Saturday, July 23, 2011
Innovation For Schools
This week, I co-facilitated my third meeting at a school which may be taken over by the state due to poor performance. During the meeting, we celebrated a new partnership between the school and a local university to start adult education classes in the building. Our NAACP Education Committee was excited, but the school leadership was leery regarding student safety. Reading the innovation approaches to addressing such safety concerns on the Harlem Children's Zone, Inc. (HCZ). website was perfect timing. Civic Builders has partnered wth HCZ to created flexible spaces where students, the community, and businesses can coexist. In the Civic Builders and HCZ's document "Maximizing Capital Dollars: Practical Lessons from Charter Schools" (n.d.), several design examples are described which actually help nurture partnerships and relationships http://www.hcz.org/images/stories/pdfs/HCZCivicCharterConstruction.pdf. Examples include large flexible spaces for community workshops and meetings. These spaces have their own separate entrances which ensures safety for students. Also, school spaces can be reconfigured, on short notice, for after-school programs, health clinics, or community events. I plan to take this information back to the school, so they can see options for addressing their safety concerns while also welcoming adults to take classes in the school. This document opened my eyes to the possibility that our buildings may be as antiquated and rigid as our subject-by-subject curriculum. I think we all need help seeing new possibilities which allow a better learning environment and stronger community partnerships. One idea I found quite scary was allowing businesses to rent space in the building. Civic Builder suggests renting space to businesses could generate much needed revenue and bring more community traffic to the school. This would be a concept that a economists or politician would recommend as an innovative and economical use of space, because they're looking strictly at the numbers. A "good for business" approach must never outweigh what is best for the students, parents, and community.
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Joy
ReplyDeleteYou are taking your expertise into the community - educating, bridging understanding gaps, and facilitating progressive changes. This collaboration of business and schools will test your negotiating skills and at the same time provide a good object lesson of the necessity for play in early years to build these skills.
Well done.
Bobbie
What is necessarily good for the economy is not necessarily good for the school. I hope that with your information you can get the board to see thing a bit differently or begin to change their minds. Keep us informed on how things are progressing with your school. Best of luck
ReplyDeleteI agree that there should be more of an individual approach for each situation, but there should also be a sense of continuity when looking at the overall needs of the community. I also viewed the HCZ website and saw the vast amount of support that the project is getting and how it is working for the Harlem community. They have a holistic approach to help end the cycle of poverty with the help of businesses, politicians and economists backing up what the program is doing and succeeding at. It is definitely worth implementing in other areas!
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