No Teachers and No Curriculum

Happy Constitution Day!

My wife is convinced that my ideas about a new learning system are not scalable. Hiring a gifted learning coach, one for literacy and one for problem-solving, and paying them upward of $100,000 a year for their services, expecting a learning cohort to show 4 ½ years of reading, writing, and math success over 3 years, building relationships between young learners and their learning coaches, expecting learning to happen anytime, anywhere, and balancing a vibrant technology experience with in-person learning.

Now I ask you: Why isn’t that scalable?

We have millions of kids in this country that desperately need something different in terms of learning than what they are currently receiving in the sucky schools they are assigned to.

What would happen if, like in medicine, these learners were given an opportunity to participate in an educational trial? Something very different than what our traditional K-12 system has convinced themselves that is in the best interest of those kids and their families?

Recently, Reasons to Be Cheerful posted an article titled “No Teachers and No Curriculum: Is This the School of the Future? The article begins:

“Walking into Brightworks could be a shock for helicopter parents – there are no rows of desks, no hallway passes and no bells to jolt students from one class to the next. Instead, the K-12 school is alive with invention, autonomy and what founder Gever Tulley calls ‘the energy of a big multi-generational family household.’ In a quiet pocket of San Francisco’s Presidio, just a short walk from the Golden Gate Bridge, a sandy beach and a winding forest creek, the three school buildings buzz with purpose and possibility.”

“The topic this semester is space. In the basement workshops, students Reza proudly shows off a Mars habitat model; another is designing an alien restaurant. In the light filled atrium, Bix is writing a screenplay about alien politics, and Truman discusses his model of Larry Niven’s imagined Ringworld, giant wheels where humans will hover in their habitat held in place by centrifugal force. In a transformed room-turned-planetarium, kids recline on couches pushed to the side, gazing at student-constructed celestial projections. Others are working on terraforming Venus or sketching Martian gardens.”

“’I think it’s arbitrary to form collections of kids that are all exactly the same age and they only play with the exact same age,’ Tulley says. ‘That seems very unhealthy to me. It also seems weird about schools that parents drop off their kids at the perimeter and then are somehow not invited to be in the mix.’”

“Therefore there are no traditional grades or classes at Brightworks. Students are grouped into ‘bands’ by interest and maturity, not by age. There are no teachers – just ‘collaborators,’ and parents are invited to visit and join as they please.”

“’It might sound futuristic,’ says Tulley, ‘but the idea is for students to be intrinsically motivated. They should learn because they want to, not because someone’s forcing them.’”

“Instead of following a standardized curriculum, Tulley urges his students to create their own ‘interest plans.’”

“His teaching motto: ‘Everything is interesting.’”

“The school founder puts great trust in his students. He hands six-year-olds power drills and matches, inviting them to build whatever their imaginations dream up. Tulley’s round, friendly face lights up with almost childlike enthusiasm when he picks up a drill to show a student how to protect their thumbs. ‘Don’t hurt yourself and don’t hurt others,’ that’s the most important rule at Brightworks.”

“When a third grader suggested building a boat, Tulley encouraged him: ‘If it’s seaworthy by Friday, we’ll launch it in the Pacific.’ That’s how Tulley tells it today, showing a photo of the brave eight-year-old paddling through the foggy San Francisco Bay in his plastic-wrapped tub, broomstick-turned-oar in hand.”

“Agency is woven into every part of Brightworks’ ecosystem. Students move freely through the buildings. ‘The first instinct can’t be ‘Where are you supposed to be?’ Tulley explains. ‘You have to assume they’re on a mission – maybe to grab a wrench from the shop or to take a walk. That’s part of the culture here.’”

“His experimental school is well-known across California, and many Silicon Valley parents send their kids there. Around half of the parents belong to the tech elite – Google, Apple, Facebook, or startups. The rest of the spots are subsidized for families who can’t afford the $42,000 tuition per school year.”

Tulley himself is neither a trained educator nor a parent; he’s a former software programmer who worked at Adobe, developed special effects for a film company and ran his own consultancy, Helium, which once advised the San Francisco 49ers football team.”

“The school he founded in 2011 is deeply shaped by his own upbringing. He grew up in Mendocino, ‘below the poverty line.’ His mother worked as a nurse, while he father – fisherman, filmmaker, and poet – remained ‘playful like a child all his life’ and was only later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Tulley and his brother were largely left to their own devices after school. ‘The beach, the streets, the whole world was our playground,’ Tulley recalls. As an adult, he watched in disbelief s his childhood friends didn’t allow their own kids the same freedom.”

…

Admittedly, a $42,000 tuition bill would be a non-starter for most families, especially those trapped in sucky neighborhood schools. But, with the advent of education savings accounts, and the possibility of a shrinking tuition cost as this type of learning organization gains popularity, what would happen if kids in low-performing schools were given an opportunity to learn the way Brightworks’ students learn? What are we waiting for? A time when the traditional school system fixes all their broken schools. Based on the last 50 years, that time isn’t going to happen.

Finally, why isn’t this model absolutely scalable? Why do folks like my wife try to convince themselves that a learning organization like Brightworks is just too risky, when the risk is actually keeping kids in really, really bad schools?

Why aren’t we at least trying to do something way different for these kids trapped in bad schools?

I don’t understand.

Til tomorrow. SVB