I've followed Joe Manko, Principal of Liberty Elementary School in Baltimore, on Twitter for a few years now. So I was pretty pumped when I found him live-tweeting the same session at a conference I attended recently and got to meet him in person.
Fast forward a couple weeks, and I just had the pleasure of visiting his school.
Some observations -
1. The average number of years of teaching experience at Liberty is 14. Two teachers just celebrated their 42nd year of teaching. (!!!) Seeing them in action (the summer program was in session during my visit), it is immediately apparent how much we grossly undervalue the power of experience in the public discourse on education reform.
2. Because of the experience level of the teaching staff, and the leadership responsibilities they take on, Joe is the only administrator. No APs, no deans. This frees up budget for 5 full time interventionists, a social worker, and a speech pathologist. Note that the school is a 90-90-90 public district school (no admissions requirements). That means 90% of the students are performing on grade-level, 90% are students of color, and 90% qualify for free and reduced price lunch.
3. The tour of the building was quite a dog and pony show. Literally. Joe actively builds partnerships with community organizations to bring resources into the school. Liberty has a school dog as part of a pet therapy program, and the students have been training service dogs for several years. They also work with a local farm to bring horses to campus once a month (and daily during the summer!). Students use their "behavior bucks" to purchase pony rides (5 Liberty bucks). Or the full pony package (20 Liberty bucks) gets them a ride and the opportunity to feed, groom, and generally learn how to take care of the animal. An interventionist on our tour referred to this as the humane education movement, something I wasn't previously familiar with.
4. The children's art was EVERYWHERE. Walls. Ceilings. Windows. Pretty much every inch of space that wasn't covered with student writing samples was covered with art. They'd even wrapped colored ribbons around the railings in the stairwell just because. Metal trash cans had become painted masterpieces. The net result - you couldn't help but feel the joy and love and warmth in the building.
5. Best (and easy to implement!) display of data to demonstrate student growth in writing: outside of one 2nd grade classroom, each student had three pieces of writing posted side-by-side: from beginning, middle, and end of year. The growth in word choice, sentence structure, penmanship was a powerful visual display.
6. Yes, there was technology - in several classrooms, students were on individual iPads researching animals for their reports. I was struck by how unremarkable this was (in a good way) - the iPad was just another tool along side the construction paper, glue, and scissors. A few bulletin boards featured QR codes that linked to students' writeups on volcanos - again, I noted how subtle this use of technology was.
7. They're building a fablab in the library and have raised money for 3D printers and the like. Kids are already making things with Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and Makey Makey, and learning Scratch.
Biggest takeaway was the school's obvious commitment to the whole child, and the balanced investment in experienced staff, community partnerships, and the mix of modern and old-fashioned tools for kids to be creators. Far too often in the debate about education reform, we're pitting teachers against technology, or dangerously narrowing our definition of education to academic content mastery as demonstrated by standardized test performance. Liberty was as refreshing reminder that is in fact possible to be a neighborhood public school that takes a wider, holistic view.