Applied practices

A small school is a set of conditions, not a finished design. What partner schools did with those conditions is where the real work happened.

Small size on its own guarantees nothing. It creates the room for teachers to know students well and for adults to plan together, and the Initiative expected schools to use that room. Partner schools were given wide latitude to design their own curriculum and instructional models. Over time, a set of approaches took root across the network, and they are described below.

Arts integration

Arts integration puts the fine and performing arts at the centre of how a subject is taught, rather than keeping them in a separate room. A lesson might use improvisational drama to explore conflict in a piece of writing, or use visual composition to make sense of a scientific process. The approach asks students to understand an idea in more than one medium at once, and it builds appreciation of the arts at the same time as subject knowledge. Read more about arts integration.

Expeditionary learning

Expeditionary learning draws on the insight that people learn powerfully through direct experience, community service and sustained inquiry. Its signature structure is the learning expedition, a sustained piece of inquiry in which students and teachers take on a compelling topic through fieldwork and original research. Expeditions finish with students presenting their work to an audience from outside the school, which gives the effort a purpose that outlasts the grade.

Project based learning

Project based learning answers a practical question: how do we make schoolwork matter beyond school? In this approach learning is organised around complex, authentic projects, many of them rooted in real needs outside the school walls. Students take on more responsibility for their own learning, and content knowledge develops as a consequence of the work rather than as an end in itself. It is at once a philosophy about what education is for and a practical method for teaching it.

Community based learning

Community based learning takes the classroom out into the place students call home, and brings that place back into the classroom. It also deepens their sense of belonging. Students may take on an issue their community is facing and develop a response, present findings to a panel of local experts, or complete service hours. Internships are another route, pairing students with local employers and a workplace mentor who helps them build both specific skills and professional habits such as reliability, teamwork and problem solving.

Professional learning communities

A professional learning community turns the usual question around. Instead of asking whether teaching happened, it asks whether learning did. Once a staff takes that shift seriously, everything else follows. Which practices have helped all students reach high levels? How might they be adapted to this school? What barriers stand in the way, and how can they be removed? What commitments must colleagues make to one another? Teams can be organised by grade level, subject or teaching group, and the most effective ones share several features: meeting time carved out of the working day, candour about teaching and learning, doors that stay open, feedback offered by peers, and decisions informed by achievement data, observation and what people say they experience.

Distributive leadership

Distributive leadership moves decision making out from the principal's office and into the wider school community. Teachers, students, families and neighbours all gain a route into decisions that affect them. The advantages are practical as well as philosophical: it builds engagement, creates opportunities for growth, and helps a school keep its momentum through changes in leadership. A flatter structure is not automatically a better one, however. It works when leaders set clear structures and guidelines so that shared authority produces decisions rather than drift.

Proficiency based teaching and assessment

Proficiency based education rests on a few commitments: teaching that starts from the student, standards that are made explicit, assessment that never really stops, and teachers who learn together. Curriculum, learning targets and lesson plans are all tied to high postsecondary standards. Teachers redesign their work so that students become active partners in learning, developing strong intellectual habits alongside content knowledge. Students understand the targets and the assessment process, progress is checked continuously through formative assessment, and each learner moves at a pace that suits them. The fixed point is the standard, not the clock. Grades and credit rest on demonstrated proficiency.