We believe that any person can learn any subject or skill in which s/he is interested enough to invest energy. Our staff provides support for that process. With lots of personal attention, we offer assistance in locating resources and coaching in various research techniques, especially use of the Internet. We believe that limiting the size of the student body to a maximum of 50 and amplifying the staff to as many as 3 full-time and 12 part-time instructors and aides makes this support possible. Contracts with local agencies, businesses, and facilities for off-campus classes further extend these possibilities. Currently we are considering contracts with Gold's Gym, The Children's Art Center, Petroglyph, Community Television, Actor's Theater and the Yoga Studio on Squid Row (we have used all of these services and facilities in former years).

Classes are provided in all subject areas: Math, English, Foreign Language, Sciences (including physical, biological and social sciences), Arts and Physical Education. Every student is required to study in each of the above subject areas each semester (except foreign languages, which must be taken for 2 years for graduation), and may do so by enrolling in a class or by designing and implementing a learning project under the staff's supervision. A student may take multiple classes in any subject area, as long as s/he can accomplish the assignments of their instructors or project contract in each of the required 6 areas as well. Early graduation, as well as continued learning beyond age 18 or concurrently with college enrollment, is possible at Bayside, since we are non-graded and graduate students based on readiness for their next goal rather than seat-time.

We do not provide a ready-made program of classes and try to fit the students to the program. Each September teachers audition for classes here. Students may try any class they wish during this month, and, by the end of September, they report to the administrator which teachers/resource persons they want hired. Teachers must develop a following during at least two demonstration lessons as our requirement for employment. This procedure substitutes for interviews and resumes, which are unreliable, and allows us to make the best match possible between the instructors and our current student body as to styles of learning, compatibility of personalities, and actual interests and goals. It also gives us time to do background checks and observe each teacher's rapport with students before hiring.

Parents can have as much or as little involvement and feedback as they wish. We give no letter grades, but give daily feedback to students as we work with them. No reports are sent to parents without a request for information, but requests can be made as often as parents wish. Feedback is given at conferences of up to an hour via requested appointments; a file of actual work is kept for each student and is accessible to the parent at any time, and feedback can be transcribed into written form upon request. Students wishing a transfer into a public high school or early entrance into a college can have their work at Bayside translated into letter grades and units of credit via a staff/student/parent review of their work file.

Bayside's most successful students have been those who have taken full advantage of the wide array of choices in courses, modes of learning and individual mentors. Our staff's best work has been in supporting this kind of learning behavior.

...by Karen Funk, founder/director

"I founded Bayside Children's College in August of 1992, when I had finally realized that public school administration could be done collaboratively with productive results for students, but would be undone almost inevitably by personal and "in-group" politics. Upon reflection, I decided that, indeed, any current institutional model for school was by now riddled with the same fatal structures that had led to my departure from public schools. I had learned that metanoia could happen even within those dying organizations, and could change the people involved forever. But there were clearly several pitfalls to avoid if a learning community was to come alive and continue to thrive. Since the fatal structures I had identified in these institutions—top-down decision-making, micro-managing Boards of trustees, teacher tenure without evaluation or mentoring, empty and/or skewed accountability instruments, boring textbooks, low teacher/student ratios, and artificial division of students by age and/or perceived ability—did not seem likely to change in my lifetime without the effort of a vast army of thinkers capable of usurping political power on a grand scale, I decided to rethink the requirements of a career in educational administration.

I sat at a sidewalk table in front of a downtown coffee house, and let everything go. Street musicians were playing in the clear, bright morning air. People were chatting, walking, sharing food, laughing, window-shopping—and suddenly I knew three things instantly: (1) I wanted to stay in Santa Cruz, (2) I wanted to work downtown, and (2) school should be more like this! After 20 minutes of becoming more accustomed to this mental red-shift, I got up and walked (in a surrealistic cloud) to city hall. Now that the walls were down, the energy I had expended to exhaustion (pushing at walls) in one institution after another for 30 years, surged freely, propelling me toward the first simple steps to be taken in a new kind of leadership. There was nothing pushing back.

I picked up the paperwork for establishing a sole proprietorship and registering a fictitious business name. Grabbing the local newspaper, I combed the classifieds for rental property downtown. As I have found is often the case for me when a new mental model is emerging, everything I needed began falling into my path in the necessary sequence. There was a new building for rent on Pacific Ave., the main street of the downtown area of Santa Cruz. The owner, who was very personable, needed to get this building rented and off his do list. He liked me, and liked my plan. I withdrew my teachers' retirement money and signed a lease. My daughter (12 years old at the time), designed a flier and newspaper ad—a schoolhouse made of puzzle pieces, each piece a part of an integrated alternative plan I had drawn up. By opening day three weeks later, I had enrolled 2 students. By January there were 75.

The basic plan was deceptively simple: (1) to create a learning center based on personal choice of subject matter, venue, teacher (or independent learning), level of work, goals, duration of studies, hours, calendar and materials/equipment; (2) to work toward a school "without walls", extending the learning environment into the surrounding community; and (3) to work within the "school" toward a community of learners. The student body would include ages 5 to 18, and any student, of any age, could take any instruction or class for which s/he had motivation and a willingness to work. The basic rate of tuition would be at the low end for non-religious private schools, and students enrolled in other schools or in homeschools would be included. Parents (of enrolled students) who wished to could take any class themselves free of charge. Staff would be selected by the students after audition, would schedule their time around their personal lives and the students' schedules, and would be required to have only personal mastery of what they would teach. There would never be any possibility of tenure. The leader would facilitate, take care of business, and teach.

Simple. Clearly sensible, I thought. But a major shift of mental models for all involved.

On the telephone with prospective parents, I was witness to personal metanoia again and again. I must have spent 24 full hours per week hearing stories, flicking away "have to" mental models, hearing gasps of disbelief followed by sighs of relief and, finally, by contagious excitement. Some inquiring teacher candidates, asking what "curriculum" we used, had a hard time hearing that they had to spend voluntary time with the students to find out what they wanted taught, then build a following and teach what they knew. Some spent a little time pursuing non-existent textbooks, hardly able to believe they would be required to use primary sources or selected or constructed materials for mixed age groups. Those who were hired by the students were the ones who hadn't even asked those questions. The others usually couldn't make the shift.

The students gathered, they coalesced around teachers who offered what they wanted; parents brought teachers into the school community or became teachers themselves. Teachers began moving students out into the surrounding community on art gallery expeditions, park trips, writing by the sea, shopping in Spanish at the farmers' market, interviewing people on the street about the American dream, protesting at city hall, playing homemade instruments and singing in the parks, interning at local businesses, putting up exhibits of student art at local cafes, photographing graffiti and murals, testing physics at the playgrounds and in the streams, visiting museums—all on foot! We became a part of downtown. PE was on the local bike trails, in the yoga and dance studios, the gyms—all uses negotiated (for minimal fees to the school) by enthusiastic teachers and parents.

We could tell it was working. The dialogue was on! If we had planned the process, we would have restricted the vision and cramped the freedom that led to the evolution of the learning community. And there were those who exhorted me to plan the process—make no mistake! Without knowing its effectiveness as yet, I had launched our subconscious minds toward the desired result! It had worked for the staff and clients even in the public school where I had been superintendent/principal the year before. But in this new environment it was growing "out of control."

The complex dynamics of this new community could have been frightening if I had focused on them in the abstract. People who have choices sometimes refuse to make them; there are those whose choices are uncomfortable for others. We have to question constantly whether we truly know each other or ourselves, and continue to be willing to stretch our comfort zone. For the leader these dynamics are always present in the whole perspective, which could be overwhelming. But living with them in the creative and generative environment of our day-to-day community, I find myself perfectly happy and productive. I was ready for this kind of leadership. I prefer it. In fact, I discovered that I always had. The teachers and students who work here for any length of time (and some do come and go, and sometimes come back again) also tend to discover that however we are operating at any given time is also "them." A community becomes what each one is.

This principle, by its very operation, also challenges our community every moment, every day, every year, and this challenge brings me to my next meditation. Our members change, grow or regress, move on and are replaced by new entities the rest do not yet know. Learning changes—subject matter, method, technology, a new flood of information, new attitudes, new self-discovery, new dialogue. So school must change—even our very new school. It has been evolving all along.

At first we attracted mostly younger students, some years a large proportion of our enrollment is over twelve years of age. At first our students were mostly part-time, involved in home-schooling or other programs, even public schools. These were generally more open-minded, alternative thinkers from non-traditional backgrounds, with family support for being different. But the traditional institutional students have been finding us. We have a new dynamic to integrate—debriefing and healing, teaching self-direction. At first we were largely a program among programs for students who had never been tied to an institutional structure. Now we are often the only formal learning community our students know. Their needs, personally and holistically, are much the same as those of our former students, but upon enrollment, they often haven't discovered them, or can't articulate them. They are used to playing games and manipulating, and we have to teach a straightforward, honest, non-defensive quest to get to know each other for respect to grow.

I began to notice this population shift in the last two years. I also noticed that the teachers who were attracted to working here during this time began setting up holistic health seminars and gender-based discussion groups, and spent a great deal of their time in one-on-one counseling of students in crisis or on the verge of personal break-throughs, and in conflict-resolution and breaking of stereotypes. The improvisation teacher and storytelling teachers began setting up scenarios related to this population's specific struggles. Each population found the other, and the change happened naturally from the subconscious level. I only watched; provided space, time, and funds; reinforced and integrated their work in my dealings with the students and parents.

I also noticed that this population hungers for community. I think our original students had come with an already solid learning base in a family and/or societal community. For more recent students, school seems to be the only community to which they feel any belonging. I find as well that they bring from their former schools the symbols they found comforting in the large populations of the institutional setting. One group organized, directed and produced a talent show here with minimal help from adults and on their own initiative. Some requested and received permission for special celebrations and parties. A group published a yearbook, spending long hours photographing, printing, collecting artwork, poetry and profiles of each student, and binding them into a beautiful kid-produced yearbook with a whole page celebrating each student. These symbols, common to almost every school, had not been a big part of ours. But the symbols changed when used here. They were more personally conceived and executed, and conveyed a different dynamic than they would have when adult-directed, polished and impersonal. Desire was the only motivation. Commitment was totally unsolicited, and the only reward was the result. None of these symbols need necessarily become a tradition here. It is not necessary to repeat them; they will not be institutionalized. The group will bring its own symbols, or make them.

As I meditate, connecting with my own subconscious process regarding the work I do, I can feel the creative tension. We, the community of Bayside Children's College, need a clear bilateral focus on the reasonableness and the intuitive trustworthiness of what we are creating here. As the leader, I need to remain in touch with the "operational trust" which is key to an outstanding team and which has grown with the evolution of this school community; at the same time, I feel that my original vision for the school has been the catalyst for this new kind of learning center, and I don't want to lose sight of the original goals. I do want to dialogue with staff, students and parents in such a way as to generate reflective openness, and keep myself looking inward to test and improve these goals and the methods we have so far used to work toward them.

Often I find that it is productive to remind myself and the others of what models we do not want in our community. It clears the vision fairly effectively. (1) We do not want to institutionalize anything unconditionally. It should all remain open to examination and either improvement or elimination at any given moment. (2) Person over program is the standard for prioritizing anything, never the other way around. (3) We would never want to give process more sway or respect than we give result.

I have a great love of jazz, especially jazz jams. Peter Senge's use of this art form as a metaphor (in his book The Fifth Discipline) for a team with operational trust and intuitively shared vision is brilliant. I have no idea what the composition will sound like in each successive year at Bayside. And that's what makes leadership in a complex dynamic so much creative fun! I can't wait for what will happen next!"