expeditionary learning

[littlehawksmom]

Does anyone have any info about this type of school? The website is informative, as is their regional director, however, I would like some 'inside' info.
My town is trying to develop a charter school and this is the format they would like to use.
Sounds like a good program to me. The founding board members originally wanted a christian private school, but decided on a charter. Does this program have roots in christianity? I sure hope not.
Thanks for any info.

[ChristaN]

We've got a middle school/high school charter in town that is an "expeditionary learning" school. As my kids are early in elementary, I have no personal experience with it, but have spoken with a few people who know something about it. Ours definitely does not have a Christian basis although some of the other local core knowledge or classical education charter schools seem to. I don't think that it is inherent in the philosophy of any of those types of schools (core knowledge, classical ed, expeditionary), but depending on who is running the school, I imagine that any of them could be steered in that direction.

I think that it is based on environmental learnining and somewhat of an outward bound type of environment.

[ChristaN]

I meant "learning" not learnining in my last line, but I can't edit for some reason.

[sbmama]

I was trained to be a teacher through an internship in an ELOB school.

They use Outward Bound philosophy (e.g.core tenets like leadership, teamwork, craftsmanship to name a few) and the idea of an expedition as a learning process/journey as a basis for school reform. Each school will look different in many ways, but many similarities exist -- learning expeditions (multi-subject "units" that address a common topic of theme), strong sense of community (students and teachers meet often, sometimes daily, in groups to talk and work together), community service, outdoor adventure, some have multi-age classrooms.

My brain is a little fuzzy at the moment, but if you have more specific questions, please feel free to pm me -- I love to talk about ELOB!

Heidi

[love2all]

I ditto the pp.. and what I will add is that strong community is not only the students and teachers but also the parents, families and greater community. My 2 oldest are in an ELOB school and we parents MUST donate so many hours per month in order to have our kids there. This work is flexible and can be anything like computer stuff at home, driving on a field trip, help with expeditions and open house nights, etc..
What I really like about this is the fact that the kids are allowed a great deal of freedom in how they will learn something- for examle my ds1- last year in 1st grade had an expedition on dinosaurs and would need to learn about one type of dino to present to the community on open house night. The kids could write a story, write a song, make up a skit, make a 3-d dino, make a display of the dino in its habitat, etc.. anything really provided they included info about the era, diet, size of the dino.
The students and teachers then keep a portfolio of work and present it to the parents 2x a year so we together track progress, 2 other times a year we get written assessment based on a rubic- E-exceeds expectations of grade level M-meets expectations or N-Needs improvement -- this is the only 'grading' at the school- every paper and project is talked about and discussed with the teacher- not merely given a grade and sent onward.
Finally- no it is absolutely not christian based- it is based on the principles of outward bound - there are many christian like qualities, I suppose- ie- kindness, cooperation, community service -all done to better the quality of life of all involved..
We love our school and as previous HSers, it has really worked for us!!!

[lauren]

This philosophy sounds really cool! Does anyone have a link for a good site to learn more about it?