So now that we’re a few days past Theo’s surgery, I feel like I have enough headspace to try to reflect on SLA’s inaugural Summer Institute. (And yes, I fully realize that everything we do this year will be our "inaugural" version of it. I figure I’ll be sick of saying it some time in February.) Last week, around 80 of the students who make up SLA’s 9th grade class came to The Franklin Institute from 9:00 am until 12:30 pm to start the process of learning about SLA and each other.

When we started planning the session, we had two main goals for the week — start building community and expose the students to the five core values of the school — inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection. I think we did a pretty good job of achieving both goals. To the first goal, my biggest fear now is that we now have to remember that thirty students weren’t there, and we can’t leave them out of the equation in September. To the second goal, I think, again, we did a very solid job, although, I think we still have a lot of work to do there. (This might be me being a bit harsh… it’s not even September.)

So what did the week look like? Monday was all about community building. We met in our advisories. We did silly things like hold hands and try to pass a hula-hoop from person to person. (For the record, my group won. And yes, I did it right along with everyone else.) We had each advisory make their own SLA super-hero and flag. We played a bunch of those "learn about everyone else games," and we talked a lot about what we all were thinking about for September. Then we introduced our City Expedition — the project that would make up the bulk of the rest of the week.

City Expedition was the creation of several of the SLA faculty, and it consisted of sending six teams of SLA students and teachers out into Center City Philadelphia to do field research. We worked with them to learn how to move from broad observations to focused observations. We tried to teach them interview skills, and we found that even with a polite manner and good questions, asking strangers questions can be difficult. We started some embryonic attempts to analyze data in an attempt to make some larger connections. That took us through Tuesday and Wednesday, along with more advisory bonding, sometimes verbal, sometimes kinetic.

Thursday was "Presentation Prep" day. We had 80 kids on the fifth floor of TFI discussing, drawing, analyzing, researching, creating and doing. They had two and a half hours to do a good five to ten hours of work. And they really got into it. Kids divided up the work, checked in with each other, and they really did buy into their work. They also got their first taste of the "fishbowl" that will be SLA as TFI CEO Dennis Wint and Center City Regional Superintendent Janet Samuels came by to talk to the kids about their work.

Friday was presentation day, and I managed to see all the presentations before I had to leave to go to the hospital, and while the faculty had decided beforehand that our mantra was "This is about process more than product this week…" I think we were overall very pleased with the quality of the presentations. We saw a lot of students get up on stage and talk in front of sixty other students, and we saw students create charts, posters, PowerPoint presentations and skits. I think we’ll see more polish as time goes on (and as we are able to give the kids the time, equipment and supplies to do it right), but again, this really was about process as much as product. And what was more important than anything we saw on the stage on Friday was the conversations we had all week, where kids started talking about asking good questions, where kids started to look at themselves as social scientists, where kids started to ask themselves what it means to look at a piece of their city through a new lens.

And what was best for me is that I really didn’t plan this week. The planning was done by SLA faculty. They did it on and off-line, and yes, I was part of the planning process, but folks other than me were the primary architects. And that’s going to start to happen a lot. And I love that the SLA faculty are visionary and hard-working and collaborative enough to create an experience for our students that was this powerful, fun and meaningful. I really can’t wait to see what they come up with in their classrooms in September.

So what does this all mean? I think we really did accomplish our goals. We asked kids on Thursday what they would improve, and what we heard more than anything else (other than "Feed us!") was that the institute was too short. They would have rather had longer days or more of them. If that’s the worst complaint they can come up with, I think we’re doing pretty well. But it’s also important to remember that, while this was a ton of planning and work, on some level, it’s still easier than September will be. This was ungraded, low-stress and meant to be more fun than rigorous. I think it was an excellent exposure to SLA-lite; and I think the kids will be ready for the real deal in September.

… because it’s 1:20 in the morning, and I just got off the phone with one of my teachers, because we were hashing out some of the issues for September. The faculty of SLA are as committed a group of teachers as I have ever seen (and, trust me, that’s high praise), and I don’t think they are going to let anything stand in the way of providing a truly innovating and inspiring educational model for our kids.

And since I’m blogging for the first time in days, I’ll continue. Here’s the problem. It shouldn’t be this hard to get a great school off the ground. Yes, of course, anything worth doing is going to be difficult, and yes, starting up is hard, and yes, innovation is damned hard. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

There has been a real excitement and outpouring of good will here in the School District of Philadelphia about SLA. People from every conceivable office have worked with us to try to get us what we need — I really have been blown away by the commitment of the city. And even with that, dealing with the constraints that are placed on urban school districts, both financially and politically, has meant getting to September 7th has taken a Herculean effort on the part of the teachers and the committed central office folks. (And yes, me too.) The behind-the-scenes folks at SDP who have been working all year to get the four new high schools open are exhausted, and I understand why.

If we are really to reform education in our cities, we need more money spent on our cities. We need to reform NCLB so that real reform can happen. We need to make it easier to get our best and brightest into our urban classrooms. And then we need to create structures that allow them to really teach and plan.

Until then, 1:20 am phone and email conversations are the only way we’re going to get it done. I’m lucky, I have a group of teachers who are on board for that. It’s my job to make sure that they don’t have to do it very often.