Outdoors Learning Renews a District in Adirondacks

School Administrator, Feb, 1994 by Barbara B. Kearns

Bigger does not always mean better in education or business. Small schools, like small businesses, have the flexibility to respond to institutional and environmental change.

New comb Central School, New York state's smallest K-12 district with only 64 students, recently faced pressure from the state education commissioner to consider consolidation with another district or pay tuition for students to attend a neighboring school. But we believed these traditional options would do little to change the quality and breadth of our students' education.

Characteristic rural initiative and innovation in times of crisis stimulated our mountain community to find an educational niche as an ecological magnet school. Based on the premise that geographic isolation is not unlike racial isolation, the goal was to increase enrollment by attracting students from around the country and even the world to spend a year steeped in a curriculum rooted in the biodiversity, geographic, and political/social issues found within the six million-acre Adirondack Park. The classroom is as big as the outdoors from the Hudson River's source to the American Revolution's frontier on Lake Champlain.

We developed the ecology-based curriculum over a single marking period in 1991-92.

Outside Exposure

The extreme smallness of the school coupled with current interest in ecology and educational change put New-comb at the center of several human interest stories in national newspapers and magazines. We sent promotional videos last spring to high school guidance departments at 15 suburban school districts in New York in hopes that families considering private school would find the free tuition of our program attractive.

Also appealing to outsiders are the student-teacher ratio of 3:1 and the availability of computers for every student. Increasing enrollent does not add to the taxpayer burden, so parents of the magnet students do not pay tuition. They only need to provide for the students' room and board.

The magnet program in 1993-94 has 20 students, three of them from outside the district. Last year, a seventh grader from New Jersey spent the entire year in Newcomb, while living with his grandparents. He has decided to remain for a second year and continue with us through graduation. Two other students commute from a district 20 miles away.

Hands-on Learning

The curriculum is action-oriented and interdisciplinary. We encourage self-directed learning. Students choose to study their own themes, which this year include: How humans impact the Adirondack environment; how the environment impacts humans; and the "curse or blessing" of recreation and tourism in the Adirondacks.

Treks, or field experiences into the environment, focus on the social, historical, geographic, and economic features of the Adirondacks. The multidisciplinary experiences this year include a Project Adventure low ropes course to foster teamwork and mutual trust, treks through a local bog to see old growth and young forests, visits to a logging camp, and a sailing trip down the Hudson aboard the sloop Clearwater.

Trekking to understand people's relationship to their environment is a project transferrable even to innercity or suburban communities.

Students are learning to debate critical issues through simulations. For example, efforts to resolve the local land use debate between preservationists and developers are similar to global debates over resource management. We expect students to apply their problem-solving skills.

We also encourage students to reflect upon the meaningfulness of what they do. To document activities and reactions, they keep personal journals during their treks.

Community Investment

Our community is involved in various ways as we implement and evaluate the curriculum.

Students in grades 5 to 12 present their independent research projects to a community jury at least once each year in the form of written portfolios and public presentations and defense. We train community residents to rate portfolio documents and some sit on presentation panels.

Mentors, including staff from a local college, provide a structured individual support system for the student researchers throughout the portfolio process. Local crafts people provide instruction in traditional cultural arts.

Student progress is reported to the public through an annual Portfolio/ Project Expo.

Entrepreneurial parents have formed a housing board to accommodate the first students to come to Newcomb from the outside.

Teachers have been working toward an integrated program with measurable student outcomes that go beyond state exams. This year teachers voluntarily extended their work day by 42 minutes to create a flexible 10-day schedule for field experiences on alternate Fridays. Teachers also participate in weekly volunteer planning meetings with parents and students.

Continuing Growth

The greatest challenge to our magnet program has been inertia. We also have had some dissenters. These include senior citizens who believe no curriculum change is necessary and some parents who think the research projects make their children work too hard and the new students will create too great an academic challenge. Some teachers want to hold on to the traditional system because they don't believe the state ever will impose organizational district restructuring.