Windsor House School

Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Windsor House learning community is founded on the principles of profound respect for all voices, real engagement in what one is interested in, and collaboration as a way of moving forward as a community. Our goal is to create a learning environment where young people develop the skills to be self-motivated and self-directed in their learning and in their lives, and where they have the opportunity to deeply engage with what they are passionate about.

Highlights:

A publicly funded K-12 parent-participation school, Windsor House is democratically governed for two reasons. First, we believe that to function well in a democratic society, people should be given the opportunity at a young age to experience its power and understand their own responsibilities. Second, we believe that a democratic learning environment allows rights and freedoms to be distributed equally to all, regardless of age or role.

Features:

• democratic governance with teachers and youth
• personalized and self-directed learning
• parent participation
• multi-age groupings
• portfolio assessment

A vibrant and energetic environment that at first glance may appear unstructured, Windsor House is, in fact, supported by many underlying structures and learning theories such as inquiry-based, experiential and active learning.

At Windsor House, learning is:

• Personalized — any time, any place, any pace
• Self-determined — students take charge to ensure relevance and engagement
• Constructivist — knowledge is created, not absorbed
• Experiential — the emphasis is on learning by doing and discovery
• Deep — higher-order thinking skills, not rote memorization
• Intrinsically motivated — no rewards or grades
• Technology-enriched — for knowledge, communication, exploration, expression, collaboration
• E-Portfolio-based — self-reflection, teacher feedback and conferencing instead of report cards
• Brain-based — working with the grain of the brain instead of against it
• Community-based — connected to the “real world” outside school walls
• Holistic — focused on learners as whole people

Links:

• Windsor House School (website) - http://windsorhouseschool.org/

Submitted by Dana Bennis on: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 - 3:45 pm

Tags for this entry:
self-directed learning, democracy, parent involvement, democratic school