When Bacal, who had the idea to open the school, met Muse, the two immediately realized they had an experience in common. “Failing is an essential part of learning.” Guiding kids to be ready to navigate “Schools want to save kids from failing,” said Muse.
Learning, he added, is “stickier” when students have to struggle with it. “We set out purposefully to design a system that allows kids to do things like navigate ambiguity.”
“The typical approach does not make kids competitive,” said Muse. This doesn’t surprise Kerry Muse, Venture’s head coach and a founder of the school with Jon Bacal, formerly the head of Minneapolis Public Schools’ Office of New Schools, and with the late civic mogul Verne Johnson. And while the local programs haven’t been in existence long enough for there to be data on graduates’ college completion rates, national research shows that the students too often lack the traits necessary to finish a two- or four-year degree. There are a number of Twin Cities schools that get outstanding academic results with similar student bodies. Most arrive at the school three to four years behind. One-fourth receive special-education services, and two-thirds are learning English. Most have struggled in other programs, and many face daunting challenges at home. Virtually all of the school’s students are impoverished minorities. Trailblazers, as the students are called, are given maximum latitude to explore. There’s art and cooking and weightlifting and a leadership class. There are supplies for quilting, for making paper sculptures and for woodworking. The teachers - referred to here as coaches - sprinkled in among the student body are given to spiky hair and chunky piercings. There are no conventional classrooms, but there is a 20-something Entrepreneur in Residence. Gathered in the school’s central great room for the morning meeting one day in the dead of winter, some 100 tweens kicked the day off by rapping the rules, the “Super Six.” It looks nothing like a middle school, but rather like the world’s hippest summer camp. When visitors first walk through the door - and there have been lots of influential, high-profile visitors in this, its inaugural year - few have a clear idea what it is they are witnessing. The simple explanation for how - by the extensive use of technology and by teaching entrepreneurship - doesn’t do it justice.Ī public charter, the school is located on University Avenue, a few blocks west of Highway 280. Welcome to Venture Academy, a year-old Minneapolis school that seeks to provide answers to those questions.
What if we stopped talking about educational technology in terms of Smart boards and broadband access, and started talking - really talking - about disruptive innovation?Īnd finally: Is anybody worried that there is very little fun in the average American school day?
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