What would it look like if schools really educated?

Tuesday I began coursework toward my Administration & Supervision Certification.  I am not sure if I want to be a Vice Principal or a Principal, but it feels like the next step and it is good to learn new things.  Right?

I was immediately struck, as cliché as it is to say, by the differences between “art schools” versus “regular schools.” The first day of “art” graduate school, I was asked the existential question, “How have you arrived here?” We were told to answer that question in any visual form we chose.  The prompt along with the professor’s tone and approach to learning set the tone for a year full of explorations and discoveries.  It was a year in which I expanded to the point of tears, but in which I learned and earned my self-worth.  Yesterday, at “regular” graduate school, I was asked – well not even really asked – to sit for three hours while the professor lectured.  It was a very interesting lecture about the law and school governance but nevertheless I walked away sorely missing art school. 

In the days since, I have been thinking and daydreaming – yes, daydreaming – about what my future school would look like and be like. Why was “art” school so different? And did it need to be this way? I gave myself the exercise to imagine what a school entirely of my creation - my school - would look like.  I first imagined a beautiful building with orderly classrooms, rows and rows of desks, and children in lines. Students would be obedient and teachers would sit in the front of the classroom and fill their students with knowledge. Then I realized that would be like lecturing for three hours, with no break, for the rest of my life. 

A school as defined by Webster’s Dictionary is an institution designed for the teaching of students (or "pupils") under the supervision of teachers.  So what would MY school look like….I think MY school would not be a school.  It would look like a concrete jungle; a city transformed into a school.  It would be full of real life problems and adults who wanted to solve those problems.  Students would learn by doing and not just doing what we say or what we want but what they think deserves to be done.  What do we call that – constructivism or expeditionary learning or Montessori?  Maybe it is all of these and something new.  My school would connect students virtually and physically; a vegetable garden; a video project using their cell phones; real conversation between students and teachers.

What would it look like if schools really educated?

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/archives/937?print=all

~Vanessa López-Sparaco