It is clear that our schools play a central role in developing self-actualizing behaviors in children in keeping with our goal of preparing learners to thrive in adulthood. If we ever get it right, we will find just the right mix of curricula and lessons and collaboration designed to produce highly competent and confident young adults who are aware of their place in the world and their purpose in it. Still, no matter how well we do, these rich experiences will never happen in schools alone. Aspiring to such lofty heights for learning will require a wider reach for school systems and grander expectations around school-community partnerships.
One way to envision such a shift in the industry is to view our local communities not as tangential to our success but as central to the school system itself. The community as the system. The school building as the centrifuge for learning, as the nucleus. In doing so, communities could support deeper learning by integrating local experiences into district curriculum, bringing relevancy and context to the facts and figures learned in school. Schools could serve as hubs for providing educational services to the community, as agents for fostering community dialogue, and as centers for family wellness and social-emotional health.
In designing what this looks like, we must examine closely the lessons we have learned from the community school models across the country. We have learned much from these experiments regarding social services that we can offer and business partnerships we can cultivate. We have also witnessed the push and pull from the competing definitions that leaders have for school-community partnerships. Much of the work in our community schools has centered on after-school programs for students and families and community access to school facilities.
Though these are positive steps, it is time to push much further in considering models that are not so much about bringing community services to the school site but as opportunities to rebrand our communities as our classrooms. We would do well to retrace the thinking of John Dewey and others who pushed for these innovations as early as the 1800s. He joined the progressive thinkers of the time in rallying against schools and lessons that were uncoupled from their neighboring communities. He saw them as one in the same, an idea referred to at that time as “school extension.”
Many of the radical notions expressed in those days continue to influence current research and thinking on community schooling.
Schools as community hubs / a necessary approach
It is fair to ask if the education industry has kept pace with the growing demand for next generation school models and stronger community partnerships. This may be difficult to hear when so many of us as industry leaders are open to change but cannot fathom how to might it happen. The psychology that propels us to innovate is helpful in envisioning a path forward. Let’s use the evolution of the typewriter as an example. As we all know, the typewriter was an indispensable tool for families for more than one hundred years. Families loved their typewriters and most purchased new ones every few years in keeping up with the latest tweaks and gadgets, from color ink ribbons to self-correction options.
In fact, we might still be tweaking the typewriter today had someone not decided that we needed something more revolutionary than color ink. Something never before imagined. It is important to remind us that long before the world could summon the idea of a word processor or desktop computer, someone had to decide that making a better typewriter wasn’t going to get us where we needed to be.
In pondering a similar leap of faith, it is hard to imagine any successful school model that doesn’t include stronger partnerships with our neighborhoods, recreation centers, little leagues, police departments, museums, and city halls. It is equally impossible to consider a seismic shift occurring without passionate involvement from our children and families.
It may help to fast forward this line of thinking by envisioning a day where children are at the center of their communities much more than they are now. This will require a significant shift in our community mindset. In truth, if we gathered all of the rec league coaches, business leaders, and City Council members into a room right now, most could not tell us what is happening in our reading or social studies classrooms any more than our children could tell them what happens at a City Council meeting.
Even among our school families, many have no real sense of what their children are learning in school. Many cannot describe what their sons and daughters know and don’t know, save what we tell them via report cards and test scores. In fact, describing our children by their class ranks or grade point averages is like describing our favorite foods by their calorie counts. Somehow we are missing the beauty, the art, the soul. And that’s on us.
Whatever partnerships are formed, schools must remain central to the cause. Families and communities must count on us even more, though (if we get it right) they will no longer see school as the only place where learning occurs. We owe it to our communities to change the perception of our schools as places where children are separated and sorted, as an uninviting collection of hallways hidden behind fences, as mysterious sites where the adults on the inside are convinced that much is going on while those on the outside are left to wonder what all the commotion is about.
System solutions / a novel approach
Creating a system of schools, families, and local communities designed to graduate highly skilled and self-actualized young adults is much easier said than done. In fact, some may question if creating an informed citizenry by anyone’s definition is just too far-reaching in light of societal challenges. We have to consider if knowing fractions and functions and sporting an advanced vocabulary is really possible for all children. Yes, some will debate this.
As those conversations happen, let us remember that a core belief for any functioning system must be that every child can learn and has the right to do so. Though some may say otherwise, the difference in learning outcomes cannot be easily explained by saying that some schools are great and others are awful or that some teachers are super and some are lousy. Those inside the system will tell you that the challenges are much more complex than that.
As such, creating community solutions will require deep introspection, along with discussions of gender, race, poverty, and bias. For no school system can be considered truly successful if it works for some and not others.
The answer for school systems involves a greater degree of shared ownership with our students, parents, and community leaders in figuring this out. Of course, if we allow others to offer their suggestions, someone has to be brave enough to consider them. If we are not too careful, we might actually uncover a novel concept or two. We might even find our game changer. Systems science tells us that connecting parts that are not normally aligned can lead to profound solutions.
We see the concept of emergence in the classical sciences, but also in cybernetics, nonlinear dynamics, and even music theory. This idea is typically born out of disequilibrium. We don’t even see it coming. In organizations, it happens when someone mentions something that nobody has considered before. As you might guess, the system will resist the idea at first, because it simply cannot handle the suggestion being made. Still, if this novel idea continues to be bandied about, the system will be forced to change and a new kind of order will be formed that wasn’t even considered before.
In truth, only a system in search of solutions will ever find them, and only the bravest will cast a lever long enough to move the world.
