The Minneapolis Charter School That Builds Its Entire Academic Year Around One Large-Scale Creative Community Project

Sometime in the early months of 1992, a small group of educators launched a school in a renovated facility in St. Paul that didn’t exactly resemble what most people thought a school should look like. There were no standardized assessments to indicate the rhythm of the year, no rows of desks facing a chalkboard, and no traditional class schedule as that term typically suggests at City Academy.

It had a few teachers who were open to trying something different, pupils who had mostly been let down by traditional schools, and a legal status—charter school—that had practically just been created to permit it to exist. It was the country’s first charter school. The Twin Cities were the location. Additionally, it was structured on the notion that students learn best when their work has a real-world application.

In the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, this concept has been developed for more than thirty years, leading to the construction of a number of schools in various formats. The K–8 charter New City School in Minneapolis follows the nationally acclaimed EL Education model, which centers its curriculum around what it refers to as “Learning Expeditions.” These are lengthy, multidisciplinary studies that can span weeks or months, integrating topics that would be taught independently in a traditional classroom into a single, ongoing examination.

Science, writing, arithmetic, and community engagement might all be done concurrently in a class researching a nearby watershed. The students would produce reports, maps, presentations, and physical projects that are meant for a real audience rather than a teacher’s gradebook. The daily “Crew” circles, which start every morning, are organized community-building activities intended to foster the kind of trust necessary for cooperative initiatives to succeed. They are not homeroom.

The model is further advanced at St. Paul’s Avalon School. There, students develop and oversee their own extensive projects, collaborating with advisers who provide guidance rather than instruction, rather than adhering to a traditional teacher-designed curriculum. A student who is interested in urban farming might devote a large amount of the academic year to creating a community garden, combining economics, biology, and civic participation into a single project that takes place in the real world as opposed to on paper.

Some students find it difficult to adapt to the lack of external scheduling, and the structure necessitates a type of self-directed discipline that takes time to establish. However, the engagement tends to be qualitatively different from what is produced in traditional classrooms for the kids who succeed in it. These schools deal with genuine and ongoing conflict. No matter how innovatively a school plans its year, it must still adhere to the accountability frameworks based on standardized testing since Minnesota charter schools must achieve state academic standards.

Extended, high-quality project work yields results that tests can measure, according to some instructors who use project-based learning methods, but the measurement is a poor proxy for what the kids actually learned. Others are more circumspect about expressing that assertion too widely, recognizing that project-based learning necessitates qualified instructors, carefully thought-out curricula, and a persistent institutional commitment that not all schools can sustain over time. PBLWorks has been carefully constructing the body of evidence rather than asserting certainty, and the study on results is promising but still in its early stages.

Observing what the Twin Cities have developed over the last thirty years in this area, it seems as though the area has unintentionally become a laboratory for alternatives to the traditional American school model. This is not due to any coordinated policy, but rather because the charter framework allowed educators to try new things, and a critical mass of people in Minneapolis and St. Paul have been trying things long enough for the models to mature.

The following thirty years will provide a clearer response to the question of whether such models scale, if they endure budgetary constraints, leadership changes, and the accountability requirements that every public school must meet.