Building School Communities: An Experience-Based Model.

To foster community among students, teachers require training that gives them a positive community experience and equips them with experience-based pedagogical and curricular tools, these authors point out. MANY schools showcased by reformers share a characteristic that a growing number of researchers and practitioners consider essential: students and teachers derive support, motivation, and direction from one another.[1] Students work collaboratively on active projects toward goals they find meaningful. Teachers meet during lunch, after school, and during preparatory periods to discuss curriculum, pedagogy, and individual students. All are engaged in what John Dewey calls a "social" mode of learning. Rather than the isolation and alienation that seem so common in many of today's schools, these students and teachers experience a sense of membership. They are part of learning communities. Influential reports in the mid-1980s, such as Tomorrow's Teachers and A Nation Prepared, spurred a series of reforms intended to enhance both teachers' and students' commitment to education by strengthening teacher and school communities.[2] Exactly what these communities would look like, however, and how to move toward them are questions too often left to the imagination and frustration of those who work in schools. As one teacher told us, "Yesterday, a staff development person came in and told us that our staff needs a sense of community -- that we should work together toward a supportive school environment. I asked him, |What exactly do you mean by a sense of community? Do we just sign on the dotted line and -- presto -- community?'" Do students working together on a set of math problems constitute a learning community? Will reducing school size or introducing team-teaching or school-based management automatically produce more personal, supportive settings for students? Will these conditions lead to professional bonds among teachers? In this article, we argue that reformers' efforts to build school communities lack two essential components. First, they fail to provide teachers with experiences that will familiarize them with the nature and benefits of strong communities. Second, they do not equip teachers with the pedagogical techniques needed to foster and sustain school communities. We highlight the need for teacher education that responds to these shortcomings and illustrate our point by describing the Experiential Curricula Project, an experience-based teacher training and staff development program piloted at the Stanford University School of Education. MISSING COMPONENTS OF CURRENT REFORM STRATEGIES Such popular reform strategies as site-based management, house systems, and magnet programs aim to build school communities by creating smaller, more personal settings and by granting teachers greater control over their schools. These changes provide an organizational foundation from which to begin. However, by themselves they are not likely to engender the support, sense of shared mission, and strong personal ties that develop among members of school communities. Communities cannot be mandated or concocted. Smaller schools may provide necessary conditions, but communities must ultimately be built from the interests and experiences of their members. When reformers expect organizational changes alone to result in strong school communities, they make two assumptions: 1) that teachers and administrators know how to turn organizational potential into truly communal relationships and 2) that teachers seek such communities. Voices from the field indicate otherwise. Researchers have found that teacher behavior -- even in settings that should accommodate community -- often reflects the emphasis on individualism and autonomy so pervasive in our culture.[3] Some teachers welcome team-teaching and scheduling changes that allow them to watch their colleagues in the classroom; others prefer not to have their teaching observed. …