It’s time to let the wholeness of the child engage with the wholeness of the world.
WHAT IS
AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
To the extent that we narrow the purpose of schooling to what can be measured, we fail to
engage those sides of children that must be developed in order for them to pull learning
from life. We also increase the likelihood that
they will be bored, question the value of school,
and in some cases even drop out.
Instead of starting with the questions “How do we prepare kids to compete in the 21st century
global marketplace?” or “What will insure that graduates all have command of basic skills?”,
suppose we start by asking what qualities we want to encourage in children as they grow toward
adulthood.
Guilford Elementary
Guilford, VT
Guilford Central has an outdoor classroom for every grade level, pre-K through 6. Students engage in a farm to school program, learning about nutrition, and spend a large part of every day outdoors.
Escuela Manzo
Tucson, AZ
Manzo Elementary or Escuela Manzo sits in the Hollywood section of Tucson, and with its gardens and chickens serves as a food source and environmental inspiration for the community.
OUR
RESOURCES
Educate the Whole Child expects to offer a graduate level 12-credit certificate–Teaching the Whole Child. It will consist of four online courses that may be taken as a series or independently. See details here.
American Schools
An excellent exploration of democratic education is Sam Chaltain’s, American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).
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Catching Up or Leading the Way
For a broad look at why whole child education is important and how it fits into global developments and America’s ability to compete, see Yong Zhao, Catching Up or Leading the Way, particularly Chapter 7, “What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?”
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