The Rose Scott Open-Structured School: A Private, non-profit 1st-12th Grade School Providing Student-Centered, Integrated Education that Makes Sense!
We specialize in students with AD/HD, high-functioning autism, Asperger's Syndrome, giftedness and learning strengths and challenges.
We welcome ALL students who are kinesthetic/visual learners and creative thinkers!
We currently have 1 opening in our 1st-4th grade group and 3 openings in our 7th-12th grade program.
If you are interested, call Cindy at 354-3101 and set up an appointment to come and visit our school.
"The principal goal of education is to create men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done--men and women who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, who have minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered."
-Jean Piaget
"A discussion of children's education and welfare must sweep across the many facets that comprise them. Each child is a mosaic of sorts, with colorful pieces contributing in complex ways to form the whole of his physical, social, intellectual, and emotional selfhood. In helping a child to achieve his integrated and holistic self, parents and teachers are wise to want to examine his 'pieces', to check carefully on the conditions of each one and to help in polishing, restoring, and maintaining them. A child's 'mosaic' includes his logical, verbal, kinesthetic, physical, social and artistic parts and pieces. All deserve attention, as each adds its own luster to the child's mosaic whole."
-Patricia Shehan Campbell,
from Songs in Their Heads- Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives
Background Information On the School
The Rose Scott Learning Community was founded at the onset of the 2008-2009 school year by local educator, Cindy Carlson. Cindy's goal was to provide a positive learning experience for non-traditional learners, who she refers to as "kinesthetic learners and creative thinkers". Cindy believes that among the students who may be included in this category of learners are children who are predominately right-brained, including those diagnosed with ADHD, giftedness, learning disAbilities, high functioning autism and Asperger's Syndrome. It is common for these children to be unevenly intelligent with a learning profile that is frequently not supported in the current public school system. Special Education has tried for years to meet the needs of these students, but because in addition to their learning disAbilities (especially a nonverbal variety), and ADHD and/or autism (executive function skill challenges), many of these students are GIFTED, presenting an increased level of complexity. The most appropriate path to success is to point these children in the direction of their strengths. While, Special Education is beginning to focus on 'Abilities First", the remaining problem is that the number of non-traditional learners whose needs are unmet is high, and there is a strong social need for small learning communities.
What if executive function challenges are truly a result of learning disAbilities and the natural way in which some children's minds think? Can we continue to call behaviors lazy, willful, oppositional and defiant and spend years trying to re-wire their brains to become organized and not impulsive? Or, would it make more sense to teach students to externalize time, organization and working memory while helping them identify and nurture their strengths? What if students who are overwhelmed by expectations, demands, and stimulis were treated with kindness and understanding and encouraged to de-stress in a quiet, calm place until they are ready to work? What kind of learning environment would that be? The public school administrators and teachers are not to blame because they work in an educational system that is large, and in many ways, beyond their control. The public school is also increasingly geared towards predominately left-brained learners: visual, auditory memory, language center, sequential, logical problem solver, 2-dimensional, accesses 2-D information, remembers letter symbols for sounds easily. The students at Rose Scott are predominately right-brained learners: hands on experiential memory, emotional, physical, musical center, see the whole, creative original problem solver, 3-dimensional, access 3-D information, remember graphic images easily. Which of these learning profiles fits your child? It is with all of this in mind that Rose Scott was created to serve as a viable option for students who are not thriving in the current public school system.
Our MISSION STATEMENT is to tap into our students' passion for learning, discovery, and accomplishment, thus empowering each and every student to uncover their limitless potential. We are committed to facilitating a multiple intelligence learning environment in order to meet the needs of ALL of our students by addressing their strengths and learning styles through multi-modal instruction. A mulitple intelligence classroom provides a 'whole-brain' approach to learning, which benefits ALL children. By allowing adequate time for students to process information and to utilize higher level thinking skills, we provide greater opportunities for our students to experience academic success.
Our VISION is to provide a safe and nurturing social and academic environment for non-traditional learners. Our students are able to learn at their own pace with engaging curriculum that is meaningful and appropriate for their current level of skills and understanding. An emphasis is placed on music, art, hands-on math and science, language arts, social studies, compassionate communication, outdoor play, gardening, service learning, sustainability, and preparedness for life. All of our lessons are taught in small groups in order to increase the level of student participation and engagement, and implement individualized instruction.
Our COMMUNICATION PLAN, in place of a discipline plan, is to provide weekly all-school meetings and regular instruction that teaches our students how to practice compassionate communication. Our lessons are based on the work of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg's Non-violent Communication. We believe, as Dr. Rosenberg does, that the only effective learning environment is one where the students feel comfortable and safe not only with each other, but also with the adults. We are a democratic learning community in which the needs of children and adults are equally important. As we implement Dr. Rosenberg's work, we learn to resist the temptation to criticize and judge ourselves, the students, their parents and all members of our school community. Amazingly, a typical school atmosphere of fear and competition is replaced by one of acceptance, cooperation, compassion and community. Our staff strives every day to create a school environment where people of all ages feel safe to be themselves, without fear of being corrected, punished, criticized or judged.
The Rose Scott Open-Structured School leadership consists of credentialed, talented adults who choose on a daily basis to commit themselves to the above Mission Statement, Vision, and Communication Plan. Our curriculum is integrated and carefully selected for each individual student by our Curriculum Director in order to provide a kinesthetic and visual approach to learning. It is not only our students' strengths we celebrate; our teachers, parents, volunteers, and community members are encouraged to identify their many areas of strength and to contribute their talents and expertise to our learning community.
Our Curriculum Director and Lead Teacher, Cindy Carlson, was a CAVE (CSUC Community Action Volunteers in Education) math tutor in Nan Evans' multiage primary classroom at Hooker Oak from 1975-1977. During the summer of 1977, she visited the British Infant School in Nottingham, England that founding parent/teacher Susan Hughes used as a model for Hooker Oak's Open-Structure Program. During the 1977-78 school year Cindy was a student teacher in the same program with Linda Holm. They were in the tri-placement program the last year the university allowed candidates to have all three placements in the OSC. Cindy was in a 4th-6th grade class with Christine Peterson, a Kindergarten class with Joanne Zitlaw and a K-2 class with Debby Drysdale. During the first five years Hooker Oak's OSC program was in operation, Cindy was present for three of those years. Her current goal is to provide an Open-Structured School in Chico that implements the program in its original form; a multiage, student-centered, integrated education for 1st-12th grade students.
Cindy's background also includes 22 years as a K-6 classroom teacher, 2 years as an instructor for CSUC's University Connection, 1 year 'Teaching Special Populations in the Regular High School Classroom', 3 and 1/2 years supervising K-12 Student Teachers for CSUC's Credential Program, 3 and 1/2 years as Project Manager for the NETWorks Tutoring Project for the Butte County Office of Education, and 7 years as an ADHD Academic Coach for CSUC's Disability Student Services Department, Bidwell Center for Psychiatry and Nancy's Mental Health Prevention Clinic. She completed her Masters of Education in Curriculum and Instruction in 1998 at Antioch Seattle. Her thesis was on 'Using Multiple Intelligence Theory to Increase Academic Success in Students with Giftedness, ADHD and LD'. Cindy's most cherished role is as the mother of 2 incredible children: Jesse Scott- a 29 year old wildlife biologist on Kauai, and Meghan Rose- a 24 year old Graphic Design major at CSU, Chico...thus the name, Rose Scott.
The Rose Scott Open-Structured School is a non-profit, private school. As we reflect on our three years in operation, we have witnessed many positive results with our students. Students who once struggled at being productive saw an increase in their level of productivity. Children who once dreaded school began to enjoy the prospect of waking up and going to school, never missing a day and commenting on having missed everyone during spring break! Children who had a difficult time finding acceptance in public school were embraced. We appreciate the many volunteers and donations, both monetary and otherwise we have received from our local community. We are grateful to the business community of Chico, California and the surrounding area for their support during our first four years and for their continued support in the future.
What is Open-Structured Education?
Open educators share a conception of childhood as something to be cherished, a conception that leads, in turn, to a concern for the quality of the school experience in its own right, not merely as preparation for later school or later life. Classrooms must be decent, pleasant places in which to spend time; for childhood and adolescence are not simply corridors through which children should be rushed as rapidly as possible to get them to the next stage.
It is not enough merely to respect childhood; it is necessary to respect children as well, which means respecting students' individuality, their interests, their needs, their strengths, their weaknesses. This means valuing individual differences instead of seeing them as a problem. It means accepting the legitimacy of individual students' individual interests--understanding that students do have interests, indeed whole agendas, of their own that are not the same as the teacher's, but that are legitimate and worth recognizing. And this, in turn, means letting students' learning at least part of the time, proceed from their interests; it means giving them freedom to explore and supporting them in their explorations.
For this to happen, trust is indispensable. Unless there is trust--trust in students' desire to learn, trust in their capacity to learn through their own explorations, trust in their capacity for growth and fulfillment--teachers will not feel able to allow students to make choices, to take responsibility, to make mistakes, and to learn from their own mistakes. By the same token, teachers will not feel able to proceed unless they, too, are trusted --by administrators, no less than by students.
Since the changes are most visible and numerous on the elementary school level, let me offer a thumbnail description of the kind of classroom I am talking about...classrooms are converted into workshops, with a reading corner, stocked with books--'book-books' as well as readers; a math area; a science center; an art nook; and so on. Each 'interest area' is richly stocked with things, not merely with paper and pencil materials. In the math area, for example, there will be scales and all sorts of things to weigh and measure, to add and subtract: bottle caps, pebbles, shells. There will be clocks and yardsticks and commercially manufactured math games, and whatever else the teacher and students choose to put in it. And so it goes from one interest area to another. A visitor will also notice that teachers and students are not ruled by the bell; the usual 40 minute period is replaced by longer stretches of time in which students may be free to choose from a number of possible activities.
I refer to a change in atmosphere--towards more humaneness and understanding, toward more encouragement and trust. I also refer to a change in learning style--away from the teacher as the source of all knowledge to the teacher as the facilitator of learning, away from the traditional whole-class orientation to more concern with individualized learning. These two changes, in atmosphere and in learning style, go hand in hand, for a focus on each individual learner can only occur if the classroom environment is transformed.
Advocates of open education generally agree that the major purpose of education should be to educate educators, which is to say, to turn out men and women who are able to educate themselves--men and women who have the desire and the capacity to take responsibility for their own education and who are likely, therefore, to be life-long, self-directed learners. "Being educated," Professor David Hawkins of the University of Colorado, a leading American proponent of open education, writes, "means no longer needing a teacher." Or, as Sir Alec Clegg, one of the great contemporary English educators, suggests, the object of education "is not so much to convey knowledge as it is to excite a determination in the child to acquire it for himself, and to teach him how to go about acquiring it."
...Open Education is not a model, still less a set of techniques, to be slavishly imitated or followed. It is, rather, an approach to teaching and learning--a set of shared attitudes and convictions about the nature and purposes of teaching and learning, about the nature of childhood and adolescence and ultimately about the nature of man. Contrasting a description of a typical open classroom with a description of a typical traditional classroom, Charity James writes,"These are not differences simply of method, they are different ways in which lives are being spent. They represent fundamental differences of values between the two institutions.
-Charles E.Silberman, from The Open Classroom Reader
Cindy Carlson, MA.Ed., Curriculum Director/Lead Teacher
The Rose Scott 1st-12th Grade Open-Structured School
850 Palmetto Ave.
Chico CA 95926
530-354-3101
rosescottschool@gmail.com
www.rosescottschool.com
www.rosescottlearningcommunity.com
(behind the First Baptist Church)