Different Schools

Jen asked us to talk about one of the two schools she left for us to read about on her blog. I want to talk about the least structured one.

This school is all about learning at your own pace to the extreme! I don't know if it really does work for the best though. This school seems like more of a hang out than an actual school. I get the concepts that this school lets kids make their own decisions about how they learn and what they learn, for instance the kid who created a class about SAT test taking so he could prepare for the SAT/ACT for applying to college. While that is a step into this idea of experiential learning, it feels like the teachers don't really have a purpose at that school except to be there just in case of a fire or something along those lines. In some ways though, this school is a lot like Linworth in the sense of the whole experiential learning idea, but with Linworth there is a lot more structure.

At Linworth we have more structure with our schedule, seeing as we actually have a schedule to follow everyday and there's only four classes everyday(unless you take classes at the home schools) and we are actually graded on our performance in each of those classes. Then every Weds. we have Town Meeting scheduled during the second half of part of one class period. Usually we have discussions with the whole school or whoever is actually at school during this time, though it seems like Town Meetings have been going downhill without Su-Yang to make his annoying proposals. At least we had something to actually vote on.

This school is very different from the normal school setting, even with a school as liberal as Linworth, with no structured classes at all and now tests or homework to do, it's amazing how these kids can actually graduate from high school let alone go to college. With their only graduating requirement being a paper on why they should graduate, you would think that this school would be in the statistics for illiteracy in the U.S. But it seems, that even though there is no class there are still vague similarities. Like their form of Town Meeting, since this is a K-12 private school, the only kids that do participate are the older kids who are interested in how the school runs and since everything is optional here, I assume that most of the older kids don't actually go to these meetings.
One thing I actually like about this school is their internships that they go to once a week instead of our yearly Interim. Though I guess not everything can be perfect.

My opinion of this school is mixed, I think it's a very different approach, but I think there should be more structure than the whole sit around school all day. Though I can see only vaguely how this school would work, I don't think I would be able to stay in this school for long. Even though I hate the structure and firmness of school, I don't think I would be able to learn much and would probably become another statistic in this country.