Building for success in an optional school

By Alan Bailey

Every other year in Chugach Optional there’s a buzz of excitement as third and fourth grade students place handmade models of medieval castles on tables along the sides of the central school corridor. Miniature knights peer down from cardboard battlements. Colorful flags wave in imaginary winds at the top of crenellated towers. And pieces of drinking straw simulate the posts of a stockade around a fortified hill.

Children dash from one elaborate creation to another, admiring each other’s handiwork and imagination, while proud parents visit with each other, comparing notes on the weeks of effort that have finally come to fruition.

The castles are a product of a Middle-Ages theme that spawns a series of projects and investigations, typical of the project-based approach to learning that is a hallmark of optional education. Students plan, carry out and present the results of their work to classmates and teachers. Parents help through encouragement, perhaps through some assistance in planning or construction, and perhaps through sharing some of the stresses of the creative process.

The idea behind project-led education is that, rather than placing each element of the curriculum – say writing, geography or history – into its own separate box, the students carry out projects that involve multiple disciplines and self-directed research, reflecting the fact that knowledge rarely fits into neat, self-contained categories.

The castle project, for example, requires group study in the classroom, library searches and maybe the use of the Internet, to research the history of castles, find a castle design to model, learn about castle construction and also learn something about how people lived during the Middle Ages. Discovering where castles are located involves geography. Designing the model involves elements of math to calculate the scaled-down sizes of walls and towers. Drawing out a plan involves geometry. And model construction involves decisions about what materials to use, estimating material quantities and figuring out how to resolve the inevitable construction challenges that arise.

While not necessarily perfection, the models are always interesting and always represent the culmination of a great deal of work. And by going through the planning, design and construction process, each student will have learned more about the world we live in and, along the way, will have honed up a few skills across a variety of disciplines.