Green Acres School

Seventy-five years ago, our founder Alice Mendham Powell saw what many of us today continue to observe in schools across this country – students passively receiving information, teachers moving quickly through material to be memorized, students’ ideas, development, and prior experience largely ignored, and a disconnect between the work of school and that of the world at large. In response, she founded Green Acres, a school based on the ground-breaking ideas of John Dewey and other educational reformers such as Francis W. Parker and Jane Addams.

These progressive era and early 20th Century thinkers and activists developed important notions about schooling which continue to form the foundation for contemporary progressive educators nationwide. In defining “Progressive Education,” we can point to the following:

• Schools must tap into students’ natural curiosity for exploration and growth. Students must learn to take initiative, to know themselves as learners, to develop their passions, to challenge themselves creatively, physically, and intellectually, and to assume ownership over their learning. Intrinsic motivation to learn is at the heart of progressive education. Learning at Green Acres is meaningful because students have daily opportunities to construct meaning through interactive, collaborative learning experiences.
• Schools must employ pedagogical practices that engage students in rigorous, engaged learning. Progressive educators emphasize depth over breadth, construction and application of knowledge over strict memorization, active participation over passive reception of information, open-ended tasks over recall, thematic connections over isolated subject-area learning, emphasis on the process and the thinking behind that process over strictly the product, and assessment practices that mirror the kinds of “products” most valued by society over an over-reliance on paper-and-pencil tests.
• Schools must respect students as individuals, as learners, and as contributors. Progressive educators attend to children’s intellectual capabilities and interests, as well as to their social, emotional, and developmental needs. Our teachers base both what and how they teach on the developmental stages and interests of their students.
• Schools must teach those skills most needed for success in the world outside of school–core academic skills but also leadership, communication, problem-solving, collaboration, and thinking skills.
• Schools must provide students with practice in active citizenship, compassion, service to others, and respect for self and others. Progressive educators prepare students to be successful in and out of school–and to contribute to improving society overall. They work to develop in students the habits of those people whom we most admire. As our founder once remarked, “training citizens begins in preschool.” We nurture students’ intellectual, social, emotional, and physical development.
• Schools must in and of themselves be democratic, inclusive communities. Each member of the community must model respect for all individuals, cultures, and the environment, shared decision-making, and an ethical approach to all situations. With an explicit focus on inclusion, diversity, and multicultural education, our students are prepared for the diverse world of the 21st Century.

At its core, Progressive Education is focused on creating as many authentic learning experiences as possible for students–the kind that enable them to produce school work that is meaningful to them and that often has value beyond school. At Green Acres, we are gratified to witness the continuing and intensifying relevance of progressive education to the current educational debate. Given what we now understand about multiple intelligences, brain research, child development, and the skills needed for 21st Century careers, the case for progressive education is even stronger today than it was in 1934.