What Social Development Opportunities Are Available In Open Classroom To Enhance The Sense Of School Community?
Life skills, such as constructive communication, conflict resolution and commitment, which are also necessary to the cooperative environment of Open Classroom, are taught in ‘Circle’ a daily forum which provides for the expression, exploration and resolution of social interaction among the children. A program-wide ‘Buddy System’ pairs the youngest and oldest students from Open Classroom, for the purpose of building relationship between the grade levels. ‘Fun Fridays’ utilize a staggered mentoring system in which a sprinkling of students from each grade level receive instruction together, over the course of time, from each teacher, facilitating exposure of all the Open Classroom students to all of the Open Classroom teachers and visa-versa. A sense of community among Open Classroom families is fostered by regularly scheduled program-wide events such as parent/teacher lunches, quarterly Open Classroom meetings, the Fall Harvest Festival and the Spring Stepping-Up Ceremony.
