Rachel Hirsch: New Year, New Program

How cool is it that I get this opportunity to share the start of our first year of the Progressive Education Lab (PEL)? The creation of a two-year program that will support, educate and train bold and thoughtful progressive educators who are in this game for the long-haul.  The mission behind PEL is to train new teachers to be progressive educators in a manner that demonstrates and implements progressive practices that include experiential learning, risk taking, student-centered curricula, making social justice central and essential in all disciplines, and original thinking.

PEL grew out of conversations between leaders at four schools: CSW, Vermont’s Putney School, the Unquowa School in Fairfield, Connecticut and the Calhoun School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in conjunction with the E.E. Ford Foundation’s invitation to CSW to apply for a leadership grant. As the women heads from these schools talked, they realized that there was a need for a program that not only focused on progressive education for new teachers, yet would employ the methods and ethos of progressive education in the training and education of these teachers.

Next year, each of the teaching fellows (“Pellow,” as we call them) will be at one of the schools as a new teacher, honing and testing the practices that they are developing this year. While the program has always sounded great in the abstract, all of us involved have been eager to see how things worked when we actually got up and running…

What we couldn’t plan for, of course was just who these teaching fellows would be and what they, and having this program running on campus, would bring to our schools.  We made sure that each Pellow would have an amazing mentor at each school (at CSW, the Pellows work intensively with Tad Lawrence, Marilyn DelDonno, Evelina Galper and Tom Evans) and would get connected with a wide range of teachers and programs (each Pellow is working closely with a 9^th grade Food and Culture class for an up-close look at Integrated Studies and collaborative co-teaching, in addition to observing and talking with teachers from all disciplines). But I’m not sure we could have imagined such a delightful, inquisitive and astute cohort of future educators as we have this year.

Aspen Golann ‘05, Dana Wolfson, Hallie Herz and Sam Egilman ’07 have jumped right into the program and into our school! Each of them is eagerly observing as many classes as they can– in the opening days they’ve managed to check out classes in art, foreign language, science, math, dance, theater, and English with more lined up for the coming weeks. In doing so, they are getting us talking about our goals and methods in the classroom and thinking about why we do what we do and how we try to do it.

Our Pellows recently started a weekly lunch group for students where they will have the opportunity to discuss and reflect on progressive education and how it serves them as learners. In other words, through their energy and their work, they are keeping progressive education living and breathing in our day-to-day practices and conversations – how amazing! The first week has been bustling, exciting and has led each of us involved to try something new and tackle a surprising challenge – if this is an indicator of what’s to come, it’s going to be a dynamic first “quad” of PEL. One of the best ways to get PEL into the community is to keep talking about it. Please feel free to check out our blog at http://progressiveeducationlab.wordpress.com, comment on our posts, or contact me directly (rhirsch@csw.org)with questions or thoughts.

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