What has to shift for a group of learners to become a learning community? What is different about a school for which this shift takes first priority?   Let’s step back a little bit to think about what each of these words means. As many educators and theorists have proposed, a useful way to think of learning is as the construction of knowledge. With what we already know in hand, we then build new structures that represent and contain new knowledge. When we learn in community, we do this work together.  Like “communication,” the word community is rooted in the idea ..read more

   Too often, people may conceive of the pedagogy of computer science in primary and secondary school as mainly the process of teaching learners to code. At Long-View, we try to approach the academic discipline of Computer Science, which began well before the invention of the personal computer, in an authentic way. As learners progress in computer science from first encounters to diverse applications of the discipline in later years, a throughline remains: we focus on thinking and learning, not syntax or language-specific features. To engage in computer science at Long-View is to lea ..read more

   The midpoint of our day at Long-View is the hour we spend at Pease Park, just an 8-minute walk down the road. But this isn’t just “a break” or “recess.” Congruent with the rest of our school day, it is an intentionally designed time to provide rich experiences for our learners.  Since the founding of the school nearly ten years ago, we have recognized the importance of unstructured free play and reflected on the value of this time. Live Oak Meadow at Pease Park is the stage where different forms of play unfold organically, contributing to the rich experiences that define our ..read more

   At Long-View, we don’t have a playground – and that’s by design. In the middle of each school day, we walk, with our lunches in hand, to spend an hour at a public park, where we run, climb, banter and pretend, unconstrained in our visions of how to play.  But lately, we’ve found ourselves thinking about the value of playgrounds to a wider community. In a series of Campfires in early October, we inquired into the history and function of several types. From “adventure playgrounds” that encourage “risky play,” to the highly designed structures and spaces brought to life in local ..read more

   Across the year on a handful of Fridays, we schedule time for “Community Conversations” — the aim of these conversations is to help the adults in our community come together to discuss ways we can support our learners. Our first Community Conversation of the 2023-24 year occurred last week. We created a reel on Instagram highlighting a few key points, and we hope, paired with this blog, those who were there can reflect more on the discussion and those who were not can feel included in the conversation.  We began with Claire Rudden (math content leader for Gold Band) giving an ..read more

   The word “assess” comes from a Latin word meaning “to sit beside.” While the concept of assessment has taken on a life of its own, especially in the world of education, the word’s etymology reminds us of the true intent. As a teacher, if you are not sitting beside a learner when you set out to assess, you are actually grading, not assessing. The difference matters.  As discussed in our recent post on conferring, much of our culture at Long-View centers around talk. Across the day, learners are expected to say more about their thinking. It is not enough, for example, to say th ..read more

   “Talking in class.” For many adults, this charged phrase may conjure up memories of times when we were asked to be quiet in a classroom so that we (and others) could focus on our individual work. But at Long-View, as in many schools that lift up the practices of dialogic teaching and inquiry learning, “talking in class” – in larger group conversations, with partners, and between individual learners and teachers – is foundational to the way we learn.  One place where this ethic manifests is in the way that Literacy teachers at Long-View most frequently give feedback: individua ..read more

   When many of us went off to college, we had little perspective on “what we wanted to be” or careers beyond what we saw our parents or close relatives doing. Why didn’t our K-12 experiences help us to better see the possibilities? Why shouldn’t school help to give that perspective?  At Long-View, we decided to do that.  To outline this effort and belief, a few years ago we wrote a blog post titled Learning Within a Larger Ecosystem. It explains “we think of Long-View as a porous organization, and work to use and be part of the wider ecosystem of learning that exists aroun ..read more

   On Fridays, when Long-View teachers meet as a team, we often begin with a discussion of an article on a topic that we are considering. This year, Ms. Fleury kicked off the series with “Transfer as the Goal of Education,” an article that synthesizes research on the difficulty of using prior learning in new situations.  Transfer is a concept that we refer to daily, both in academic blocks with learners and among ourselves as we analyze the work of learners through informal discussion. In a Long-View Math Block, for instance, we coach learners to see how they transfer understand ..read more

   It was 9am on Monday of Build Week 15, and learners were already saddling up to head for the park – not yet sure what they’d be making across the week. When they arrived at the park, teachers handed each team two model gliders: one larger one made of foam and one smaller made of balsa wood. Then, equipped with a clipboard, three strings of varying lengths, basic information about gliders and two blank data tables, teams set off to run three test flights on each glider, measuring the distance of each trial and observing the differences in the designs of the gliders. By then, they’d ..read more