POLICE OVERSIGHT IN AURORA
City leaders are looking at creating a civilian agency to oversee the Aurora Police Department after a series of high-profile cases that have shaken the public’s trust, but which model that oversight will adopt remains the biggest question.
A Jeffco Public Schools elementary will convert to a “classical” model next year, joining six other public schools in the Denver area that base their teachings on a philosophy developed in ancient Greece.
Fighting declining enrollment at Vivian Elementary, principal Michael Zweifel said she hopes a new model will revive interest in the Lakewood school among people in the surrounding area.
The school, to be renamed New Classical Academy at Vivian, may be the first traditional neighborhood school in Colorado to adopt a classical model, since most other schools using it are charters founded to provide a different educational approach.
Vivian is using Jeffco’s standard curriculum this year, but next fall it will focus more on classic books and using primary sources in research, Zweifel said. Kids also will get more direct instruction on phonics, grammar and spelling, she said.
“It’s going to look very different next year,” she said. “The big thing that we want to teach kids is how can you critically think.”
Interest in the classical model has been growing in the Denver area in recent years. Between 1994 and 2012, six schools promoting a classical model, including one in Aurora Public Schools, opened in Colorado. Eight more have opened since then, including a second campus in Aurora, two in Jeffco and two in the Douglas
County School District.
A ninth tried to open in Boulder Valley School District or Adams 12 Five Star Schools, but both districts rejected the application to open a new charter, according to the Daily Camera newspaper. School board members raised concerns about the proposed academy’s governance structure, its ability to serve students with special needs, and a non-discrimination policy that didn’t include gender identity and expression.
Proponents say students develop a deeper understanding through classical education, but there’s little research comparing it to other approaches.
Colorado classical schools vary substantially, with some outperforming the state average on stan
dardized tests, and a few scoring well below average. As in most schools, performance on tests tended to be better in classical schools with more affluent student bodies.
Before Vivian switches models in the fall, teachers will have to undergo training on the new curriculum and instructional practices, Zweifel said. Some of the more visible changes will be reducing the role of technology in classrooms, requiring uniforms and perhaps moving toward more traditional seating arrangements, she said.
Some teachers at Vivian say they already include parts of the classical philosophy in their work. Dana Omi, who teaches children with hearing disabilities, said she tends to start with one strategy for whatever math or writing skill students are trying to learn, then bring in other strategies if that doesn’t connect for a kid. In recent years, some teachers have moved toward showing multiple strategies and letting students take their pick.
“I try to worry about the roots and foundations instead of frontloading them with strategies,” she said.
Classical schools have different programs of study, with some requiring all students to learn Latin, while others emphasize giving students a broad view of world history and art. What they share is a philosophy first developed in ancient Greece: the idea that education involves three stages, called the trivium.
The trivium assumes students first have to learn an array of facts, often through memorization, then use logic to make sense of those facts and employ communication skills to apply what they know.
The model was developed for learning what we’d call language arts today, but schools can apply it to other subjects, said Jay Cerny, executive director of Vanguard Classical School’s two campuses in Aurora.
One of the defining characteristics of classical education is a broad curriculum, Cerny said. Some traditional schools have cut back the time they spent on subjects other than math and language arts in an attempt to boost test scores, but classical schools set aside time for those subjects, he said.
“You will always have music. You will always have art. You will always have social studies,” he said.
Jason Edwards, principal of Leman Academy of Excellence in Parker, said much of the way classical education is practiced today comes from reactions against highly regimented teaching styles developed during the Industrial Revolution. Some saw a need for a more holistic approach, where children would learn to appreciate virtue and beauty, he said.
At Leman, there’s a strong focus on history and culture, as well as a middle-school class on logic and six years of Latin, Edwards said. While students don’t always see beauty or value in what they’re studying, part of classical education is “training our palate” to understand what different cultures value, he said.
Classical methods are popular in Christian schools, where ideas about truth, virtue and beauty are filtered through a lens of one religion and culture. Character education has to be different in public schools, however, and Edwards and Cerny both emphasized their students learn about major world religions only in the context of understanding what other people might believe.
Discussing values typically comes up in the context of history and literature, Edwards said.
They use a modified version of Benjamin Franklin’s list of virtues, including trust, orderliness, integrity and perseverance.
“I think the teacher’s role is not to tell the students what to think but to teach students how to think,” he said.
Vanguard prioritizes four virtues: honor, achievement, world citizenship and kindness, in line with the school’s Hawk mascot. More than two dozen other character traits get a month of focus on a rotating basis.
Brandi Stott, assistant principal and instructional coach at Vivian, said they’re going through a process of determining which values the community wants to emphasize, and how to cover as much as possible — for example, including the concept of honesty under “integrity.”
“I think it’s really critical to see what they define as core virtues,” she said.
Ultimately, the goal is for students to understand how everything they’re learning, both in terms of character and academic content, relates to the rest of their studies and to life, Cerny said.
“You go into a classical school and you ask what they’re learning and why it’s important, and they’ll be able to tell you,” he said.
“It’s going to look very different next year. The big thing that we want to teach kids is how can you critically think.” Michael Zweifel, principal at Vivian Elementary School in Lakewood