2. The Evolution of an Idea

A former principal I worked for often said “Education is tricky because everyone has been a student and gone through some sort of education system. Everyone has personal experience they bring with them when they are talking about school. It means everyone - parents, teachers, custodians, community members - has an opinion on how the perfect school should be run.”

In our early days of discussing our vision for our small co-op this is what we found. We each had passionate beliefs about what a micro-school should look like, and we all had solid reasons why our ideas were important. But we quickly realized we couldn’t embrace all the ideas. At least, not at first.

We dove into learning about different educational models and philosophies for educating students. Nothing should be done just because “that’s how it’s always done.” Anything we put in place needed to be purposeful to our overall mission and belief. More than anything, though, we kept coming back to the idea that we wanted to respond to the needs of the students in our program. As adults, we could have amazing ideas - but none of those will matter if they do not match our learners. The one truth we all held onto was that we wanted a program that would empower our children. We needed to find a model that would be owned by the students and could adapt and change with them if something was not working for the community.

Finally, we settled on an inquiry-based model of learning where we ask questions and spend time finding the answers and proving them.

Inquiry will be behind all we do - from how it is best to set up our community of learners, what learning commitments/rules we will adhere to as a group, and what we should spend our time doing. The community of learners will discuss and determine each step of the process. We will utilize the socratic method, as well as dive deep into student-led projects.

Our learners will spend the year examining one overarching question as a group - “How does environment impact community?” Through taking an entire year to contemplate one question, we will support our learners in a critical thinking and questioning process. In our two-day a week nature program, our learners will switch the question to ask “How does community impact the environment?”

Through open discussion, learning from one another, and thinking deeply, we will support each learner in finding their own questions to pursue and individual projects to dive into.