Sometimes the juxtaposition of two ways of thinking makes you sit up really straight or feel that you’ve skipped a heartbeat or two. The feeling of worlds colliding, and in my case this past week, bouncing off each other. Some of the LinkedIn posts I’m seeing are messing with me. Really!

We’ve been working hard at Eastwood Montreux to prepare for the start of the academic year, the inaugural academic year at this unique school. Together, my colleagues and I are building a process in which teachers and students co-create curriculum. It’s our attempt to make as much space for authentic student agency as possible. Not just a choice between A or B and not merely tinkering at the edges of traditional curricula, and certainly not student-input-for-show on decisions that have already been made by the adults. We are trying to go all in on co-creation. Processes, materials, timing, projects, groups, feedback, demonstrations, all to be co-determined with students. If you are going to teach agency, after all, you gotta make space for students (and teachers) to practice agency. 

Daring. Scary. Visionary? Maybe. Decidedly out of the box, that’s for sure.

So we’ve been talking about our values for the program and modeling for each other processes and sample content. It hasn‘t been easy for us adults. We have to constantly remind ourselves not to over-structure the curriculum, determining when, by whom, and in what way. We’re having to ask questions, not provide answers. And we are unlearning very ingrained habits of teaching. We’ll be asking the students to unlearn equally ingrained habits of schooling, too. I don’t anticipate this will be easy. In fact, from previous alternative programs I’ve been involved with, I know it won’t be easy. Unlearning many of the central assumptions of school, assumptions that individuals have rehearsed for years and generations have grown comfortable with, is heaving lifting. 

I’m happy to say we’re making progress in our initial iterations and that we’ll continue to make progress after the students arrive, iteration by iteration. All year long and beyond.

But those LinkedIn posts. Lots of them now, at the beginning of the school year. Some of the posts inspire me and many give me that jolt when worlds collide. It’s their schoolishness I’m reacting to, I realize. Grading policies, assuming a single teacher at the head of the room, the emphasis on rewards (and punishments), the predictability of curriculum, putting students in classes by age instead of readiness. It’s so schooly, which yes, has sometimes served well. But it’s so not the mindset we’re working on, it’s not our vision for the future of education.