By Steve and Carol Rebscher
Like many new parents in the San Geronimo Valley my wife, Carol, and I looked at the three elementary programs in the Lagunitas School District. At the time, those were the Montessori Program, the Open Classroom Program and the Academics and Enrichment Program. The word around town often mentioned that the Open Classroom might be a little bit soft on academic achievement. We took a tour of all three programs. In the end we chose the Open Classroom. For me, the reasons were clear.
Throughout my career I had the good fortune to work in a leading edge biomedical research group at the University of California. The most important thing I had learned by the time we toured those three classes at Lagunitas in 1999 was that even at the highest levels of research the technology itself was seldom the real barrier to progress, and I had begun to feel the same was true in all fields. We could always, eventually, find the answers to the critical questions. What frequently crippled innovation within our group? Poor communication, awkward group dynamics and the inability to truly listen to colleagues – these were the factors that most often stood between our group and real success in our endeavors. In the end, we were extremely successful. But that success could have come sooner and with much less drama if our social vocabulary was on par of our academic prowess. When Carol and I found a school program that actually placed emphasis on kids learning how to communicate, how to work together and how to plan their own way through each school day I felt without a doubt that this program was where we wanted our children to spend their elementary school years.
Carol adds that the chance to be intimately involved with our children’s school through co-oping, camping trips (my personal favorite times), field trips, parent meetings, fundraising events, (which we felt were fun-raising too) and whole school plays, to the close friends we made with other families, was and is the happiest of memories for us. These were all related to the warm and sweet atmosphere always promoted in the Open Classroom. And we see, as parents of two successful adults, (both in their personal and professional lives) the Open Classroom was integral in helping to form them and their futures.
Thank you to the many teachers who were a part of this!