The Whole Child at Open Wings

By Anthony Rowe

Open Wings is a school that focuses on the whole child. The school environment nurtures deep and meaningful learning through a balanced experiential and integrated educational program that is individualized for students. The entire school community benefits from drawing on a diverse community of learners.

Mission Statement

Open Wings Learning Community

Kenosha, Wisconsin

"Open Wings is a school that focuses on the whole child," is the first line of the Open Wings Learning Community's mission statement, but what does the term "whole child" mean? Two seemingly simple words - "whole child"- but teaching the whole child is a complex process - requiring perception, compassion, understanding, flexibility, patience, and perseverance on an almost moment by moment basis.

According to Dr. Kim Hufferd-Ackles, the founder of Open Wings Learning Community, when a student arrives at their door, the staff asks, "What does this kid need?" instead of, "How does he fit in our program?" Understanding the difference between those two questions is a fundamental first step in teaching the whole child.

James Ford, the 2015 North Carolina State Teacher of the Year and the program director for the Public School Forum of North Carolina, told Education Week, "Our first job as teachers is to make sure that we learn our students, that we connect with them on a real level, showing respect for their culture and affirming their worthiness to receive the best education possible."

Teachers accepting responsibility for learning about an individual child makes sense. The teacher is the trained professional whose job it is to guide a child toward succeeding within a classroom community. How can success happen if the teacher does not set aside the time necessary to understand the child as a person and as a learner?

"You can't put kids in a box or label them,"

Dr. Kim Hufferd-Ackles Founder, Open Wings

Jacquline Woodson, the award-winning author of books for children and adolescents, was recently asked about labeling children, "Any kind of qualifier can be harmful because who we are is not static. Our abilities are constantly changing. What does it mean to be a struggling reader? I know if I was raised in this day and age, I would have been labeled a struggling reader. But what I know now is I was actually reading like a writer. I was reading slowly and deliberately and deconstructing language, not in the sense of looking up words in the dictionary, but understanding from context. I was constantly being compared to my sister who excelled, and it made me feel insecure. What gets translated is 'you are not as good,' and that gets translated into our whole bodies. That's where the danger lies."

Dr. Hufferd-Ackles knew she wanted to start a school where students would be allowed to let their intelligence unfold, a school where students aren't constrained, and a school where teachers are given a chance to implement different strategies in the quest to meet the needs of the individual children within a learning community. So, she started talking to people, and the idea of Open Wings began to unfurl.

"While he struggled to conform to his public school classroom, Open Wings embraces his differences."

An Open Wings Parent

Addressing the wants and needs of the whole child at Open Wings means a belief in a child's strengths. "In many schools, students can tend to be defined by their lowest points, and their high points can just get forgotten," says Dr. Hufferd-Ackles. Teaching the whole child means you start by looking for a child's strengths, by communicating a belief in the child, and by building trust between teacher and student. Once a relationship is established, that's when authentic learning can begin - students are willing to take risks if they know that they are safe and if they trust the teacher who is asking them to take those risks. When you recognize strengths, identify needs, and build trust, students can grow from successes rather than deficits.

"When you can scaffold what they need... they don't need the label and sometimes lose the label," explains Dr. Hufferd-Ackles. While scaffolding is a term that can have different meanings within the world of teaching, at Open Wings the term means asking learners to, "take an active, inventive role and reconstruct the task through their own understanding," rather than, "passively absorb[ing] the strategies of an adult," as early childhood educator Anne B. Smith put it.

If you are going to commit to the whole child within a community of learners, a teacher has to make numerous decisions through the course of one class. You are not setting the bar at the same height for the whole class. Each student's bar is set at a different height, but they all run and jump together. Meeting individual needs while building a community is hard. It requires reflection and a collective ability to learn from experience. "It's a dance," says Dr. Hufferd-Ackles. And when it works? "That's the magic."

"She is now getting an educational experience that is customized for her, and she now has a confidence that we have never seen before. She initiates socially now with her peers, and has a social life that warms my heart to its fullest."

An Open Wings Parent

Another critical aspect of addressing the whole child is understanding a child's social needs. You are not meeting a student's needs in a vacuum. Children have a desire to be social, to have friends, to be accepted, and to feel that they belong.

Children can be essential motivators for each other. During a recent class at Open Wings, students were partnering up, and a girl walked up to a boy and invited him to join her on the rug, "Come sit over here." The boy followed her. The boy's teacher explained that if he had asked the boy to do the same thing, he would have met with resistance. It's not just teachers who are fostering the whole child; the children know and care about each other, and it is the classroom community that is recognizing and nurturing the whole child in one another.

Dr. Hufferd-Ackles feels that adults often make "a huge assumption" about the social capabilities of students who struggle in a public school environment. She tells a story, "In gym yesterday, these three girls were playing, and they were all giggling, I think they were playing volleyball with a balloon, and there was so much interaction and no need for a language they may not yet have. We need to show the world this story."

Alfie Kohn, author and lecturer on topics in education, states, "learning isn't something that happens to individual children — separate selves at separate desks. Children learn with and from one another in a caring community, and that's true of moral as well as academic learning. Interdependence counts at least as much as independence."

In many schools, class sizes and curriculum expectations make it challenging to take the necessary time to focus on an individual child's needs. Some students can become overwhelmed by the frenetic pace and the complex demands of interacting with their peers in the whirl of a public school environment. The "huge assumption" mentioned above by Dr. Hufferd-Ackles can then follow - that these students do not want to interact with other students, and they aren't social. This assumption is not fair because often the children haven't been given an opportunity and a setting that allows them to connect with others at a pace they can handle. When a student can't keep up, she can be prone to eventually give up.

"Getting a sentence out is sometimes such a victory for some kids that to know that the sentence will be heard in a world that moves so fast is immeasurably valuable. We are grateful that the Open Wings team hears our daughter and validates her voice."

An Open Wings Parent

Every child wants to be heard. At Open Wings, a significant focus is channeling the bursting desire each child has to be heard and understood. "There's so much talent in this group if you spend the time getting to know them," says Dr. Hufferd-Ackles. Recently, a visitor to Open Wings once remarked that she felt she knew every child by the end of her day-long visit. The reason, according to Dr. Hufferd-Ackles, is because "They all have the chance to speak every day."

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Southern California who studies the effects of emotions and mindsets on learning explains, "People sometimes mistake a kind of casual familiarity and friendliness for the promotion of really deep relationships that are about a child's potential, their interests, their strengths and weaknesses."

Communication goes both ways - not only do children want to be heard; it's essential for teachers to communicate effectively to find the right way to reach a child. Instead of one set of directions, take it or leave it, teachers at Open Wings continually refine their communication skills. Tom Eber, Literacy Coordinator at Open Wings, shares his approach, "When kids don't get to where I'm trying to get them to go, I look at it and say, "I'm not asking the right question." Asking a different question, and approaching children from a variety of angles to find the right path, reassures a student that he is important, that he is worth the effort to help him understand.

"Since starting at Open Wings four months ago, Henry is a new child. He loves school, even becoming upset when his Grandmother mentioned a possible snow day."

An Open Wings Parent

When a student is heard, feels valued, and believes she has strengths, she begins to like school; and after a while, she may even come to love school. And what happens when a student shows up to school with a positive attitude and confidence in herself? Learning happens!

Dr. Hufferd Ackles says that the teaching team at Open Wings has heard story after story about how much students love to come to school at Open Wings (as evidenced by the parent quotes in this piece). When she thinks back to the beginning of Open Wings, Dr. Hufferd-Ackles reflects," I had no idea the positive impact our school would have on whole families - siblings, parents, and grandparents."

and most of all he was loved."

An Open Wings Parent

When a child is not afraid to take risks, when a child trusts, and when a child's relationships are nurtured, pathways to learning are formed.

Engaging the mind is an essential piece of the learning process, but focusing on the mind alone cuts off so many opportunities. The heart is vital, and to get to the heart, you have to attend to the whole child.