Schools That Think

This discussion isn't part of Sturgill's lesson plan, which was to study the exploits of Odysseus in Homer's "The Odyssey." But things haven't been going well for the past week or so: One student has become the target of a lot of teasing and hostility. Sturgill and fellow teacher Andy Hauty, 46, have decided to tackle the problem head-on.

Instead of scolding the students, the two teachers are working the issue through with them, patiently questioning, listening, and talking. This particular afternoon draws to a close with everyone thinking about respect and ways to deal with someone you just don't like. No one has come up with a perfect solution, but that's okay. The students are up against a life problem, the kind of social dilemma that stumps adults on a regular basis -- which is exactly the point.

Welcome to one of the more radical experiments in education reform -- a school founded on the notion that how children learn to treat one another is as important as what they learn in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It's a learning agenda that makes sense, especially in the new economy. "The school has a clear mission," says principal Laura Baker, 48. "We're about developing informed, ethical decision makers and problem solvers. That's not instead of teaching academics; it's teaching academics in a way that is always focused on making us more humane."

It's a mission that has been clear from the very beginning at GCS, a grade school (K through
8) with 147 students. Starting with a handful of children in a four-room rented building -- the school now occupies two buildings on a campus in the rolling Berkshire hills -- the teachers developed, and continue to work on, a style of teaching that they call the "responsive classroom." What that means is that classroom learning at GCS, though rooted in academics, takes as its distinctive mission the nurturing of social skills like cooperation, standing up for what's right, responsibility, empathy, and self-control -- and does so on a daily, even an hourly, basis.

"It's all about communication," says Chip Wood, 58, one of the six teachers who founded GCS. Because Wood and his colleagues established GCS as a laboratory, outside the local public-school district, it technically is a private school. But there are no academic requirements for entrance, and tuition is based on parents' ability to pay -- anywhere from $650 to $6,050 a year. The only constraint on entry: A student body is chosen to maintain racial, gender, and economic diversity.

GCS serves a local population, but its impact is national. Its parent organization, the Northeast Foundation for Children, includes consulting and publishing arms to further the founders' mission of transforming learning in U.S. public schools. The foundation regularly publishes books by its teachers and staff -- including Wood's recent "Time to Teach, Time to Learn: Changing the Pace of School." Its newsletter reaches about 50,000 educators nationwide. Also, hundreds of visitors a year stop by to see the responsive classroom in action.

What those visitors -- most of whom are educators -- see or hear about in workshops is a kind of teaching that refuses to compress learning about character and civic values into a weekly one-hour unit. The staff at GCS has created a model of social-skills learning that is integrated into every aspect of school life: Each morning, in every classroom, all children greet one another and are given time to talk about whatever might be interesting or troubling them, at home or in school. Once a week, the entire school meets for a special morning meeting to celebrate academic and personal achievements.

The message isn't lost on students, many of whom have been at the school since kindergarten. Seventh- and eighth-graders occasionally roll their eyes about things getting "a little sappy," as one girl says. But they're also clear on what the school has taught them. "I think I'd be a really different person if I hadn't come here," says Sadie Childs, 14. "I'm a better person. I've learned about things like conflict resolution. This school not only teaches you academic stuff; it also teaches you how to be a good person in the world."

A lot of this learning doesn't translate neatly into standardized tests. But at GCS, standardized tests are not the point. Even so, from the third grade on, students take the California Test of Basic Skills, and their scores consistently go up, so that by the seventh and eighth grades they're in the 90th percentile.

As far as Baker and her staff are concerned, though, the standardized test is only one indicator of how well students are learning. At GCS, children are evaluated constantly. Teachers regularly keep classroom journals. And report cards are actually detailed assessments that cover specific academic and social skills. For first- and second-graders, skill categories run from "Understands and counts using odd and even numbers" to "Initiates and participates in conflict resolution."