Creati ve Learning Paths School promotes an environment that nurtures and respects individual differences.

How “progressive’’ is a progressive school?

It is when any type of learner is accommodated and students with various learning styles are catered to.

It is when students learn by doing, through collaboration with both the teacher and classmates.

It is when the curriculum is studentcentered and flexible, allowing students to move through themes that interest them, while carefully following their developmental pace without compromising their need for challenge and scholastic achievement.

Creative Learning Paths (CLP) School is all these and more. Located in Merville Park, Parañaque, CLP began as a preschool in 2001 through the efforts of four friends who share a passion for child development and advocacy for marginalized special needs children — Kristine Canon, a children’s book author and reading specialist; Joji Reynes-Santos a special education specialist and multi-grade/inclusive education practitioner; Katrina Carandang, a child development specialist; and Desiree Villegas, educator and entrepreneur.

Believing that children learn in different ways and that there are different pathways to learning, the school started with three preschool classes with 24 students. It now has 111 students.

CLASSROOMS WITH NO WALLS

The CLP curriculum calls for teachers focusing on teaching for understanding, where comprehension is given importance over rote memory learning.

“In this way, the students learn to apply knowledge learned in school to different settings, in the real world,” says CLP managing director Kristine Canon.

Here, concepts are viewed as questions to be investigated together with the teacher instead of or not just facts to be memorized.

“Skills are learned using multi-sensory pathways, and not only through drills that are usually only visual or auditory in nature,” explains shares program director Joji Reynes-Santos.

Also, experience trips are conducted as often as necessary, making learning not only fun but also highly interesting since each lesson is taught in visual, auditory and kinesthetic modes.

“Because we attend to the whole child, a progressive school’s curriculum adjusts to the interests and needs of individual learners and not the other way around,” Santos adds.

Canon says progressive philosophy emphasizes educating for life and not only on educating to pass for the next school level.

“Much focus is given on the process of learning that the students independently undergo, which is more valuable than the product output such as number grades.”

Aside from the small class size, CLP also integrates all core subjects — Reading, Math, Science and Social Studies — making learning relevant regardless of the subject matter. This, Canon explains, helps all types of learners and not just students with learning difficulties through its activity-based method of teaching. As such the students are in a “classroom with no walls”.

“They are engaged in experience trips, experiments, exploring the world around them, making learning meaningful and worth remembering, instead of relying solely on paper and pencil tasks and rote knowledge,” Canon says.

EVERYBODY’S SCHOOL

Santos stresses that one of CLP’s main goals is to promote a culture of acceptance where individual differences are accepted and uniqueness is celebrated.

This is the reason why it accepts students with learning difficulties who can be managed in a regular classroom set up.

Special teaching accommodations are given to students with Specific Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, high functioning autism and hearing impairment.

Currently, CLP reserves a limited number of slots for special needs learners and can only accommodate about four students with special needs in a class of 10 to 12.

“We have to have recommendations from their developmental pediatricians or other professionals who have worked with them for inclusion or mainstreaming. In addition, they have to go through a screening process in CLP to ensure that they are given appropriate placement and support.”

Although CLP accommodates special needs students, Santos points out that a progressive school is not synonymous with special education school.

“However, because a progressive school is child-centered and adheres to developmentally appropriate approaches, including special learners in the regular classroom comes naturally,” she explains.

In CLP, problems, issues, concerns are discussed in class where children develop the skills of identifying problems, proposing several solutions, exploring efficacy of each solutions, choosing a workable solution, and evaluating solutions applied.

“Having this kind of an environment, labels for special needs children become irrelevant,” Santos says.

To prepare regular students in dealing with those who have special needs, they are properly oriented on each others’ strengths and weaknesses.

Canon believes that their collaboration enables them to maximize their areas of strengths or affinities while developing areas of weaknesses. “Parents are also a huge part of the CLP community because they share in the same philosophy of celebrating uniqueness,” she says.

REGULAR VS. PROGRESSIVE?

In traditional schools, Santos points out, the curriculum is set and children are expected to adjust.

But in a progressive school, learning activities are designed to tap different intelligences and learning styles. “In this way, children with learning difficulties are provided with opportunities to learn in the modality of their strength, bypassing their difficulties,” she explains.

Students can also exhibit the depth and breadth of what they have learned in many different ways since they are not limited to paper and pencil tasks that are extremely challenging for some children with learning difficulties.

In hiring teachers, CLP considers those who think out of the box—teachers who are creative and critical thinkers. “This has to be so because we want our students to be creative and critical thinkers as well and they need good role models. We also want them to advocate for children because we believe that only then will they go the extra mile in helping all types of learners, especially those with special needs,” Santos explains.

Both teachers Katrina Carandang and Rachel Silverio agree that in comparison with a progressive school, regular school faculty also tend to be more concerned with the parents rather than the children themselves. “Sometimes, they adjust to the parents’ concerns more than with their students. Preparing lessons thus become less challenging,” Silverio observes.

She adds that in a regular school, teachers can easily follow textbooks to teach, which is not the same in progressive schools.

“The pace and level of understanding of the students are what you need to base your plans on, forcing you to exhaust all possible resources to cater to their needs,” Carandang says.

Being the director for faculty and staff development, Carandang observes that the challenge that most teachers face is how to make the lessons interesting and easy for the students.

“Lessons should be dynamic and engaging at the same time, we also have to go beyond academics while instilling values and morals,” she says.

But the biggest satisfaction comes from seeing children overcome their difficulties. “When they begin to understand,when we see that “a-ha!” moment, it’s worth all the effort,’’ Carandang enthuses. “Our fondest dream for our students is for them to become life long learners. This will equip them to face their future head on. We also hope that they will learn to care and be an active member of society and just celebrate their life to the fullest.”

(CLP will hold a seminar on Nov. 21 entitled “Success Out of the Box” with Dr. Letty Ho as guest speaker along other successful professionals as part of its weeklong school curriculum fair starting on Nov. 16. For details, call 828 83 80 or 0917-324704.)