My first year teaching was in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in 1998, at a school called Federal Hocking High School, at the confluence of the Federal Creek and the Hocking River. We called it “Fed Hoc.” Perhaps nothing gets at Fed Hoc as quickly as sharing that we formally took the first day of deer hunting season off each fall. The school was rural in a way that my Columbus, Ohio suburban upbringing didn’t know really existed. I started at Fed Hoc as a student intern during my undergraduate studies at Ohio University, and continued from student teacher to full-time high school English teacher after I graduated. Fed Hoc’s culture, at first, felt foreign to me; it was another world. Freshman boys described going “frog gigging” on the weekends and telling me tales of Ohio River catfish so large and vicious that the workers who built bridges in the area had to do so in cages. From my students, I learned the difference between hay and straw.
I admit I struggled not to exoticize Appalachian culture, and I’ll admit too that this included a particular version of poverty – rural poverty specifically. I had two students whose families didn’t have running water. Many families hunted for sustenance, not sport. One student, shocked that I had never eaten squirrel, brought me frozen squirrel meat with his grandmother’s favorite recipe. I was aware of being an outsider, and an emblem of this outsider status was my unheard of last name. To make sense of my name and perhaps to connect, the highschoolers coined dear diminutives including “Miss Sassafras,” “Ms. Sycamore, “T-Sap,” and “Tree-Sap.” Once, while interning at an elementary school, I explained to a kindergartener that oftentimes Greek names end in the letters “is,” spouting out examples like Eleftherakis, Parthenakis, and Topakis. The child grabbed my arm suddenly and stared at me, big-eyed and with delight: “That means the Snuffleupagis is Greek!” Yes.Yes, it does.
Somehow, when I conjure up the two school environments, Federal Hocking and Westland, there is a striking commonality that comes to my mind – and to my heart, frankly. I have thought about this commonality for years: “How could two schools, so different, be so similar too?” I have come to the conclusion that this striking similarity – ethos – between these two schools is the emphasis on democracy in education.
Both Westland and Fed Hoc have the Dewean roots of democracy in education. Simply put and utilizing a definition Dewey wrote: “A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.”
In 1999, the Department of Education put out a case study entitled Creating a Democratic Learning Community: The Case Study of Federal Hocking High School. The small book details how Fed Hoc went from a traditionally structured, one-size-fits-all, factory model high school to a personalized, project-based, socially-emotionally and multiculturally-attuned learning community. The case study lays out the qualities of a democratic learning community.
These qualities embody many of the qualities and values we center at Westland: shared decision-making, shared norms and values, collective focus on student learning, teacher empowerment, collaborative professional development activities, team teaching, planning meetings for shared decision-making, reflective dialogue, and deprivatization of practice – the ideas that practitioners openly share, observe, and discuss each others’ process and methods.
While we may not use the exact language, these are all practices that Westland values and strives for. The Case Study goes on to lay out pedagogical practices present in schools that value democracy: hands-on learning, critical thinking, cooperative learning, building a democratically-centered learning community, classroom meetings, alternative assessment techniques (no grades), involvement with the outside community, diversity, and a global view of education.
It’s these qualities that I am acutely aware of, and eager to analyze and reflect upon regarding Westland’s mission, culture, and pedagogy. What stands out to me for Westland is the shared decision-making, shared values, and reflective dialogue components. Westland is complex and its mission is ambitious because it’s so against the grain of how other schools, public and private, operate. As such, we’re consistently in process and getting there. Democracy isn’t ever tidy. We never fully “arrive,” I don’t think. Valuing process as equally important (or more…) as the final product? That is counter-cultural.
So is shared decision-making. At Westland, we strive for an aligned parallel process between the classroom approach to decision-making and the school-wide approach. In the classroom, children, with the guidance of their teachers, co-create classroom agreements for the school year which convey the ways children want to communicate and be in community with one another in their work and play. During morning meetings and check-ins throughout the day, teachers invite critical thinking and dialogue when problems arise between and among children. From name calling to balls being left out on the West Yard, problems are solved collectively.
Our mission emphasizes shared decision-making. The second sentence of our mission reads: “Teachers are cooperatively involved in developing and implementing an integrated, hands-on, social studies-based curriculum.” I believe teacher voice is imperative to this element of democracy. This voice expands to Westland’s Educational Advisory Committee, where three teachers (two tenured, one non-tenured) meet with the Head of School to actively collaborate in developing staff meeting plans in close collaboration with me, Jennine, and Rasheda in order to create space to discuss important issues concerning staff and school culture each week. Even at the governance level, Trustees are nominated by a vote of parents, guardians, and staff. Community members have a voice in choosing those individuals making fiscal and strategic decisions on behalf of the School - our Trustees.
Shared Values: This past summer, the Archival Committee, composed of parents and staff, got together to begin the big endeavor of digging into the archives housed at California State Northridge in order to produce a commemorative book and video for our 75th anniversary. It was suggested that we initially organize our research through shared values. Through dialogue and brainstorming, we generated a satisfying list of values together, and then Jennine and I facilitated a similar process with the staff and landed on eight values. The values the parents initially listed, and the values the staff generated were aligned, so whittling them down to a just-right number was smooth. The eight values (with some context for a few of them) that we generated are:
Democracy (first one!)
Play + Childhood
Critical Thinking + Creativity (This is where music, woodworking, and the arts resides)
Community + Collaboration (Emphasis on *the Group* and parent involvement – and food too!)
Social Studies (At the core of children’s studies as well as integration with the specialists)
Nature + Sustainability
Social Justice (Diversity, equity, and inclusion)
Hands-On Learning (Block building, field trips, and culminations, and more)
I am acutely aware of how easily we are able to state our values. Keeping our values clear and focused is essential. How do we, as much as possible, ensure shared values across constituencies – parents/guardians, staff, and children – as we move forward through the next 75 years of Westland’s history?
Everything at Westland, from the content of our staff meetings, to parent education, to even the line items in our budget, should reflect our mission and these values. We must continue to center our mission. For the last seven years, at every Board meeting, for example, we read aloud Westland’s mission statement. Also, reflective dialogue – the next and final marker of democracy in education, must remain a habit.
Reflective Dialogue: The first year I landed at Westland, I collected and wrote down key phrases and potent pieces of language to internalize them. I quickly learned that intentional language and process are an essential element at Westland, and a key element to reflective dialogue. Growing our use and comfort with VISIONS, Inc.’s “Guidelines for Communicating Across Differences” which include “Notice process and content,” and “It’s okay to disagree” have been important to how we continue learning. By having shared guidelines for communication, we center community and live out democracy. I once read that disagreement is a sign of psychological safety in the classroom. I think we can extend this to the entire school. If we can disagree, account, admit mistakes and failures – we can live out our values and strive to be the best version of ourselves.
In a 2023 Time article, “Teach Citizenship the Way the Founders Intended,” Sal Khan and Jeffrey Rosen write: “We need to teach students not just history and civics, but also the virtues of democratic citizenship, beginning with the ability to consider arguments with which we disagree and to engage in dialogue and deliberation with people who hold views different from our own.” By relentlessly reflecting, we teach children (and ourselves!) just this – that democratic citizenship involves perspective-taking and essentially empathy. As one parent so powerfully admitted to me upon her daughter’s graduation from Westland, “I think maybe I’ve learned as much as my daughter has, especially around communication.”
I think the stakes are high. It certainly is complicated and fraught out there – from marked polarization across political lines, to war, to the upcoming tumultuous presidential election. I believe the world needs an infusion of Westland values and the values of democracy in education. I recently heard a fellow Head say that our country’s democracy depends on citizens being well-educated and well-informed. I know I’m obviously biased (!) but I don’t think there’s a better place for children to be well-educated and well-informed for our collective future as a country than Westland. I just came across a John Dewey quote recently: "Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife."
A Westland education enables children to be empowered, to ask questions, to make meaning, to serve on committees, to dialogue across differences, to research work that is important to them, to participate actively in the life of their classroom, their school, and their Los Angeles community. At schools like Federal Hocking and Westland, we support the birth and growth of democracy each school year.Democracy is what we do, it is what we value, and it is essential.
