Dear Colleagues,

Consider this as an open letter from our newest colleagues to those of us returning for the beginning of a new season of learning at LREI. In a short ideation session, new faculty identified essential elements of our progressive purpose, stated goals for “being” at LREI and uncovered some questions for which they will look to you for support and guidance.

It was a pretty good way to start the year. Connecting their work to our upcoming work together, the title of this letter borrows from a recent post by Grant Lichtman. I think that it provides a  useful frame for how we might most fully embrace the year that lies ahead:

Let’s take some liberty with this myth and think about opportunities for your school to change with the world around us. Imagine a version of Pandora’s Box in which you collectively crack the lid and allow some of those uncertain, uncomfortable options to emerge.  Allow the questions to flow out at a manageable rate, and deal with them…and their spin-offs. Problems, opportunities, “terrible”, and unexpected events never come alone; they are part of complex systems that we understand and exploit through a patient, intentional, transparent process of systematic problem solving.

Below in words and pictures is a summary of the ideas our new faculty generated as they cracked the lid on our LREI Pandora’s Box:

What does great teaching and learning in a progressive school look like to you?

• Creativity in motion
• being flexible
• Fun
• Asking questions
• Being openminded and self-reflective
• Grounded in reflection
• Learners continue to reflect on what they hear and see in school beyond the walls of the school
• There is a process for seeking answers and solutions
• Looking at the individual child
• A deep value and respect for childhood
• Learners are actively engaged in exploration of and acting upon the world
• Engaged learners who are asking questions and trying to answer them
• Learners taking risks
• Sees each individual child and values the whole child
• The learning environment is responsive  to students’ needs
• Learners’ interests are reflected in the community
• The content of learning is meaningful and therefore retained by learners
• Teaching is contextual, brings in new ideas and is demanding and accessible
• Grounded in conversation (student to student, student to teacher, teacher to teacher)
• Grounded in partnerships between learners (student to student, student to teacher, teacher to teacher)
• Defined by collaboration
• Working with/in a community
• Highly interactive

What are some hopes and aspirations that you have for yourself for your work at LREI?

• Be part of a community
• Allow myself to learn from the students
• Collaborate with the full LREI community
• Work with a team of like minded teachers
• Create a safe and happy learning environment
• Learn from the knowledge and experiences of my peers
• Learn from the community and play a role in continuing its progressive legacy
• Have meaningful conversations
• Do more diversity work
• Become more comfortable with taking risks to support learning
• Foster in my students the power to create
• Take risks and try out new ideas in the classroom . . . and then reflect
• Create differentiated work
• Try new things and challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone
• Reflect/act on the results of my efforts
• Balance my goals with those of my students and their families
• Have students see/use my as a resource
• Engage in progression and growth as a teacher and as a person
• Put into practice what I’ve learned
• Be learning consistently

What are some worries/concerns/confusions you have about beginning at LREI and what can we do to address them?

• Not feeling integrated into the community because I am only here twice a week
• As a technologist, how can I make sure that I can be more included in the student learning experience?
• What community routines/practices might be taken for granted? How best to learn the “norms?”
• As there was a clear “public” connection in the history of the school, what is our enduring “public” commitment in the present?
• How do teachers bring their own diversity  to LREI?
• This is my first year teaching full time
• How do I make sure that I am in communication with my colleagues? I want/need to be able to share experiences reflection and feedback.
• Collaborating with and getting helpful and constructive feedback from my colleagues.
• Communicating and engaging with families
• What curriculum is place and to what extent can e choose curriculum?
• How much are new and experimental teaching methods encouraged?
• Will I be given the opportunities I need to try, fail, succeed and grow?
• What if what I think is progressive is not in fact progressive?

As we prepare to come together as a full community to begin our work as learners at LREI, I would encourage each of us to think about how we would respond to the following questions:

I think useful to also consider how our responses to these questions may have evolved since the day when we were part of a new cohort of faculty at LREI.