Alternative Schooling and Student Engagement

Canadian Stories of Democracy within Bureaucracy

Nina Bascia, Esther Sokolov Fine, Malcolm Levin, Nina Bascia, Esther Sokolov Fine, Malcolm Levin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319542584
• eBook ISBN: 9783319542591
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This book explores the unique phenomenon of public alternative schools in Toronto, Canada and other large urban areas. Although schools of this kind have existed for more than a century, very little has been written about the alternative school movement. These alternatives focus more on child-centered instruction, give many students (and teachers) opportunities to organize the school differently, provide a greater voice for teachers, students, and parents, and engage students far more with experiential learning. When traditional school structures are failing to meet the needs of many children and youth, there is a rapidly growing need for information and discussion about alternatives that will encourage their talents and serve their needs. This book draws attention to the issue of alternative schooling to help make it more accessible to a wider audience.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Contents
• About the Editors
• Introduction
• Part I Local Democracy Within Bureaucracy: Critical Perspectives
• Chapter 1 Curriculum Development in Alternative Schools: What Goes on in Alternative Schools Stays in Alternative Schools
• Chapter 2 Alpha Alternative School: Making a Free School Work, in a Public System
• Chapter 3 Tracing Tensions in Humanization and Market-Based Ideals: Philadelphia Alternative Education in the Past and Present
• Chapter 4 Alternative Schooling and Black Students: Opportunities, Challenges, and Limitations
• Chapter 5 Reverberations of Neo-Liberal Policies: The Slow Dilution of Secondary Alternative Schooling in the Toronto District School Board
• Part II Historical Perspectives
• Chapter 6 Private to Public: Alternative Schools in Ontario 1965–1975
• Chapter 7 Looking Backward and Forward: Fifty Years of Alternative Schools
• Chapter 8 From the Release of the Hall–Dennis Report to the Founding of Alpha II Alternative School—My Personal Journey
• Chapter 9 An Administrator’s Perspective on the Politics of Alternative Schooling in Toronto
• Part III Teaching
• Chapter 10 Learning to Teach and Becoming a Science Teacher at City School
• Chapter 11 New Beginnings
• Chapter 12 Notes on Big Ideas and Incremental Change
• Part IV School Stories
• Chapter 13 Contact—An Alternative School for Working-Class and Racialized Students
• Chapter 14 Inglenook: A Cozy Place by the Fire
• Chapter 15 The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School
• Chapter 16 The Triangle Program: Canada’s Only High School Program for LGBTQ Students
• Chapter 17 Credit Factory or Alternative Education for Adults? Student Re-Engagement Through Multi-Media Arts and Social Justice Education: A Transdisciplinary Pilot Project
• Chapter 18 Resistance: Student Activism, SEED Alternative School, and the Struggle Against Streaming
• Part V Epilogue
• Chapter 19 Some Last Words
• Epilogue
• Further Reading
• Index