I’ve worked in summer camps for over 20 years. Around about Summer 15 we were trying to have evening campfires with singing and s’mores in a beautiful outdoor location in the woods. Standard stuff, you’d think it would go well. 

It wasn’t going well at all. It was rowdy, we staff weren’t kumbaya’ing, we were full on crowd-controlling, policing with everything short of batons and protective gear. And losing the battle. Yet as director I kept scheduling campfires.

Until one evening, after the flames were doused and the students were mercifully dispersed  into separate floors in separate dorms where the chaos dropped from red to orange and then yellow as they wore themselves out, David, a thoughtful academic I had never worked with before, said: “You know, we don’t have to have a campfire.”

No campfire? No s’mores, no singing? No melancholy reflection, no giggling, no faces reflecting the flickering flames, no swaying back and forth to a sad song? Could it still be a summer camp?

Of course it could. After an initial moment of staring at David, we agreed to jettison the campfire. What a relief. 

(This happened over 15 years ago. I saw David again for the first time this past summer and thanked him for that moment. It was a BIG insight for me. He couldn’t recall it. Ah well …)

So one of the hallmarks of traditional summer camp just wasn’t helping the purpose of our summer camp. Instead of gamely persisting, David helped me get over it, to move beyond an assumption that was holding us back, in order that we might get on with the real purpose of summer camp, like having fun, learning, and building a healthy community together.

I recently thought about the campfires and David and those energetic (to put it nicely) students as I mulled over school startups. The things that are impeding progress to the big vision have to go, they need to be removed. You need to clear some things out to have a new way of doing school. But that is hard.

Then just this morning I mentioned to a colleague on a Zoom that I’d been involved with several new programs in schools, and on one occasion with an entirely new school, all of which talked the talk during the planning stages but walked it all back once the program started. (IF the program even started: I can also think of someone who threw in the towel before ever getting started, after watching progressive dreams fade in favor of school as it is easily understandable to investors.)

But I’m not giving up hope. You can have summer camp without campfires. You NEED to have summer camp without the campfire if it’s actually a dumpster fire. 

And you can be progressive in a school, or with facets of the school, I know you can. There are some out there. (Thank you for leading the way, for showing us possible futures.)

I’m thinking this afternoon of ways to help those who are starting a school, or a program, or any sort of new educational adventure that they want to keep innovative, different, and worth pouring so much time and effort into. Try some bullets and some questions.

Bullets – Make a bullet list of those things that are typically associated with schools but that arguably dampen and restrict innovation. Remove them when you can, decrease their importance if flat out removal isn’t possible. Do less of what drags you back to traditional schooly ways of being. You can have a summer camp without a campfire. What impediments to innovative practices can we remove in order to create a culture of craving learning, of doing learning because why would you not?

Questions– List some questions that might be useful to start a discussion, to disrupt the adoption of schooly practices. When you ask the question, don’t let anyone answer it immediately. Find together the next best question that takes you deeper, that challenges your thinking. Suspend the need for answers long enough to really get into the thinking.

These two processes overlap of course, these bullets and questions. Try one or the other, or both, whatever suits. I’ll start you with a few of each to share what I have in mind. But you find your own bullets and questions, that of course will be best.

Things that are typically associated with schools but that may well dampen and restrict innovation. 

• restricting student choice to the point that they are most often learning material they aren’t interested in or aren’t good at
• adult judgment about student work, in other words, a culture in which students work for adult opinion and verification
  • comparing students with each other
  • giving out prizes
  • working for a grade or mark on a rubric
  • measuring achievement with a test score
• completing work as opposed to learning from it (get that worksheet filled in!)
• and now you find bullets relevant to your situation … 

Questions that might be useful to start a discussion, to disrupt just a little the adoption of schooly practices we assume are necessary to have school.

• Do we really have to do X? Why? (The best answer probably shouldn’t be that every other school does it.) What value does it bring? What culture does it help make?
• What value does X bring for the students? the teachers? for society?
• What might some side effects be of doing X? Are those side effects moving us in the direction we want to go? Are those side effects creating a healthy culture?
• and now add your own questions.

Kumbayah and good luck!