Cite as Cross, A. (2021). Out of this chaos, beauty comes: Democratic schooling in a progressive independent middle school. In K. Swalwell & D.Spikes (Eds.) Anti-Oppressive Education in "Elite" Schools: Promising Practices & Cautionary Tales from the Field. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Retrieved at
In the service of learning, we practice responsive and progressive education and strive for equity. In service of the whole person, we embrace unique gifts, experiences, and relationships. In the service of social justice, we foster responsibility, advocacy, and compassion. In the service of democracy, we nurture individual and collective growth. In the service of the world we cultivate curiosity, creativity, and innovation.
—Mission Statement, Wingra School, Madison, WI
“This is what democracy looks like!” was the chant that still occasionally rings in my ears from the protests against union-busting legislation in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. Sometimes, when I have recess duty, I honk out the rhythm of it on a bike horn to indicate when it is time to go in. While shouting the slogan seemed powerful and meaningful in that protest context, it is overly simplified and pretty ambiguous in its general meaning. What does democracy look like in the context of a learning environment like that of Wingra School, an independent school founded nearly fifty years ago for children ages five to fifteen? Even though we describe Wingra School as democratic and progressive, our student body is made up of predominantly white students with most of the few enrolled Black and Brown kids adopted by white parents. While one may call this community “elite,” all of the students are different in personality and have their own histories—some very complex. Of course, all are deserving of our full attention and care. Unfortunately, our teaching staff is also predominantly white. How does this group of teachers educate this group of young adolescents to be critical of their privilege, and to become co-conspirators with those less privileged to affect positive change in our democracy? How can our private institution be one that serves the public good?
My efforts toward answering these questions and engaging in social justice education are influenced by interrogating my identity as a middle class, white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, atheist, feminist; being an active and informed citizen involved in the broader community; and honing my craft as a democratic progressive educator for 11-15 year-olds. Working in a private progressive school like Wingra affords me and my teaching partners the advantage and responsibility of co-creating a meaningful and responsive curriculum that serves the students' needs and challenges in an open and democratic environment free from the mandates of top-down policy makers. The school is guided by the same principles of our country's founding: popular sovereignty, equality, liberty/freedom, individual rights, representation, pursuit of happiness, and checks and balances. Each of these concepts has either been the primary topic or highlighted within a unit of study. What is most important to us is, however, is how living these concepts daily makes for a rich and vibrant social and academic environment—one that demonstrates connectedness with each other and the Earth. Living and learning in a democracy like this can be time-consuming, complex, sometimes messy, but it is always beautiful and important.
An important part of democracy in our classrooms is deciding how to decide. There needs to be time and a flexible schedule for coming to consensus about goals, identifying and interpreting the problem at hand, agreeing on fair strategies for decision-making, and discussing possible ways to move forward. Our students are presented with a number of collaborative tasks at the outset of every year to establish their version of community and democracy. One of the first is to create plans for the layout of the room. They facilitate a process for deciding who will fairly get what desk, finding just methods for working out conflicts that may arise. Returning students have experienced these decision-making processes inherent in popular sovereignty before and a number of them have become skilled facilitators, though we step in if it advantages certain individuals or groups. Even with a process for creating a fair way to select desks, justifications for privilege still arise. Older students might argue that seniority is a good reason for them to get what they want, or that a former student has “willed” the desk to them. Some surreptitiously resort to bartering or buying what they want. In a small way, we connect this experience when we discuss issues of structural or institutional advantage in the broader community.
In terms of power and authority in school, we function in a very informal manner at Wingra. Vital to teaching democratically is getting to know the students well and for them to get to know us. Working with mixed-aged classrooms helps in terms of understanding the range and variations in people regardless of age. Our all-school activities and monthly community circle meetings add to the understanding of equality. We make use of dialogue journals to aid in getting to know the students and for them to get to know us via informal writing. We encourage students to challenge decisions, policies, and behaviors in constructive ways. We regularly encourage students to keep an open mind, maintain a big heart, be forgiving, and receptive to others' honest criticisms. We create a learning space that is safe for making mistakes so that all members of our learning community can be honest about their strengths and challenges. Students tell us that they think we know them well and that we listen to them. They view teachers as facilitators of their learning. I believe this leads us to have a sensitivity to social injustices and a disposition to want to take action for positive change.
We are not an institution for the sole purpose of guaranteeing advanced educational opportunities or preparing students for the capitalist economy, but more an institution for living a fulfilling life centered in being an active participant in our larger democracy. Our theme-based integrated curriculum allows room for individual choice and negotiation with an emphasis on learning how to participate positively in any group or community of which students are a part. The tension between individual rights and freedoms, and challenges of helping make sense of the concepts of fairness and the common good is a constant one working with 11-15 year-olds. We often make use of centers, a form of structured choice where students decide in what mode they will learn the required content or skill. The weekly schedule includes work times where students decide what learning task they will engage in, with whom and where they would like to work. Students tell us where they are going and don't ask permission—in general take more charge of their lives and learning. Students are encouraged to initiate and run projects, clubs, and activities as part of their schooling.
One of the features in our program that students cite as vital to our democratic functioning is having opportunities to practice speaking their minds in discussions on topics of their choosing—a free exchange of ideas. Topics for discussion are signed up on the open agenda sheet, and students usually facilitate these discussions or problem-solving sessions. Teachers need to wait to be called on like the rest of the class. Recently, some of the older students expressed concern that the younger students were not speaking up freely during discussion times, so they signed up to address the issue with the whole class. The next day, after one of the older students introduced the topic, a younger classmate volunteered to facilitate the discussion. While there was some hesitation in offering thoughts on the topic, it turned out that many of the youngers felt intimidated by the older. With more sensitivity and self-awareness, things improved. We also have had many lively and informative discussions including on cultural appropriation, the use of personal electronic devices, “guys” and “bro” as a referent for any gender, meme culture, national defense spending, and “vsco girls.”
Since we are co-creators of the curriculum, each of the teaching staff needs to be engaged in our larger democracy and knowledgeable about the world, willing to be honest about mistakes, weaknesses, and challenges—to be well-informed but also rather egoless. No one teacher can serve the purposes of reading the world and reading the students. Our combined interests, skills, strengths, and areas of knowledge are vital to creating a rich, responsive and meaningful integrated curriculum. Since we do not have the wide range of Madison's voices present on a daily basis (or the world's, past and present), we need to represent them in some way. We make use of critical pedagogy guided by resources developed by Rethinking Schools, Teaching Tolerance, Teaching for Black Lives, The 1619 Project, Wisconsin First Nations, PBS Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin School of Education, and Educators for Social Responsibility. We also draw from local media, including our community-sponsored radio station WORT, publications like Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories from Madison and Milwaukee, and periodicals like UMOJA, Hues, Isthmus and The Capital Times.
The arts and literature are marvelous ways to bring in underrepresented perspectives and voices. Our knowledgeable librarian and the Cooperative Children's Book Center help us find quality literature that challenges dominant narratives to help students engage with stories as windows and mirrors (Sims Bishop, 1990). For example, we play music from around the world and protest music in the mornings during our 15-minute morning adjustment time. We study the painter Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, learn about Zora Neale Hurston and other artists of the Harlem Renaissance, learn about Navajo country music, watch the hip-hop artist Supaman. We make use of the story of Billie Holiday's recording of Strange Fruit, compare Big Mama Thornton's version of Hound Dog with Elvis Presley's later version, discuss Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama as a racist response to Neil Young's Southern Man and Alabama, and learn about Marion Anderson's Concert that Shook the Establishment (with a 10-year old Martin Luther King in the audience). We juxtaposed Gill Scott-Heron's Whitey on the Moon with information celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. I think my interest in free jazz, experimental and world music has aided with this. I have also conducted research around the sonic culture of the classroom that has helped me take up less air space and better understand what we sometimes dismiss as noise.
Does our students’ education politicize them in a way that inspires them to action or does their understanding of democratic functioning further bolster their privilege? I can't say for sure, but I do know that many of our former students enter fields that are active in working toward social justice including law, the arts, journalism, politics, and teacher education. As individual educators, and as an institution, we need to continue to be self-critical and receptive to others' criticism of us—comfortable with discomfort. We have struggled over many years to develop and sustain strong meaningful partnerships with local organizations. While our older students have identified issues on which they would like to take action (climate change, restorative justice, Tiny House movement, the homeless, LGBTQIA issues, sustainable food production /food deserts), we also have struggled to develop a meaningful, sustainable service-learning program. It is important that we make sure that students understand that, while none of them are guilty for the wrongs in the world, they can be agents of change.
The question of whether (and how) Wingra School—and progressive education, for that matter—is racist has given us pause and forced a closer examination. Even with the COVID crisis consuming much of our energies with trying to adapt to distance learning, we continue to address social justice and white privilege. Actually, much thought went into considering those issues in the way we went about reopening in the Fall. It feels to me like we, as an institution, are taking more seriously the often uncomfortable but essential work to directly address the lack of diversity in the student body and teaching staff. Much speculation has been made about why we have remained such a white institution, even though we say we are advocates for social justice and a strong democracy. Maybe it has to do with never having a critical number of people of color, both on staff and in the student body so as to be safe or inviting to others? Maybe the informality here doesn’t sit well with some people? Maybe the tuition is too high? We know that democratic and/or progressive schooling has been successful in other places with a wide range of populations (e.g., Meier, 2002). That said, during my time here, there have been periodic efforts to increase diversity in our school community— efforts led primarily by white members of the community. This time, however, the white people are trying to step out of the way and people of color are taking the lead. This time, we seem more committed to real change across all aspects of our school functioning.
Thanks to the efforts of our outgoing Board of Trustees president, three of the twelve board members are now people of color, including the incoming president. With the aim of truly being able to call Wingra School an anti-racist institution, the Board of Trustees is more public in its commitment to developing a long-term plan for achieving this goal with specific actions to address ongoing issues.1 On a classroom level, we are examining educational catchphrases we have used to guide and describe our teaching methods that so often center whiteness: “child-centeredness,” “individualized learning,” “holistic education,” “progressive,” and “democratic pedagogies.” Abolitionist education (Love, 2019), Black Lives Matter curriculum, Hip-Hop pedagogy (Akom, 2009), and other non-white centered forms of education are being implemented within a grounding in the principles of the democratic project. It has also been suggested that we end our affiliation with Independent Schools Association of Central States (ISACS) and replace their accreditation process with one that is more local and community-based, composed of critical friends from organizations within our community that we develop mutually beneficial bonds with to help us toward our goals. This will take a concerted amount of time and energy but is worth it.
______________________________
Interview with Allen Cross
Katy: Your school was founded by women in a progressive, democratic tradition. Can you talk about the challenges of upholding their mission?
Allen: The challenges seem to be a lack of diversity in the student body and the staff. It was white women who founded it in 1972. You know, I ended up at the school by mistake. This is not something I sought out. For many years, I said “I really want to be in public schools.” And then my partner told me I have to stop saying that because I’m still there. I see the potential and it’s so rich a space for thinking about all of this. By nature of it being a private institution, especially in a Left-leaning city like Madison, what does that mean? Why are people leaving public schools to come to this school? We’re not very self-promoting, which is fine with me. Some of us say we want to put ourselves out of business.
Katy: Can you say more about that?
Allen: I’m an advocate for progressive, democratic school and I’m an advocate for public education. We are open for people to come and observe. We had a lot of practicum students and a pretty good connection with the University of Wisconsin for matching theory and practice. But I’d like to see what we do to be more in the public sphere. Madison has had pockets of progressive education—and still have independent teachers who work in isolation—but there isn’t a model of education for 11-15 year-olds that is consistent to really get the best out of them and harden the notion of self, collaborative learning, generating knowledge together, understanding how to facilitate discussion so all the voices are heard, how to engage in decision-making in ways that are fair and open and democratic—all those skills that are essential to our democracy surviving.
Katy: Is that how you square staying? “Here, at least, there is a cohesive model.”
Allen: It’s the only way—and that I serve as a cooperating teacher. [My student teacher] is reading bell hooks and we have these rich conversations about how institutions function, how classrooms can function, looking at power and authority in the classroom. Not to say that public school teachers don’t do that, but, wow, there’s so much other crap they have to deal with. It’s hard to have intellectual and ethical and aesthetic discussions when you’re jumping through hoops and other expectations. In a privileged institution, I have space, time, support from the administration to co-create and implement social justice curriculum. I’m expected to do it in my contract. I have a wonderful co-teacher—we have these conversations. We believe that we want to make the institution serve the public good even though it’s a private institution. But we can do that because we have a privileged situation outside all of regulations, so we can be a laboratory and try different stuff out all the time. I highly respect my public school colleagues that fight to do what they know is best for students in the face of all the other crap they have to deal with. So many of them do carve out time for those important intellectual discussions about ethics and aesthetics and I have been so inspired by and learned so much from so many of them.
Katy: When you describe it, it almost sounds like you see yourself as a keeper of tradition and experimenter pushing it forward, knowing that the ecosystem in public schools is inhospitable right now.
Allen: I used to say, “We’re not a museum.” It felt like that at times—it has nothing to do with sentimentality or nostalgia.
Katy: What about the democratic, progressive tradition speaks to you?
Allen: My concern is to the larger society. I’m a nurturer and a caregiver and a facilitator of learning for that age group’s understanding of how human beings can be together. Democracy is way more than voting. I think about the deep, ethical concerns and epistemological questions: What is school for? What is life about? I’m fascinated by the aesthetic and the ethics of education, which may be the same thing—I’m not sure. We know when there are these beautiful moments that happen. They happen frequently. [chokes up] Not lately, though. [composes himself] There’s a certain beauty about people being together and that place is rich with it—when we’re together. We have a student right now—he’s fascinating. He’s a white kid from a wealthy family. He was really interested in “hygge.” It’s a Danish concept of coziness. He studied that as a research project. And then he studied feng shui. And then he studied hip hop. He’s an Irish dancer. A lot of that came from being in that classroom with a variety of people with a variety of interests and seeking out what is good and meaningful in life together and teaching each other about that. When I first started working there, [the students would say,] “Uh-huh, Allen! That’s not how we do it here!” They decentered my authority really fast. I love listening to free jazz and, for me, it’s like living that. Out of this chaos, beauty comes. [chokes up]
Katy: The physical aesthetics of progressive private schools are often so inviting and the relationships kids have with adults in the building and the informality—it all just feels so humane in ways that the institutions of public schooling are so often, by design, stripped of. That’s something that I’m drawn to and heartbroken about: that there is this really small percentage of kids who have a schooling experience like that—most often kids who are already so advantaged.
Allen: That’s right.
Katy: I struggle with those parts of the progressive, democratic tradition. I’m curious to hear what you have to say. Let’s take informality. On the one hand, that feels familial. But knowing who typically goes to those schools, kids who are rich and white, I worry that it breeds elitism and fuels overfamiliarity with adults that re-privileges them.
Allen: Yep.
Katy: How do you wrestle with that?
Allen: It’s a concern I have. It makes them more privileged. Yeah. They’re skilled. They have a real deep understanding of power and institutions and how group dynamics work and how to express themselves in ways that get what they want. Hopefully, they become advocates for others. I think we have a reputation of students leaving here and benefiting the communities that they are part of. The ones who aren’t like that, I know about them and it’s disappointing. I wrote a poem about this one kid. It’s called “Bratty White Boy.” This kid was playing around in the hallway before school started. He threw a baseball and it hit a Duke Ellington album and broke it—bratty white boy screwing around in the hallway, didn’t apologize, broke “Black, Brown, and Beige.” His family is very socially conscious. So, who knows?
Katy: Another tension I struggle with is the idea of choice. There is so much in progressive education about following students’ interests and curiosities. For me, that rubs up against more critical traditions demanding that kids need to know certain things—especially given their privileged social identities. Maybe they want to learn about dolphins, but I need them to learn about racism and wealth inequality. I know I’m framing it as either/or, but can you talk about choice in the democratic traditions?
Allen: Our students absolutely need to know about their privilege. How hard do you push on that? What’s the tipping point where they feel resentful or indignant? I was reading aloud Nikki Giovanni’s Bronx Masquerade and this white student was sitting next to me and said, “We need more students of color here to understand what this is about.” She was sitting next to another white girl who is also socially conscious and worried. When I brought up the notion of white fragility, which seemed appropriate at the time, it became one more thing that she had to think about in the world. She went home and threatened to kill herself. It’s not going to stop me from finding ways to connect this for kids, but I don’t think that phrase was helpful to her. So, what is developmentally appropriate and is not going to do harm? It’s not their fault for being born into a family of privilege and, yet, they have to be self-critical.
Katy: It’s hard to figure out how to provide space for kids’ interests and hobbies to flourish alongside a very articulated curriculum for understanding and disrupting structural oppression. One side of this is, what does it mean for the kids at the school who have some sort of minoritized identity and the need to carve out time for them to be joyful and have hobbies? The flip side is that kids who don’t have minoritized identities—it’s not that they don’t need hobbies, too, but I worry that they won’t learn what the world needs them to learn.
Allen: Right. Yes. I’ve been thinking about how there needs to be, for this age group especially, avenues of hope and joy within the hard histories. As part of our Indigenous Peoples Day celebration this year, for example, our student teacher shared the story of his grandmother being forced to attend Haskel Indian Industrial Training School. Even though there are and were serious attempts to deny her Winnebago heritage, he reminded students that she ended up living a happy, healthy life. He encouraged students to think about our shared future and stressed that he wanted to focus on the hope and the love in addition to everything else. You can tell the really awful injustices and frame it as avenues for action, but sometimes that can feel like a set-up. Especially the white boys will respond and say something like “Oh, we can’t say that. You’re censoring us!” The memes that look funny to them—we say, “you might want to rethink that because it has a connection to eugenics.” And they say, “Oh, we can’t do anything right. Everything is censored.” So, then that sends them backwards. “Here are the adults ruining our fun or don’t understand.”
Katy: I hear teachers say they have to be tactical and not turn those kids off because they need them to buy in—but also acknowledge that they don’t want to coddle or center them, either. It’s a delicate dance. How do you think about that?
Allen: It’s important for us to represent the range of marginalized groups’ struggles and suffering and joys and beauties—the interwoven fabric and benefits of diversity in our country and the world, in spite of oppression. But, of course, they learn about that, too. We have to be reading the kids and families to know how hard to push and what the story is that we want them to have about themselves and their heritage.
Katy: As a white educator, I don’t trust my gauge for that.
Allen: I think that’s true.
Katy: What are your accountability checks? Especially as a white dude, how do you keep that at the forefront?
Allen: I don’t feel successful about it all the time. Evaluating what has happened this past week, even. I’ve got other colleagues at the school, especially the one teacher of color, Angela Baker, who is a huge inspiration. I read a lot and my partner funnels me resources. The work of educator and activist Jesse Hagopian is helpful and blogger Heather Cox Richardson. I trust my teaching partner, but she’s white—but she’s also a “she,” so that helps. You feel like you have a handle on it and then the next moment you think, “No. Not even close.” Or you come to a realization or someone points it out to you. You have to be receptive, but not paralyzed. The danger is that you shut down. You have to present yourself so that people know they can tell you about yourself when you’re messing up—they shouldn’t have to, but you want people around you who are going to do that. Kids do that for me, too. They have deep conversations with me—they know I’m willing to be honest about the flaws I have. Not having those peer regulators or people that can critique your practice for you is hard, though. There’s a lot of performative anti-racism. I do wrestle with these things. I like the idea of framing the work in more critical democratic principles as things that we live and breathe daily. I appreciate the chance to do this. I hope hearing us talk about and elaborate on these ideas is helpful to others.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank the Wingra students, parents, and staff of color who have helped the white members of the staff look at ourselves more closely, and tolerated, up to this point, our slow processes of change—especially Angela Baker, Elizabeth Garcia, Daniel Torres-Rangel, Chhoeub Chaam, and Eddie Smith. Thank you to Gabby Arca for her suggestions on this piece. Lastly, I want to thank Kathy Oker, my teaching partner, who is an incredible inspiration. She is vigilant in questioning and critiquing schooling, society, and herself in healthy and hopeful ways. She is a mighty advocate for young adolescents and our democratic way of schooling and the larger democratic project of our nation.
Allen Cross has taught at Wingra School since 1988, co-creating and implementing theme-based integrated curriculum with his teaching team and multiage groups of 11-14 year-olds. He and his partner Mary Klehr facilitate local teacher research groups, are among the Founders of Troy Gardens (now Community Groundworks), and have each served as President of the Friends of the Cooperative Children's Book Center.
REFERENCES
Akom, A. A. (2009). Critical hip hop pedagogy as a form of liberatory praxis. Equity & Excellence in Education, 42(1), 52-66.
Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Meier, D. (2002). The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Sims Bishop, R. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 1(3), ix-xi.
ENDNOTES
1 For an overview of the actions the Board of Trustees has committed to taking in support of Black Lives Matter, see https://www.wingraschool.org/aboutus/#board
—Mission Statement, Wingra School, Madison, WI
“This is what democracy looks like!” was the chant that still occasionally rings in my ears from the protests against union-busting legislation in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. Sometimes, when I have recess duty, I honk out the rhythm of it on a bike horn to indicate when it is time to go in. While shouting the slogan seemed powerful and meaningful in that protest context, it is overly simplified and pretty ambiguous in its general meaning. What does democracy look like in the context of a learning environment like that of Wingra School, an independent school founded nearly fifty years ago for children ages five to fifteen? Even though we describe Wingra School as democratic and progressive, our student body is made up of predominantly white students with most of the few enrolled Black and Brown kids adopted by white parents. While one may call this community “elite,” all of the students are different in personality and have their own histories—some very complex. Of course, all are deserving of our full attention and care. Unfortunately, our teaching staff is also predominantly white. How does this group of teachers educate this group of young adolescents to be critical of their privilege, and to become co-conspirators with those less privileged to affect positive change in our democracy? How can our private institution be one that serves the public good?
My efforts toward answering these questions and engaging in social justice education are influenced by interrogating my identity as a middle class, white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, atheist, feminist; being an active and informed citizen involved in the broader community; and honing my craft as a democratic progressive educator for 11-15 year-olds. Working in a private progressive school like Wingra affords me and my teaching partners the advantage and responsibility of co-creating a meaningful and responsive curriculum that serves the students' needs and challenges in an open and democratic environment free from the mandates of top-down policy makers. The school is guided by the same principles of our country's founding: popular sovereignty, equality, liberty/freedom, individual rights, representation, pursuit of happiness, and checks and balances. Each of these concepts has either been the primary topic or highlighted within a unit of study. What is most important to us is, however, is how living these concepts daily makes for a rich and vibrant social and academic environment—one that demonstrates connectedness with each other and the Earth. Living and learning in a democracy like this can be time-consuming, complex, sometimes messy, but it is always beautiful and important.
An important part of democracy in our classrooms is deciding how to decide. There needs to be time and a flexible schedule for coming to consensus about goals, identifying and interpreting the problem at hand, agreeing on fair strategies for decision-making, and discussing possible ways to move forward. Our students are presented with a number of collaborative tasks at the outset of every year to establish their version of community and democracy. One of the first is to create plans for the layout of the room. They facilitate a process for deciding who will fairly get what desk, finding just methods for working out conflicts that may arise. Returning students have experienced these decision-making processes inherent in popular sovereignty before and a number of them have become skilled facilitators, though we step in if it advantages certain individuals or groups. Even with a process for creating a fair way to select desks, justifications for privilege still arise. Older students might argue that seniority is a good reason for them to get what they want, or that a former student has “willed” the desk to them. Some surreptitiously resort to bartering or buying what they want. In a small way, we connect this experience when we discuss issues of structural or institutional advantage in the broader community.
In terms of power and authority in school, we function in a very informal manner at Wingra. Vital to teaching democratically is getting to know the students well and for them to get to know us. Working with mixed-aged classrooms helps in terms of understanding the range and variations in people regardless of age. Our all-school activities and monthly community circle meetings add to the understanding of equality. We make use of dialogue journals to aid in getting to know the students and for them to get to know us via informal writing. We encourage students to challenge decisions, policies, and behaviors in constructive ways. We regularly encourage students to keep an open mind, maintain a big heart, be forgiving, and receptive to others' honest criticisms. We create a learning space that is safe for making mistakes so that all members of our learning community can be honest about their strengths and challenges. Students tell us that they think we know them well and that we listen to them. They view teachers as facilitators of their learning. I believe this leads us to have a sensitivity to social injustices and a disposition to want to take action for positive change.
We are not an institution for the sole purpose of guaranteeing advanced educational opportunities or preparing students for the capitalist economy, but more an institution for living a fulfilling life centered in being an active participant in our larger democracy. Our theme-based integrated curriculum allows room for individual choice and negotiation with an emphasis on learning how to participate positively in any group or community of which students are a part. The tension between individual rights and freedoms, and challenges of helping make sense of the concepts of fairness and the common good is a constant one working with 11-15 year-olds. We often make use of centers, a form of structured choice where students decide in what mode they will learn the required content or skill. The weekly schedule includes work times where students decide what learning task they will engage in, with whom and where they would like to work. Students tell us where they are going and don't ask permission—in general take more charge of their lives and learning. Students are encouraged to initiate and run projects, clubs, and activities as part of their schooling.
One of the features in our program that students cite as vital to our democratic functioning is having opportunities to practice speaking their minds in discussions on topics of their choosing—a free exchange of ideas. Topics for discussion are signed up on the open agenda sheet, and students usually facilitate these discussions or problem-solving sessions. Teachers need to wait to be called on like the rest of the class. Recently, some of the older students expressed concern that the younger students were not speaking up freely during discussion times, so they signed up to address the issue with the whole class. The next day, after one of the older students introduced the topic, a younger classmate volunteered to facilitate the discussion. While there was some hesitation in offering thoughts on the topic, it turned out that many of the youngers felt intimidated by the older. With more sensitivity and self-awareness, things improved. We also have had many lively and informative discussions including on cultural appropriation, the use of personal electronic devices, “guys” and “bro” as a referent for any gender, meme culture, national defense spending, and “vsco girls.”
Since we are co-creators of the curriculum, each of the teaching staff needs to be engaged in our larger democracy and knowledgeable about the world, willing to be honest about mistakes, weaknesses, and challenges—to be well-informed but also rather egoless. No one teacher can serve the purposes of reading the world and reading the students. Our combined interests, skills, strengths, and areas of knowledge are vital to creating a rich, responsive and meaningful integrated curriculum. Since we do not have the wide range of Madison's voices present on a daily basis (or the world's, past and present), we need to represent them in some way. We make use of critical pedagogy guided by resources developed by Rethinking Schools, Teaching Tolerance, Teaching for Black Lives, The 1619 Project, Wisconsin First Nations, PBS Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin School of Education, and Educators for Social Responsibility. We also draw from local media, including our community-sponsored radio station WORT, publications like Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories from Madison and Milwaukee, and periodicals like UMOJA, Hues, Isthmus and The Capital Times.
The arts and literature are marvelous ways to bring in underrepresented perspectives and voices. Our knowledgeable librarian and the Cooperative Children's Book Center help us find quality literature that challenges dominant narratives to help students engage with stories as windows and mirrors (Sims Bishop, 1990). For example, we play music from around the world and protest music in the mornings during our 15-minute morning adjustment time. We study the painter Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, learn about Zora Neale Hurston and other artists of the Harlem Renaissance, learn about Navajo country music, watch the hip-hop artist Supaman. We make use of the story of Billie Holiday's recording of Strange Fruit, compare Big Mama Thornton's version of Hound Dog with Elvis Presley's later version, discuss Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama as a racist response to Neil Young's Southern Man and Alabama, and learn about Marion Anderson's Concert that Shook the Establishment (with a 10-year old Martin Luther King in the audience). We juxtaposed Gill Scott-Heron's Whitey on the Moon with information celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. I think my interest in free jazz, experimental and world music has aided with this. I have also conducted research around the sonic culture of the classroom that has helped me take up less air space and better understand what we sometimes dismiss as noise.
Does our students’ education politicize them in a way that inspires them to action or does their understanding of democratic functioning further bolster their privilege? I can't say for sure, but I do know that many of our former students enter fields that are active in working toward social justice including law, the arts, journalism, politics, and teacher education. As individual educators, and as an institution, we need to continue to be self-critical and receptive to others' criticism of us—comfortable with discomfort. We have struggled over many years to develop and sustain strong meaningful partnerships with local organizations. While our older students have identified issues on which they would like to take action (climate change, restorative justice, Tiny House movement, the homeless, LGBTQIA issues, sustainable food production /food deserts), we also have struggled to develop a meaningful, sustainable service-learning program. It is important that we make sure that students understand that, while none of them are guilty for the wrongs in the world, they can be agents of change.
The question of whether (and how) Wingra School—and progressive education, for that matter—is racist has given us pause and forced a closer examination. Even with the COVID crisis consuming much of our energies with trying to adapt to distance learning, we continue to address social justice and white privilege. Actually, much thought went into considering those issues in the way we went about reopening in the Fall. It feels to me like we, as an institution, are taking more seriously the often uncomfortable but essential work to directly address the lack of diversity in the student body and teaching staff. Much speculation has been made about why we have remained such a white institution, even though we say we are advocates for social justice and a strong democracy. Maybe it has to do with never having a critical number of people of color, both on staff and in the student body so as to be safe or inviting to others? Maybe the informality here doesn’t sit well with some people? Maybe the tuition is too high? We know that democratic and/or progressive schooling has been successful in other places with a wide range of populations (e.g., Meier, 2002). That said, during my time here, there have been periodic efforts to increase diversity in our school community— efforts led primarily by white members of the community. This time, however, the white people are trying to step out of the way and people of color are taking the lead. This time, we seem more committed to real change across all aspects of our school functioning.
Thanks to the efforts of our outgoing Board of Trustees president, three of the twelve board members are now people of color, including the incoming president. With the aim of truly being able to call Wingra School an anti-racist institution, the Board of Trustees is more public in its commitment to developing a long-term plan for achieving this goal with specific actions to address ongoing issues.1 On a classroom level, we are examining educational catchphrases we have used to guide and describe our teaching methods that so often center whiteness: “child-centeredness,” “individualized learning,” “holistic education,” “progressive,” and “democratic pedagogies.” Abolitionist education (Love, 2019), Black Lives Matter curriculum, Hip-Hop pedagogy (Akom, 2009), and other non-white centered forms of education are being implemented within a grounding in the principles of the democratic project. It has also been suggested that we end our affiliation with Independent Schools Association of Central States (ISACS) and replace their accreditation process with one that is more local and community-based, composed of critical friends from organizations within our community that we develop mutually beneficial bonds with to help us toward our goals. This will take a concerted amount of time and energy but is worth it.
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Interview with Allen Cross
Katy: Your school was founded by women in a progressive, democratic tradition. Can you talk about the challenges of upholding their mission?
Allen: The challenges seem to be a lack of diversity in the student body and the staff. It was white women who founded it in 1972. You know, I ended up at the school by mistake. This is not something I sought out. For many years, I said “I really want to be in public schools.” And then my partner told me I have to stop saying that because I’m still there. I see the potential and it’s so rich a space for thinking about all of this. By nature of it being a private institution, especially in a Left-leaning city like Madison, what does that mean? Why are people leaving public schools to come to this school? We’re not very self-promoting, which is fine with me. Some of us say we want to put ourselves out of business.
Katy: Can you say more about that?
Allen: I’m an advocate for progressive, democratic school and I’m an advocate for public education. We are open for people to come and observe. We had a lot of practicum students and a pretty good connection with the University of Wisconsin for matching theory and practice. But I’d like to see what we do to be more in the public sphere. Madison has had pockets of progressive education—and still have independent teachers who work in isolation—but there isn’t a model of education for 11-15 year-olds that is consistent to really get the best out of them and harden the notion of self, collaborative learning, generating knowledge together, understanding how to facilitate discussion so all the voices are heard, how to engage in decision-making in ways that are fair and open and democratic—all those skills that are essential to our democracy surviving.
Katy: Is that how you square staying? “Here, at least, there is a cohesive model.”
Allen: It’s the only way—and that I serve as a cooperating teacher. [My student teacher] is reading bell hooks and we have these rich conversations about how institutions function, how classrooms can function, looking at power and authority in the classroom. Not to say that public school teachers don’t do that, but, wow, there’s so much other crap they have to deal with. It’s hard to have intellectual and ethical and aesthetic discussions when you’re jumping through hoops and other expectations. In a privileged institution, I have space, time, support from the administration to co-create and implement social justice curriculum. I’m expected to do it in my contract. I have a wonderful co-teacher—we have these conversations. We believe that we want to make the institution serve the public good even though it’s a private institution. But we can do that because we have a privileged situation outside all of regulations, so we can be a laboratory and try different stuff out all the time. I highly respect my public school colleagues that fight to do what they know is best for students in the face of all the other crap they have to deal with. So many of them do carve out time for those important intellectual discussions about ethics and aesthetics and I have been so inspired by and learned so much from so many of them.
Katy: When you describe it, it almost sounds like you see yourself as a keeper of tradition and experimenter pushing it forward, knowing that the ecosystem in public schools is inhospitable right now.
Allen: I used to say, “We’re not a museum.” It felt like that at times—it has nothing to do with sentimentality or nostalgia.
Katy: What about the democratic, progressive tradition speaks to you?
Allen: My concern is to the larger society. I’m a nurturer and a caregiver and a facilitator of learning for that age group’s understanding of how human beings can be together. Democracy is way more than voting. I think about the deep, ethical concerns and epistemological questions: What is school for? What is life about? I’m fascinated by the aesthetic and the ethics of education, which may be the same thing—I’m not sure. We know when there are these beautiful moments that happen. They happen frequently. [chokes up] Not lately, though. [composes himself] There’s a certain beauty about people being together and that place is rich with it—when we’re together. We have a student right now—he’s fascinating. He’s a white kid from a wealthy family. He was really interested in “hygge.” It’s a Danish concept of coziness. He studied that as a research project. And then he studied feng shui. And then he studied hip hop. He’s an Irish dancer. A lot of that came from being in that classroom with a variety of people with a variety of interests and seeking out what is good and meaningful in life together and teaching each other about that. When I first started working there, [the students would say,] “Uh-huh, Allen! That’s not how we do it here!” They decentered my authority really fast. I love listening to free jazz and, for me, it’s like living that. Out of this chaos, beauty comes. [chokes up]
Katy: The physical aesthetics of progressive private schools are often so inviting and the relationships kids have with adults in the building and the informality—it all just feels so humane in ways that the institutions of public schooling are so often, by design, stripped of. That’s something that I’m drawn to and heartbroken about: that there is this really small percentage of kids who have a schooling experience like that—most often kids who are already so advantaged.
Allen: That’s right.
Katy: I struggle with those parts of the progressive, democratic tradition. I’m curious to hear what you have to say. Let’s take informality. On the one hand, that feels familial. But knowing who typically goes to those schools, kids who are rich and white, I worry that it breeds elitism and fuels overfamiliarity with adults that re-privileges them.
Allen: Yep.
Katy: How do you wrestle with that?
Allen: It’s a concern I have. It makes them more privileged. Yeah. They’re skilled. They have a real deep understanding of power and institutions and how group dynamics work and how to express themselves in ways that get what they want. Hopefully, they become advocates for others. I think we have a reputation of students leaving here and benefiting the communities that they are part of. The ones who aren’t like that, I know about them and it’s disappointing. I wrote a poem about this one kid. It’s called “Bratty White Boy.” This kid was playing around in the hallway before school started. He threw a baseball and it hit a Duke Ellington album and broke it—bratty white boy screwing around in the hallway, didn’t apologize, broke “Black, Brown, and Beige.” His family is very socially conscious. So, who knows?
Katy: Another tension I struggle with is the idea of choice. There is so much in progressive education about following students’ interests and curiosities. For me, that rubs up against more critical traditions demanding that kids need to know certain things—especially given their privileged social identities. Maybe they want to learn about dolphins, but I need them to learn about racism and wealth inequality. I know I’m framing it as either/or, but can you talk about choice in the democratic traditions?
Allen: Our students absolutely need to know about their privilege. How hard do you push on that? What’s the tipping point where they feel resentful or indignant? I was reading aloud Nikki Giovanni’s Bronx Masquerade and this white student was sitting next to me and said, “We need more students of color here to understand what this is about.” She was sitting next to another white girl who is also socially conscious and worried. When I brought up the notion of white fragility, which seemed appropriate at the time, it became one more thing that she had to think about in the world. She went home and threatened to kill herself. It’s not going to stop me from finding ways to connect this for kids, but I don’t think that phrase was helpful to her. So, what is developmentally appropriate and is not going to do harm? It’s not their fault for being born into a family of privilege and, yet, they have to be self-critical.
Katy: It’s hard to figure out how to provide space for kids’ interests and hobbies to flourish alongside a very articulated curriculum for understanding and disrupting structural oppression. One side of this is, what does it mean for the kids at the school who have some sort of minoritized identity and the need to carve out time for them to be joyful and have hobbies? The flip side is that kids who don’t have minoritized identities—it’s not that they don’t need hobbies, too, but I worry that they won’t learn what the world needs them to learn.
Allen: Right. Yes. I’ve been thinking about how there needs to be, for this age group especially, avenues of hope and joy within the hard histories. As part of our Indigenous Peoples Day celebration this year, for example, our student teacher shared the story of his grandmother being forced to attend Haskel Indian Industrial Training School. Even though there are and were serious attempts to deny her Winnebago heritage, he reminded students that she ended up living a happy, healthy life. He encouraged students to think about our shared future and stressed that he wanted to focus on the hope and the love in addition to everything else. You can tell the really awful injustices and frame it as avenues for action, but sometimes that can feel like a set-up. Especially the white boys will respond and say something like “Oh, we can’t say that. You’re censoring us!” The memes that look funny to them—we say, “you might want to rethink that because it has a connection to eugenics.” And they say, “Oh, we can’t do anything right. Everything is censored.” So, then that sends them backwards. “Here are the adults ruining our fun or don’t understand.”
Katy: I hear teachers say they have to be tactical and not turn those kids off because they need them to buy in—but also acknowledge that they don’t want to coddle or center them, either. It’s a delicate dance. How do you think about that?
Allen: It’s important for us to represent the range of marginalized groups’ struggles and suffering and joys and beauties—the interwoven fabric and benefits of diversity in our country and the world, in spite of oppression. But, of course, they learn about that, too. We have to be reading the kids and families to know how hard to push and what the story is that we want them to have about themselves and their heritage.
Katy: As a white educator, I don’t trust my gauge for that.
Allen: I think that’s true.
Katy: What are your accountability checks? Especially as a white dude, how do you keep that at the forefront?
Allen: I don’t feel successful about it all the time. Evaluating what has happened this past week, even. I’ve got other colleagues at the school, especially the one teacher of color, Angela Baker, who is a huge inspiration. I read a lot and my partner funnels me resources. The work of educator and activist Jesse Hagopian is helpful and blogger Heather Cox Richardson. I trust my teaching partner, but she’s white—but she’s also a “she,” so that helps. You feel like you have a handle on it and then the next moment you think, “No. Not even close.” Or you come to a realization or someone points it out to you. You have to be receptive, but not paralyzed. The danger is that you shut down. You have to present yourself so that people know they can tell you about yourself when you’re messing up—they shouldn’t have to, but you want people around you who are going to do that. Kids do that for me, too. They have deep conversations with me—they know I’m willing to be honest about the flaws I have. Not having those peer regulators or people that can critique your practice for you is hard, though. There’s a lot of performative anti-racism. I do wrestle with these things. I like the idea of framing the work in more critical democratic principles as things that we live and breathe daily. I appreciate the chance to do this. I hope hearing us talk about and elaborate on these ideas is helpful to others.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank the Wingra students, parents, and staff of color who have helped the white members of the staff look at ourselves more closely, and tolerated, up to this point, our slow processes of change—especially Angela Baker, Elizabeth Garcia, Daniel Torres-Rangel, Chhoeub Chaam, and Eddie Smith. Thank you to Gabby Arca for her suggestions on this piece. Lastly, I want to thank Kathy Oker, my teaching partner, who is an incredible inspiration. She is vigilant in questioning and critiquing schooling, society, and herself in healthy and hopeful ways. She is a mighty advocate for young adolescents and our democratic way of schooling and the larger democratic project of our nation.
Allen Cross has taught at Wingra School since 1988, co-creating and implementing theme-based integrated curriculum with his teaching team and multiage groups of 11-14 year-olds. He and his partner Mary Klehr facilitate local teacher research groups, are among the Founders of Troy Gardens (now Community Groundworks), and have each served as President of the Friends of the Cooperative Children's Book Center.
REFERENCES
Akom, A. A. (2009). Critical hip hop pedagogy as a form of liberatory praxis. Equity & Excellence in Education, 42(1), 52-66.
Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Meier, D. (2002). The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Sims Bishop, R. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 1(3), ix-xi.
ENDNOTES
1 For an overview of the actions the Board of Trustees has committed to taking in support of Black Lives Matter, see https://www.wingraschool.org/aboutus/#board
