How the One Room Schoolhouse Is Making a Comeback

05May
by La Comadre

It was good enough for some of our parents and grandparents.  Many argue that our kids would have improved instruction if we went back to one-room schoolhouses.  Should we? 

For most of us, our frame of reference (or mine, at least) of the one-room schoolhouse is something from Little House on the Prairie – or the one on display at Knott’s Berry Farm. However, these “microschools” are making a comeback in education. And the reasons behind it are pretty fascinating. Per U.S. News & World Report:  

“Janelle Wood, founder of the Black Mothers Forum, a Phoenix-based parent advocacy group, has witnessed the success of the model firsthand. Her group launched a network of microschools in January 2021, seeing the model as the best way to achieve their goal of disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline.

Within mixed-grade classrooms of no more than 10 students, the forum’s microschools are led by community members, many of them parents who are also former teachers. Students spend part of the day working on online curriculum platforms like Zearn and iReady. The rest of the time they collaborate on projects and research topics of their choosing. Some days they engage in electives, like debate or foreign language study.

‘These kids get to move at their own pace,” Wood says. “We have an environment where students can keep on going until they hit a challenge, and that makes learning fun, because they have to figure out how to solve a problem.”

The idea is definitely taking off. In fact, the Governor of Arizona just pledged 3.5 million in funding towards microschools. What do you think about the idea of microschools? Is a classroom of ten children or less a drawback for your family, or an advantage?

What do you think?
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La Comadre

We are Moms, Tias, Ninas and Play-Tias who love children in our lives and we want to help every child succeed in school. Navigating schools and education—from preschool to college—is hard. We want to help each other with this. We are all in this together with you. We want to be a resource for you and for all of the children you love. Whether you need some info or you have info to share, you know where to go…LA Comadre.

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