Philosophy
BIRCH SCHOOL EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
Since our founding
More than 12 years ago our founding team set out to create a student-centered environment where students have agency and choices in learning. Since our beginnings we have co-created and experimented within this learning community. We observe, ask questions of our learners, and adjust in order to adapt. In fact, adaptation is a basic foundation of our ecology-based philosophy. We believe the strongest communities adapt spontaneously to their environment.
Blended, Hybrid, Online and In-Person, Customized
Personalized learning plans serve as the foundation of a student’s school experience at Birch. This allows us to customize student learning programs. Study isn’t limited to an assigned grade level, and can expand into areas of interest and where a student is strong. The pace of learning can be adjusted to fit student need. Our program provides learning plans as families choose experiences for their children. Mornings, afternoons, core subjects, academic support, one-to-one tutoring, in-person, virtual, are all choices that can be made. This allows for fluid transitions between learning locations.
Children learn at different paces
We believe that children are naturally creative and highly divergent in their thinking about problems and solutions. Children learn at different paces and have different interests, strengths and weaknesses. Learning at the Birch School is individualized.
Our focus is holistic, and our priority is to support child-led interests and activities. Individualized curricula, combined with authentic participation in community life form the core of the program.
Systems Thinking in a Community of Kindness
The Birch School is a connected learning community. Our connections are many: to each other, to the natural world and to our larger community. We are systems thinkers, and encourage understanding of our individual roles and responsibilities in the natural and social eco-systems we inhabit. We foster awe and joy in self-directed learning in a community of learners.
We embrace and embody concepts of character education. We teach responsibility, respect, and caring, in a community of kindness. We are conscious about the way we interact with one another, and encourage positive attitudes.
Conscious participation in community
We create a safe, caring community guided by knowledgeable, passionate adults in which our children can learn and grow. We have a clearly defined democratic process that we, as a school, consciously participate in. Students take responsibility for themselves, learn to keep their word and be accountable to others, and to communicate their ideas and feelings. We avoid the creation of hierarchies, avoid practices of domination and power-over and use strategies of collaboration and co-learning between students, their teachers and each other.
Teachers mentor, question and encourage. Learning involves discussion and analysis in small groups and one-on-one discussions, both formally and informally, Students also participate in field trips, projects, experiments, lectures, creative work, art, writing, and workbooks.
We inspire children to learn by promoting the natural love of learning that all children are born with, resulting in a deeper commitment to their own education.
A school is not just a place to learn academic skills. Rather, it is a community of families coming together for the purpose of educating and growing a child.
Listen to Director Kate Fox interviewed about
The Birch School on Rockland World Radio
September 2015
September 2013
Social Ecology
We are environmental activists and artists as well as educators, we are focused on our bioregion, and we teach our students from that engaged world-view. We hold at our core the principles of Ecology:
The most diverse ecosystems are strongest.
Natural systems promote diversity spontaneously.
That spontaneous exuberance is characteristic of healthy ecosystems.
At the Watershed Learning Center, and now at The Birch School, we try to manifest that exuberance every day. We have been inspired by and grounded in nature. The natural world sustains human life, and so all things relate back to nature. In these times of limited resources and increasing human damage to the natural world, we believe it is more important than ever to learn about and appreciate nature and the outdoors. The interrelated ecosystems of which humans play only a part are complex and beyond comprehension by any individual alone. We seek to explore and discover our place in natural ecosystems, starting from where we are.
We take inspiration from what we see in the natural world. At the Watershed Learning Center and The Birch School we embrace diversity, and honor and celebrate the unique contribution that each child makes to the school community.
Our history as Watershed Learning Center
The Birch School developed from our previous work as The Watershed Learning Center. While still taking inspiration from Watershed Learning Center, The Birch School became incorporated as an independent, non-public, non-profit school in 2014.
We began the Watershed Learning Center because we are fundamentally concerned with our relationship with nature.
We sought to be a learning community studying how we might live within the natural world in a sustainable way.
The Watershed Learning Center, and now The Birch School, provides a context for student’s spontaneous growth and learning, as well as structure for organizing and understanding their journey. The school day is structured to provide a strong academic program, and within the structure students take responsibility for making their own choices. Our pattern regularly includes a “School Circle” where the school community, including students and teachers, convenes to discuss the day’s activities, share surprises, good news, problems, and sing songs. Group problem-solving, kindness and cooperation are encouraged.
In a community of learners, every member’s unique qualities add to the complexity and diversity of the whole group. Our students are a mix of ages and talents and levels of ability. We don’t attempt to homogenize or standardize them.
We encourage group participation, and consider each child and each family part of the school community. We have weekly and daily school meetings where all students are asked to participate.
We have a clearly defined democratic process that we, as a school, consciously participate in. Students take responsibility for themselves, learn to keep their word and be accountable to others, and to communicate their ideas and feelings. We create a safe, caring community guided by knowledgeable, passionate adults in which our children can learn and grow.
We embrace and embody concepts of character education. We teach responsibility, respect, and caring, in a community of kindness. We are conscious about the way we interact with one another, and encourage positive attitudes.
We foster awe and joy in self-directed learning in a community of learners.