Fantasy School

The final project for one of my classes was to design a school. The school could be any place where any people learn anything. I told them they don't have to worry about where the money would come from either. I gave them a number of questions to answer about their school. They presented their ideas today and the results were pretty interesting.

Five of the six students who had it finished (in time for class) still chose to invent an academic school, or at least schools that had academic subjects available. (The sixth school was a gaming school--as in computer games--which also offered PE as an option). One school featured a helicopter landing pad on top and a waterslide down the outside of the building. All of the schools had multiple playing fields (something lacking from our school and many other urban schools.) Several schools required uniforms and most had some kind of interview and/or essay as an entrance requirement. (This surprised me a little.) One school offered to pay students who attend, but they would have to attend at least 3 days per week to get paid. (To that, another student said, "I'm comin 5 days a week if I'm gettin paid!")

Two schools offered dormitories. One of those was an all-boys football school (there'd be a girls' school next door). The other would have no teachers and would be entirely based on peer-teaching. Two of the schools require students to have some goal or dream of their future, upon which their education would be based (that is, they'd take the classes that were appropriate to their chosen career).

Another part of the project involved students choosing authors we'd read during the class and saying why those authors would or wouldn't like to attend their school. Most of the imaginary schools had libraries full of books that their inventors said would please the authors who had written about their love of reading. (Our school doesn't have a library, although the public library isn't too far away.)

Overall, it was a successful assignment in that it engaged students in reflecting on the learning process and writing a bit more than they had for other assignments. They were all quite interested in hearing about each other's ideas (something they don't get to do a lot of in independent study, unfortunately).

Tomorrow, we're all going to see the movie Freedom Writers. It was a student's request and I asked our executive director for the money, which she agreed to. I have 13 or 14 students signed up, plus another teacher is bring about 20 students from the YAYI (Youth Against Youth-Incarceration) group. We're going to meet at the school, walk to the busstop, ride up to Berkeley and see it up there. I am looking forward to seeing it with them and hearing what they think afterwards.

Anyone want to share their fantasy school?