Welcome!

Welcome to the blog of Zaq Roberts, Associate Head of School at The Berkeley School in Berkeley, CA. I blog about a wide variety of topics, from classroom moments I witness, to administrative events and conversations, to the educational blogs, videos, and books I am reading and watching, and how they are influencing my thinking. I hope this eclectic approach will give you insight into the many ways that I am engaging in advancing the school and strengthening our program, and I welcome your thoughts and comments!

This blog takes its name from a quotation by Archimedes that reads "Give me a lever long enough, and I can move the world." The TBS mission speaks directly to the need to engage a changing world, while many of the experiences in our program focus on the development of students' agency and authority. TBS is the lever by which we all - administration, faculty, students, and parents - can together move the world to be more humane, compassionate, and responsive. To borrow an important Montessori phrase, it is our way to remake the world.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Let Kids Rule the School






"Autonomy" and "emergent curriculum" are often used by progressive educators to describe aspirations more than actual practice. When a student-identified interest does protrude into the usual course of a curriculum, often the teacher maintains control of the so-called emergent curriculum, which looks like a short unit or lesson on a topic that a student selects and the teacher then designs and delivers. Today's NYTimes op-ed piece by Susan Engel describes a different approach to these concepts, in which genuine autonomy led students to generate authentic emergent curriculum that they then took responsibility for learning.
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1 comment:

  1. MarkMarch 24, 2011 at 11:43 PM

    Zack - I saw this in action at the Emerson School in Portland. http://www.emersonschool.org/home.htm
    The kids really owned their work there and presented with conviction.

    Mark kohr

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