Best Schools www.hol.edu

• Young people are valued for their unique talents and dispositions, and education is seen as drawing these forth.

• Conversely, education is not seen as filling people with socially useful information, but as helping them to discover their full potentials.

• There is no perceived dichotomy between human development vs. knowledge and skill acquisition—the growth of the whole person and the subjects they learn are interdependent.

Schools stand for and are “about” something.

School values and beliefs are important and shared by parents, teachers and students.

Why do I go to school?Knowledge and skills are not seen as ends in themselves, but as a means to develop people of greater wisdom, caring, thoughtfulness, intellectual competency, and social as well as ecological responsibility.

School is not just a way to get to the next level (a credentialing system) but is sought and experienced for its intrinsic value.

Education is valued for its power to move people--to change hearts and minds and be an agent for both individual and collective transformation.

I feel like teachers see me for who I am

• Teachers and students are given more than a token say in what goes on at school, in the belief that this freedom of choice is essential to authentic learning, and is a matter of trust as well as respect.

• Students may have a hand in helping to create their own assessments and rubrics as a teaching tool to help them understand and accept how they will be evaluated, and what is seen as having importance, and why.

• While direct instruction is used when needed, instructional models lean toward inquiry-based learning, which gives students the opportunity to explore their interests within the broader context of what they are required to learn.

• Students and teachers both feel like they can be who they are without pretense.

i like to go to school

• The school community internalizes norms which guide both academic expectations and social life.

• There is as much cooperative learning in small groups as there is individual work.

• Small group work (advisories, teams, thematic clusters) promotes a human scale environment, and ensures all students have some kind of home base and lots of positive contact with adults.

•The school feels and acts like a community-natural and close, similar to a family.

•The school is informed more by communal agreements about how to be together as opposed to rules or other forms of legislated behavior.

Although we’re different, we are a lot alike

• The school culture honors cultural diversity, which also involves paying attention to and rectifying biases.

• Student immersion in other cultures (both within and outside US) is recognized for its transformative potential.

• There is a lot of one-on-one interaction between adults and kids.

the things I learn are real

• There is less reliance on texts and more use of original material and authentic sources.

• While direct instruction is used when needed, instructional models lean toward inquiry-based learning, which gives students the opportunity to explore their interests within the broader context of what they are required to learn.

• Lessons are designed and taught in ways that enable space for digression, surprise and teachable moments.

What I’m learning makes sense to me

• For the most part, curriculum is not taught in separate, disconnected disciplines, but in integrated ways that mirror our experience of reality.

• Curriculum often focuses on themes which advance the school mission in building young people of purpose, character, courage, civility and moral sensibility—as well as introducing required knowledge and skills.

• This is with the belief that knowledge gained without a moral framework that relates to real life can lead to a degeneration of meaning, pro-social purpose and ethical sensibility.

You’re more than the test

• Standardized tests are administered; but the current “accountability” system does not run the school nor deter it from its central mission.

• Practices that label, rank and divide students are minimized--such as ability grouping, excessive emphasis on testing, single point grading, contests, competition and rewards or punishments.

• Authentic assessments are more often relied on (portfolios, written narratives, student self-assessment, performances and demonstrations).