Educate
the
Whole
Child

It’s time to let the wholeness of the child engage with the wholeness of the world.

WHAT IS

WHOLE CHILD EDUCATION

AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

To the extent that we narrow the purpose of schooling to what can be measured, we fail to
engage those sides of children that must be developed in order for them to pull learning
from life. We also increase the likelihood that
they will be bored, question the value of school,
and in some cases even drop out.

Instead of starting with the questions “How do we prepare kids to compete in the 21st century
global marketplace?” or “What will insure that graduates all have command of basic skills?”,
suppose we start by asking what qualities we want to encourage in children as they grow toward
adulthood.

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OUR

SCHOOLS

Putney Central School

Putney, Vermont

A beautiful rural school with forest classrooms in Putney, Vermont

City Neighbors

Baltimore, MD

The learning environment in City Neighbors schools deserves special recognition because it has been achieved despite formidable challenges, especially entrenched poverty, and lack of funding for innovative educational programs and practices.

The James and Grace Lee Boggs School

Detroit, MI

Boggs is more than a school. It is the nucleus of a community and a process of change. Using Place-Based Education, the school immerses students creatively in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities, experiences, and service projects for the school and local community.

OUR

RESOURCES

Educate the Whole Child expects to offer a graduate level 12-credit certificate–Teaching the Whole Child. It will consist of four online courses that may be taken as a series or independently. See details here.

Whole Child Education

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) convened a Commission on the Whole Child in 2006. It subsequently issued an important report and has resources at its whole child website.

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Dr. Mary Goral

For anyone interested to see what happens when Waldorf methods are applied in public, usually charter, schools, here is a link to Dr. Mary Goral giving a talk to parents.

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Letters to a Young Teacher

Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher contains a distillation of a lifetime’s work in education. It builds on the premise that the best teachers refuse to see their pupils as so many “pint-sized deficits or assets for America’s economy.”

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