Inspiring example

This story, told by a student,  is about Xplore, an innovative secondary school in Amsterdam that uses a very open approach towards the curriculum, creating a large amount of freedom for students.

Goals

My school, Xplore Agora in Amsterdam, has a really different concept than regular schools. Everybody works on their own goals. We call these challenges. You make challenges based on what you want to learn. In regular schools, the school chooses what to teach you, but here you choose what to do yourself. You can also choose at what time you want to start school. You can choose between 9:00 and 9:30. If you come here at 9:00 you finish at 14:45 and if you come at 9:30 you finish at 15:15.

In regular schools you go from one classroom to the other, but here you stay in one classroom, which is called the coach group. There are around 15 students in one coach group and everyone gets their own work space. You can decorate it however you want. We also don't have any subjects, but if you want to learn a subject you can always make an appointment with the teacher of that subject. These teachers are called experts. At our school it’s more important to learn how to learn, organize and plan and to find out who you are and what you would like to do later. What I really like about my school is that you have the freedom to choose what you would like to learn.

Reflective questions after reading the full story

• What kind rules, regulations and structures do you have that are barriers to supporting our students motivation for learning?
• Which of them could you actually change in your school
  towards supporting your students inclusion?
• How could you involve parents more actively in the learning
  process?

Links and materials

Story about the school
Schools web site: https://www.xplore.nl/
Rob Houben, manager at Agora Schools (Netherlands) talks about the Future of Education in Practice