You Are Never Finished in Smart Lab ...

I participate in a political discussion group every Saturday morning. It meets in a charter school called Southwest Learning Centers, link.

Last Saturday, we met in a different room; a classroom called the Smart Lab. In the Smart Lab, students can do wind tunnel experiments,


test the tensile strength of material samples,


make video productions of some kind,

and any number of other hands-on activities.

Southwest Learning Centers is a top notch school, but not because they have equipment like this. APS schools have the same equipment.

The difference is summed up in a poster on the wall;

Clearly, the staff at this school get that, each student is on an individual learning path, and they won't reach the end of that path during that class period, that school year, or even upon graduation.

In APS classrooms, students sit like tombstones a cemetery;
five rows of six desks, or maybe six rows of five, depending on
the shape of the room and the flexibility of the Principal.

When students in those classrooms are "finished", they are
expected to wait quietly for the rest of the class to finish,
in order that they can then move on together, thinking and
learning in a thought choir; for twelve grueling years.

If the ultimate goal of education is to create lifelong independent learners, why is that not the first priority?

Apparently, in a few (charter) schools, it is.




photos Mark Bralley