circumstantial

In response to: The Power of Their Idea (Part II)

The integration of, parents, students, teachers, alumni, and public officials that make up the community at CPE is absolutely integral.

While reading the excerpt I immediately felt that Central Park East’s organization, creation, and support of their curriculum and school was highly circumstantial. The author notes the supportive community, fantastic alumni, creative teachers, and how they all worked together, the immediacy of the program, the freedoms the teachers and students were granted, and the citywide and statewide goals to improve new York’s communities as factors that are not something one finds just around the corner.

“What has allowed this to happen is a combination of imaginative public policy initiated by a few brave, well situated officials who made the experiment even possible; specific reproducible ways of organizing schools and getting teachers, students, and families to work together; a small crew of teachers who were ready to take the risks and seize the opportunities; and a group of families either desperate enough or eager enough to give it a chance.” [17]

“All involved some form of faculty and student choice far greater autonomy and self-governance than the system had previously allowed.” [20]

“…Today we are also surrounded by powerful outside friends and by dozens of sister schools struggling collaboratively to make a common dream come true not just for one small group of students in one of the city’s thirty-two districts but throughout this system of a million students” [17]

That being said, I believe that CPE is a great example of how to fully utilize a series of factors, and create a great learning environment that nurtures students.

“A dream come true. A rather fragile dream…Today, however, it would take an unusually strong storm to uproot [it] or break [it]—or even to bend [it] very much.” [17]

--dan