By Jack Lattimore, Campitor Co-Editor in Chief

“Maybe we could create a school grounded in nature,” I hear as I stop by to see how one group is doing. Walking to the next table, they seem to be going down a completely different path, talking about how splitting the school into “Harry Potter” type houses might foster a more profound sense of community. And with each different table, a new idea arises, just as innovative, just as exciting, and just as distinctive as the last. This was the first day of our STEP Forward: Transforming Ideals into Realities Conference, held on November 5th and 6th, in which we allowed imaginations, like tiny saplings, to grow wildly as participants designed their ideal schools.

The day began with a speech by Dr. Mary Kay Delaney, head of the education department at Meredith College, who spoke on the nature of schooling and various philosophies and theories of education, which inspired participants to see the immense possibilities available for the education paradigms of their own schools. Then, the students, who came from eight different schools and one university, were randomly assorted into their groups, with whom they would be working for that day on a task that was much more complex than it seemed: to “design the ideal school”. In the beginning, students had a tendency to constrain themselves to the current paradigm of education rather than stepping (no pun intended) outside of the box. Yet, with our gentle prodding and encouragement, they ended the day with final designs that pushed well beyond their initial hesitations and were truly unique and innovative.

However, we weren’t content to stop there; ultimately, we wanted students to have more awareness of education issues, both on local and national scales, so that they could be more informed and advocate for societal change. Hence, the second day began with a panel of six experts in education from a school board member to a school architect to a founder of a center to help socioeconomically disadvantaged children excel in the STEM fields. Students seemed to gain much more awareness of the very real issues that face education today, both from the panel itself and from informal discussions afterwards with the panelists. After the panel, we gave them their challenge for day 2: to keep some of their ideals alive while conforming to the parameters of a randomly assigned scenario. These scenarios were purposely varied in order to give a sense of the wide range of schools which exist in the real world and that exist in terms of their  funding and resources (we had everything from a wealthy private school to a low budget public school with a high drop-out rate). The groups from the previous day were combined, leading to the additional challenge of combining ideals from the previous day in addition to the challenge of meeting the new conditions. And through doing this, students and teachers gained a very real sense of the difficult work that the people who have to plan and run schools must do every single day. One of the stand out memories for me was when the teachers (who formed one of the groups) had to limit the salaries for teachers and administrators in spite of knowing from personal experience how teachers don’t receive nearly enough compensation for the hard and important work that they do. When it came time for the final presentations, at the end of day 2, it was fascinating to see how each group managed to mold its abstract, theoretical ideals into a very realistic, pragmatic school and the unique challenges that each had to face.

All of us on the STEP leadership team were extremely proud of the work that our participants did over these two days and hope that they garnered a wealth of knowledge and insight, which they can take with them both back to their current schools and carry with them in their lives beyond high school. We are also incredibly grateful to our wonderful speakers and the many, many people at Cary Academy without whom this conference would simply not have been possible. Also, we’d like to thank all of you who came to watch some part of the conference; we appreciate your making the effort to support us and hope that you enjoyed it. If you didn’t have the opportunity to come view the conference, we will soon be sending out an email with photos and videos of both speeches and participant presentations, allowing you to observe some of the phenomenal work that was done. We very much hope that, based on the success of these last two conferences, STEP will keep on hosting these for years to come and look forward to all of your continued support over the coming years.