50 ways to make your school more democratic

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Changing Education as We SpeakUncategorized

50 Ways To Make Your School More Democratic

Posted by Kirsten Olson December 13, 2010 20 CommentsThis is also cross posted at the IDEA (Institute for Democratic Education In America) website.

It was an amazing meeting. Ten activists, educators, school founders, and school re-starters

recently gathered for an IDEA Board Retreat in San Francisco. Fired up by Pedro Nogueraskeynote speech to the Coalition of Essential Schools the day before, we framed up IDEAscommitments and strategy: how we move this baby out so were actually doing something,making sure were talking about what matters, and ensuring were providing tools for change.Because we aim to be the organization in this country connecting people who are transforming anrevolutionizing education, we had a lot to talk about.

Want to get in?

What have you done, as a classroom teacher, a student, a parent, administrator, to make your

school more equitable, less hierarchical, more welcoming to everyone, and more like a place wherreal thinking happens?

50 WAYS (or more!) MAKE YOUR SCHOOL MORE DEMOCRATIC

1. Invite 5 students to a faculty meeting

2. Eliminate staff and student bathrooms

3. Ask students to facilitate important school wide meetings

4. Start each day with a morning meeting and check in, and listen to each other. (How are you?How are you feeling today?)

5. Ask students to develop rubrics for judging excellent work

6. End courses/units with a culminating projects designed by students, about something thatreally matters to them

7. Have students read each others papers and comment on them, directly to each other
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8. Get students to determine the homework policy (even in the early grades)

9. Charge students with deciding what goes up on the walls at school

10. Pass a talking stick during intense discussions so that everyone gets a chance to speak

11. Eat lunch with kids (or teachers) you rarely talk to

12. Ask students to attend parent/teacher conferences

13. Ask students to evaluate themselves prior to parent/teacher conferences

14. Ask students to run parent/teacher conferences

15. Have everyone practice yes/and more than no/but (because success is available toeveryone!)

YES! And what can you add?

We want to go for 50 (or hundreds) more suggestions, and then use them to talk about ourmission. Please let us know how you are making your school more democratic, or ways you wishyour school were more democratic

About Kirsten Olson

I'm writer and educational activist. I work in public, charter, private, unschools. I'm here for thelearning revolution.View all posts by Kirsten Olson

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Discussion

20 Responses to 50 Ways To Make Your SchoolMore Democratic

1. Use participatory budgeting to engage the whole school community in setting budgets.Involve students in staff appointments.Make sure any school inspectors or visitors talk to any students, not just those staff select orwho are self-selecting (e.g. student council).Keep track of student involvement as well as attainment (Who is taking on what leadership

roles? Who is engaged in programmes that allow them to be involved in decision-making?)Make sure your student council isnt just a fundraising or school improvement club, but is astudents union - make it clear that its primary role is to represent the views of students.Get students to research what helps them to learn. Get them to present their findings to staff.Give students the funding, trust and time to set up and run their own extra-curricular clubs anactivities.Get students involved in planning lessons.Get students involved in teaching lessons.Get students involved in evaluating lessons.Make sure your School Development Plan has a student voice column, so that every issue haa student voice from reducing truancy to improving attainment. Student voice should not ba line that is separate from anything else. If you dont have a School Development Plan, look aall your other policies, add in a student voice element.Train students and staff together.Have student mediators.Have student mentors.Have student play and sports leaders.Dont have a staff room or allow students free access to it.Uniforms: if youre going to be democratic they need to be as free/restrictive for staff as they

are for students.Ill stop for now. Great post.


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Posted by Asher Jacobsberg | December 14, 2010, 8:29 amReply to this comment

Asher, Thank you and fantastic! I am adding these all to the list. I especially like the idea oftraining staff and students together. Thank you for these.

Keep them coming!

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Posted by Kirsten | December 14, 2010, 10:57 pmReply to this comment

2. Invite students to budget meetings, listen to their unique perspective on what is important.

Let students be in charge of organizing school assemblies and gatherings.Invite students to help plan learning.

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Posted by ktenkely | December 14, 2010, 6:08 pmReply to this comment

Yes yes and more. Inviting students to budget meetings. Great idea.
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3. You guys are describing a learning commons! Alec Patton and I wrote about it in the LearninFutures recent pamphlet: The Engaging School: Principles and Practices. Learning Commonsschools arent just democratic, theyre successful, achieving schools. We have to accept thatgiving students more power/rights/responsibilities will only be accepted by administrators,parents, policy makers and, yes, teachers, if it also increases attainment. But lets not be afraid saying it does. Heres a few from Learning Futures (www.learningfutures.org) schools practic1. Ask students to define what powerful learning looks like, and commit to implementing

findings (see Harris Federation Commission for Learning);2. Make students co-designers of projects;3. Train students to coach each other to become better learners;4. Instigate a right to roam: if students would better learn from someone else in (or out) ofschools, let them (with responsibilities to report back);5. Set up staff/student research programmes;

None of these theoretical all set up and working well.Great ideas hope you get lots more!

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Posted by David Price | December 15, 2010, 7:51 am

Reply to this commentDavid, I just checked out Learning Futures online and you guys look fantastic. We over atIDEA will be in touch. We are very aligned philosophically and I am interested in youremerging four principles. Thank you so much for commenting.

As someone who spends a lot of time in schools, I am especially taken with your ROOM TOROAM idea. I see so many students planted in chairs in school dying from lack of oxygenand stimulation, and if they could roam, theyd be learning. Im going to quote you on this
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Kirsten

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4. With apologies and a headache:

- Start a democratic school meant to take on traditional public schools in your community.

- Focus on democratic education, rather than school, and credential experts and communityvolunteers to serve as circuit teachers meeting with a variety of students at a variety of sites foauthentic, project and service-based work in communities. Let the credentialed experientialinstructors pitch courses for students to choose, as is done at Steve Mirandas school.

- Give students and parents equal votes and/or shares in consensus decisions about budget,facilities, catering, curriculum, materials, and staffing.

- Allow students to leave classes that suck.

- Ask all adult community members and interested students to read Doing School, Wounded bySchool, and The New Global Student.

- Provide leave time for all community members to visit undemocratic schools and to discusshow similar and different their democratic schools are to and from the undemocratic ones.

- Accept for credit (whatever that means) all service work and self-directed learning evidencedoutside school.

- Allow students to define credit individually.

- Abolish seat time requirements.

- Secure and defend self-pacing rights for students, including graduation plans, portfolios, andrequirements.

- Allow specialization.

- Allow students to use public and private transportation to attend the school of their choice.

- Study the sustainability of a democratic model within the context of your school and divisiongiven the predispositions of the rest of the staff, faculty turnover, and community values. Don
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do democracy to a community unwilling to participate in it. Start slowly unless you are in theperfect place.

- Leave schools that arent democratic.

- Abolish grading and resist all norm-referencing products and practices, including state testswhich, while seemingly criterion/standards-based, are actually validated and scored by normreferencing student performance on each item each administration.

- Allow communities to democratically elect their teachers and administrators, as well as todemocratically authorize new schools.

- Look past your school, which is likely unrepresentative of all of our kids.

Best,C

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Posted by Chad Sansing | December 15, 2010, 9:31 amReply to this comment

5. Wow Chad, with a headache.

You rock. This puts us so far past 50.

3 of my 4 children go to a school like you describe. Teachers pitch courses to students, studentvote on what will get taught. Major (and minor) decisions get made in Town Meeting. Everyonvotes. My son tried to organize abolition of grades, but students wouldnt go for it.

There should be many, many more democratic schools for families, students, and teachers tochoose. You seem like the perfect executive director for one. When?

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That kind of school sounds great to me, Kirsten. I think its important for communitymembers to have voice, to feel supported and interdependent, and to know that even if awell-reasoned and passionate argument doesnt carry the day, the community still cares foeach person in it and values him or her.

I dont know that executive is the right branch of government for me which one does tria

and error best?

With thanks,C

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Posted by Chad Sansing | December 15, 2010, 5:15 pmReply to this comment

6. Im thinking of all of these belowin verb form:ListenRespectQuestion

ObserveNoticeEngageThinkReflectUnderstand

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Posted by jengroves | December 15, 2010, 8:24 pmReply to this comment

7. Jen, Love it! Do you know of schools in your area that embody these values?
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Kirsten

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8. Kirsten,

I cant resist the urge to reply to your posts. You have an amazing way of inviting us all in.Something to aspire to for me as a teacher.

So how aboutA) Turn off the damn bells! Feels like we are teaching inside a Skinner box! Lets encourage kidto respond to their inner voices, to human requests, not to bells. While were at it turn off theintercoms too. Too Orwellian.

B) Take the kids outside the classroom. Nothing democratizes like a natural setting. Nooverheads pointed to the front. No teacher at the board. If its not possible to take em outside,how about the hallway. Cn you at least arrange the seats in a circle or somehow allow studentto see eachothers eyes?

C) Create choice in any way you can. Ask yourself honestly, how many legitimate options doea given student have in any one moment? For example: they can raise their hand and answerthe question. They can ask to use the bathroom. They can sit quietly. Challenge yourself toincrease the range of acceptable moves exponentially. No secret formula here; what is possibledepends entirely on your specifics. Be creative.

D) Allow for physical movement. This neednt mean anarchy. Establish whatever boundariesyou need to on this, but again challenge yourself to allow for stretching, standing, circulating.This can be done without losing time, focus or completion of tasks. Truly.

E) Aspire towards a sense of spaciousness. Allow for silence and time for reflection.F) Have a sense of humor! If you must use your authority to exact desired behaviors,acknowledge to yourself and the kids that this is what you are doing, and recognize that doingso does not match your ideal world view. Notice the absurd when it comes up especiallywhen it comes out of your own mouth, i.e. no, this is not a good time to use the restroom.Youll need to wait.

Id love to see the long list of suggestions when theyre all compiled together.
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Thanks, Kirsten

Paul

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Posted by Paul Freedman | December 17, 2010, 11:28 amReply to this comment

9. Paul, Thanks for your beautiful and as always, thoughtful suggestions. They go to the heart ofthings. The bells too drive me crazy, as do the loudspeaker announcements. Not being able tomoveespecially for people who learn best with their bodiesmakes school torture. Finally, I

think one of the reasons Courage and Renewal work (which weve discussed) often is mostneeded in schools, and often hardest to land there, is its emphasis on spaciousness, silence, anreflection as deeply connected to the life of the teacher. In my experience, silence is oftenshatteringly difficult for practitioners. Silence means having to listen to yourself, which in avery busy place that overvalues process, can be extremely uncomfortable.

You should write about the atmosphere at Salmonberry. Tell us what its like to be a studentthere.

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10. Hi Kirsten,Replies make great reading and its exciting to know that this democratic approach to educatiois so sought after across the globe after all it is the kids school, not ours!!Some of the key ways our schools are including children in the process are* inviting classes and parents to contribute to the development of whole school policies (valueand citizenship, assessment, homework etc)* pupils and parents being involved in the recruitment of headteachers / deputes.* pupils and staff (teaching, admin, catering, janitorial) doing the same child protection traininfor insight to peer mentoring.
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* pupils building the class requisition for supplies.* pupils choosing what they will learn and suggesting how they might best learn it.

Well done on creating such an inviting discussion.

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Posted by jenmcnicol | December 27, 2010, 6:18 pmReply to this comment

Folks, Based on this list here and others at IDEA and the Daily Riff, Im putting together aproposal to present these to instructional leaders in Massachusetts in February. So keep

them coming! Thank you collaborators!

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Posted by Kirsten | January 4, 2011, 9:49 amReply to this comment

Coolness. Did we hit on the idea of hiring teachers pre-disposed to radicaldifferentiation/running democratic classrooms? Staffing probably counts for somethingtoo.

Thanks for advancing this work, Kirsten!C

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Posted by Chad Sansing | January 4, 2011, 10:46 am
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Reply to this comment11. Thanks Chad, youre right as usual. The idealogical divide: kids need to be controlled and

prodded and managed to learn, vs. the human beings are naturally primed to learn, and weneed different kinds of structures and environments depending on the task and our owndevelopment, really shows up in hiring. Also shows up in who shows up to a conferenceoffering on making your school more democratic!

And hey, when did you say youre starting your school?

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Posted by Kirsten | January 4, 2011, 4:56 pmReply to this comment

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