How We Think About "Behavior Management"

“What ‘behavior management’ system do you use?” This is a question we often hear from visiting educators, as well as prospective parents touring the school for admissions. We understand the general impetus for this question, prefaced around wondering whether our classrooms are “well run” or or “well behaved” or just based in curiosity with how we “deal” with children who might not be on task in the way we’d like them to be. In many schools, behavior management systems are almost a badge of honor for teachers, proudly displayed as evidence of a classroom under control. And believe it or not, some of us even sat through entire college courses dedicated solely to this topic!

However, the notion of a behavior management system does not square up with our philosophy at Long-View. First and foremost, we do not actually think about “managing” anyone’s “behavior.” We are interested in teaching children to productively engage in the learning process with agency, curiosity, and earnestness, and a system of managing behavior does not serve this goal. So be assured, we are not handing out popsicle sticks or changing cards from green to yellow to red….

generalLisa ZapalacOctober 11, 2024Long-View Micro Schoolbehavior management, agency, philosophy, pedagogy

Learning How To Learn

Like other teachers and learners all over the country, we are adjusting to the rhythms of a new school year at Long-View and finding our way in new iterations of our learning community. As discussed in many of our posts, including this one from last spring, the idea of “learning community” is integral to the way we do school at Long-View.

These ideas may feel a bit foreign to many learners and even parents or teachers, since many of us (likely) were educated in classrooms that engaged in very traditional, behavioristic pedagogy. As adults who want to help children further contemplate these ideas, we might ask questions such as:

What are you realizing you might do differently to increase your own learning? What is different about a class that functions as a “learning community”? Learning is messy and hard work…what are you realizing is important to do in order to increase learning for yourself and others?

It is quite a journey for most kids to fully understand the ideas behind these questions. At Long-View, new learners get a lot of support from their peers who have been at our school for multiple years....

generalLisa ZapalacAugust 29, 2024Long-View Micro Schoolnew year, learning, community, drive your learning

Celebrating Marin's Journey: From Long-View to University of Washington

We are thrilled to spotlight Marin, one of our remarkable Long-View graduates from the Class of 2020, as she embarks on her new adventure this fall at The University of Washington, where she will be on the rowing team and major in business. Marin's journey from our halls to the vibrant campus in Seattle is a testament to her resilience, passion, and commitment to personal growth and excellence.

Marin's story took an exciting turn after her participation in the Long-View Cardboard Boat Regatta, where she discovered a new interest in rowing. Before that, Marin explored various sports, never quite settling on one. The regatta sparked a curiosity that led her to a summer rowing program, an experience she describes as humbling and transformative. Her initial apprehensions about competition—rooted in a fear of losing—gave way to a newfound confidence as she joined the novice crew and found joy in the sport....

generalLisa ZapalacJuly 11, 2024Long-View Micro Schoolcollege, rowing, growing interests, regatta

What is a learning community, really?

What has to shift for a group of learners to become a learning community? What is different about a school for which this shift takes first priority?

Let’s step back a little bit to think about what each of these words means. As many educators and theorists have proposed, a useful way to think of learning is as the construction of knowledge. With what we already know in hand, we then build new structures that represent and contain new knowledge. When we learn in community, we do this work together.

Like “communication,” the word community is rooted in the idea of sharing; in community, individuals are not independent, but interdependent….

Community Conversation Recap (Nov. 2023)

Across the year on a handful of Fridays, we schedule time for “Community Conversations” — the aim of these conversations is to help the adults in our community come together to discuss ways we can support our learners. Our first Community Conversation of the 2023-24 year occurred last week. We created a reel on Instagram highlighting a few key points, and we hope, paired with this blog, those who were there can reflect more on the discussion and those who were not can feel included in the conversation.

We began with Claire Rudden (math content leader for Gold Band) giving an overview of the personal finance series we are in the midst of during Monday morning Campfires. We are working to make sure all learners have exposure to aspects of personal finance through this teacher-led Campfire series, which spans three weeks. Last week, the four options for Campfire centered around saving money. Yesterday, the four options taught about various aspects of spending money. And the week after Thanksgiving break, we plan to have four options teaching about investing….

generalLisa ZapalacNovember 14, 2023Long-View Micro Schoolparents, community, campfire, financial literacy, challenge

Assessment at Long-View: To “Assess” is to“Sit Beside”

The word “assess” comes from a Latin word meaning “to sit beside.” While the concept of assessment has taken on a life of its own, especially in the world of education, the word’s etymology reminds us of the true intent. As a teacher, if you are not sitting beside a learner when you set out to assess, you are actually grading, not assessing. The difference matters.

As discussed in our recent post on conferring, much of our culture at Long-View centers around talk. Across the day, learners are expected to say more about their thinking. It is not enough, for example, to say that you think that the midpoint between 8 and 46 is 27. There’s always the follow-up question: “How did you think about that?” Early on, learners may respond by saying, “I am not sure,” or “It just seems like it should be.” As teachers, we lean into these responses and support learners in developing their metacognitive processes so that they can articulate the thinking by which they arrive at understanding….

generalLisa ZapalacNovember 10, 2023Long-View Micro Schoolassessment, conferring, understanding thinking

Conferring: A Dialogic Teaching Practice from Literacy Block

“Talking in class.” For many adults, this charged phrase may conjure up memories of times when we were asked to be quiet in a classroom so that we (and others) could focus on our individual work. But at Long-View, as in many schools that lift up the practices of dialogic teaching and inquiry learning, “talking in class” – in larger group conversations, with partners, and between individual learners and teachers – is foundational to the way we learn.

One place where this ethic manifests is in the way that Literacy teachers at Long-View most frequently give feedback: individual “conferences” between a learner and a teacher. Our reading and writing conferences aren’t a once-a-semester affair, but happen in the course of every day. These brief interactions provide timely, individualized, holistic feedback on what’s happening at a particular moment in a child’s reading or writing life – and do so, critically, in a way that permits the child to engage dialogically with that feedback in real time….

generalLisa ZapalacNovember 3, 2023Long-View Micro Schoolliteracy, dialogic teaching, feedback, pedagogy

Experts Come In To Help Us See Out

When many of us went off to college, we had little perspective on “what we wanted to be” or careers beyond what we saw our parents or close relatives doing. Why didn’t our K-12 experiences help us to better see the possibilities? Why shouldn’t school help to give that perspective? At Long-View, we decided to do that.

To outline this effort and belief, a few years ago we wrote a blog post titled Learning Within a Larger Ecosystem. It explains “we think of Long-View as a porous organization, and work to use and be part of the wider ecosystem of learning that exists around us.” Further, ”Learning is precipitated on openness, opportunity, connections, depth, and curiosity. At Long-View, we don’t wait for these to find us, but actively seek them out. Interacting with professionals and specialists helps us gain perspective as we learn about a high-level topic.”

But in this post, we want to tell you more about the experts who have come to us recently. Returning to our more regular cadence of hosting experts (after covid-related disruptions), last school year we welcomed many fascinating visitors both in person and virtually. Dr. Jenna Moore told scientists about her “library” of worm specimens in the natural history museum in Hamburg….

Learn More About Long-View: An Interview With Lisa Zapalac

Last week, one of our Co-Founders sat down with Voyage Magazine to answer questions about Long-View. Read the article online here and find out how Long-View started, what is unique about our school and our business model, and important lessons Lisa and team learned along the journey from idea to reality….

generalLisa ZapalacDecember 13, 2022Long-View Micro Schoolinterview

Building Culture for a New Year

After a summer of exciting work with colleagues from Long-View and other educators from beyond, some invigorating sessions of Open Math, and some down time too, we’re now fully immersed in our new year at the micro school.

We kicked things off with Launch Camp, when our newest learners spent two days diving right in to the Long-View way of life – building pendulums from scratch to learn about momentum (and collaboration), choosing the first just-right books for their personal book bins (and understanding that THEY are taking charge of their reading lives), and even figuring out how much is too much in one’s backpack on the walk to the park at lunch time (while realizing that the adults at Long-View trust them to manage all of these details)….

generalLisa ZapalacAugust 30, 2022Long-View Micro Schoolculture, new year, launch camp

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