Part I: Louisiana’s Living School
Taking a non-traditional, 21st century approach to education and learning is not just an exercise in the art of the possible. It’s also a commitment to the promising, practical, and productive. It doesn’t rely on orthodoxies and the “we’ve always done it this way” philosophies that prevail in virtually all public schools. It strikes out in new directions, incorporating elements of what we know works – hands-on learning, individualized instruction – with “radical” concepts like learning by doing.
Hurricane Katrina may be a distant memory for some, but its impact is still felt in New Orleans, where many young people struggle against the challenges of homelessness, truancy, and general disengagement from education and learning. More than 20% of students fail to graduate high school.
But this spring, Living School’s first class of 45 students will not just graduate but will leave school with two things that most could never have dreamed of: at least one college acceptance letter and a living-wage job. It’s a great accomplishment, and it didn’t happen by accident.
Living School is designed to help every student graduate with a college-ready diploma, a trade certification, and a living-wage job offer. Its motto is “Learning by Doing,” and it takes a multi-disciplinary, project-based approach to learning while helping students earn the credits and certifications they need to succeed at whatever they want to do after high school. Most schools specialize and simplify learning into distinct subjects divorced from real-world work; at Living School, learning is collaborative and carried out through inquiry, projects, problem-solving, internships, and apprenticeships.
The school offers two career pathways in-house, as well as – in partnership with local colleges, programs, and universities – individualized career planning pathways, all with a focus on trade skills and entrepreneurship in a wide array of areas: construction, engineering, architecture, digital media, emergency and medical fields, food systems, music production, agriculture and horticulture, coastal resilience, water management, and more.
When the school’s founder, Stefin Pasternack, was envisioning Living School, he couldn’t get access to a public school facility, even though many buildings were vacant in the aftermath of Katrina. So he traveled to New Orleans East, bought a laser-tag arena, and transformed it into a vibrant school (all for less than $40,000).
Far from a top-down management model, Living School takes an inside-out, all-sides-toward-the-middle approach. As the school’s statement of principles explains: “Most schools are built for students and families instead of with them, giving stakeholders little agency. Students, families, and staff form democratic branches that co-design every element of the school to balance institutionalized power.”
At Living School, students work with their heads and their hands, building everything from solar generators to musical instruments. In the woodworking shop, students can learn how to build furniture or frame out a house. The work is project-based, demonstrating the power of skills, creativity, teamwork, and student ownership.
At the school’s orchard, adjacent to the campus, students have created a museum on the history of the banana trade and its complex relationship with New Orleans. The museum is completely student-driven: young scholars conducted all the research and created graphics and pillars throughout the orchard to tell the story of the trade, while also finding the time to grow dozens of varieties of bananas in the orchard.
Promising, practical, productive: education in America is undergoing a transformation. Despite pushback from a hidebound “we’ve always done it this way” education establishment, institutions like Living School are showing not just what might be done, but what is being done – and what more schools can do.
