Colleen Hroncich
Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. According to MIT researcher Mitchel Resnick, these are the “four Ps of creative learning.” He notes that in kindergarten, children have historically learned through play and exploration. But he thinks too many schools have gone away from that approach. “Kindergarten is becoming like the rest of school,” he writes. “I argue for exactly the opposite: I believe the rest of school (indeed, the rest of life) should become more like kindergarten.”
The Innovation School in Bismarck, North Dakota, puts those ideas into practice. The school has adopted the four Ps as its core values: Projects—students learn by working on meaningful projects; Passion—they work on projects they care about; Peers—students share, collaborate, and build upon each other’s work; andPlay—giving students time to experiment and explore.
According to Kelsy Achtenberg, who is a teacher and dean of students at The Innovation School, Maggie Barth founded it because a conventional school wasn’t working well for her son. He was very bright, but he didn’t care about school; she thought there had to be a better way. Maggie began researching, which led her to question her own ideas about education. Before long, she realized she needed to start a school that took a different approach. As she told a local news outlet at the time, “We do a lot of project-based work, based on kids’ curiosity and their questions. It’s called inquiry-based learning; rather than us just giving the content, the kids are curious about the topic that we’re researching. Then their research drives their projects.”
Kelsey had been teaching at a nearby Catholic school and was ready for something different when she learned a new and unique school was opening. She began teaching there, switching to part-time when she had her own children. After Maggie stepped down to move to another state, Kelsey took on a new leadership role. “I’m still teaching,” she says. “Dean of students is my title because I didn’t want to be called the director yet—that feels very business‑y, and I want to be more on the student side of it. But essentially, I’m the director.”
This year, there are 21 students, K‑8, at the school. The students are divided into bands; the teal band is K‑3rd grade, and the purple band is 4th-8th grade. The bands can be split more depending on what the students are working on.
The school day starts with a morning walk. “It gets cold in North Dakota, so it’s sometimes not the favorite, but it’s such a good way to start the morning,” Kelsey says. “It’s just like a 15-minute walk around the neighborhood, and if it’s really cold, we’ll do it in the gym.” Next comes a morning meeting, which becomes morning mindfulness on Wednesdays to give children tools to manage their emotions in a healthy way.
One interesting part of the daily schedule is inquiry time, which Maggie modeled after a school in Colorado. There are six inquiry blocks throughout the year, each around six weeks long. Social studies and science are included in inquiry time. Some parts are teacher-led, and others, the kids get to explore what they’re interested in. For example, when Kelsey covered space, she started with a lesson that taught the children what she wanted them to learn. For the next lesson, she had them find something related to space that interested them.
There is also some variety in the afternoons. On Mondays, they work on STEM. Enrichment, including an optional drama club, is on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Specials, such as art and music, are on Wednesdays. On Fridays, they have a meeting where they can discuss things from throughout the week, and then they have flex time where they can work on whatever they need to work on.
In keeping with the focus on play and exploration, there are several recess breaks throughout the day. The whole school comes together for lunch and recess, and Kelsey thinks having the mixed ages together is beneficial. The older kids learn that their behavior matters because the younger kids are looking up to them. And the younger kids get the benefit of learning from the older kids. Plus, mingling with people of a broad range of ages resembles the real world much more than being surrounded only by children their own age.
North Dakota is one of the few “red”—i.e., Republican-majority—states that doesn’t have any school choice programs that would let state funding follow students to a variety of educational options instead of just going to the local public school. Earlier this year, the legislature passed an education savings account bill that was limited to students in private schools. Governor Kelly Armstrong (R) vetoed the bill, saying it fell “far short of truly expanding choice as it only impacts one sector of our student population.”
Kelsey says she “absolutely” would consider participating in a school choice program if the state enacted one. Funding “should just follow the student, and it should give these families that choice. You know, it’s just all about choice,” she says. “I think having those vouchers would be huge for some of these families who can’t afford it otherwise.”