New York City’s first Agile Learning Center is an independent school for self-directed learners. Students at Agile Learning Centers individualize their learning within the context of a supportive community. We have adapted simple tools for self-organization and intentional culture creation to better support young people in engaging with their passions and curiosities while shaping the environment of the school.
Culture
Our ALC model is emergent and adaptive. We iterate and evolve our tools and practices so that the process is always serving the people. The ALC model holds these four assumptions, the Agile Roots, at its core — they drive all that we do.
The Agile Roots
The soil we grow from is trust: in students, in each other, in you. The four assumptions that ground us are as follows:
1. Learning: Learning is natural. It’s happening all the time.
2. Self-Direction: People learn best when they make their own decisions. Children are people.
3. Experience: People learn more from their culture and environment than from the material they are taught. The medium is the message.
4. Success: Growth is achieved through cycles of intention, creation, reflection, and sharing.
An Agile Cycle of Learning
Intention
What do you want to accomplish today?
In an Agile Learning Center, we discern and articulate what we want to do, individually and as a group.
Creation
What are you going to do about it?
Agile Learners spend their days exploring and inventing – once we know what we want, we create it.
Reflection
What did you learn from your choices?
Looking back, we develop awarenessof what worked and what didn’t, so we can move forward more powerfully.
Sharing
How can you share it with the world?
We document our work to record, exhibit, and share our experience with others.
Empowering, Innovative, Collaborative
We prepare young people for the world they are growing up into by empowering them to actively create it.
We use leading edge tools and culture creation practices to provide students with the maximal support with minimal interference.
We are the flagship of and active collaborators within the ALC Network. We aren’t in this game alone! We share and learn with ALCs around the world.
