Abstract:

Bill Ferriter, a North Carolina NBCT, reviews Kuntz’s book about Alpha, a grade 4 through grade 8 combined classroom where students contribute to designing what they learn.

Citation: Kuntz, S. (2005). The story of Alpha: A multiage, student-centered team—33 years and counting. Westerville, OH: National Middle School Association.

Full Text:

By Susan Kuntz
2005 (116 pp./paperback)
National Middle School Association
ISBN: 1-56090-177-2
$13.60 (online price)

Reviewed by Bill Ferriter
Salem Middle School
Wake County Public School System

There has been great concern in recent years over the failure of America's middle schools. These schools, critics contend, are failing our children both academically and socially. The stakes are higher now than ever as coercive accountability and high stakes testing has become an essential part of schooling. Administrators and teachers must find ways to ensure that children aged 10-14 thrive.

But what are the characteristics of successful middle grades programs? What challenges are unique to middle schoolers, and how should those challenges be addressed in our classrooms? These are questions that Alpha, an innovative middle grades program in Shelburne, Vermont, has been investigating for the past 33 years. It is this investigation that Susan Kuntz shares in her book, The Story of Alpha: A Multiage, Student Centered Team-33 Years and Counting.

Alpha began as "The Nameless Idea" in 1971 when Shelburne fourth-grade teacher Jim Reid decided to pursue essential questions asked by John Dewey. What Jim wanted to know was whether or not students could plan their own learning, identifying areas of personal interest and for personal growth. Could students, Jim wondered, be trusted "to make responsible choices about how they spend their time?" With the support of his administrator, John Winton, Jim started an experiment within the new Shelburne Community School.

The core of Jim's classroom was centered on student choice. Children were encouraged to develop individual learning plans each week, mapping out their topics of study and working independently. The independence of Jim's student centered classroom was unique and unusual in the early 1970's. What was most exciting, Jim said, was that "students succeeded...Students learned the material they would have in a more traditional classroom and they also learned how to study it themselves."

Soon, Jim's ideas expanded. Another fourth-grade teacher named Barbara Macamer joined him. Together, Jim and Barbara team-taught two classes of fourth graders for several years. Students were given the same opportunities to set their own goals and manage their own time. This empowerment had great impact on the growth of the children in Jim and Barbara's class. As one former student said, she learned to identify her "own abilities to accomplish work and her capabilities and limitations as a learner."

Even with these changes, Jim wasn't sure that he was meeting the developmental needs of his students. He shared his thoughts with author Susan Kuntz, who recalls:

Jim told me he had been doing a good deal of reading about middle school organization that showed there is a great variety in individual levels of cognitive and social development during the early adolescent years and that transitional changes to a different class each year can be stressful to them because they happen simultaneously with other more personal changes, those associated with puberty. Most research he had read supported multiyear classrooms..."

Jim approached Shelburne's administration with the request to create a multiyear program for students in fourth through eighth grade. His request was granted and Alpha was born. Essentially, Alpha became a school within a school. Students of the Shelburne community could choose to be a part of this multiage classroom, or remain members of traditionally structured middle grades classrooms. The Alpha community ranged from 40-60 students being served by 2-3 teachers over the years.

Learning in Alpha happened in ways that continue to be elusive in traditional middle school classrooms. Children worked together to design units of study that were appropriate for them. These themes "usually started with a group of students coming together, sometimes randomly, to investigate a topic they were all interested in. They presented their idea to the teachers, and with them, decided on a plan for the study, including a timeline. The exploration and planning sometimes took a week or a month to complete while at other times it was finished in hours."

What's more, student work groups in Alpha were flexible. Children of different ages regularly joined together in study. As Kuntz wrote, "Teachers in Alpha did not assume that possessing some knowledge was expected because of one's age or grade level; rather, students along with teachers figured out what they needed to know, put it into their weekly goals, and went about learning it."

"The range of ages (from 9-14) and grade-levels (5) in the class," Kuntz writes, "encouraged a variety of activities at numerous levels and gave students flexibility in finding a place to comfortably work. They had the opportunity to move from the top in one area of study to a lower one in another."

This flexibility allowed older students to serve as leaders and as role models for younger students and "supported continuing relationships between students and teachers who acted as constants in each other's lives." These continuing relationships are often cited as the single most significant aspect of the Alpha experience. Together, students learned "how to work with others, how to love, how to take criticism, and how to experience joy. Although students in Alpha were certainly caught in the confusion of pubertal changes, full of doubts, fears and anxieties about themselves...they found a comfortable place in Alpha in which to examine the transformations taking place."

Over time, the teachers and students of Alpha adapted their program to meet the changing expectations of their school and their district. As calls for accountability increased, Alpha teachers worked to document the ways in which students were addressing the expected components of the curriculum. In fact, as Kuntz writes, "Working through the tensions [of the assessment challenges] helped members of the program clarify their philosophy further, refining it to meet the context and demands of the time."

In essence, Alpha has been refining itself for years while holding to the following five core beliefs:

To train each child in the skills of responsibility and self-sufficiency.

To allow the child to take as much responsibility as can comfortably be handled, no more, no less.

To do everything possible to ensure that most of the time, the child is happy and free of those outside pressures that really do not need to exist.

To lead the child to a form of self-discipline that will carry over to those situations where it will be the only discipline worth having.

To encourage the formation of an intellectually curious and creative being, well grounded in basic knowledge and ready to apply it to a field of learning far beyond the usual.

While the program has changed, it remains an option to the families of Shelburne. It currently serves 65 students in grades six through eight. Children still set their own goals and accept responsibility for their own growth. They continue to be led by teachers who love them deeply and who are skilled at guiding, prompting, and facilitating the learning of middle-grades students.

Alpha's continued existence poses challenging questions for us all: Are our schools developmentally appropriate for "children in the middle?" Is an over-reliance on standards and testing carrying us further and further from a vision for education that could be more effective? Do multiage classrooms have a hidden potential that we have forgotten to tap? Where do alternative approaches to education fit into our current systems of accountability?

The Story of Alpha may not definitively answer these questions, but it certainly allows readers an inside look at what schools could be if we were willing to take the same risks that Jim Reid and the Shelburne community first took so many years ago. And for those convinced that middle grades children are not being served in traditional school settings, it is an inspiring vision!

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