No teachers, no homework: Students set own agenda at private school in Davie

photo: Amy Beth Bennett/Sun Sentinel

DAVIE — It’s about 11 a.m. in the small, sun-drenched building, and 4-year-old Leila Ekendiz has an idea.

It’s her classmate Ian’s 8th birthday so she wants to make him a birthday card. About five other kids follow her into a room with a closet full of crayons, paper and stickers.

When they finish, some of the kids wander over to the computers while others head for the garden or to the refrigerator. At the Sunset Sudbury School, a new private school in Davie, the 11 students, ages 4 to 9, set their own agendas. Chalkboards, lesson plans and tests simply don’t exist.

“In traditional schools there are so many students that kids are not allowed to talk to each other during their school day,” said staffer Idelma Quintana, whose son attends the school. “Our kids here are learning how to get along with other kids and negotiate conflict.”

As public schools adopt tougher standards and emphasize standardized tests, alternative schools have become more popular.

“The regular public school system and even some private schools tend to operate under the paradigm that kids are lazy and need to be forced to learn,” said Jerry Mintz, director of the New York-based Alternative Education Resource Organization. “We take a diametrically different approach that starts with the assumption that kids are natural learners.”

Mintz said in the past two decades, the number of home-schoolers nationwide has grown from about 20,000 to about 2 million. He said there are about 12,000 alternative schools, including charter and public alternatives and Montessoris.

Of those, about 200 are “democratic schools,” in which students play a big role in decision-making, he said.

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