A School of Our Own

by Samuel Levin

  By the time Dominic got his standing ovation, my uncertainty about the criteria for endeavors had been replaced by clarity. His endeavor entailed more than one kind of skill (reading music, composing, and performing). The work was meaty.

  Finally, as I watched Dominic take the leap and attempt that most difficult aspect of jazz, improvisation in front of an audience, the idea of grit fell into its rightful place. His endeavor elicited not simply diligence, but an eagerness to persevere in the face of frustration. Such zeal can emerge only when you are genuinely committed to your goal. Dominic’s growing devotion to jazz, his longing to be good at it, and the rich layers of knowledge on which his endeavor rested—these were what elevated his efforts from a nice project to an educational experience that changed him.

  My worry with John’s proposed Individual Endeavor was the opposite of my worry with Dominic’s. He said he wanted to write a philosophical novel. It just seemed way too ambitious for one semester. But again, it wasn’t my place to discourage him.

  My worry turned out to be unfounded. John finished the first novel early on in the semester, gave it to me to read, and started his second one. By the end of the semester, he was working on a third draft of his second philosophical novel. And his growth as a writer between the two books was phenomenal. It was like seeing someone take steroids for writing.

  John doesn’t fit the stereotype of the kind of kid schools fail. He’s smart, well read, quiet, and thoughtful. Nonetheless, school was failing him. He’s a reminder that the school system fails all kinds of students. But John, who before the IP never dreamed of education after high school, is now a sophomore in college. And, more important, he’s a published author.

  The many students who heave, glide, or resist their way through conventional schooling without developing a deep love of some domain and the mastery that usually goes hand-in-hand with such love enter adulthood disabled.

  Individual books, periods of history, or math topics may quickly fade from memory. Most adults remember little of what they learned in high school. Psychologists know quite a bit about what it takes to become an expert: layers of knowledge, practice, commitment, trying something and then trying it a different way, and finally, using one’s expertise in a range of settings. These are the elements of expertise. They take time. No one becomes an expert overnight or after a few sessions. No one becomes an expert simply by dabbling or by doing a unit in a textbook, filling out worksheets, or hearing what the experts have done from a lecture. When kids know something about a topic (a class in Spanish or history), they may be able to pass a test, but it’s not clear anything profound has happened to them. In contrast, when they are experts, they can do things: compose music, cater dinners, write books, fix cars, develop arguments, use mathematical thinking to solve real problems, and so on, and that sense of accomplishment and facility is generative. Students who attain hard-won mastery at something they care about want to experience that same process again and again. The research suggests that overall their lives are fuller and more satisfying. And the sense of ownership that comes from such mastery endures.

  * * *

  One day, in the summer after my junior year, I was up at the school doing some batting practice with a friend. It was a day off for me. It had rained all week, so no one needed to water the garden, it wasn’t a community volunteer day, and we were still a few days off pickling and freezing vegetables for the school year. It was midsummer, so the school grounds were completely empty, and my friend and I took advantage of this to play some baseball on the school diamond.

  After a few hours of taking turns at bat, my friend headed off, and I headed down to the garden to wait for a ride. I was still a few weeks away from being able to drive myself and needed to wait around for my parents to pick me up.

  But, as I walked down the hill and crossed the road to the two-acre plot where Project Sprout lived, I was surprised to see that there was a car parked by the farm stand. We never sold our produce, but sometimes we gave some of it away during the summer when we had too much to store or deliver to shelters. I expected that the car’s driver was hoping to score some produce, but whoever it was would be disappointed. At the moment, nothing was harvested.

  It turned out the driver was a woman in her thirties, and at first I thought she was walking around the garden on her own. It took a moment for me to realize that she was actually holding someone’s hand, only that someone had been hidden by the tall tomato plants, because he was four years old. The mom, seeing me, said, “Oh, hi there! I hope we’re not intruding.”

  “Not at all,” I said, “but unfortunately we don’t have any vegetables to give away today. If you come back on Thurs—”

  “Oh no, no, that’s okay,” she said. “We’re not looking for produce. It’s just that my son was in one of your after-school programs, and every day we drive by he begs me to stop, and we never seem to have time. But today we do, so I thought I’d let him show me around. As long as we’re not in the way, of course,” she added.

  Sure enough, I recognized her son as Parker Hanes, a four-year-old boy who had come to the garden every day after school for a month in May.

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “I’m just waiting for a ride. Spend as much time as you want.”

  So for the next half hour or so, I sat at the edge of the garden while Parker Hanes led his mom by the hand around the garden. Occasionally he would disappear behind a row of tomatoes or a stretch of young corn, but his voice carried through the garden to where I sat.

  “Mommy, look, these are my beans. We planted them with the taters so they grow good.”

  Or, “Mommy, look, look, these are my peas, they have little fingies and they climb and climb and climb until I eat them.”

  Eventually, Parker’s mom got tired of touring. “Come on, honey, time to go. We’ll come back another day, though, I promise.”

  But as they left the garden, he suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned to look up at her. His eyes were wide with a mixture of excitement, fear, and expectancy.

  “Mommy,” he said. “Do you like my garden?”

  I remember looking at little Parker Hanes, his head barely reaching his mom’s waist, and then looking out at two acres of farm production. I remember thinking how amazing it was that a four-year-old could feel ownership over something as vast and unwieldy as Project Sprout. And I remember thinking it was even more amazing that he wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t been tricked into feeling that way. He had been there every day, planting the seeds, watering the sprouts, weeding the rows, and he really was responsible for much of the life there.

  It seems almost unnecessary to say that every high school kid should have a chance to feel about something the way Parker Hanes felt about his garden.

  We said at the beginning of this chapter that there were ways in which this step was the simplest, the most difficult, and the most important. To require mastery is a very simple step, achievable in a single stroke. Just tell everyone they must become a master of something, and then set up a time when each student will demonstrate his or her mastery. This is, in fact, what Ted Sizer intended with the performances he described, back when he started the Coalition of Essential Schools. But more often than not, those demonstrations got watered down until they were simply a collection of projects students rushed to finish in time for evaluation. We suggest, instead, putting mastery at the center of your school. Students (and those guiding them) will need to spend time, perhaps several weeks, choosing endeavors that demand expertise. The endeavors must be complex and multilayered. They should involve several kinds of skills, rest on a range of types of knowledge, and be embodied in ways that can be shared with others (books, performances, meals, scientific reports, useful new tools, software, or machines). At the end, students should show (tell, demonstrate, perform) some work that is useful or beautiful to others. Not only that; the students should be able to teach what they now know to novices and trade insights and ideas with other experts.

  M
astery that is not given due time and status is a waste, and allowing kids a chance at true mastery requires a big chunk of the school day and school year. But we believe that a school without real mastery fails to prepare kids for their future.

  7

  OVERCOME OBSTACLES, TOGETHER

  The truth is, when it comes to creating a new school, the devil is in the details. There are some problems that you just can’t plan for, and some solutions that you shouldn’t plan, remedies that students should work out organically as they go along. Mistakes will be made, plans will go awry, group dynamics will shift, and new solutions will be needed. Some of the hardest and most interesting challenges that arose that first year of the IP came as complete surprises.

  Elements that seem straightforward may become roadblocks. You may be blindsided by the reaction of a student or teacher. People will behave unpredictably. But any school that can’t deviate from the script is not a very good school. In fact, glitches, and students’ responses to those glitches, can be some of the most powerful elements of a good education. After all, shouldn’t all teens learn, with help, how to deal with the unexpected and how to shift tactics without losing sight of the goal?

  In traditional school, obstacles are often viewed as hindrances, embarrassments, things to scurry past as quickly and painlessly as possible. Because your school is run by students, there is the potential for obstacles to be educational opportunities, and the experience of overcoming them can be as rich an education as any other component of the school.

  Sarah was the only senior besides me in the Independent Project. I thought, going in, that this would be a reason she could really flourish in the program. She needed fewer credits than the other kids, she had already taken her SATs, and she was in the process of applying to college. In other words, she had fewer burdens, it seemed to me, and therefore would be free to make the most of the IP.

  It wasn’t just her age. Unlike many of the others, she came into the program already possessing serious interests. She was the star of almost every school play and musical. I once watched her play Sandy in Grease, and I thought she was as good as any you might see in a professional production. She was an avid painter and had already taken every art class the school offered, plus a few independent studies. She had a group of close-knit friends among the art crowd. She wasn’t very academic, but she was bright and lively. She was applying to high-caliber colleges: Bennington, Oberlin, Sarah Lawrence.

  To be honest, among kids like Dominic and Rix, who were on the edge of dropping out of high school, and John, who had diagnosed learning difficulties and had received his fair share of Fs, at the outset, Sarah was the least of my worries.

  Early on, I made a couple of big mistakes. Sarah said she wanted to do an independent study with Mrs. Truman, the art teacher.

  “The thing is,” I told her when she mentioned her idea, “we’re not really supposed to be taking classes in the school during the Independent Project.”

  A look of consternation spread across her face, and she seemed very serious as she said, “But I feel it would be a real shame if I didn’t continue to pursue my art because of the Independent Project. Wouldn’t it? And I’m at a stage in my art career where the best way to move further is to work with a teacher who really knows her stuff.”

  “Okay,” I thought. “That does make sense.” Why should she be discouraged from pursuing her passion in the Independent Project? Wouldn’t that be hypocritical? And, yeah, if there was an expert in the school, why not take advantage of that? That was exactly how I hoped teachers would interact with students within the IP.

  “Okay, sure,” I said. She could carry out an independent study in art during the semester.

  Then, sometime during the first week, Sarah said that she was auditioning for the role of Macbeth in the school’s annual Shakespeare production.

  “Sam,” she said on Friday of de-orientation, “I’m thinking I’ll do an Individual Endeavor related to my role as Macbeth. I want to really get into the character.”

  It sounded like a bad idea to me. In my mind, Macbeth was something she was already doing, in addition to school, and so should be separate from her work in the IP. I figured that it would be a cop-out if she just counted her commitment to the play as her Individual Endeavor.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sarah. This is an opportunity to do something new—something different from what you’re already doing.” I understand my thinking at the time. But it was probably wrong.

  Still, despite these mistakes, in the beginning things looked good. The first week of academics Sarah taught us how Pixar animation works. Her presentation was energetic and engaging, filled with detail that was clearly the product of serious research. She taught us with joy and vigor, and I think everyone agreed it was the best forty minutes of teaching that first week. I remember thinking that Sarah would be a tent pole that would help raise the standard of the group throughout the semester.

  But Sarah never regained the level of passion, commitment, hard work, or interest that she had that first week. In fact, she was our one failure. I still don’t completely understand why, and I suppose I never will. But I know a lot of the factors that contributed to it, including plenty of my own mistakes.

  For one, I think letting her do the independent study was a mistake. Allowing her to pursue art was not a mistake, but I should have either encouraged her to choose an art-related Individual Endeavor or allowed her to carve out time to do art during the day and on a case-by-case basis work with a supervisor. The problem was that the independent study just ended up being a continuation of her art classes so far in high school. And I found out from her teacher, too late in the game, that that consisted largely of hanging out with her friends in the art room. It took her away from both her Individual Endeavor and the academics, without pushing her in new directions or challenging her in any way.

  More and more, as the semester went on, she disappeared to the art room to work on her independent study. It was only when the art teacher started coming to me and asking where Sarah was that I realized she wasn’t going to the art room at all—she was just leaving school with her friends. It turned out she was using the independent study to say she had to leave the IP, and the IP to say she had to leave the art room.

  On a deeper level, the independent study disconnected her from the group and the program. The rest of us didn’t have some outside commitment that could pull us away. So if someone was fucking around, we knew, and we called them out on it. This was harder to do with Sarah, because she was more disconnected and had commitments elsewhere.

  Second, it became apparent (again, way too late in the game) that preventing her from making her Individual Endeavor about Macbeth was a mistake. She was really passionate about the role and ended up using her time in the afternoon to memorize lines and learn more about the play, rather than work on her Individual Endeavor. But because it wasn’t her Individual Endeavor, she couldn’t really devote all her time to it like she wanted to, and she missed out on an opportunity to expand beyond the boundaries set by just playing the role.

  Instead, her Individual Endeavor was to write a play. But I never saw her working on it. Or at least, I could never tell the difference between her working on it and her working on memorizing her lines. And she always had a reason why she couldn’t show it to anyone. It wasn’t ready. She wanted to type it up first. She was about to make a big change to the plot. Then again, Dominic was never willing to play the piano for us until the end, so why was that necessarily a bad thing?

  I guess because there were other warning signs. One Friday she couldn’t really teach us about her science question because she wasn’t quite done with it.

  “Guys, you’re really gonna love this stuff—it’s just sooo interesting. But it’s just too good to teach it to you before I know a little bit more. I’ll do it next week, okay?”

  But the next Friday she was sick and didn’t come in. One week, she couldn’t take part in the book d
iscussion because her cat had died and she was really torn up.

  “I want to guys, I really do,” she said, sniffling. “I just need to be on my own today, okay?”

  All of these on their own were valid excuses. But I should have pieced them together to make a bigger picture.

  It’s not as though I ignored it completely. Actually, Mr. Huron and I talked about it all the time. During the semester, we would meet every day before school and after school, just to chat about how things were going. Most days we also ended up meeting again, during the day, to address something specific, and there were some days when we met throughout the day. Sarah was fully on our radar as someone to worry about. Still, we felt we couldn’t help but accept her excuses. I mean, what were we gonna say? “Get over your stupid dead cat”?

  I can’t speak for Mr. Huron, but I think the real reason I didn’t address Sarah head-on sooner is that deep down I was afraid. The more she fucked up, the more I worried that she was proof that the Independent Project didn’t work. I was scared to address the issue because everyone else was doing so well. I thought that if I pretended nothing was wrong with Sarah, then I could feel good about everything.