If you work at a K-8 school and want to transform to a deeper learning experience for your students, I simply do not know of a better example to visit than Design 39 Campus in Poway Unified District, CA. If you have read my posts in the past, you know I follow D39C closely; I tagged along on one of their very frequent tours today with friends from Hillbrook School in Los Gatos. You can learn a lot from D39C by visiting their website, looking at the resources and videos they post, but every time I go on a tour with a group of teachers and administrators, they tell me that you cannot understand the breadth of what they have accomplished without visiting.
In a nutshell, D39C, a public school, in a union district, with no advantages other than being a new school (now three years old), has reinvented the school operating system around students and learning. Period. Anything that contributes to that gets amplified and anything that does not gets tossed out. They have more time to collaborate, fewer silos, more engaged kids, more student ownership of learning, more design, and more passion-centrism than any other school I have visited. And they do it with class sizes of 26-35, and with fewer financial resources than most other schools in the country.
Look, learn, and come visit if you want to see what “it” looks like!
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