Cooperative Nuts And Bolts: Some Co-op Realities

I've been receiving a lot of questions lately about cooperative preschools, how to start one, and in general asking for more insight into how cooperatives work. This is the fifth and final post in a series that I hope will address those questions. In that first post I gave my best shot at what I think would be the first steps to starting your own cooperative preschool. In the second post, I described the specifics of how our school works. In the third post I wrote about working with parents in the classroom. In the fourth post I got into reader's questions, writing a brief history of cooperatives with links to more information, and discussed how parent education and parent scheduling works. In today's final post I'm going to try to finish answering your questions and generally tie up some loose ends.

If you're entirely unfamiliar with our model, please take a look at my Cooperative Manifesto in which I attempted back during the dawn of this blog to provide a sort of socio-economic-political context for what we do. And if you include this post, I will have now written 48 pieces on various aspects of what it's like working in a cooperative preschool, which you can find by either clicking on the "cooperative" tag in the right hand column under "Teacher Tom's Topics," or just clicking here. So, there's plenty of further reading should you really want to delve into what I've had to say on the topic so far.

I attended public schools in Columbia, South Carolina through 4th grade, a state whose schools at the time were considered among the nation's worst, with the schools in the state capitol ranking right at the bottom. I nevertheless feel good about the education I received during those years, not necessarily because of anything my teachers or schools did or didn't do, but because of the support I got from my parents.

Teachers have been under assault from all directions these last several years, being made the scapegoats for the false idea that America's schools are failing. Research consistently shows, however, that despite the rhetoric about "bad teachers," parents have a far greater impact on educational outcomes than teachers, schools, or any other single variable. It's quite simple: the students whose parents value education and are actively invested in their academic life tend to be better educated.

Parents, be it via a cooperative or not, as they are in every other aspect of a young child's life, are the key. As educators, if we want to do just one thing that will have the most impact on your students' success in school, it will be to encourage greater parent investment in their children's education. My friend and co-op parent Toby recently asked me what parents can do when they have no choice but to send their children to flawed public schools (e.g., standardized curricula, high stakes standardized testing, too much filling of the vessel and not enough lighting of the flame, etc.). I think this is a big part of that answer.

The economic realities of the cooperative model
Let's be honest, the cooperative model requires one fairly rare things in order to function: families with at least one parent available to put at least 5+ hours a week into their child's school. Almost by definition this means middle class families, and even then with most parenting partners both working, it even excludes a lot of those families. Some co-ops get around the realities of a traditional work schedule by running in the afternoons or evenings, but they tend to be chronically under-enrolled programs, probably because parents are exhausted at the end of the day.

Over the years, I've heard from teachers who say they like everything they hear about the cooperative model, but bemoan the fact that their student's parents simply don't have the time or interest to work in the classroom, and this seems to be particularly true in schools that serve lower income populations; those who tend to have less flexible work schedules, more single-parent households, and, in general, less experience, first hand or otherwise, with educational success. These, not coincidentally, tend to be the schools that are "failing" (in the parlance of the education reformers) and no amount of test prep is going to change what is really a symptom of poverty.

I'm only half joking when I suggest that instead of putting money into things like high stakes testing, new buildings and text books, or getting teachers competing against one another for bonuses, we might want to consider paying these poor parents to get involved with their kid's school. That's what the research seems to indicate will make the most difference. For anyone thinking of starting a charter school in a poor neighborhood, here's the free idea from Teacher Tom. I'll bet it would work.

I don't mean to be flip, but that really is the extent of my advice for teachers about parent involvement in these circumstances. The challenges of poverty are not issues that can be addressed through the schools unless the plan is for everyone of us to become one of those "super teachers" about whom they make movies and get busy inspiring those kids with street-smart wit, no-nonsense toughness, and a heart of gold. But since we live in the real world, I will continue to have great respect for teachers who do their best and hope for the best.

Not all parents, even those with children in these "failing" schools, are hopelessly disengaged, however, and there are ways to help get them invested in their child's education without setting foot in the classroom. I know it's above and beyond the call of duty, but teachers who work to make connections with parents, who teach them how to support their child, and who open lines of communications with home, are probably engaged in the single most important thing they can do toward educating their students.

(Incidentally, as a parent of a child in a private school, I will say that I've come to the conclusion that the single biggest reason these schools produce superior educational results is parent engagement. There's more to it than this, but to be perfectly blunt about it, when you're paying a high tuition, it's only natural that you're going to keep a close eye on this investment in the form of being quite actively engaged, staying on top of how your child is doing, getting to know their teachers, jumping in when things don't seem right, and generally supporting your child and the school. My daughter's school is not a co-op, but I never go there without bumping into her classmates parents in the hallways and offices, even in the high school. This sense of community is the reason we've been there for 9 years and plan to be there for 13.)

What happens when Teacher Tom is away?

One of the parent jobs is what we call "teacher's assistant" (TA). I usually describe this as the easiest job in the school until it is the hardest. This is the person who takes over for me should I be sick, traveling, or otherwise unable to attend all or part of our school day.

I don't miss a lot of days due to sickness, thankfully. After 13 years of diving daily into the world of childhood illness, my immune system appears to be quite powerful. 

More often than not, I'm able to plan for my absences. I'll usually prepare a detailed written classroom plan for my TA, complete with suggestions for books to read and songs to sing at circle time. I always wish that I could have a webcam installed in classroom on these days. I imagine that this is when we come the closest to the ideal of a cooperative. The typical report back from the TA is, "It went well, but the kids missed you." That sounds about right.

Rules and regulations
Many people, especially those from countries outside of North America, ask me about credentials and regulations. I've even been told by some people (always English people so far) that our school would simply be "illegal" in their country.

Say what you want about our schools, but it seems that we, at least in Washington state, are not as regulated as other parts of the world. For us, this is a good thing. I am not a "licensed" teacher, nor do I carry any particular credential other than a bachelor of science degree in journalism (and a minor in English). At one time I did some college level ECE coursework with the idea of completing a degree, but was hired by Woodland Park before I got that far based upon my 3 years as a co-op parent and referrals from my daughter's former teacher and parent educator, and I haven't looked back. As I mentioned previously in these "nuts and bolts" posts, we seem to have a very effective informal apprenticeship program going here that works very well for us. Cooperatives are owned by the parents and they can, quite rightly, hire whoever they want to teach their children.

I'm not sure of the legalities of how we've made this work (although it has something to do with the fact that we technically operate as 3 separate half-day programs) but our school is also not licensed or regulated, at least by education authorities. What outside rules we must follow come from our insurance company, which requires us to follow certain health and safety protocols, most of which are very common sense. For instance, I must undergo an annual criminal background check. Fair enough. And parents, for their own protection as well as the child's, are not permitted to be alone with a child that is not her own. Fair enough.

I often describe our school by saying we are a group of people who have chosen to homeschool our children together. And that's certainly true as far as state rules and regulations.

Challenges
One of the biggest challenges I face as a teacher in a co-op is one that arises from one of the greatest benefits of our model. If they don't feel that way at first, most parents come to value the connections and friendships they form with the other adults they find here. Just last week I ran into Lauren, whose daughter Ava is now in 6th grade, and she told me she her family still regularly gets together with a group of former co-op families, and some of them even read this blog!

Of course, that also means that there is a strong temptation to chat with your friends during class, which tends to take the focus off the kids. I don't want be too much of hard-guy about this, but it's an admonishment I find myself giving at just about every parent meeting. I avoid making these admonishments during class, although usually all it takes is a little proximity on my part to remind parents to wrap things up.

Another typical challenge is that parents of young children are not always entirely in control of their own time, which means that on any given day, there may be a parent who is late in taking charge of her station. This may not sound like a big deal to a teacher who is accustomed to working a classroom alone, but I've come to count on those adult being in place by 9:30 and if they're not, it sometimes means that the station is closed to the kids until she arrives. More often than not, however, another parent is willing to fill in for a few minutes when someone is running late.

Generally speaking, however, this is not my classroom. It belongs to the parents and their children. No matter how much I speak to them about how I believe things ought to operate, I can never go any further than to speak of them out of my "expectations." Typically, the majority of the parents come to share my expectations, but ultimately, each year's collection of families forms their own culture surrounding their work in the classroom, one that suits them as well as their kids. I will always push from the direction of my expectations, but at the end of the day, the parent community, as it should, regulates itself.

If you are a teacher who tends to like to be "in control," you'll have to learn to give some of that up if you're going to have parents want to keep coming back to your classroom.

Yesterday, I included this quote from a reader, Siobhan Hannan:

The environment, which is the third teacher, is not only nature or the building -- organizational structure also has a critical effect on how a program operates and what can be done. The fabulous thing about this model is the way it generates a unity of purpose between the institution and the family.

I think Siobhan has hit the nail squarely on the head. Cooperatives are not about a pedagogy or a method or an ideology as much as they are a powerful way to organize the first and second teachers (parents and classroom teachers). It really does, more than any other model with which I'm familiar create that "unity of purpose." I want to teach here for the rest of my life.

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Cooperative Nuts And Bolts: History, Parent Ed, And Scheduling

I've been receiving a lot of questions lately about cooperative preschools, how to start one, and in general asking for more insight into how cooperatives work. This is the fourth post in a series that I hope will address those questions. In that first post I gave my best shot at what I think would be the first steps to starting your own cooperative preschool. In the second post, I described the specifics of how our school works. In the third post I wrote about working with parents in the classroom. In this post I'm going to begin to answer some of your questions and tie up some loose ends, particularly regarding the history of cooperatives, where to find more information, parent education, and the scheduling parents.

If you're entirely unfamiliar with our model, please take a look at my Cooperative Manifesto in which I attempted back during the dawn of this blog to provide a sort of socio-economic-political context for what we do. And if you include this post, I will have now written 47 pieces on various aspects of what it's like working in a cooperative preschool, which you can find by either clicking on the "cooperative" tag in the right hand column under "Teacher Tom's Topics," or just clicking here. So, there's plenty of further reading should you really want to delve into what I've had to say on the topic so far.

The environment, which is the third teacher, is not only nature or the building -- organizational structure also has a critical effect on how a program operates and what can be done. The fabulous thing about this model is the way it generates a unity of purpose between the institution and the family. ~Siobhan Hannan

A cooperative preschool is imperfect, as are all schools, indeed all institutions. They are imperfect because they are expressions of us, and humans are flawed. So we do the best we can, trying to organize ourselves to do the things we need to do together.

It is in fact true that at least once a year, a parent meetings will run "off the tracks." By that I mean spill over the confines of the agenda and cause the meeting to run well past our official 9 p.m. end time. As a deeply democratic institution, with each family an equal stakeholder, it's important that we have the opportunity to speak and sometimes takes more time that we'd originally hoped. It can get heated, after all we're dealing with people's children, perhaps the most emotion-triggering thing on the planet. More often it gets tedious as a small, committed group gets a little too much into the weeds on what seems to them a huge issue, but to everyone else is a bit of a yawner. But come on, we're on schedule 80-90 percent of the time. There aren't many democratic institutions that can make that claim.

It is in fact true that some people work harder than others. Board members, in particular, putting in at least triple the hours of the typical co-op parent, often way more. And every year there are a few families that for whatever reason can only manage a minimum contribution. If you don't accept that this is also a communistic enterprise, and you're one of those with "abilities," co-op can be a frustrating experience.  This is one of the reasons I urge families to think of Woodland Park as a 3-year preschool program. In any given year, yours may be the family with abilities or the one with needs, but chances are that over the course of 3 years you'll find yourself in both positions. Although hopefully you'll never be the one with the needs because that always sucks worse.

And yes, it is in fact true that not every parent in a cooperative is good with the kids. Naturally, everyone is good with their own children, in their way, but it's not unheard of that parents arrive in co-op with very little natural affinity for or understanding of young children. But most of us do have skills or learn skills from our parent educator or Teacher Tom or more often than not from each other over our 3 years together. In this way we are more than a school for children: we are a community of learners.

A little history
Today there are thousands of cooperative preschools across the US and Canada, yet as Lesley from the Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School in Maryland wrote, "(c)ooperatives usually get a paragraph in education text books."

I'm not sure why our model is so little known. Maybe it's because throughout most of our history we've simply been the domain of moms getting together to raise their kids, teach them a little something for a few years, then move on as the kids grow up: flying under the radar. The cynical part of me wants to say that it's quite typical for the history of women and families to be underwritten, but it's also true that the cooperative movement is not about building large, enduring institutions, or creating elaborate core curricula, or promoting a particular philosophy of child development or teaching or parenting, or any of the other kinds of things that typically get you a few more pages in text books. What makes us unique is our organizational structure, as Siobhan points out in the quote at the top of this post, which is not as often seen as being as central to education.

Whatever the case, Leslie sent me this link to a brief history of cooperative preschools, the first of which was founded in 1916 by a group of faculty wives from the University of Chicago. The oldest continually running co-op is The Children's Community Center, founded in 1927 in Berkley, California. Apparently, the 1940's was a time of great growth for the cooperative movement, with schools springing up across the US and Canada, including the schools that formed the basis of the system in which I now teach in Seattle, Washington. (I've been told that ours is the oldest continually running co-op system in the world, but I have no way to support that assertion.) According to this article co-ops popped up during this period in other countries as well, including New Zealand (under the moniker "play centres") and in Great Britain ("preschool playgroups").

Until Leslie sent me this link, I was unaware of Parent Cooperative Preschools International, a non-profit membership organization set up to support cooperative preschools around the world. For those of you who asked me about further reading, you might want to check out their resources page.

Parent education
One of the fascinating aspects of our particular system of some 40 individual co-ops is that all but one of our current teachers are former cooperative parents. The last time I checked, the same could be said of the parent educators employed by North Seattle Community College. One might say we have a kind of informal apprenticeship program going on here in which each of us learn at the feet of a master, then go on to teach future teachers. (So far two Woodland Park parents have gone on to teach their own cooperative classes upon their children's graduation.)

While there are no credentialing requirements for the teachers in our schools, the parent educators not only have completed all the classroom work, then also have decades of experience both as teachers and educators. The primary function of our educators is to be a resource to both parents and the classroom teacher. They run a monthly class for parents, typically on topics the parents themselves have chosen, and participate in the classroom on a weekly basis. They also sit on our board in an advisory capacity.

When I first started teaching, my educators served the role of mentor for me. As I've gained experience, I've come to consider them as indispensable partners and my go-to person when I'm stuck or when my emotions are geting in the way of my ability to be an effective teacher.

Different educators approach their roles differently, especially when it comes to their classroom time. Many just drop to their knees and get busy with the kids, chatting with adults over their heads, answering simple questions, role modeling good teaching practice, and generally helping out as a kind of "super parent," only leaving the room for private conversations when necessary. Others prefer to stay focused on the adults in the room, stepping into corners or out in to the hallway to have one-on-one conversations with parents as needed.

If the parent educator's classroom time is when parents can get their individual concerns and questions addressed (although the educators are also available via email or phone), our parent meetings are when we can get on the same page with over-arching issues like pedagogy, teaching techniques, speaking informatively with young children, dealing with conflict, developmentally appropriate behavior, and a host of other teaching-related matters. Typically, the educator and I will sort of tag-team much of this, especially as it applies specifically to our classroom.

Scheduling of parents
I often think that one of the most unappreciated parent jobs in our school is that of the scheduler. As you can imagine, juggling the classroom work schedules of 20+ adults isn't easy. Ideally, parents are sorted by work day at the beginning of the year, spread out evenly over the week, becoming in our informal parlance "a Monday parent" or "a Thursday parent," etc. On each day, there are 6 parent-lead stations (snack, blocks, art, sensory, drama, table toys) and the parents rotate through those stations according to a schedule prepared by the scheduler. All of our schedules are available to parents online, so everyone should know in advance at which station they are working that day, but just in case we also post it on the wall just outside the classroom.

If that were all of it, the scheduler's job would be hard enough, but every year parents need to switch work days, or take maternity leave, or have other events come up in their lives that require our scheduler to scramble to fill in gaps. If a parent is ill or otherwise needs to miss a work day, however, it is that parent's responsibility to find a substitute parent.

It is my job to determine the specific materials or activities that take place at each station. I use the labels ("blocks," "art," etc.) as a sort of loose guideline for what will take place in each part of the indoor and outdoor classrooms. Typically my instructions to the parents at the beginning of each session are comprised of a brief description of what I think will or could happen, then a reminder to "let the children make it their own."


I can see that I'm going to need one more day to finish tying up the loose ends and get to all the questions, including what happens when Teacher Tom is away, typical challenges, and other questions. To be continued . . .



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Cooperative Nuts And Bolts: Working With Parents

I've been receiving a lot of questions lately about cooperative preschools, how to start one, and in general asking for more insight into how cooperatives work. This is the third post in a series that I hope will address those questions. In that first post I gave my best shot at what I think would be the first steps to starting your own cooperative preschool. In the second post, I described the specifics of how our school works, especially with regard to the parent role. In this third post I'll talk about the nuts and bolts of how I, as the teacher, work with parents in the classroom.

If you're entirely unfamiliar with our model, please take a look at my Cooperative Manifesto in which I attempted back during the dawn of this blog to provide a sort of socio-economic-political context for what we do. And if you include this post, I will have now written 46 pieces on various aspects of what it's like working in a cooperative preschool, which you can find by either clicking on the "cooperative" tag in the right hand column under "Teacher Tom's Topics," or just clicking here. So, there's plenty of further reading should you really want to delve into what I've had to say on the topic so far.

Working with all those parent eyes on you every day . . .

From a teacher's perspective, it can be quite intimidating having 7-10 parents in the room with you at any given time. Although I'd been a parent in a co-op for the preceding 3 years, I spent my first year as a teacher barely making eye-contact with parents, especially during circle time, because it "threw me" to suddenly be made aware that I was being so closely watched and judged. I remember the sense of cool relief each time I had an excuse to slip into the storage room for a moment, or during that 10 minutes during which I was alone outside preparing for our transition to out there.

I've obviously by now made my peace with that. In fact, I've come to understand that having all those parent eyes on me all the time makes me, every day, the best teacher I can be. I'd like to think that even without parents in the room, I'd give it my best at all times, but having them in there is a kind of guarantee against letting up, even for a moment. Lord knows, parents have had complaints about my work, but no one has ever accused me of phoning it in. And I've also come to understand that parents are doing a lot more than judging me. In many cases, I'm observed as a kind of role model, especially when I'm trying to deal with challenges similar to those they have at home. And most parents, most of the time, are simply working their butts off to support me, to make me "right" when things appear to be going wrong, to leap in with the idea, the part, the missing link that makes the difference between a big miss and a project that really flies.

These people with whom I get to work each day are so much more than parents, of course, even if that's the role in which they first show up on Woodland Park's doorstep. I value that as a teacher in a 3-year cooperative program I get to know them in their roles beyond parenting. These people are, every one of them, accomplished, thoughtful, talented folks who have powerful contributions to make to the lives of young children. It would be a crime for me to let that pass without at least trying to take advantage of them. They are artists and contractors and gardeners and merchandisers and teachers and musicians and museum curators. They've lived all over the world, understand quantum physics, and live on the beach. This, and the love that each of them brings into the room each day, is the stuff that more than compensates for any lack of pedagogy or formal education training.

When I look down the work schedule each day to see which parents are assigned to which stations that morning, I'm always looking for ways to take advantage of these special things I know about them.

What about the pedagogy?

There was a time when I was more protective of my own teaching philosophy and ideas, when it made me cringe and whinge when parents, following their own instincts and inclinations, would leave the farm: when an architect mom, for instance, would take over the block area and manage the creation of a building that was clearly of her own design, or when a father would turn his station into pig-pile wrestling. I wouldn't want these things happening every day because I most things should be child-directed, but at the same time, I can hardly complain when the kids, for the next two weeks, are including "flying buttresses" in their buildings, or when the door is now wide open to meaningful conversations about when, where, and how wrestling can happen when that particular dad is not there.

One of the core principles of progressive education is that the teachers are learning right alongside the kids, that each day should be an experiment. This is a big part of how that shows up in our cooperative preschool. It's not always great, but it is always an experiment. And when it is great, it's better than any other place in the world.

In other words, if you are going to invite parents into your classroom, you must be prepared to invite them all the way in, even if that means challenging the purity of your pedagogical approach. I try to inform parents about how I want things to happen during our monthly parents meetings, via this blog, and in hallway conversations, but I cannot, nor should I, expect them to become "mini-mes." The strength of parent involvement is that they get to be regular-sized "thems" even if that sometimes bumps up against the regular-sized me.

I am in the room every day, all day long. Perhaps my most important role as the teacher in a co-op is to serve as that consistent thread through the children's days and years. Whatever individual parents do, even if a parent one day shocks us all by yelling at the kids, through me and the parents who have been working with me for a long time, that crucible of progressive, play-based pedagogy remains as the container of everything we do, and serves as the context within which the children learn that sometimes even grown-up lose it and yell.

Parent jobs

Whether your school is a cooperative or not, if you're going to have a vital program of parent involvement, the most important thing is to having meaningful things for them to do. And understand that most parents are there, when they're there, to interact with the kids. There is nothing worse than to give up free time to show up in your child's classroom and to then be left to stand around or to spend an hour cutting out heart shapes for a project that will take place three weeks from now. Parents show up wanting to be involved.

On the flip side of the coin is the idea that if the teacher is going to plan a meaningful way for parents to participate, then she's going to need to be able to count on those parents actually showing up at the time and in the numbers she's expecting. There is nothing worse than putting the effort into planning a parent-lead activity only to have to abandon it when the volunteers fall through.

A cooperative solves this second problem by requiring on-time, reliable parent attendance as part of the price of entry. In a non-cooperative, it would likely be best to identify your most responsible parent volunteer and assign her the role of scheduler, letting her be in charge of rallying the troops in a timely manner. A staff person might be able to take on this scheduling role, but frankly, I've found that parents will tend to be more responsive and respectful to "one of their own."

As far as finding meaningful ways for parents to be engaged, that has to be up to the teacher. In our school, the bulk of parent-teacher time is spent on managing the stations I wrote about yesterday, both indoor and outdoor, which are nice, meaty parts of our curriculum that are typically flexible enough to allow parents the room in which, along with the children, to make it their own.

It's true that some parents who are just starting out in our Pre-3 program sometimes struggle with their role, especially as it seems to conflict with their manifestly more important role as parent, but like with anything, there's a learning curve, steeper for some than others. Fortunately, the Pre-3 class tends to have an abundance of parent "floaters" (those not assigned to a specific station) who can pitch in, and since typically about a third of the enrollment in that class are returning families, there is a great deal of experience in the room to teach these parents the ropes so that I don't need to take a lot of time away from the kids. I try to do most of my own in-class parent-teacher training via role modeling, which allows me to stay focused on the children. On top of that, our parent educator is in the classroom at least once a week to work with parents on their roles both inside and outside the classroom.

By the time these families have moved on to our two-year 3-5's program, they are all veteran parent-teachers.

Tomorrow I'll try to wrap up this series by tying up the lose ends and answering specific questions any of you may have . . . so if you have any drop them into the comments.

Cooperative Nuts And Bolts: How Our School Works

Yesterday I mentioned that I'd been getting a lot of questions lately about cooperative preschools, how to start one, and in general asking for more insight into how cooperatives work. In that first post I gave my best shot at what I think would be the first steps to starting your own cooperative preschool. In this second post, I'm going to try to simply describe the nuts and bolts of how our school works.

If you're entirely unfamiliar with our model, please take a look at my Cooperative Manifesto in which I attempted back during the dawn of this blog to provide a sort of socio-economic-political context for what we do. And if you include this post, I will have now written 45 pieces on various aspects of what it's like working in a cooperative preschool, which you can find by either clicking on the "cooperative" tag in the right hand column under "Teacher Tom's Topics," or just clicking here. So, there's plenty of further reading should you really want to delve into what I've had to say on the topic so far.

How our school works . . .
The parents own the school, so they are the ones who hire, pay, and evaluate. In other words, as the teacher, and only paid employee, I have 20+ bosses. At the same time, a big part of my job is instructing and managing these same parents as they work in the classroom as assistant teachers. We are affiliated with North Seattle Community College, along with some 40 other cooperative preschools, a relationship through which we receive our insurance, administrative and marketing support, executive training, and most importantly, parent education.

As is true with most cooperatives, our tuition is quite low, which is made possible because parent involvement is quite high.

Parent Responsibilities
Parents enrolled in our school take on 3 main responsibilities.

• Parent meetings: The entire adult community convenes once a month, in the evening, at a "parent meeting," half of which is spent on the business of running the co-op, the other half on parent education under the instruction of a parent educator provided by the college. Our parents are technically enrolled as students at the college. This is credit-earning classroom time dedicated to helping parents become better parents and, importantly for our school, better teachers. When families move on from our school, they often cite the parent education as the thing they miss the most. The parent educator also attends class once a week to work with parents in a classroom setting.

• Parent jobs: Each family takes on one of the dozens of outside the classroom "jobs" necessary to make the school run. Some choose a position on the board, which is generally more work, but with the compensation that you don't need to to take a turn in the weekly weekend school cleaning rotation. Our 3-5 board is comprised of a chair, vice chair/scheduler, treasurer, health and safety officer, parent coordinator, PAC representative (our liaison with the college and the other co-ops), as well as our parent educator and me, the teacher, as non-voting members. Other jobs might include things like field trip coordinator, photographer, gardener, teacher's assistant, purchaser, or fundraiser.

• Work in the classroom as assistant teacher: Each family provides an adult to work in the classroom as an assistant teacher once a week under my instruction and supervision. Most often this adult is a mother, although fathers, grandparents, and even paid caregivers sometimes take on this responsibility depending on what works best for the families.

Classroom schedule and parent roles
I teach two classes -- the Pre-3's and 3-5's -- that together comprise our 3-year program. I'm going to use our 3-5's class in my examples where our child-adult ratios are 3:1. Our ration in the Pre-3 class is 2:1.

• Discovery Time: We start our day with an indoor free play period featuring a number of "stations," such as art, blocks, sensory, drama, table toys, and snack. Each station is the primary responsibility of a parent-teacher. Ideally, as parents arrive, I take a moment to fill-in the parent-teachers about my expectations for their stations for the day, instructions (if necessary), and what to look for both in terms of individual children or group dynamics. During this time, I expect the parent-teachers to stick to their stations and to focus on the children, limiting their adult conversations. I rotate through the stations in a kind of intuitive pattern, striving to be where I'm most needed, role-model teacher behavior, and get some time with each of the kids.

• Clean-up:  Just before I beat the drum that signals our first transition of the day, I make the rounds of the stations, if necessary, to let the parent-teachers know my expectations for how their station should be cleaned-up. While there are some aspects adults need to handle (e.g., sanitizing, really getting paint brushes clean, etc.) the onus is primarily on the children to put the school back in order. I often say that this is the core of our curriculum, the time when the children really claim ownership of their classroom, and I don't care if it takes a half hour to complete, I want the children to be in charge of it. One of the biggest challenges for me is convincing the parent-teachers to get out of the way and let the children do it for themselves.

• Circle time:  This is our daily community meeting, a place for singing songs and telling stories, of course, but also for sharing exciting topics from home, addressing issues in the classroom, or giving compliments to our friends. The parents join us at circle time and I expect them to fully participate (e.g., singing and dancing), while also helping children manage themselves in group settings so that I don't need to repeatedly interrupt the flow of things to correct behavior, request listening, break up tussles, or do any of the other things can suck a teacher's attention away from the group.

• Small group activities:  If there is any one thing that causes parent-teachers anxiety it's the responsibility for running these small group activities. The basic idea is that the children divide up into four groups and a parent-teacher leads each group through some sort of activity she has brought from home. This might be anything from exploring a collection of kitchen utensils, to making art, to performing a science experiment. One of the things, I think, that creates the parent stress is that it is during this time that I leave the classroom to prepare for moving outdoors and I expect them to keep the children engaged for at least 10 minutes, but ideally 15 or 20.

• Outdoor time: This outdoor free play period also features stations such as workbench, art, sand pit, and garden, again "staffed" by parent-teachers. This outdoor time runs very much like the indoor free-play period.

• Clean up and story circle: We end our day sitting together again as I read a story before releasing the children to their parents.

I hope this wasn't too terribly dry. Tomorrow I hope to get into the more interesting softer tissue of how parents and I work together both inside and outside the classroom.

Cooperative Nuts And Bolts: Starting Your Own Preschool

I've received quite a few questions in recent weeks and months about the nuts and bolts of how our cooperative preschool works both from people considering starting their own cooperative or seeking to incorporate more parent participation within their existing classrooms.

If you're entirely unfamiliar with our model, please take a look at my Cooperative Manifesto in which I attempted back during the dawn of this blog to provide a sort of socio-economic-political context for what we do. And if you include this post, I will have now written 44 pieces on various aspects of what it's like working in a cooperative preschool, which you can find by either clicking on the "cooperative" tag in the right hand column under "Teacher Tom's Topics," or just clicking here. So, there's plenty of further reading should you really want to delve into what I've had to say on the topic so far.

So you're thinking about starting your own cooperative preschool . . .

I'll begin with what the cooperative model is not. It is not a pedagogical approach like Reggio Emilia or Montessori, but rather a structural model for how to organize an entire school from the classroom right through administration, enrollment, and teaching, to maintenance, purchasing, and janitorial. Our school has a progressive, play-based curriculum, but a co-op model could accommodate any type of pedagogy from one of rigorous academics (not recommended by this blogger) to democratic education or "free school" (highly recommended by this blogger).

The fundamental characteristic of a cooperative is parent ownership and management. Once you've signed your parent agreement and paid your tuition, you are an equal owner of the school along with the other families. From there, theoretically, anything can happen, but all the co-ops I know about are characterized by a professional teacher, supported by a high level of active parent participation in the classroom and other day-to-day operations.

Many people have written me after having researched their area, found it lacking in terms of cooperative options and wondered how I would suggest going about starting one from scratch. I've never done this before so understand that this is really just an educated guess about the best way to go about it.

The first thing I would do is more research, just to make sure you haven't missed anything because plugging into an existing school would be so much easier, but if you've resorted to writing to some guy on the internet, I'm assuming you've run into a brick wall. In that case, my first step would be to start talking up the idea among your fellow parents with the idea of putting together a team committed to the idea of a cooperative. (For the teachers who've written me with this question, I've thought a lot about this, and I can't envision any other way for a cooperative to get off the ground than via a group of committed parents. A teacher could, and perhaps should, be part of the start up team, but it must be parent lead.)

The original co-ops founded back in the 30's and 40's didn't even hire teachers. They were simply groups of parents who took turns hosting the "school" in their homes, garages and backyards, cobbling together a curriculum from their own reading and instincts. I'm sure that many of them included former teachers in their membership. I doubt they asked anyone for permission to do this. I'm no lawyer, but this may still be a credible option for many of you. And that may be enough, but in any event this could at least be a way to get started.

If the idea is to create a more formal school with a proper facility and professional teacher, I could imagine that these in the home school days could be structured so that 3-4 parents handle the "classroom" while 3-4 parents, in another room, tackle the nuts and bolts of building a cooperative school.

I would then think you would want to get busy making sure it's even possible to do what you envision. Not only do the laws and rules surrounding schools and incorporation and regulations vary so widely from state-to-state, not to mention nation-to-nation, that it's very possible that the kind of cooperative I write about could literally be illegal where you live. You may have to buy and hour or two of a lawyer's time to sort this through, but if you're doing it on your own, I'd suggest taking a look at regulations surrounding non-profits, cooperatives, home schooling, and the school regulatory policies in your area. Are there any schools in your area that are in any way similar to what you envision? It might be a good idea to talk to them. And understand that it may take a great deal of creativity to come up with just the right structure to make a cooperative fly where you live. Our own school avoids many of the more onerous regulatory requirements by running as a half-day program and by legally operating as 3 separate schools.

What you learn from this process will impact to a greater or lesser extent the exact shape of your cooperative preschool, but I suspect that there is a legal set-up possible in every part of the US that would allow for a workable version of a cooperative. I can't speak about other countries, but when I was in England last fall, I was told by several people that our model would be flat out illegal there. Then two of my fellow conferees came up to me after a presentation to let me know that cooperatives do in fact exist in England and that they indeed work at one, so I really don't know.

I don't know if this getting started post will be helpful or not. It's the part of this topic I know the least about having had the good fortune of living in a part of the world with several robust and well-established systems of cooperative preschools.

In the coming days I will cover the parts of this about which I consider myself an expert such as the parent role in our school, their rights and responsibilities, parent education, and the dynamic between me, the professional teacher, and our parent-teachers. I can imagine that this will cover 2-3 more days, so stay tuned.