How the ideal student experience would look in NOLA
You have to see this handsome, new public elementary school located in New Orleans.
In this neighborhood, the question of will you send your child to a public school isn’t analogous to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. The choice is not personal; it’s collective. The neighborhood chooses to walk to school together.
If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because we’re not working toward it. But education reform needs a vision of a destination to know what we’re working toward.
So, you have to see this school.
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If you arrive early enough, you will see that the faculty and staff are first to add color to the school’s tapestry. Veteran teachers walk a little bit more efficiently than their eager, 20-something counterparts, but they walk in together. However, I wouldn’t call them teachers as much as they should be deemed masters of their respective fields. Writers, mathematicians, scientists, and artists arrived daintily clothed in their academic identities, ready to usher their apprentices into their particular guilds.
We could easily walk to this inclusive building as most children who live near the school do. The only children who don’t walk can’t, and the school ensures they join the colorful procession. Hand in hand with their children, parents from every corner of the neighborhood confidently drop them off.
Students arrive promptly at 7:30 A.M. to receive a nutritious and tasty breakfast. The chef uses many of the fresh fruits and vegetables grown from the school’s edible garden or those from local farms. The chef also prepares New Orleans-style beignets and coffee, and the aroma calls parents to purchase them from the student run coffee shop.
You have to smell this school.
“…. education reform needs a vision of a destination to know what we’re working toward.”
If parents don’t immediately go to work, many grab a seat in the school’s small amphitheater to politely gossip over java. However, on Friday mornings, some parents stay to see the first grade’s weekly recital, which occurs reliably at 8:00 A.M. A particularly large crowd attended last week when Ms. Thomas had her students perform Hey Pocky A-Way by the Meters.
You have to hear this school.
This public school is not designed to build up poor children, and a picture of the parent association could not be lifted from a society page. Local history is honored, but its curriculum is built to not How the ideal student experience would look in NOLA | The Hechinger Report: