By Melinda A. Tsapatsaris
In 1949, a group of progressive educators asked, “What is best for children?” and a group of parents pondered, “What education do our children deserve?” Their questions gave birth to Westland School over 70 years ago. They were risk takers, passionate in their hopes for a better world, and certain that this world could begin by educating their children in a humanistic, democratic way. They understood that youngsters displayed an innate joy of freedom in learning and were certain that a mode of education existed that could retain and heighten the pleasure of mastery while simultaneously instilling values and a feeling of responsibility to the class, the school, the community, and the world. During the time of Joseph McCarthy, Westland became a safe haven for children and spouses whose fathers and husbands were sent to jail for refusing to speak before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Today, Westland is a modern safe haven, an institution where democracy is practiced, where communicating across differences is encouraged, and where community is integral.
Recently, Westland Head of School, Melinda A. Tsapatsaris took a moment to reflect on the school’s founding principles in light of the current moment. Here are her thoughts:
I have been thinking a lot lately about a talk given by educator, writer, and scholar Richard Weissbourd. I heard him speak three or so years ago to an audience of heads of school in California. Weissbourd explored the imperativeness for moral education in our schools and in our parenting – from how we create the reflex in children to internalize a responsibility and obligation to their communities, to the notion that moral development is essentially about justice, to the idea that constant complimenting of our children can actually be constant assessment. (Weissbourd wondered if children are being “blizzarded by praise.”)
A last suggestion from his talk, that perhaps endures with me most, is the idea that nothing signals more to a child than the questions we ask them. Weissbourd asserted the most powerful tool to impact the formation of a child’s moral identity – caring deeply for others and internalizing values of honesty and fairness – are our questions.
A child comes home from a soccer game. Do we message with the question, “Who won?” Or, do we message with, “How did your team work together?” At dinnertime on a school night, what would it mean for us to ask “Who did you help today?” or “Who helped you today?” instead of the more default question, “How was school today?” or even a parental tic that Wendy Mogul cautions against, that of interviewing for pain: “Did you get left out again today at lunch?” As I think about a school’s responsibility to give children the experience of being active citizens in a democratic context, I’m excited for us adults, who are working with and parenting children, to be ever-conscious of the questions we ask young people. Given our world, from marked political polarization to a climate crisis, this intention is perhaps as critical now as ever.
From the start of their Westland experience, children develop the habit of question-asking. Questions are framed as powerful vehicles to pursue curiosity, and ultimately investment into pursuing “How can I make my community a more just, welcoming, and equitable space?” Classroom studies are often guided by a big overarching question, “How does food get to the table?” or “What makes up a neighborhood?” Educator, scholar, and writer Theodore Sizer espoused the practice of curriculum being guided by “essential questions” – rich, textured questions that can be asked over time and that have no one *right* answer, ever.
Westland teachers also ask children what they want to learn about. This practice is actually one starting point for democracy in the classroom, because student voice gets honored in powerful ways when a child’s question is pursued by the full group. At the beginning of a study, teachers invite the children to make their questions public. In their study on family, Group One-ers were asked, “What do we wonder about families?” Children shared their questions and watched them being recorded on chart paper, from, “Do people in families have different heart sizes?” to “Why do people in a family have different skin, hair, and eye color – sometimes?” and “Why are babies red when they come out of the uterus?” From this Group One example, topics of health and human development, genetics, identity, and even beauty and love can be pulled out from the students’ questions. Teachers often observe that a study, even done every year, can go anywhere because of children’s questions and their current context.
I am also struck by the power of adults at Westland School modeling to the children, “I don’t know the answers to all of these questions – let’s research them together.” It was Helen Keller who noted, “A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers." Today, print and news media, and more enigmatically the pulse of society, as I experience it, is bursting with opinions, know-it-all stances to be angrily debated, the competitive desire to be right. What if the pulse of our conversations shifted to an openness to explore each other’s questions?
Additionally, I think about the child who asks a specific question, and then has that question followed up on. The empowerment that comes for that child when a book is found and shared with them! Or a guest speaker is invited or a field trip planned because of their questions. Westland teachers provide children the experiences that create that special satisfaction of moving from not knowing a whole lot about something – then – through mixing the ingredients of curiosity, research, discussion, hard work, and play, the children become a bit of an expert on a topic. This experience is cyclical. In some ways, culminations at the end of a study are just the beginning. This is the stuff and sweet taste of life-long learning and active citizenship. And it all begins with questions.
I recall that the first letter I ever wrote to the Westland community, in my initial year as head of school, was on questions. And just the other day, while reading Rebecca Solnit’s Recollections of My Nonexistence, I underlined absentmindedly, “Perhaps I will always live in questions more than answers.” Not only am I excited about being ever conscious of the questions we ask children and in turn the questions they ask us, but also the questions Westland is asking on an institutional level. An obvious form of evidence are the questions we ask during the hiring process of prospective candidates. Value-patterns can be teased out. Here are some examples of our questions to candidates this past summer:
Westland is a decidedly progressive school where we want children to thrive. Sharing your personal philosophy and the underpinnings of your philosophy, how do you honor the whole child and a child’s identity?
What is your approach to collaborating with colleagues?
How do you integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice into your teaching practice?
How have you integrated two or more subjects in a unit or around a theme?
What strategies do you use to have children feeling supported and safe?
Progressive education, social justice, child development, social studies integration, cooperation and collaboration, and how we optimally support children are values that emerge. I am proud of these questions, I admit, because they mark the work we’ve been doing together as a community and the aspirational work we are embarking upon now. My mind wanders, and I wonder and worry about what questions are being asked at other schools on a more national level – “achievement”-based, test-obsessed, and deficit focused. Also, what questions aren’t being asked? What questions are being avoided? And as I think about my school community’s upcoming work together this current school year, I also ponder the value that emerges from the very last question we ask candidates: “Do you have any questions for us?”
I invite everyone of us to always keep that question at the top of our minds, perhaps in all of our conversations and meetings. If we don’t ask that question of one another, what gets unsaid? Missed? Not explored? Tucked away? Or worse, what might get held onto as a resentment if not put out into the open? Inviting questions of one another communicates we are curious, that we care, that we want to listen and connect to each other. That we want to learn! Questions provide a powerful way to express ourselves and be in community with one another. Questions meant to explore and uncover are an integral source of fuel for communication in a diverse democracy.
Question-asking gets at important elements of Westland School’s mission. Of course as mentioned, democracy. But also, critical thinking, problem solving, and cooperation. Sizer wrote, “A good education teaches you how to ask a question. It’s knowing what you don’t know; the skills of critical thought.” So here’s to all of us lifting a model of education that puts questions at the center of teaching and learning. Children’s questions and adults’ questions as well. Knowing what we don’t know yet, especially as we reconcile the societal issues we are contending with and supporting our children to sort through and respond to. Let’s take on the stance of author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who states plainly: “I am a person who believes in asking questions.” Question asking will keep us on the exhilarating and meaningful road of life long learning and community building.
Perhaps I should end with a question: Where will your questions and your students’ questions take you this year? It’s a hopeful question with endless possibilities as well as powerful implications for the type of society we want to live in. May we all draw on the spirit of Westland School’s community of founders and be risk takers, passionate in our hopes for a better world, and certain that this world depends on educating our children in a humanistic and democratic way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Melinda A. Tsapatsaris is in her fifth year as Head of School at Westland School, a K-6 progressive independent school in Los Angeles founded in 1949. Prior to Westland Melinda worked at Wildwood School for 15 years as assistant head of school, upper school director, and middle and upper school humanities teacher. Before moving to Los Angeles, Melinda taught high school English in public schools. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Education from Ohio University and her Masters Degree in Teaching from Brown University. She is the mother of three children and enjoys practicing yoga, camping, and reading.
