How do we measure holistic student success?
The word holistic has been around for almost 100 years and, unbeknownst to me, seems to have become the latest buzzword in education regarding recruitment, enrollment, support, and retention of students.
Dimensions Collaborative School has been holistic since its inception more than two decades ago, prior to the latest fad. We have considered our students’ academic and non-academic interests, skills, and talents from day one. We attract our students by word of mouth and referrals - students recruiting other students. And as a public school we can’t be selective through an application process; therefore we must adapt to our students’ needs for them to be successful in a school which promotes self-directed learning.
To be holistic is an uphill battle in a system that wants standardization, data, and measurements. How do you measure happiness, contentment, and inner peace? Many of the ills our students face is caused by the school system. The system makes demands and puts pressures on students and then creates programs and policies to fix problems that the system created. The system then pats itself on the back when it creates social emotional, remediation, or enrichment programs.
To truly understand and navigate an independent study homeschool program, students and their parents go through a process to regain their autonomy and independence. You can’t play golf successfully by reading a book and you can’t homeschool successfully without doing it.
Part of the process is for DCS to support students via individualized materials and instruction. For parents and students to understand the process may take one month, one year, or one decade. The time it takes to discover your interests, skills, and talents are due to various variables, pressures: family, community, media, brain washing, and resources. As a school we individualize curriculum, but to highly individualize costs money.
A child may not discover they have knack for music until they are exposed to music, or a gift for languages until they are exposed to various literary works. They don’t know they’re good at sports or dance or theater until they get to participate in such activities. Parents who have the finances or resources available to them, can expose their children to experiences and cut the process time down. They can provide a holistic curriculum more readily and expose their children to hands-on experiences in science, technology, humanities, and the arts. Only then may we begin to measure holistically.
Holistic measurement is not linear. At best there is a path. A student may stay on that path, bouncing off both sides of the path, jump over the fence off the path, or simply plow through the fence to get off the path as quickly as possible. This too applies to the adults in the picture. No matter the chaos, these can all be part of the process to reach the desired goal. As long as we are able to get back on the path, it’s all good holistically.
The original question that triggered this stream of consciousness was, “How do we measure holistic student success?” I still don’t know what was being asked, but I recently told a parent that after three years, she has gone from, “What books should I use,” to “Here’s a list of the curriculum we’d like to use;” from “What are my kids’ test scores,?” to “I forgot about the tests,” from “I don’t think they’re grasping the material fast enough,” to “They have a deeper understanding,” from “How many hours at the kitchen table,” to “These are the field trips we went on.”
Unfortunately, after this rant, I still don’t have a data point to measure a student’s well-being, kindness, and smile when they share with excitement what they did last month academically and non-academically.
Charles Schechter
Educational Facilitator
Dimensions Collaborative School
