[So we have some school-wide discussion forums on our Moodle server at SLA, and the conversations are flying fast and furious these days. One of the threads was about where everyone went to middle school, and it morphed into some students talking about how they have to justify their choice to attend SLA over one of the older, more prestigious public schools in Philadelphia, Central High School.

One of the joys of the small schools movement, and of creating more choices for students within the public school system is that we can start to move beyond a purely hierarchical ranking of schools where X is always better than Y, and instead start to offer students and families more choices so that kids have multiple options and can choose the school where the style of learning and the community that exists makes the most sense for them. Central, for example, is an amazing school with nearly 170 years of tradition, but that doesn’t mean that just because a student gets into it, it’s the right school for them. I think, now, with SLA and other small schools, the students of Philadelphia can make more informed choices about going to the school that gives them the best chance to realize the best version of themself four years from when they entire high school. With that… here’s what I wrote in that Moodle discussion:]

Tell all those folks that you’re going to the school that you want to go to.

We have a bunch of students who chose us over Central (and a bunch of kids going to Central who chose them over us.) I think Central is a great option for some kids, I think we’re a great option for some kids (o.k. — I’m biased, of course, I think we’re an AMAZING option, but hey… like I said, I’m biased.) And I think that if the worst thing in the world is that someone has to make a choice between Central and SLA, well, then they have a pretty good life.

I do think that some folks might not understand why a student wouldn’t go to Central, with all of its history and prestige, but I do think that we offer something different that you all are already a part of. I agree that the kind of teaching that we’ll do here at SLA, as Bryanna said, might end up looking very different than it does at Central, and I think that having things like — for example — this moodle forum where teachers and students and administrators have conversations like this makes us very different. But I think that it would be hard for someone who isn’t willing to look past the name and history of Central to understand why we’re all so excited about SLA.

And that’s one of the things that makes you all unique. Every student coming to SLA this year had to make a positive choice to come here, whether it was coming here over Central or a charter school or Germantown or somewhere else, you have to make the decision that the way we talked about education and schools made sense to you. I — and I think I speak for all the teachers here — am always humbled and honored by the energy with which you all have taken to that choice, and I (and we) feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to honor that choice by working with you all to make SLA something special and unique and powerful for the students of Philadelphia — for this first class and every class that follows you all.

So definitely keep talking about where you all are coming from — where we come from has a powerful effect on who we are and who we will become — but as much as we all are coming from 49 different schools, we’re coming together to form one amazing school, and that is the most exciting part of it all.