A few years ago, I saw a video about this magical school that opened in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2007: Ron Clark Academy. In addition to having all of the furnishings and touches of Hogwarts, which won my heart at first glance, the teaching methodology had me further intrigued as it integrates music, dance (<–this video shows off the school space as well), song, pop culture, and current events into its everyday classes.
This school serves middle school students from a variety of socio-economic and academic backgrounds, and is a non-profit which has received national and international recognition for its passion, culture, and educational success. Students and teachers go on mandatory field trips all over the world. What strikes me most is the engagement of students and teachers in community–students take place in competitions like The National Amazing Shake (a “handshake” competition where students compete in challenges to test “social skills, confidence, charisma, and poise under pressure”, travel to far-off countries where students become the experts and take on the role as tour guides, and are pushed to discuss and debate current events with #nofilter to talk about what is going on in the world.
Here are RCA’s founders, Kim Bearden and Ron Clark, talking about RCA.
I thought it would be interested to look up the vision and mission statements from RCA. True to form, RCA’s vision and mission put forth some challenging and provocative goals.
OUR VISION
To be the best school in the world by demonstrating transformative methods and techniques that are embraced and replicated everywhere.”
OUR FOUNDING PRINCIPLES
The Ron Clark Academy will…
-
Foster an atmosphere where students, parents, staff, and community members work together to create a family environment for our learners.
-
Be a school that inspires academic excellence, leadership, collaboration, and a world-class education for our students.
-
Teach in ways that promote creativity, innovation, wonder, joy, and a passion for learning.
-
Embrace RCA’s motto: No Fear!
-
Demand academic rigor and set high expectations for every learner.
-
Follow The Essential 55 and create a culture with high levels of discipline, manners, and respect.
-
Cultivate students who will become global leaders and citizens by teaching them about the world and by traveling with them to see it firsthand.
-
Ensure that we have classes that are composed of students with varied academic, social, emotional, and economic backgrounds.
-
Seek to enroll a large number of students who would not otherwise have the academic opportunities that the Ron Clark Academy can provide.
-
Celebrate diversity and different cultures.
-
Strive to find the best, brightest, most passionate educators from across the country to teach in our classrooms.”
While some have criticized RCA for being “edu-tainment” (disclaimer: it might be) — it is also FUN. Students have fun at school: they learn, they’re challenged, and they become part of the RCA family. In the meantime, their test scores improve pretty dramatically too.
Reference: http://www.ronclarkacademy.com/Test-Scores
That being said, there is significant money coming into RCA through corporate donations and educator training programs. There’s definitely some criticism out there for the high-energy school–some, for example, say that this type of education is not practical due to the high cost (this article here stated that at RCA, $18,000 per year is spent on each student). Let’s also keep in mind that this is a school has 120 students in grades 5-8 and employs 30 staff members. You can also take a look as some of RCA’s other Fast Facts and think about how it may vary from the average school in the United States. Teacher training programs bring in approximately $2.8 million dollars per year.
Is it hype? Or great education? Or a bit of both? In our current “more is more…and more is better” society of the United States, is RCA just tapping into our over-stimulated mindset to create an educational buzz, or are its teaching methodologies truly replicable with less money and resources? Is it asking for teachers to be too “out there”– making more of a stage than an actual classroom? Regardless of these answers, one thing is apparent to me– seeing the way the students who attend RCA talk about their school shows that there truly is some education magic making happening–and that’s always good.
NM2 
My friend, who is from Atlanta, and I were just talking about this school yesterday as a great example of someone thinking outside of the box to reimagine education. Traditional methods of straight lecture and note-taking aren’t working with students. If we are going to reach our current students, we’re going to need to try things which may have seem too “out there”. The reality is our current students are used to be entertained. Why do we continue to do the same things over with the same results? If engagement leads to the love of learning, academic success and improved test scores, it seems obvious we need to try to implement some of Ron Clark’s strategies sooner rather than later.
LikeLike
After reading and watching videos about RCA I landed on one that resonated with me for the first day of school activities. It is critical to set the tone of the school year with beginning of year activities, fun, community building and engagement. Our school did a great job but this has inspired me to think outside of the box and encourage our staff to do something totally fun and active. One major takeaway from this video was that not only do they have fun, the observation of the teachers expressions is what made me think more critically about the message and tone they were sending to the students. Although their physical body movements were fun and engaging for students the staff’s facial expressions remained relatively serious. The subliminal message perhaps being that you don’t smile until Christmas new teacher adage has been replaced. I believe that the staff was illustrating the fun yet disciplined nature of the schools culture but they didn’t have to talk about it and drill it in an assembly style lecture. This is exciting. I don’t believe that it is truly realistic for all schools to adopt RCA elements of practice but it is definitely worth exploring examples, as Taryl mentioned.
LikeLike
I love the fact that the body language is the real communicator, you’re right. We don’t need to tell kids what is fun, they’ll tell us–if they’re given the space and the opportunity to do so.
LikeLike