Alfie Kohn - The (Alternative) Schools Our Kids Deserve - 2011 MAAP Conference. ICSD :: About the School. The Lehman Alternative Community School is a small middle school/high school whose 300 students are chosen by a random lottery. It is a public school, with no tuition or fees for district students, with alternatives to traditional curriculum and school governance philosophies. LACS staff, especially at the high school level, design schedules and curriculum to allow students to study subjects of particular interest to them in-depth. Middle curriculum tends to be broader in topics covered. LACS does not depend on report cards or letter grades, but rather written evaluations of students. Lehman - Dave Lehman was the founding principal of the school.
Alternative - We are an alternative to traditional schools, in our curricular and school governance philosophies. Community - We believe in being both a community within our school and being part of the larger Ithaca community. School - Well, we do learn here! TeachingDemocracyPDK.pdf. High School for Public Service: Heroes of Tomorrow - Home. Methodology. Our pedagogy arises directly out of the Close Up mission: To inform, inspire, and empower students to exercise the rights and accept the responsibilities of citizens in a democracy.
Though our many student programs each have their own distinct learning goals, they all share a common grounding in the aims of our mission. That mission informs every aspect of the design, content, and instructional method of all Close Up programs. The overarching goal of all our student programs is to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for effective and responsible participation in the processes of democratic society and the American political system. The methodology and instructional practices described below rely on over 40 years of developed expertise, allowing us to precisely craft experiential learning models to the goal of our programs and the aims of our mission. Experiential Education Cooperative Learning Cooperative experiences are not a luxury.