In my line of work (the crazy and unpredictable world of education reform) we share our model of education, which utilizes a student-centered approach that requires a systemic change, with many people. The people we meet with always have plenty of questions as to how this works despite the fact it has been successfully serving students for 18 years at our flagship school (The Minnesota New Country School) and the many other replications schools.

The EdVisions model doesn’t include bells, hallways with lockers, a course/classroom curriculum, GPA’s or class rank. This isn’t your traditional middle/high school and wasn’t designed as such.

This model does so many things differently but I’d like to focus on the curriculum. The EdVisions model cites ‘The world is the curriculum.” This is an accurate assessment as students garner the required standards, subjects, credits, etc. via a personalized curriculum unique to each student’s individual needs. This personalized curriculum blends a full-time multiage advisory, student-directed project-baseds, seminars, online-classes, college courses, internships/job shadowing and field experiences.

This tends to cause many traditional teachers to cringe. Why? Many fear they are no longer needed. Others state their concern for how the students will “get all of the standards checked off.” We focus first on the learning then the actual content. Yes, the students still get all of their required standards in order to graduate but that isn’t the end all. It is far more important that students have all the tools required to be able to learn things on their own after they leave the safety and security of high school.

Again, this can be a frightening thought for some people. I can understand their concern when the current US education system is so focused on content and standardized testing to demonstrate mastery of this content. The flaw in this thought process is the assumption that students learn and retain 100% of that content. Let’s use biology as an example…say a student completes all the required biology standards…they probably actually learned 75% of them. Would it have been better for the student to have focused on 75% of those standards to begin with allowing more time to dig deeper into those areas and actually learn all of that 75%?

I would argue YES. Why? Because the process of learning (engaging, discovery, exploration, explanation, evaluation, reflection…) is far more important for life long learning than simply route memorization.

I feel it is far more important that students have skills/competencies such as time management, responsibility, resiliency, persistence, independence, creativity…Providing students the proper tools in an environment most conducive to learning so they can continue to be curious and hungry to learn more.