Sitting in PS #1, in a horseshoe of prospective parents, surrounded by children’s art, I focused my attention on the yard outside the window.
Parents and children were sifting in through the vine covered gated blue arbor. There were strong relationships between parents evident in animated greetings and relaxed body language. The children were stationed as greeters at the gate and showed their familiarity with the whole school body by approaching those of us for the tour and guiding them to this room. They knew we were not a part of their school family by sight. A church bell rang, a real one not one of those pre-recorded sound bites, and all the bodies moved into action. Kids picked up backpacks, parents kissed children, and children and parents moved in opposite directions.
Community.
Joel chose to sit with us instead of stand at a podium and address us formally. He spoke about his inspiration for starting the school: summer camp. He felt that children should always be excited to learn and work together and feel valued and strong in their confidence. Choosing to be a k-6 offers the staff and parents to make informed decisions about best fit for the next steps of education, and perhaps most importantly – offers the children an extended childhood.
PS#1 stands for Pluralistic School #1. They embrace diversity in order to expose children to as many differences as possible in others. But that’s a quantitative measure generally not encompassing the differences in how we learn. Pluralism refers to different learning styles. It’s very much like the focus on the 100 languages at NSW. There are several ways to learn and several approaches. As Joel says; “It’s not how smart you are, it’s how you’re smart.” There are many similarities in philosophy to the Reggio approach.
Touring the school we saw the scaffolding predetermined by the staff. Each classroom is a cluster of two grades. Kindergarten and First, First and Second, Third and Fourth, and Fifth and Sixth, share a classroom with a retreat room between them so that each year, new relationships and self identity are formed. The ‘smartest’ or the ‘shyest’ have opportunity to find different roles each year among their peers instead of being pigeon holed for the entire elementary experience. There are 25 kids per class with two lead teachers in each classroom. They work together on numerous collaborative projects that relate to current events and curriculum, and perform on stage twice a year either through music or acting historical pieces or Shakespeare plays. As kindergarteners, the children are exposed to the older children taking public speaking roles and theoretically come to expect the opportunity for themselves. The outdoor areas include a 100 year old oak tree, stage around the tree where most assemblies occur, an elaborate climbing structure, raised flower beds and veggie gardens, sport court and an inviting grassy area. The classrooms are a thematic in their posted alphabets and number charts all around at ceiling height, but there is evidence of different learning styles and in depth work all around.
We noticed a study of the layers of planets that was made in Playdough; offering a great kinesthetic experience and visual learning. Each classroom has a strong library and there is a very welcoming whole school library to visit each week that is filled with inviting shelves of books and run by the retired librarian from the children’s section of the Beverly Hills Library for the last 5 years. On our tour, the self worth of the children shone through with confident renditions of songs, plays, mathematical discussions, and analytical literary observations in the higher grades. It was a wonderful validation of Joel’s summer camp ideal to see that the children in the older grades retained a joy about them and seemed very much, like children still.