There are moments in time where what you do comes into crystalizing focus. Last night was one of those nights. We had over 80% of our families at Family Night at The Franklin Institute last night. It was a celebration of the choice they’ve made to come to SLA, and it was a chance for them to see the work we’ve done to honor that choice.

We got to make a few really fun announcements… one of which is that all SLA students will be receiving Family Memberships to The Franklin Institute, our cultural partner in this project… and the other… well, I’m saving that for another post. And after listening to me talk for probably far too long, the real power of the evening happened — the SLA faculty got up and spoke to the parents about how they are interpreting this vision and making it their own. For me, that was just such a powerful moment. These are brilliant educators who have come together to build a idea together. To say that it’s been a humbling process is an understatement.

Together, we created a thirty page Family Night curriculum guide (feel free to download) that we think really shows the work we’ve put in to create a school with a real common purpose. This document really is the next evolution of the Curriculum Summit book we published back in January, and I think the path we are travelling as we move toward September should be very clear to anyone who reads the text. And again, one of the great pieces of this whole planning process is now seeing how these wonderful teachers interpret the vision of the school together and create something unique in Philadelphia.

A group of the SLA faculty went out afterwards to decompress after the evening, and we all really felt a powerful connection to the families right away. This was the night that made the whole enterprise real. As Matt Baird, our history teacher said, up until now, this could have all been a really elaborate grad school exercise — "Design your dream school" — but tonight we were reminded who we are doing it for.

I think we had a good format for the evening. The evening started with a quick intro by me, and then Carol Parssinen, our liason at The Franklin Institute, made her remarks, and then I went over the pedagogy of SLA and gave an update on many of the projects we’ve been working on. Then the faculty spoke… and that took about an hour and fifteen minutes. Then, we broke the students and teachers out into their advisory groups, and I stayed behind with the parents for a Q&A. It gave the parents the chance to ask their questions, but more importantly, the advisors talked with the students about the school — about what they thought about starting a school… their role, their needs, their hopes. Hopefully, it was our first opportunity to live up to the pedagogy of empowering our students to have a voice in their own education. We are taking the notes that each advisory created as the basis of our next moodle staff meeting this week. We want to look at their vision as we craft our own.

One last thing that really made this evening special for me — I had the opportunity to thank these families for being willing to go on this journey with us. Think about it — many, many of these students had multiple options for high school, and they chose to start a school with us. I cannot really express how powerful that is… how much work we have to do to honor that choice. We really do have an obligation to exceed expectations.