Leaving To Learn

I’ve met so many students in alternative schools that described leaving school in 11^th grade because they just didn’t see how graduating was going to make a difference in their lives or because they felt pressure to start contributing a pay check for their families immediately.  After six months or a year of trying to make it in low-paying jobs (if they were lucky enough to find a job), they returned to school with a fierce determination to graduate and get further education and training.  I’ve always wondered...if leaving school can increase maturity and clarify tough decisions and trade-offs, why not allow students to take a leave of absence and return to school without being labeled a “drop-out”? 

Leaving to Learn, the new book by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski, explores work and the many other ways in which students benefit from not being in school. They state: 

All students need to leave school  – frequently, regularly, and, of course, temporarily –  to stay in school and persist in their learning. To accomplish this, schools must take down the walls that separate the learning that students do, and could do, in school from the learning they do, and could do, outside. 

Decorating their argument with anecdotes and inspiring quotes from leaders in all fields, the authors artfully make the case that our young people disengage from school because of the way we have designed school, as well as the narrowness in what we value as important to learn.  They make the argument that, by designing our education system around real-world engagement, students will own their learning.  

As we begin to think through an eduployment policy platform to create meaningful pathways for young people that are in poor positions to compete for college and jobs, it is important that we consider the options proposed by the authors.  Some are familiar, such as online courses, after-school, community service, job shadows, and internships. Others have interesting twists and new opportunities, such as experts-in-residence, road trips, work, travel, gap years, entrepreneurial learning, and come-back programs. 

Leaving to Learn is a welcome counter-balance to the flurry of school designs and modifications driven by the availability of digital technology.  These are important capacities that need to be embedded in holistic education approaches, that take into consideration motivation, engagement, social-emotional learning, and the nature of the environments in which students are interacting.   

There are two sections in the book that will be especially helpful in sparking rich conversation:

Understanding Disengagement: It’s Deeper Than You Think takes the discussion on why and how students disconnect from school another step with the analysis of the Big Four reasons for disengagement (academic failure, behavior, life events, and disinterest) by adding the Deeper Four (not mattering, not fitting in, unrecognized talents, and interests and restrictions).  I wish the authors had expanded into the counterproductive policies and practices (school-to-prison discipline policies for example) that sever relationships with students.  We have to remind ourselves that the school environment itself may be the source of disengagement. 

What Is Important to Learn to Achieve Success? is timely as the door swings open again to talk about what we really mean by college and career readiness. The authors make several assertions:

• Schools address a dangerously narrow number of learning standards.
• Schools give little or no attention to creativity and invention.
• Schools’ insistence that all students address all learning standards and address them in the same way is counterproductive and wasteful.
• Schools’ focus on low levels of competence impedes the quest for mastery, craftsmanship and artistry. 

School leaders and designers need to be clear about what they expect students to learn, how they can learn it, and how they can demonstrate that they have learned it.  We can’t do everything, so we need to find balanced approaches that provide rich learning opportunities. 

As our understanding of what personalization can mean in the schools of today and tomorrow expands, Leaving to Learn is a must-read in thinking about break-through school designs.