If you look up the word ‘school’, you find three main definitions:
- An institution for educating children
- Any institution at which instruction is given in a particular discipline
- A group of people, particularly writers, artists, or philosophers, sharing the same or similar ideas, methods, or style.
At first glance, none of these descriptions seem to adequately define our learning community at The Village School. The first suggests children as passive recipients. No, that doesn’t fit. The second suggests teachers teaching specific disciplines and implies children ‘receiving’ as instructors/adults focus on ‘giving’. No, that clearly doesn’t describe our school. And the third- a group of writers, artists, or philosophers, well- no. But….wait. There may be something here.
This third definition is absent the word ‘institution’ so it departs from thinking of school as a location or place. It’s rooted in the concept of school as a community, as a group of people who share similar beliefs about something.
This seems closer to what we mean by ‘school’ at TVS. Interestingly, many of us are writers and artists- and I would argue that ALL of us are philosophers, *people engaged in thinking about the world, the universe, and society (*Definition from Oxford Languages).
Each person in our community, and in our network of learner-driven schools, shares similar ideas, methods, and approaches to education -which are, ironically, in contrast to the ideas, methods and approaches of traditional schools.
At the core, is our shared belief that all children have a gift that can change the world in a profound way. Our methods are rooted in Montessori and other inquiry-based, self-directed learning methods and our approach is one that emphasizes the development of the whole child– intellectually, physically, socially and emotionally. .
As a team, we are actively engaged in thinking about our methods and how they illustrate our beliefs about children and learning, hailing from the “learner-driven” school of thought. And this “team” includes our parents- particularly during these last few months of learning from home. Through our weekly surveys, every person in our community can give us feedback on our methods and approach.
Recently, we heard from a parent that our game-based Writing Workshop this session was inspiring their child to write more, but required a waiting period between submission of a writing entry and leveling up to the next challenge- which halted their child’s momentum and flow in the activity.
Another parent has observed something that I have observed with my own boys, while hyper-focusing on earning badges for their “level”, they are missing out on other rich learning experiences and activities.
These insights are a gift. Taken with our own observations and feedback from our learners, we can streamline, refine, or recreate parts of our learning design- particularly those that do not match our beliefs about children and how they learn best.
Like our heroes, we are committed to growth and improvement and we will continue to do so, just like them- by learning, doing, reflecting, and becoming better in the process. In other words, we come together as philosophers, but we stay together as humble practitioners- all of us.
Perhaps, if we were to create a fourth description of school that adequately defined our community, this would be it.
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