Radicalschooling’s Weblog

(Here is the the only response I received from a Grade 7-8 Albany Free School Teacher)

Questions for Albany Free School Teachers

1) How long have you been teaching at The Albany Free School? What is your background (in terms of education and employment)?

I have been teaching at The Free School for 8 years. I have a bachelors degree in English with a minor in education. In addition to teaching at the school I have also worked as a journalist, a cook and sous chef and at The New York State Museum as an assisitant director of their summer camp program.

2) How would you describe your experience working at The Albany Free School? I has been an amazing experience of discovering the many ways that children learn and also discovering a lot about myself. I have grown a lot as a person, learned new skills and been challenged in many ways.

3) In his farewell letter, Chris Mercogliano notes that The Albany Free School’s “approach to education and to life is so far out on the edge”. Do you agree? Why? What is the school’s philosophy/curriculum? In comparison to the mainstream culture, yes I would agree that we are “…out on the edge”, but when we look at what we do in the context of how children naturally learn and interact with each other and the world around us I would say no.

4) Does the school get any sort of public funding? Do parents pay tuition fees? If so, how much? The only public funding we receive is city funds for textbooks and computer software and we participate in the federal food program to ensure that children of lower income families receive free lunches. Parents pay tuition on a sliding scale based on their family income and no one is turned away for financial reasons.

5) In the eyes of the New York Ministry of Education, how is The Albany Free School regarded? We are pretty much ignored as an anomaly and not much attention is paid to us, I believe that would change if free schools were more prevalent and posed a threat to public school enrolments.

6) Do the students take any state tests? Please describe the school’s evaluation procedures. No state tests are administered. Evaluation is done on a very individualized basis and we have a narrative report that we prepare for each student which is given to parents at mid year and is followed up with a mandatory parent-teacher conference.

7) When students graduate, what can they do? What have past graduates done? Most go on to the public high school, and now some choose to go on to our sister school the Harriet Tubman Democratic High School.

What kinds of benefits are there to children attending The Albany Free School, rather than being homeschooled? The largest benefit I can see is that they are in an highly social environment and they learn how to work well together within diverse multi-aged groups.

9) Have any parents enrolled their children at The Albany Free School and then withdrawn them? What were their reasons in doing so? Yes that happens at least once or twice each year, the main reason is that they want more structure for their child, and they want more academic focus.

10) What are the biggest challenges that you encounter on a day-to-day basis? What are the most memorable moments like for you?

The biggest challenge is to not become too attached to one way of viewing a situation. I feel that we have to be very self-directed as teachers and especially tuned into each child’s particular needs, as we do not work with kids from a preset curriculum.

Thank you so much for your support and assistance!