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

Compass School

Westminster, VT

Compass School’s unusual model accommodates both independent and public school students for its sparsely populated rural communities in Vermont. The school is open admissions and this arrangement works well for them. Upon graduation, students enjoy a high level of college acceptance.

East Kingston Elementary School

East Kingston, NH

East Kingston illustrates what can be achieved at a rural school that is small enough so that each child is known well and with whole child practices can grow and be nurtured to reach his or her full potential.

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.

Seed and Spark

Seed + Spark shows what can happen when fresh eyes—in this case architects and designers—look at education from outside the educational establishment. This book provides a refreshing vision of possibilities that could help bring bold new models and possibilities to schools.

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American Schools

An excellent exploration of democratic education is Sam Chaltain’s, American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).

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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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