by Samuel Levin
Now encourage them. Say to them: why not? If they don’t come to it themselves, eventually suggest that they actually do it. That they actually start their own schools. Tell them you’ll be there in whatever way they need: getting other teachers on board, convincing the school committee, thinking through obstacles, designing the curriculum. But also make it clear that they need to take the lead. This is their show. Imagine that one of them finally says, “Okay, I will.”
What do we imagine? We like to imagine that you’re sixteen years old. Or maybe you’ve just turned seventeen. We like to imagine that you’ll turn over the last page of this book, call up your best friend, and say, “I think we should start a school.” Or maybe you’ll tell your favorite teacher. Or bring it up at the dinner table. Maybe you won’t tell anyone just yet. Maybe you’re on the bus home from school. You’ll just quietly slip the book into your backpack. And you’ll think, “Today was the last day I’ll be pissed off.”
Good. You’re at step one.
APPENDIX: EXTRA NUTS AND BOLTS
Below are a few specifics that weren’t part of the story of the IP—but we think they might be useful to people who plan to roll up their sleeves and start a new school.
ASSESSMENT
Sam didn’t think that much about assessment when he designed the Independent Project. Nor did he think that much about it during the Independent Project. He was so excited about making it happen, he barely stopped to wonder how anyone would know whether the project was succeeding. It was only later, when it was all over, that anyone really gave assessment any serious thought.
Given a choice between creating a really good school that educates kids well but never assesses itself, and creating a mediocre school that assesses itself all the time, the former is by far the better option. And yet, educators so often opt for the latter. When faced with an interesting idea for learning activities, or new ideas about what students should learn, people often say, “But how would you test that?” Teachers frequently choose to include things in their curricula not because they’re worth doing, but because they can be easily measured.
But the truth is, the choice between a good school without assessment and a bad school with assessment is a false one. You can have a good school with assessment! And you should—for two reasons: one, some kinds of assessment improve education; they help students learn better and teachers teach better. And two, no one, no matter how great a school design they have, can know for sure that their school is doing good things unless they periodically check to find out.
Luckily, though Sam didn’t think to include it in his plan, assessment was woven into the fabric of the program. First, the students used several kinds of assessment for the sake of improvement. They gave one another feedback, criticism, and judgments, all for the purpose of making each other better learners, better thinkers, and better workers. At the time it didn’t appear to them to be “assessment,” because, to them, “assessment” meant standardized paper-and-pencil tests and final exams.
Every Monday the IP students critiqued one another’s natural and social science questions. As the semester unfolded they got better and better at criticizing one another, giving one another useful feedback, and prodding one another. Then every Friday, after one of the IP students taught the group something new, the others evaluated: research methods, materials chosen, the breadth and depth of their answers, and the degree to which they delved in. The group also evaluated one another’s teaching by commenting on clarity, communication, and the use of an effective hook. Crucially, the purpose of all of that evaluating was not so that they could each get a pat on the back or a kick in the bum. They did it so that everyone would be able to improve.
Similarly, students kept two journals (one for academics and one for the Individual Endeavor) and a portfolio of their work. Keeping such records encouraged the students to regularly monitor themselves. Some kinds of learning naturally entail a lot of self-assessment. When playing the piano, for instance, it’s unavoidable to hear oneself play well or badly. But with something like science, it’s less natural to consistently consider whether one is learning to become a better thinker, a better scientist, or more curious. When thinking itself is what needs to improve, keeping a self-assessment journal can be very effective.
But these types of self-assessments work only if the learner is motivated to get better. People tend to take in feedback, or take advantage of self-assessment, only if they care about improving. Fortunately, in the Independent Project, the students did want to improve, so the kinds of assessment they used fit their needs. Ironically, when assessment is used as a system of rewards and punishments to motivate reluctant learners, it fails because those students have little innate desire to get better at math or science or English. Instead of providing an incentive, grades become a self-fulfilling prophecy: kids become C or A students, college prep or honors, and once they’ve settled into such a category, things don’t change much. The assessment doesn’t help them get better; it just tells them how good or bad they are, have been, and will continue to be.
The IP students used a second kind of assessment for the purpose of telling other people how they were doing. This assessment was for the sake of employers, colleges, parents, and community members. It didn’t contribute to the educational process the way the first kind did, but it was a required component of the school of which the IP was part.
Green River listed the Independent Project on student transcripts. On college applications, in the “additional information” box, students could include assessment letters written by Sam and Mr. Huron, which evaluated the students’ work in the IP. Every college application also went out with a signed letter from the principal explaining what the Independent Project was. Many of the students wrote about their Individual Endeavors in their college essays, talked about them during their interviews, and included them on their résumés. Mr. Huron, who serves as the school’s guidance counselor for college applications, believed (and heard, on occasion, from admissions officers) that the Independent Project, and the students’ Individual Endeavors, made students stand out among the humdrum of honors and AP classes. It’s worth noting that alumni of the Independent Project have gone on to Harvard, Wesleyan, Skidmore, Sarah Lawrence, and the University of Vermont, among other four-year institutions.
The group also used final presentations as a way to allow parents and community members to assess the IP students and the program itself. Everyone had to do a final presentation of his or her Individual Endeavor. This was useful for two reasons. One, it allowed people to look in from the outside and judge the program and the students in it. Were the endeavors up to snuff? Did the students make real achievements in the semester? The presentations also allowed students to share their work with the public, which gave the students a concrete goal toward which to work.
When trying to write fiction, the end goal is self-evident: a complete, polished story that people want to read. But with an Individual Endeavor like learning to cook, it might be easy to drift, without having a clear destination that guides the student’s day-to-day efforts. Rix’s presentation was to cook a delicious four-course meal for eighty people. That gave him something to aim for from day one.
Finally, the IP students wanted to evaluate whether the Independent Project was successful. As we said at the beginning, the Independent Project could have been successful without ever being assessed. Just as there could be a great artist who never showed his work in a museum, there could be a terrific school whose success was never measured. That said, the Independent Project was part of the public school system, and for public education to work, schools need to be held to a common standard—in other words, they need to be evaluated.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of assessment Sam gave the least thought to, and we don’t want others to make the same mistake. Once you’ve decided to start a new school, figure out what it is you want your school to achieve and how you’ll measure whether or not it does that.
; There were, fortunately, a few post hoc ways to measure the success of the Independent Project. One surprising way presented itself after the semester ended. Halfway through the year, students had to transition back into regular classes. There was a lot of worry among teachers about this transition. People always talked about it like it was in capital letters. What will happen after the TRANSITION? Yes, of course, but there’s still the problem of the TRANSITION. Watch out for that TRANSITION!
The fear was that after a semester of the Independent Project, regular classes would be a disaster. The Indies would have forgotten how to do homework, how to listen, how to take notes, how to memorize things, and they would probably all flunk out of school. This became one of the main worries among teachers, including Mr. Huron.
It turned out it needn’t have been. Almost every kid got better grades that second semester than they had in the rest of high school. Though most of them complained, when they met up occasionally to reminisce, that they found so much of it infuriatingly pointless and superficial, they also all found that the Independent Project had given them tools to make the material more interesting. They were able to pick out specific topics or ideas that caught their interest and pursue them deeply, and this, they said, accounted for their improved grades.
Needless to say, the goal of the Independent Project wasn’t to make kids do better in regular school. But the fact that everyone did so well after the transition was a sign that the skills, tools, and habits they learned in the Independent Project carried over into other aspects of their lives and stuck with them. That, after all, was the goal. Not to learn specific information, but to learn how to learn. Doing so made them better at learning specific information once they were back in traditional school.
The success of the Independent Project can also be measured by looking at what happened during the semester. As the weeks unfolded it was easy to see that the students were engaged, that for the first time they seemed to delight in learning, reading, and working hard. The Indies talked and wrote in their journals all the time about how much they loved their new school. In the end, all they wanted to do was share their story and help other kids discover what they had experienced. With the exception of Sarah, every one of them completed an ambitious Individual Endeavor. They all talked about having discovered a new relationship to science, and every one of them either spoke or wrote about realizing what learning actually was, and feeling like they had finally become more adept it.
There’s one last measure of the Independent Project’s success. Dominic started a band. Rix got a job as a sous chef at one of the best restaurants in the area. John has published his writing. Sam just finished his second novel. Tim went on to make a mockumentary about high school that accrued thousands of views on YouTube. Dakota went to a top college, one famous for its writing program. None of these are explicit, standardized, objective measures. But there’s no reason some of them couldn’t lead to a more objective and standardized assessment.
LENGTH OF THE PROGRAM
The Independent Project should be for a year, not a semester. The nature of the program means that everything gets better with time. Doing the first Individual Endeavor is a crash course in taking ownership over something. Doing it a second time would give students a chance to hone the skills they learned the first time around. The first semester of the year, academics are really just a primer in serious thinking. That first semester gives students a chance to fall in love with learning and to get a taste for what it’s like to pursue knowledge, read books for fun, and be part of a serious intellectual community. A second semester would allow students to dive deep into a few topics, developing some of the techniques that are used by serious scholars. And having more time at the end of the year for an extended Collective Endeavor would give the group a chance to do something that would have an impact on the world around them.
Here’s one way to do it. Keep the first semester exactly the same, structure-wise. Then, in the second semester, have everyone do a new Individual Endeavor. This time, the only requirement would be that it’s in a different field than the first one. In the second semester, eliminate the distinction between the languages and the sciences. Allow people to choose weeklong, two-week-long, monthlong academic endeavors, reading novels as a group throughout. Then allow a good five weeks for the final Collective Endeavor and have regular discussions about what it might be for the whole semester leading up to it.
It takes time to transition into being fully responsible for your own education. It takes time to build up an absorption in, and commitment to, one’s Individual Endeavor. And it takes time to learn to collaborate in meaningful ways. The more time students have to do all of this, the more likely it is that they will emerge having learned things that are worthwhile and enduring.
MATH
Math was, without a doubt, the weak point of the program. In the end, the students did make progress, overcome important hurdles, and learn some lessons on the way. But even though the students started working on math and opened their minds toward it, compared to the academic triumphs in the sciences and literature, the work they did in math seemed pallid and lifeless.
We’re no longer sure math should be required in the Independent Project at all. Why should every student in the IP have to learn trigonometry, geometry, calculus, and algebra? Certainly everyone should have the opportunity to learn those things. But lots of students don’t get it, never will, and don’t need to. Arithmetic, times tables, calculation, understanding of proportions are necessary for everyday life. But those should be learned before the Independent Project, before high school even. Is there anything that IP students should have to learn about math? Is there something sacrosanct about the standard high school math curriculum? The IP had already rejected the concept that there were set bodies of knowledge that all the students must learn in history, English, and science.
If math is going to be included—for example, if you’re starting your new school in a state where math is required—then here are some thoughts for how it should be done. Looking back, choosing a different math topic each week was silly and pointless. At best, it gave kids a chance to discover a math topic that interested them, and perhaps reduced their fear of the subject. At worst, it reinforced the idea that math didn’t interest them, wasn’t relevant to their lives, and was really confusing. It trivialized mathematics.
Instead, the “math” work should be about logic and speculation, leaving numbers out of the equation as much as possible. Students could concentrate on what it means to prove something exists, logically. For instance, they might focus on why 2 + 2 is exactly the same as 4. Could it ever be any other way? They might examine what it means for two things to be equivalent, or try and understand why a set of all sets that don’t contain themselves as a member is impossible. They could attempt to come up with an algorithm for finding the highest point on a foreign moon without using a map. A short, intensive course in logic could be fun for everyone, and much more helpful for high school students’ mathematical understanding than learning a bunch of random math topics. This may seem like a very specific and narrow piece of advice. But it’s not. It’s a change that could make many more students interested in and adept at the process of mathematical thinking, without the unnecessary and often failed attempts to teach math procedures that they won’t really understand and might never need again.
Math has for so long been a puzzle and a burden to teachers and students alike, and the standard efforts have resulted in little success in creating a truly numerate population. A growing number of scholars are questioning the value of teaching math as it has been taught for the past century. Doing it in a half-conventional way was a mistake for the IP. The academic integrity and impact of the program would be enhanced by the change we recommend here.
TEACHERS
So far, teachers have barely appeared in these pages. And yet, they are at the heart of education, right up there next to students, and as key to a good school’s success as anythi
ng else discussed in this book. So why have we ignored them?
We haven’t discussed teachers yet because Sam originally envisioned one role for them and ended up contending with a very different one. The truth is, the school wasn’t able to allot the teacher hours the IP wanted. This is ironic, given that one of the faculty’s biggest fears was that teachers would become irrelevant or redundant in the IP. Part of it came down to the unions. The teachers couldn’t work with the IP without extra compensation, and the school didn’t have enough money for that.
The upshot was that teachers had a surprisingly marginal role in the Independent Project, when they were intended to have a central role. A science, history, math, and English teacher occasionally sat in on Fridays or heard the student questions on Mondays. But that was pretty much the extent of it. Here is how they could be involved to much greater effect.
A teacher from each subject should be associated with the IP. They should serve as a source of expertise and guidance. The science and history teachers should hear everyone’s questions and give feedback along with the students. They should help suggest sources, answer questions, and give guidance on research methodologies. They should engage in discussions and arguments about students’ research. On Friday, they should give criticism and feedback along with the other students. And they should each choose their own question, too, and, by doing so, model how an expert does research in a given field. The English teacher should read the agreed upon books with students and should suggest her own. She should edit and critique the writing, join the book discussions, and read her own work aloud. The math teacher should guide the students in the core principles of mathematical thinking, like logic, as described earlier. Teachers might also invite speakers, share videos, suggest books, and offer ideas that they think might inspire students. In other words, they should provide matches to ignite the flame and add fuel once it’s going.