes.

Billboard showing propaganda of the revolution

Billboard showing propaganda of the revolution

We heard about Cuba as an upside down pyramid. Nothing quite makes sense viewed through our American capitalist lens. We listened to musicians made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club CD and movie. We danced to music in alley-ways and clubs. We laughed; we cried; we learned that the best way to know yourself is to learn about others. I returned to my home humbled by the experience of learning about Margarita. I returned buoyed by the possibilities that Cuba is on the brink of positive change. I have returned grateful for new and deepened friendships with Veronica and Blanca, and the chance to reminisce about the many friends that exist only as memories, albeit beautiful ones.

To my travel companions and film makers, Veronica and Blanca, whose energy and humor made this journey to Cuba an unforgettable experience. Gracias a todos. Especialamente a Cuba.

At the Buena Vista Social Club

Beautiful beach in Cienfuegos where Veronica learned to swim!

Took some time to learn to swim!

Connections of love and loss and friendship

Margarita lives in my memory with other cherished friends. Finding out about Margarita’s life caused me to relive parts of my own life. Margarita reminded me of other friendships, of lives cut short too quickly.

Margarita’s commitment to social justice is like that of Abbie Schirmer, my colleague and friend from many years at Fenway and in Boston Teacher Union (BTU) work. I miss Abbie every day. She helped me organize that first solidarity trip to Cuba in 1979 even though she never went with us. She, too, fought daily for students to reach their dreams, often against a backdrop of family and community difficulties. Abbie was a fighter, like Margarita. You wanted her on your team, always!

Margarita’s love of family reminded me of Amy Waldman, my best friend from college who later married Felix Vilaplana. Felix left Cuba in 1980 among what became known as the Marieltos—the Cubans who left by boats from the town of Mariel. Amy, with whom I shared almost everything, died too young and left behind Felix and two beautiful children—Maya and Talia.  I have the privilege of being Maya’s madrina. Amy was a connecter and a fierce advocate for family, and when she was living she traveled to Cuba to meet all of Felix’s family. She especially loved his sister Maria Antonia whom we got to meet. Like me, Maria was a principal and a teacher. Maria told me how it was due to Amy that so many of her family re-connected.

Margarita’s dignity and determination as she confronted her cancer reminded me of Emily, my friend from high school, who so bravely fought leukemia. Emily spoke before medical school classrooms about the stages of denial and then acceptance as her death became imminent. Emily, with her long dark hair and dark eyes, spoke before the publication of the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross book “On Death and Dying.” Emily wanted young people in the medical profession to know the beauty in death. She, too, wanted her story told, her twenty-one years remembered and to leave something to help others. So she gave talks whenever and wherever she could. I was spellbound by this and angry. I wanted my friend alive and not so accepting of her death. It felt unfair.

Margarita was similar to Deidre, a colleague from BAA, whom I had the privilege of knowing for nine years as she worked on issues of access and equity for our students. She was deeply committed to creating the conditions for a strong student government and for student decision making about issues related to language of origin, race and gender. Deidre took students to conferences, to college visits, to work internships. She repeatedly found ways to provide access to unique opportunities for all of her students. She gave herself to their growth and development. Deidre came alive even more after her death as I helped prepare for her final celebration and memorial.

To Abbie, Amy, Emily, Deidre and Margarita, I thank you for the gifts you shared along the way. I am humbled to have shared time with each of you.

What’s right about schooling?

Too much of school these days is relegated to a relentless focus on raising test scores. Too little of school is dedicated to creative and inquisitive pursuits. Too much of “schooling” is about learning what someone else has decided young people must know and be able to do—what factoids must be crammed into their brains. Or worse – schooling and learning have become almost synonymous with high scores on a test.  Creativity, critical thinking and communication skills have taken a backseat to our obsession with testing, compliance and accountability. There is nothing wrong with a data-driven school, but the data cannot just be about what reading and math quartile 3rd graders are in. Learning is more than numbers on a test.

I was fuming about all that is wrong with “education reform” today until I walked into the NuVu Studio on a snow day last month — note that it is not called “school.”

NuVu describes itself this way:

NuVu is an innovation center for middle and high school students whose pedagogy is based on the studio model and geared around multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects. NuVu nurtures creative problem solving, collaboration, and presentation skills, all critical for student success.

It’s tag line is “innovative education for the future.”

NuVu feels like a mini-version of MIT’s Media Lab, but for younger people. As the founder/director, Saeed Arida, explained to me “NuVu is really for young people for whom the traditional school model has failed.” NuVu doesn’t believe in traditional classes and classrooms. Students work in large studio spaces. There is a main office which is divided with glass walls so that students and adults always see one another. 3-D printers line one wall. Mannequins are grouped in the entrance inviting fashion design projects.

Saeed Arida with pictures of students

A more traditional wood shop with work benches and various cutting tools has a separate entrance and an actual door, but again the walls are mostly glass. Coaches work with students in small groups and introduce them to a variety of open ended problems. There are no traditional subjects like math or history, science or art.  Students use a method called the “studio model” or “design thinking.” In this model one learns “to navigate the messiness of the creative process, from inception to completion.” Classes are not segmented into hour long blocks; instead, students spend at least two weeks, daily from 9am-3pm, re-imagining solutions to complex questions such as: How to redesign school breakfast or lunch? One student, who has gained some notoriety on NuVu’s web site and vimeos, works diligently to improve access for students who are physically challenged and in wheelchairs.

students in the studio

woodshop

mannequins welcome students in the morning

Shop Etiquette: these are the only rules I saw at NuVU

How does the studio actually work? Here is NuVu’s own description:

Students are provided with access to outside resources – leading thinkers and experts – to whom they present their framework and receive feedback. Students document their process and progress, continually reviewing it with the Coach. They set parameters, synthesize, and continue refining, refining, refining. NuVu trains students to apply multiple perspectives to challenge and refine ideas over and over again until it becomes a natural learning process. All of this is documented through individual student portfolios. [This is in lieu of traditional grades].

Here is a graphic from NuVu that describes the student’s processes.

I found it such a relief to return to discussions about real assessment of student work instead of just tests.  NuVu describes its assessment system as follows:

A portfolio serves as a compilation of student work done at NuVu over the course of the term, semester or full year and is meant to show the student’s growth over time and development of key academic and life skills (creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, research, quantitative reasoning and analysis). Each NuVu student is provided with their own online profile on NuVu’s online platform where they document and present their work. At frequent periods during the term, NuVu’s team works with the student to assess how far the student has developed since the beginning of the term. The portfolio-based assessment helps make learning and assessment relevant to students’ lives.

Perhaps all trends in education are cyclical. Portfolio assessment was widely implemented in the late 80s and 90s. In fact, when I was co-directing Fenway High School from 1984-1998, we spent a great deal of our professional time as faculty developing a portfolio assessment system. As state tests (such as MCAS in Massachusetts) began to consume more and more of educators’ attention, it became more difficult to focus on developing the criteria for measuring student mastery as well as the myriad ways of assessing that mastery. We didn’t feel that the ideas that Ted Sizer had developed in his now seminal Horace books (Horace’s Compromise, Horace’s School, Horace’s Hope) were irrelevant, but we found it increasingly difficult to find the time to develop and implement deep and challenging portfolio experiences, especially in the face of high stakes testing.  Many educators began to retreat from developing curriculum and assessments that aligned with students’ own passion as the pressure to produce good student scores on tests increased. We knew that our students were still learning some important basic skills; nevertheless, the trade off between test scores and engaging curriculum has had negative repercussions. Personalized learning and competency-based teaching and learning have almost become “boutique terms” only available to those who can pay for it in private independent schools or for those in highly specialized schools.

At Boston Arts Academy, which I founded in 1998, as state testing was gaining momentum, the school has managed to keep some portfolio assessment at the center of learning for students. This means that test preparation for the MCAS may be sacrificed in favor of more time, for instance, developing senior grant projects which require students to use both their artistic and academic skills to solve a community based problem. Students research a range of issues in which they want to make a difference such as fighting homelessness, aiding children of incarcerated parents, increasing arts programs in schools, confronting body image issues in teens, and providing access to the arts for deaf and hard of hearing students. In their proposals students describe how they will address their chosen issue. Even if a student’s specific project is not chosen by a panel of judges for funding, students report that this year-long, multi-disciplinary experience often carries them into college and career, and they even find themselves returning to the project many years later. This is what it means to educate for and with passion. That is what NuVu is doing, too.

This kind of learning happens only in isolated pockets around the country. NuVu now must charge tuition to be solvent. They have found it difficult to work with public school districts that can’t figure out how to “fit” the studio model into the constraints of credits, grades and state regulations. All sorts of rationales are given: it is too expensive; students won’t learn the basics; students won’t do well on tests; teachers can’t teach this way, and the list goes on and on. Yet, we have exciting examples across the country of schools that do just this. Big Picture Project  and its MET (http://metcenter.org) schools view students as passionate competent learners who deserve to have some choice in their approach to learning. High Tech High in San Diego  (http://hightechhigh.org) shares much of the same philosophy as NuVu about how schools and studio models might overlap.

I want to see more schools inviting students to approach their education passionately and creatively. Risk taking and “mucking about” with ideas in the company of adults who take students seriously might actually give us another window into effective teaching and learning. Studio thinking, design thinking, maker spaces, fab labs – all these catch phrases don’t just belong in higher education institutes like MIT or in Innovation Labs at Harvard. They belong in our public K-12 school with our students who are desperate for engaging and personalized learning.

As I look around the country, I get more and more concerned that our state and federal mandates have caused us to ignore the idea that education is about empowerment and the ability to make change in one’s own life and community. Vito Perrone, my mentor and a mentor to hundreds of educators around the country, wrote in his book A Letter to Teachers about how quality education is about the ability to connect learning from the community to school and the school to community. Perrone wrote that education is about “build[ing] bridges…” and not just about reproducing the materials and expectations of our current society. He asked, “What do we most want our students to come to understand as a result of their schooling?” Perrone urged us to think about “setting ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement.” By that he meant the opportunity to discover joy and play and the power of community. Perrone didn’t shirk away from recognizing the devastating impacts of poverty, poor nutrition, unemployment, or racism, but he pushed us as educators not to allow the trauma surrounding so many of our students’ lives to prevent them (and us) to think about aesthetics and authentic learning. Perrone used these terms before they sounded trite to our 21^st century politicians. He exhorted us to think about larger possibilities for learning, and not to settle for quick fixes and test scores. He often paraphrased Dewey, especially in the ways that Dewey thought about the importance of habits of mind, heart, and hands. For Perrone, vocational education, project based learning, was for all students not just those who couldn’t “do school.”

Recently, I learned about the Workshop School in Philadelphia http://www.workshopschool.org/, which is a small school that focuses on solving real world problems. The four co-founders are Dr. Matthew Riggan, Executive Director and engineer, Simon Hauger, Principal, Dr. Michael Clapper, teacher, and Dr. C. Aiden Downey, the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Division of Educational Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

The web site describes how the school is different from most schools because “students spend their days working on meaningful projects that solve real world problems.” Vito would have loved this school. Simon Hauger, one of the school’s founders and an engineer says, “We believe learning should be interesting, even fun. The Workshop is a place where your ideas matter.  Sure, we focus on all of the stuff you need to be successful in school, like reading, writing, and math. And we definitely work hard. But we also learn the things you need to be successful in life. Like how to ask the right questions, push through adversity, make positive change, and work well with other people.” Projects run the gamut from building a solar powered house to investigating topics such as immigration or climate change. Students say that the school feels like “family.”

In today’s high stakes turnaround approach to learning, “family” is almost seen as a curse word. At the very least, it is seen as being “soft on standards.” We are not allowed to talk anymore about the trauma and pain that our kids come to school with. Double periods of English and math and scores on tests are all that is measured and all that is reported. But we know that when school is truly about engaging young people, learning really occurs. Schools like this might show us the way forward.

When I first began at Fenway High School, Vito Perrone suggested that we visit Ann Cook at Urban Academy in NYC. Vito wanted us to see how they did Project Week.  We borrowed many of Urban’s ideas and introduced Project Week to Fenway in the early 1990s.  One of our essential questions was: “What makes a good museum?” 250 students fanned out across the city to study this question in various forms. At the week’s end, we reported out our findings to museum directors, city councilors and other interested officials. It was an exhilarating learning expedition for students and teachers. To this day, Fenway continues Project Week and Boston Green Academy (another Boston Public School) also has introduced Project Week. It has morphed a great deal and is not necessarily one essential question that everyone studies, but it continues to be a high point of the year for everyone. I vividly remember one of our earliest discussions after Project Week with Vito. As he listened to our excitement about all we had learned he asked, “Why not have Project Year and School week?” That question has stayed with me.

I had always hoped that the Boston Arts Academy would find a way to bring “project week” into the school’s curriculum. Finally, under the leadership of Anne Clark, BAA’s headmaster, and Monika Aldarondo, Creative Director, “Intersession” was born at BAA. Students and teachers offered 33 different sessions. In the proposals the leader had to describe the goals of the learning experience as well as the activities and the community partners (if any) involved. “Think about all the actions you can take to understand and experience a topic more deeply. In addition describe all the ways your experience will allow people to learn to explore, create, investigate, make, do, engage, perform, play, question, connect, practice and deepen.” These words and their meaning are so compelling to me and to students.

Some of the projects included: Site Specific Dance (students studied exhibits at the Museum of Science and then responded in dance), Mini Musicals, Youth Activism, Documentary Film Making, Healing with Music (including learning about Alzheimer’s and performing at a senior citizens home), Cooking, CosPlay which allowed students to study anime characters and construct their costumes, Exploring Local and National Monuments, Study of the Caribbean, Sculpting Fashion, Basics of Owning a Car, Jewelry Making and the list goes on and on.

A dancer working on a site specific dance showed me his duet on balance. “I went to the exhibit about the human body and spent a lot of time learning about the ear. My dance is an exploration of how the ear helps us balance.” Another dancer showed me her quartet she had finished choreographing about planets and their inter-relationships. “We spent a full day at the exhibit learning, reading, playing, choreographing. We made our dance right there. No one wanted to be Uranus at first, but we had to figure out how that planet was interacting with Pluto and Neptune. It was fun to learn about planets in a different way.” The idea of interacting with a museum exhibit through dance was exhilarating and challenging for these young dancers. I’m certain they wouldn’t have spent so long at an exhibit if they hadn’t had the chance to use their passion and their way of experiencing the world—through movement—as their medium for understanding.  One of the students in the cooking group talked about how much he had learned about shopping on a budget and how you could still eat nutritious food but how planning was so crucial. A small group of girls (with a male teacher) studied pregnancy both from a scientific and emotional perspective, reading literature, studying reproduction and even carrying an 8lb weight around to learn about the physical dimensions to pregnancy.

I believe that because students to chose their projects (and even volunteered to lead projects) the level of enthusiasm and engagement was breathtaking.

But while I was thrilled to see Intersession at BAA, I also was sad. This kind of open-ended exploration with joy is not generally the norm in schools. We are continuing to feed our students a steady diet of discrete and disconnected facts and text book learning. We seem to avoid the obvious: when students are engaged they will learn. When students are included and asked about what they want to study, they will respond. This doesn’t mean that students should never be exposed to stuff that they don’t like or don’t want to learn, but at least half the day should be spent engaging in activities that directly relate to questions students are asking.  This is what Vito meant when he talked about the “larger purposes of school.”

Check out these pictures from intersession. I hope you can begin to ask, “How can ice skating be part of school?” Or “What does it mean for musicians to study abstract painting?” Or even better, “What does it mean when students are leading the sessions?” We must not settle for what currently passes as schools. We must keep pushing ourselves to ask how our classrooms can become more open to real community and interests of our students. Then, and only then, will school be a place where we all want to belong as a family.

Vito and me

This student group learned to figure skate during intersession.

Students learned to make their own candy and constructed a “candy land.”

Learning to make jewelry