Finding Alternatives to the Assembly Line.

School--it's not just for widgets anymore

When most of us were going to school, the widget method reigned. Education was handled like an assembly line: Place a group of 30 students in five rows across and six deep, teach them a lesson, test their recall and stamp their papers pass or fail. There wasn't much room for customizing lessons based on students' individual learning styles. A lot has changed since then.

These days, we know that each student has a unique learning style. If we want to help every student achieve, then we need to stop looking at education as a one-size-fits-most process and begin looking for opportunities to develop customized one-of-a-kind education plans for each student. Every single student, in other words, needs to receive a "special" education.

Offering choices allows each student to select the style of education best suited to his or her unique learning style. Can't be done, you say? It's actually easier than you might think to expand the choices available to your students.

First, ask your students and their parents what they would like to see in the way of options. You may find interest in language immersion, the arts, the sciences or other specialty areas. Then, look for low-cost ways to implement those options.

Perhaps you have a school where attendance is dropping but the community doesn't want the building closed. Look at the situation as an opportunity to develop an alternative school open to students throughout the district. Set aside a wing of the building where a few teachers can create a language immersion or an arts-based school. Or use the building to develop a small K-8 or K- 12 school.

Your teachers' areas of expertise could lead to alternative programs based on everything from engineering and design, to art and music, to ecology and horticulture. Any of these areas has the potential to become the foundation for an alternative program or school.

An excellent example of an unusual alternative school is Environmental Middle School in Portland, Ore. Although I don't usually talk about my school district in this column, I'm making an exception in this case.

Environmental Middle School, which received an "exceptional" rating in our state's most recent review of schools, is one of 30 special programs open to students from throughout the district. The school, which is located in the heart of an urban area, teaches students through the lens of gardening, earth sciences and ecology. Here are some excerpts from a letter the students recently wrote to our local paper about EMS:

"Our school has beautiful gardens that we care for. We love to eat our lunches outside in the garden, pick vegetables for lunch and draw plants for our science classes. Our gardens attract birds and butterflies to our school grounds and help us feel safe and happy at school."

"All of us participate in service learning at school and in the community. Many of us contribute over 100 hours a year to our school and community. Service learning teaches us so much about science, social studies, art and people who are both younger and older than us. Each week we feed the homeless at Blanchet House in downtown Portland."

"We come from all over Portland, from many different backgrounds and neighborhoods. Our school helps us to know people and places all over the city since we go out on field studies every week. We love our city and the school that teaches us so much about it."

EMS is just one example of an alternative school. What possibilities exist in your district to expand educational options for your students? Look for ways you, too, can provide alternatives and you won't have much to fear from vouchers.