Sitting across the dining table at Akasha from two young innovators who spewed sparks when speaking of their unorthodox new project, a visitor swiftly deduced the uniqueness of the charter school they are proposing for Culver City.
Career educators, they believe passionately in character education, and an entirely starting-over agenda in fundamental ways children should learn.
[img]1409|exact|||no_popup[/img]
Ms. Jacobs, left, and Ms. Rodov
With infectious vigor, they say days of classroom dreariness are over, or should be.
Not only is this not your father’s charter, it isn’t even your older children’s charter. In their dueling presentation over lunch, the energetic women say their ideas are equal parts fresh and nationally tested.
The charter’s name almost is self-explanatory, Innovatory (in-NOH-va-toree) School for Professional Youth, destined to take flight as “I-Spy.”
Practically every important aspect of the I-Spy charter is innovative. That is not a random or clever-sounding term they dreamed up shlepping down boulevard.
Have a listen:
“Our school allows working or training youth to holistically balance their careers with their academics. And at-risk youths will be academically engaged by pursuing personal interests in the professional realm. Students experience a rigorous college preparatory program while making a difference in their communities and the world. I-Spy graduates will be disciplined, confident, cultured, generous and engaged role models who will excel in college and beyond.
Eschewing traditional formats, brushing aside bromides like pursuing the brightest students or the most overlooked, Jessica Jacobs and Florina Rodov have established an imaginative latticework for their school, grades 6 to 12, that is simultaneously opaque and obvious.
They only are interested in two types of students among the 80 they intend to enroll for their opening year. Their targets are on hardly anyone’s radar, professional children (actors/musicians/athletes) and at-risk boys and girls.
Why?
“Once people learn of our game-changing school program, we hope they will want to support our petition to charter with CCUSD,” Ms. Jacobs says.
In part, game-changing refers to the virtual concept, as in virtual classrooms – although there will be a campus – and to the open-spaces curriculum.
A closer-look video features Ms. Jacobs’s son Sage:
Pretty free-wheeling, but deeply and soundly plotted, they insist.
“We would only be an asset to the School District and to the city,” Ms. Jacobs says. “We will be renting office space, bringing additional ADA (average daily attendance) funding, meeting the needs of homeschooling families, creating business partnerships via internships, and putting CCUSD on the map for virtual online and real-life project-based learning.”
The two women maintain that stodgy, inflexible, decades-outdated public schools have been careening away from childrens’ most pragmatic interests and needs for years.
The charter model they are bringing, they say, is as creative as a child’s roaming mind but as tightly structured as the most retrofitted building.
With almost strident disdain, they reject one of public school history’s proudest values, rigidity.
(To be continued)
