In order to teach the conditional verb tense and the use of vivid imagery, I asked my ELL students to design and redesign spaces. A few students thought about ways to turn phone booths into relaxation centers or podcasting booths. Students imagined the ultimate treehouses, complete with ziplines, climbing walls (a bit redundant when one can climb a tree) and water balloon launchers.
I also asked them to redesign the classroom space. While a few of their ideas were unrealistic (two story classrooms with a balcony between the room and "half-room" or fresh food snacking centers) many of their ideas were practical. They wanted skylights and windows. Some even suggested windows that opened. They wanted walls that weren't off-white. They wanted lamps that would provide lighting from the side.
Some of them wrote about tables where they could stand instead of sit alongside couches and bean bag chairs so that they could sit in something that wasn't made from moulded plastic. Students wrote about art work framed on the wall instead of chart paper with material they already had in their binders. They wanted half walls creating quiet spaces. They wanted mini-studios for video and audio recording. They wanted a back door to open to an outdoor garden area where they could work on projects using their "outside voice."
I drove home with their design ideas swirling in my mind. As I drove past an old factory building in downtown Glendale, I thought about that space. I imagined it as an artists' loft with a coffee shop, museum, living space and garden. I pictured it as a creative community inviting an element we often miss in suburbia.
I thought again about the obsolete factory model in place in my school and wondered if we could redesign this space, not just with a more authentic curriculum, but physically and spatially as well. Why can't we redesign it to be an inviting space for a creative community? Why can't we turn this factory model into an artists' loft?
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This sounds like a great assignment, and it got my imagination going, too.
I suppose your imaginative journey spurred by the writing of your students is the lure of charter schools for the visionary teacher. I know several inspiring colleagues who have set out on their own and created their own schools, manifesting their own visions. These are people with whom I would DEFINITELY trust my own children.
But I'm torn, because I love being a public school teacher (in the old-school public school sense, not the new-school publicly funded charter school sense). I suppose that I believe that some level of accountability for a qualified teaching staff, and all the funding inequities to work out, keep me from fully supporting charter schools.
I wish that there were some way to encourage the innovation possible in the charter school system with the (ideally) public accountability and not-for-profit ideals of the public school model. Any ideas about that?