Teachers and Learners

I say all the time that we are all teachers and we are all learners. The thing that we do distinctly at Cottage is that we make that engagement explicit. All of us, teachers, parents, and children, equally, are teachers and learners, whether we admit it or not, and whether we plan for that or not. Now I want to break that down a little bit more, so you can see the gears turning inside the philosophical approach we use here. 

First of all, let’s talk about my use of the word, “we”. Cottage is a cooperative. As our Director, I get to stand at the front of the room lots of times, or write here in a public place where everybody can see me, but I am not Cottage by myself. Cottage has been here since before I was born. We moved houses back in 1985, so we know the building was not Cottage by itself either. The thing we call Cottage is the name for all of us. The community of parents, teachers, and children is what makes the living, breathing, multicellular organism we call Cottage. Think of us like a coral reef, maybe, or your own microbiome. As we change, Cottage changes too. When Cottage is healthy, all of us thrive. When something is off, it impacts all of us. In that way, we kind of appear to move as one. If you are just here for the few years of your child’s preschool experience, you might not get to see the slow-moving shifts that happen in an organism like ours. We change over time, grow, prune, wither, flower, like a garden full of all different kinds of plants. 

We make decisions as a group. We find ways for each member to contribute according to their ability and desire to contribute. We value the range of diverse contributions that this model creates. There is nobody, not a single person, adult or child, who is more Cottage than another. I would point out, in fact, that any appearance of authority that I might have could easily be dissolved if it no longer served Cottage, as it changes and grows, as it should be. I answer to you all. What I do here is I act as an organizing principle. I strive to keep our mission and our values at the center of everything we do, and facilitate the growth and flowering that I know will happen with or without me. I know because I have been here long enough to see it. 

Now let’s talk about teachers and learners. Educational theorist Paolo Freire, in his work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, describes what he terms “the Banking Model of education” which will be immediately familiar to anyone who went through any kind of conventional school: The idea is that we as members of a society grant teachers authority to pass on the information that we collectively have decided is important, and that would tend to be things that line us up to be able to get a job, because we live in a capitalist society. Teachers hold the knowledge, the way a consumer holds money. The teachers are supposed to then make selective deposits into the minds of students, who are meant to receive it passively, swallow it whole, unquestioning. Then, at the appropriate time, students are meant to spit that knowledge back out to the teacher, like an ATM machine, usually in the form of a test. There is no invitation to engage in analysis of the value of that knowledge. There is no acknowledgement of the humanity of either the students or the teachers. Freire argues, in fact, that the process degrades the humanity of everyone involved. The process exists for the express purpose of perpetuating unequal systems of power, keeping hierarchies in place. That’s why it’s so important to avoid allowing creativity to flourish, to avoid dissent or critique. That’s why it's so important to stay in line, face forward, mouth shut, the way so many of us were required to do at school. 

You’ll notice how different Cottage looks from the Banking Model. Instead of acting like the people called “teachers” will be the gatekeepers of knowledge, and will bestow the right content upon those people we call “students”, so that they have the information we collectively want them to have (which is by definition just certain knowledge), we acknowledge that children have knowledge that teachers may not have. You already know this if you have been lectured about backhoes, deinonychus, or mantis shrimp. We credit students with bringing understanding that they have developed outside of school with them, which gives them a unique and insightful perspective. We view the love of learning, the excitement of creative expression and free pursuit of our interests, as critical components in a life of possibility, where we can be anything we dream, and do whatever it is we want to do. We listen, observe, and provision the school with the things we think will help the students find their creative expression and innovate. That’s why we call ourselves “an environment for ‘yes’”: people need the freedom to try things another way, try it themselves instead of taking an authority’s word for it, research it and discover, fail and create solutions, fall and pick themselves up. All people need that freedom. We long for it. We do it in secret if we can’t do it out in the open. At Cottage, all of us-- parents, teachers, children-- are invited to participate in that process. 

This part, this essential participation from all of our community members, in the ways that we choose to participate, makes it absolutely essential that the adults, parents and teachers alike, model that which we intend to teach. It can be an uncomfortable feeling, this idea that our kids are watching us for cues about how to be a person. We want our kids to have a better framework than maybe we ourselves had. We don’t want them to, say, use food or alcohol as a crutch, believe some people are just better than others, or disbelieve in themselves, as we have. We would like for them to be able to hear what we say about how people are supposed to act, but not notice the ways we ourselves undermine that teaching. As much as we would like for that to be the way teaching and learning works, at Cottage, we acknowledge that it’s just not. And so, many times as a community leader, the most important thing I can do is admit to my mistakes and make amends in front of everyone. Try something out that might not work super well. Take responsibility for the things I have done, even when there were unanticipated consequences. Have difficult but important conversations that I could easily avoid. Do the work that I ask others to also do. There is no such thing as, “do as I say, not as I do”. 

As a community of adults, we enact democratic principles, we do conflict resolution, we actively include people who are underrepresented. We volunteer to help, we show up, we share power and decision-making. That’s what I mean when I say that each of us can take Cottage with us when it's time for our family to move on to other schools, other communities, other towns. When you have done this, when you have felt the pull of expectation that you will do your part and participate, that you are essential, that others are counting on you, and that whatever you are able to contribute, even if you don’t believe it’s much, is an important part of the whole--once you know that you are a critical part of the whole, you can’t go back to thinking that you are insignificant. I try to tell people about this in shorthand by saying that we are a whole-family school, and that we are humanizing education. When Cottage is at our best, I think that's what we do: create space for each of us, parents, teachers, and children, to be seen in all of our resplendent, distinct individual parts, as well as experience a sensation that is available to us all the time but rarely acknowledged, of being absolutely essential as part of human society and the world, the universe. Here, we can make a small enough community so that each of us is known, each of us can be seen and loved exactly as we are, each of us can count on being supported and join in supporting others. It makes visible a knowledge that is far more profound than anything you can get from a textbook: that we are all connected.