Learning Centered Schooling - Part 4

To quickly recap, we now have teachers helping students to overcome academic hurdles instead of merely delivering information. We have year round school with parents being able to choose when to take breaks that fit the families schedule. And now, I want to suggest changing the daily structure of the classroom.

Since the teachers and students have now been freed from the standard lesson plan/lecture based system the overall school structure can be opened up and made significantly less rigid.

Students don't need to move from lecture session to lecture session. Their is really no inherent framework that must be ascribed to. Some structure would still need to be enforced since kids work the best in a structured environment, but what that structure should look like can be explored anew to find the best fit for learning in this new age.

Additionally, school hours could be expanded to make drop off and pickup times flexible. Say the school opens at 7AM for drop offs and doesn't close until 6PM? Parents could drop off and pick up their kids based on what works for them and their schedule thus avoiding before and after school daycare expenses.

Now, of course this begs the question, what about the teachers? Do I expect them to work 12 hour days to allow this system to work? The answer here is not at all. This would give teachers the same level of flexibility it offers studens and their parents.

To explain here is another disruption to the class dynamic. Since each student has their own digitized learning path the teachers are there to guide and assist not to deliver the content. So instead of having one teacher with 20 some odd kids you could have 50 kids with several teachers or any other structure you wanted. This takes away the central focus of learning from the teachers.

Therefore to fulfill their 40 hours for the week the teachers would only need to work 8 hours a day. But since they are not playing the same top down administrative role that they are now they could leave part way through the day without significantly disrupting the students and be replaced by another teacher. This would also allow for part time teachers who could come in to tutor kids for a few hours a day.

With this kind of schedule teachers could adjust their schedules more to their liking and no longer be chained to the standard school day.

I realize that there are a lot of issues regarding discipline and classroom behavior that I am largely ignorant of. Changing all this would affect that. Possibly in a negative way. However, I strongly believe that with the increased flexibility this system provides solutions could be found that adequately resolve these issues.

Tomorrow I will talk about eliminating age ranges and the larger grade year system.