I was stunned when I walked into the classroom of Carmen Wilkinson at Jamestown Elementary School in 1975 (all names are actual people and places). In my first year as Arlington (VA) school superintendent, I had already seen hundreds of elementary classrooms. This was the only one I had seen that had mixed ages (grades 1 through 4) and learning stations in which 50 students spent most of the day working independently and moving freely about the room; they worked in small groups and individually while Wilkinson–a 27-year veteran of teaching–moved about the room asking and answering question, giving advice, and listening to students. Called “The Palace” by parents, children, and staff, the class used two adjacent rooms. Wilkinson teamed with another teacher and, at the time, two student teachers. She orchestrated scores of tasks in a quiet, low-key fashion. Wilkinson’s informal classroom was unusual at Jamestown–I did discover a few more in other schools–in the 500 other elementary classrooms in the Arlington public schools.
Wilkinson began teaching in Arlington in 1950 and came to Jamestown in 1957. She taught first through third grades. She was one of the first teachers in the County schools to try and then embrace “open classrooms” in the late-1960s. Parents vied to get their children into “The Palace.” Local colleges sent their CONTINUE READING: Teachers I Respect and Admire–Carmen Wilkinson | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
“If I were going to tell one of my sons how to possess the world, I would simply bring him into my house, show him that solid wall of books, and say to him: ‘the secret is in there somewhere, and even if you never find out what it is, you will still have come closer.”
