Learning

‘You have to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something they can think about in lots of different ways,’ Howard Gardner

We cover all academics through an integrated, interwoven, multi-disciplinary approach focused on providing a challenging and supportive environment for children to holistically solve problems that life and this time in history present.

Learning how to think clearly, deeply and well: the root processes that humans use to learn.

Children are empowered by being given more responsibility for their learning through having the space to be themselves and to expand into the learning, rather than having the learning fed to them. We “open the floodgates” by giving them real opportunities to show what they can do, and then guiding them to fill in the gaps of what they don’t yet know. Through this process they are learning how to think and develop minds capable of penetrating to the essence of a subject, what its purpose is, how it is used, and how it connects with all other subjects. What are the origins of all subject areas and how did they unfold and develop? Integrated academics isn’t just doing lessons in all subject areas, it is seeing how all subject areas are interconnected and linked and build one upon the other.

Learning unfolds best in an environment that honors a child’s natural rhythm of energy usage which is the fuel for the entire creative process. Children must be able to engage their bodies fully throughout the day so that they can channel their immense energy into all areas of learning. This means allowing time to balance engaging in activity, focusing, being quiet, and working in groups for ALL of the children.

Three Centered Learning

For learning to be permanent and real children need to be taught from and be active in engaging from their minds, their bodies and their feelings. We call this “three centered learning.”

When children are interested and feel caring, that is when they learn. Without this “feeling component”, learning is rote and mechanical, and often transient. Secondly, all children learn with their bodies; they use their senses, they try and experience through moving and imitating, and they manipulate their environment to find out for themselves how things work. Lastly, children need to be engaged in problem solving, wondering, asking questions, talking, searching and analyzing. Searching and engaging a process to find their own answers, is valuable and necessary. Children need experiences rather than answers. Life does not present complete solutions to problems, and neither should school. We give children the opportunity to reflect and analyze problems as they arise naturally in daily living situations as well as in the world at large. This is not “conditioned” learning, but rather “real” learning. The process of real learning requires children to dig down into what they already know, and to find ways to solve what they don’t know, without being told there is only one right answer or being guided by an adult along a process to a predetermined result.

When teachers are presenting material using all of their “three centers” and children are engaging from all three centers on a daily basis, knowledge will be based on personal experience. Nothing can be fully known without experience.

Example of a unit on bicycles:

Moving center: How do we ride a bicycle? What are the movement principles we engage in our bodies to get the best results? Intellectual center: How do we take apart, care for and even build a bike? What are other uses for bicycles? (“pedal power.”) What is the origin of the bicycle? What are the mechanics? The physics? Feeling center: We will write about our bikes, read other literature, write a manual for kids and go on different kinds of bike rides all over Boulder.

The Need for Guidance and the Need to Explore on Their Own

Children are also given time to pursue their own interests, with support from staff and parents. Children need both adult guidance so that they develop the necessary skills to approach learning any topic (goal setting, learning all the skills to effectively engage any process from beginning to end, time management and more), and time and space to explore, experiment, and learn through personal experience about topics they are naturally drawn to on their own. When children come to us with a topic they want to learn about, we create an environment where they can do that. We engage the parents in this process too, doing all that we can to help each child pursue their individual passions.

Preskills™

We want to give children the understanding and ability to accomplish any task from conception to completion. Preskills are tools universally applied to all particular tasks and situations regardless of the complexity. There are fundamental principles of whole thinking where a child can envision an entire project and break it into its component parts. For example, in a baking project a child would need to make sure he had the recipe and all the ingredients, the tools and knowledge, and the time needed for the process before he began. The frustration that children sometimes experience can often be related to not knowing how to get from the beginning to the end of a task. Preskills include planning, organizing, seeing the relationship between things and correlating similarities and differences. This is a core principle in helping children learn how to approach learning or doing anything new.

Transferable Knowledge™

Once you learn a particular skill, that process can be applied to other learning situations. For example, if a child practices over and over and finally learns how to successfully hit a baseball, those same learning skills can be applied to a difficult math problem. The child needed to focus, to persevere, to be confident in eventual success, and even to position her body in such a way as to allow the energy to flow freely and efficiently. All children have strengths and weaknesses. When knowledge is transferred from areas of strength to bolster areas of weakness, a confidence can be developed that is applicable to all areas of life.