The Simple School

For more than two years now, a friend and I have been day-dreaming about starting a school.  Both of us are short on school-starting credentials, however.  My friend, Chris Espinosa (known to many Texas students as “Uncle Chris,“)  is not even a certified teacher, and, while I do at least have that much formal qualification,  my resume is not nearly as thorough or impressive as one might expect of a would-be school master. (And it includes this unfortunate experience after which I vowed to never attempt to teach again in a hopelessly dysfunctional school system.) Accordingly, Chris and I have been hesitant to develop this dream and impose it upon the world.

Enter God.

A fire on March 30 at Oak Park United Methodist Church, in the neighborhood where my father grew up, has inspired me to put the dream to writing.

I am posting this article  just one day before the congregation of Oak Park is scheduled to meet about what should be done with their once-majestic church. I’m told that the group will likely go along with proposal that the local elders of  the United Methodist Church have put forth (with much sadness, I am certain) to formally close the church and raze the buildings.

I do not wish for this article to be taken as some sort of dramatic, last-minute attempt at saving the buildings. (Neither Chris nor I are in any position to attempt such a thing.)  But I think it is important to note that this article does owe its timing to my glimmer of thought, shared for at least a few recent days by a number of people involved with the church, that a restored Oak Park Church would be a great place for a school. I suffer no delusion that I will be persuasive with the next section — in fact, I encourage readers active in the case of Oak Park Church to simply skip over it, if that’s their inclination —  but I do feel God calling me to begin this article with an argument for returning to the idea of starting a school at the church.

The Case For A Neighborhood

Oak Park UMC  sits in the middle of a Corpus Christi neighborhood that has quietly defied, for decades, the local populace’s attempts to desert it. The area was once home to the city’s luxurious country club, it’s most energetic shopping district, and it’s most heralded schools,  but, for reasons best left for historians and sociologists to ponder, its prominence has steadily fallen since about 1960. Nevertheless, as plywood, graffiti and weeds have taken over commercial sectors, dozens of the area’s stately homes remain stubbornly in good repair. (I checked a few addresses on the county appraisal district’s website the other day and found them to all be valued at $250,000 or more. ) I’ve done no formal study on this neighborhood’s current demographics, but my years of knowing friends who have lived in the neighborhood lead me to this hypothesis: most of the homes that have weathered the area’s decline are owned by people of two broad categories. They grew up amidst relative wealth in the neighborhood’s glory days and have stayed all these decades in their childhood homes, or they are people who secured their family’s nest for a steal  from other families frightened away by the area’s economic troubles. Either way, since this neighborhood is their family’s homestead, these people have plenty of non-economic incentive to keep their houses and streets in excellent shape even as commerce has abandoned them. And their diligence has certainly kept this neighborhood viable over the years — despite the economic forces working to the contrary.

But, as these long-time homeowners pass on or decide, finally, to cash in their family’s real estate windfall (perhaps with the fear that the eventual profit their families have long-counted upon may disappear entirely), the area’s third category of homeowner seems poised to become even more prevalent: those seeking inexpensive investments. Non-economic incentives don’t exist for the real estate investor, of course. So, for him, the amount of care devoted to a home depends directly surrounding commercial districts. If commerce is shabby, rental homes in the area will be shabby too. That’s just the way our free market works. As things currently stand, only increased shabbiness seems to be the fate of the Oak Park neighborhood.

I appear to be in the minority in Corpus Christi, but I’ve long believed that our city owes it to the long-time residents of this great  neighborhood to make a serious attempt to restore its prominence.  The last thing the Oak Park Church’s neighbors need is yet another lot that used to be bustling with energy.  The death of any church is always sad, but this one would be a tragedy (albiet, one that would be largely unrecognized, unfortunately) for our city. I’ve felt the same sadness dozens of times over the years at the closing of the neighborhood’s various department stores, restaurants, and even a movie theater.

I suppose I am consoled somewhat by the fact that another church has relatively recently moved into a former school building in Oak Park’s  neighborhood and has reportedly  established itself very well amongst people who live nearby.  I’m told that some 300 people attend worship services there each Sunday, and dozens can usually be found there working on various projects during the rest of the week. What’s more, I’m told, the church politely discourages participation from people who live in other parts of town. This interesting caveat seems proof that my hypothesis is correct: hope and vitality are still very much in the hearts off those who live in the neighborhood.

But, since Romans 8:37 tells us that we are “more than conquerors,” I am troubled to be consoled by this church’s good works. I see God clearly asking for more from us all so that this neighborhood, and our city, can achieve the great potential that He has in store.

The Simple School that I describe below can be established in any neighborhood in any city. But I hope all readers will keep in mind that the Oak Park neighborhood is the one that inspired it.

The Simple School’s Conception

As any complex project might, the idea for this school took an unexpected twist a few days ago as my co-dreamer and I began talking seriously about making it a reality. Chris typed up some notes that tied together most of the ideas that we’ve talked about informally for months. But, as I studied those notes, I realized the school we have been dreaming of  has much in common what many others have envisioned, and even attempted, recently. Project-based education is anything but our original idea. In fact, Chris reports that a school with which he has worked recently  in Keller, Texas is implementing a “project-based” curriculum these days. And a recent article in The Corpus Christi Caller Times tells of two troubled schools that local officials are transforming into “magnet schools” that appear, likewise, to be ready to follow a similar model.

I decided it would be a mistake (perhaps even a disservice) for our school to try to compete at this “project-based” idea against the much better funded public school system, so I introduced the twist which resulted in the name “The Simple School.”  To adequately explain The Simple School requires that I first describe what was in Chris’s notes, so I hope the reader will forgive me now as I delve upon that for a few lines.

Chris noted that we had talked of starting a school for 5th – 8th graders that would follow a “project based” curriculum, in other words students would learn language arts, science, math, and history, as if by osmosis, as they work through various “real-life” projects.  We decided the projects would all be centered around “communication,” and that would provide the additional benefit of teaching students media production, speaking, and other such skills that are very important in today’s world.  Some of the projects would also be counted upon to make “real” money that would be used to pay for scholarships and facility overhead.

Here are some of the projects we envisioned for the school: a newspaper serving the entire neighborhood around the school; blogs and other such websites; plays; films; science, math, and history projects that find solutions to “real” local problems and would involve “real” interaction with community leaders and local media; a small advertising agency that would assist local businesses; television and radio stations that would broadcast programing of local interest via the internet; an art gallery featuring student works as well as those of other local artists, and a band that would play “real” gigs throughout town (or even on the road).

Our idea was that a portion of the typical school day would find students practicing with teachers the practical skills they would need to work on the various projects (desktop publishing, web design, art, music, audio/video production, etc.), and the remainder of the day would find them involved directly with the projects themselves.

Each project would be run by student leaders appointed (and guided) by faculty members. The project managers would have to “hire” their fellow students who would “apply” for “jobs” in the school. Students’ “grades” in the school would be based on the number of jobs that they hold and the written reviews their work receives from project managers and teachers. The project manager’s grades would be based on the overall success of their project. To assure a good variety of learning, students would be required to work on many different projects throughout a school year.

The Simple School Twist

I’ve said that this plan is very similar to others, but careful readers will note that it is also very different in one respect, which my twist highlights even further. Whereas most other project-based learning is careful to stay centered upon the core traditions of modern education (carefully prepared lessons, formal tests, textbooks, uniform class periods, etc), our plan is careful to all-but eliminate those.  The only one to which we pay explicit homage  is that of grades, and even that one we intend to alter fairly dramatically by not pretending that it is, necessarily, a fair and objective assessment of a student’s effort. (All grades, in other words, would be open for discussion and appeal, thereby discouraging the habit of defensiveness that often results in students when grades are presented as a harsh, final judgement.) More than any other school that I know of, ours would be based upon the reality of a free-market. Students would be required, above all, to make their projects viable in the “real” world — just as they will be in, well, the “real” world.

Thinking of this difference between our idea and other project-based models, I realized that our school would likely have to be even more committed to the spirit of laissez-fair than Chris or I had anticipated.  To be true to our ideals, our list of potential projects would have to go. The students, themselves, would have to recreate it. Philosophically speaking, if our main requirement for students is that their projects prove viable in the “real” world, we have no business mandating which projects students undertake. This recalls the age-old argument for a free-market economy over communism: people are naturally more committed to their own ideas than to those forced upon them by a bureaucratic system. Our original idea ignores this lesson (as do all of the other project-based models I’ve seen so far).  Education would suffer as a result.

So, here’s my twist:

The Simple School would entail all of the features named above, except the list of projects and the teacher appointed project managers. The main job of students would be to develop commercially viable projects of their own, but they would also help other students develop projects too. Teachers, meanwhile, would become intimately acquainted with each student (and his or her family), helping him or her to make wise choices regarding the projects and to find the resources to be successful.

Simple really. Right?

Starting The Simple School

Another advantage to the twist I have introduced is that it would make starting the school much less complex and expensive than other project-based models. (Corpus  Christi ISD is currently spending millions to turn “classrooms” into “conference rooms,” and to train teachers in the new approach.)

In the spirit of simpleness, we would simply need to uncover a commercially viable idea in the mind of a single potential student. Armed with that, we could then simply coach the student (and his or her family) as she develops the idea (writing a business plan is as good of a learning experience as pouring over a term paper), finds others to support it (financially and otherwise), and generally gets the project going. This first student would then “hire” new students who would help with her project, and each of them would be required to develop a project of their own. (And the first student would be required to help with some of these other projects, too.) The school’s growth would be all-but assured from there.

If you know of (or are) a student who has a brilliant idea for a commercially viable project, just let me know, and we can get started any time.

Simple really, right?