After reading A.S. Neill’s book on Summerhill, I rocked up to the AME School in the early summer of 1977, hoping to get permission to look around. I told the principal, Bernie, I was enrolled for a Dip. Ed. in primary education the following year, and was interested to learn about the school’s philosophy and practice. Bernie must’ve thought I was OK, for I was given permission to spend a week observing in the grade 6 class taught by Steve Shann. I was really appreciative of the opportunity offered by Bernie and Steve, and the experience left a deep impression on me. The following year I completed the Grad. Dip. Ed. in primary education as I believed that my best chance to implement some of my personal views on education of the “whole child” would be in the primary school environment.

Fortuitously, the AME School advertised for a secondary maths teacher to start in 1979. Perfect! I thought my background as a scientist coupled with my study of general principles should make me a strong candidate. The selection panel wasn’t completely convinced, however, and one member decided to apply for the job himself! Just another headache for Bernie to sort out, but in the end they offered me the job. I thought it was Christmas!

AME Secondary Maths 1979-88

I stayed on for ten years, during which time I engaged with some wonderful people. The parents were magic, and supported the school at every turn. It wasn’t plain sailing, however. It was hard work but I thrived on the “Aha!” moment when a student realised a relationship or solution. Our close association with students and each other was physically very tiring for me. Not having dogma as a recipe for daily action meant that one had to question oneself in every situation, and create a solution to the issues at hand.

Developing a realistic maths curriculum was a tremendous challenge, and in this I found myself with a dilemma. On one hand my students would be going on to college where they would almost certainly be studying maths. For this they had to have the groundwork covered and thoroughly practised. On the other hand a central tenet of AME education was the primacy of meaningful activity. It was not always clear how in-depth study of algebra or geometry would contribute to a typical teenager’s primary concerns, usually of an inter-personal or social nature. There is quite a large skill overhead in maths. To develop it requires seemingly endless practice, and the short-term pay-off isn’t obvious. Unlike, say, dancing or computer programming, where there is also a large skill overhead but the feedback is instantaneous and provides motivation, the buzz obtained by successfully solving simultaneous equations only delights a certain type of mind.

The Maths Riddle

I solved this curriculum riddle by adopting a variety of approaches. Firstly, I used a fairly conservative instructional style with textbooks as a framework for the majority of class time. Secondly, I allowed for students to work at their own pace in a workshop setting in which I was available as a resource person. Thirdly, I explicitly included whole units of work devoted to non-routine problem solving. In these the problems were either synthetic or arose from current events. At one time there was a report that a baby had died when left in a car on a sunny day. This socially relevant story was discussed in class and touched on topics including the nature of light and the ratio of surface area to volume for bodies of different size.

I was particularly interested in teaching problem solving strategies alongside specific skill training. Skills training is effective for helping students solve specific types of pre-defined problems. However, skills training alone is not sufficient to help students deal with problems they have never encountered, which I refer to as “non-routine”. I took guidance in developing material for these classes from the writings of George Pólya, whose quotations can provide maths teachers with much inspiration and food for thought. And so, students were advised to draw a diagram, discuss it with someone, devise and solve a simpler version of the problem, search for patterns, use trial and error, and thoroughly understand it.

Something had to be displaced from the traditional curriculum to make room for these added delights. I could either spend months teaching how to perform long division, or spend the equivalent time on general problem solving strategies. Cautiously, I chose the latter, and allowed calculators into the room. I felt I was on fairly sure ground on the basis of two observations.

Firstly, having had a brief career prior to teaching, it was obvious to me that manual long division was a skill rarely used by the majority of the population. Instead, people were poor at recognising order of magnitude errors spewed out by calculators. Secondly, my traditional education armed me with all the tools for solving all sorts of equations, but in the workforce the problems were entirely novel, and we were obliged to invent methods of solution. On the basis of these observations, I gave lower priority to hammering long division, and spent more time on estimating and predicting calculator responses, and playing with non-routine problems.

And we had tests, just to see how the teacher is doing, and the practice of having tests.

The computer was introduced into the classroom during the late 80’s as a teacher’s assistant, a computational tool, and a platform for learning to write Logo programs to control a virtual turtle.

The computer as teacher’s assistant was based on programs which generated a problem whose solution was not known to the teacher, such as the randomly buried pirate treasure on a 10×10 island, the computer giving clues of warmer or cooler according to the proximity of the sequence of guesses by small groups of students. This allowed the teacher to be on-side with students and be their resource, guide and mentor. As a computational tool, the computer was used to explore hypotheses involving tedious repetitive operations on large numbers. For example, generate a sequence of integers as follows: if a number is even, halve it to get the next one. If odd, then mutiply by three and add one. Do all series converge to 1? How can you prove it? What is the longest sequence for starting numbers less than 100?

Were the Students Prepared for College and Beyond?

My colleagues had similar and different dilemmas. It was tricky being the sole teacher in the department. From time to time we invited ex-students and parents to tell us about their post-AME experiences. I recall one consistent piece of feedback on the positive side to do with being well prepared to manage one’s time in college. Was this a fruit of our incessant effort to place responsibility for learning and time management on students? I also recall it appeared AME students became good at identifying what they really wanted to do with their lives. Could this have been due to the expectation that every secondary student had a self-initiated activity (SIA) in addition to their Art, Drama, English, Maths, Science and Social Science classes? On the negative side, we heard how some ex-AME students were less able than their compatriots from traditional schools to add up and divide numbers, and write coherent essays. But this didn’t seem to hamper their appetite for life and learning.

SIAs

SIAs were a normal expectation of all secondary students. The Self Initiated Activity was a study guided by the homegroup teacher, or other mentor, and involved a subject chosen by the student in consultation with their adult mentor. It usually involved a written component. It was about learning to follow up on something one was interested in, to develop depth and breadth of knowledge in that subject. SIAs were preceded by a lot of discussion and questioning. Some students never could get the hang of them, but it was a way of leading students to independent thinking and behaviour, for taking responsibility for their learning, and for learning how to learn. These notions were at the heart of the AME philosophy, and SIAs were one way this philosophy was enacted.

Holism

One of the primary reasons I sought to teach at AME was the ambitious “whole child” approach. This woolly term just meant that learning relationships were not restricted to the maths classroom. For example, the secondary staff room at the AME School was open to students, we related to each other on a first name basis, we participated in many of their activities as equals (or sub-equals in the case of ice-skating) and each teacher had a homegroup. The homegroup teacher was said to be the student’s severest critic and staunchest supporter. Suffice to say the teachers and students were close, meaning that we knew a little more about each other’s personal motivations than might be the case in a conventional school. Certainly it was my student experience at a conventional school that very few teachers were known to us in any personal way. There were exceptions of course, but these were exceptions.

The Journal

One of the devices used to promote communication at the AME school was the journal, a booklet each student shared with their homegroup teacher. Homegroup teacher and student took turns writing in the shared journal. Every Monday morning my homegroup kids would eagerly collect their journals to see what I had written. Oh, if only I had the flair and fluid style of our English teacher, Judy. Her kids were invariably blessed with pages and pages of Judy’s beautiful and fluid writing. My kids had a few scratchy sentences, if that. Nevertheless, the journal was a device that allowed an alternative mode of communication between a student and their homegroup teacher, and allowed students to reflect on their growth and development over time.

The Outdoor Programme

The outdoor program was a special feature of the secondary school program, as indeed it was for the whole school. The secondary outdoor program hinged around three annual 5-day trips known as the Target Camp, the Ski Trip and the Coast Camp. The latter had no pretension to effort. It was purely and simply a relaxing time down at the beach, sleeping in tents and cooking our own food while enjoying nature and each others company. It was a time to farewell our year 10s. Although it required some organising, it was just that kind of camp. However, being AME, the education didn’t stop. I remember many discussions about stars, the universe, the history of the Earth, the workings of the minds, evolution, where it all came from and everything else while sitting on the beach under the starlight. Perhaps I’m over romantisizing, and you might have a different take on that. There were also occasions of sunburnt feet and rain-soaked sleeping bags, which occasioned learning of a different kind.

The other two camps required solid preparation, both physically, logistically and from the safety point of view. The Target camp, as the name suggests, involved a destination, invariably in the bush, so was also known as the Bush Camp. The mode of transport was various, whether by walking, horse riding or air-bedding. Pages and pages can be written about Target Camps and what they demanded of students. Similar comment can be made about the Ski Trip, a cross-country skiing experience, sometimes in Australia’s remote wilderness high country. In both cases, several weeks of intensive preparation were required to ensure students were well prepared going into unfamiliar and challenging environments, some with primary school experiences, others doing it for the very first time. The camps were considered a compulsory part of the education program, and only in a few cases did students opt out.

Camps were organised by a dedicated small group of students, supported by one or two staff members and the school’s Outdoor Education specialist, Barry Cooper. Organising groups met regularly and with the student body as a whole to develop the requirements, the criteria, the training program, and the training required to safely embark on such an experience. The adult:student ratio on these camps was generally about 1:5, and safety was an over-riding, one might say obsessive concern, while at the same time judging how much responsibility to put in the hands of students themselves. For the school’s philosophy was that students learned valuable life skills with being trusted to take on responsibility, and the teacher’s role was to judge the limits of these capabilities, provide the resources and material support, and ensure safe practices.

The Day we Burned the Course Outlines

It wasn’t all plain sailing as the above might suggest. We tend to romantisize the past, but there did come a day when the secondary staff became so dispirited with a consumerism malaise which afflicted the student body, that we decided to “burn the course outlines”. There did come a day when I lost my temper in class. No, it wasn’t all light and bliss, but I often reflect on those aspects of the AME experience which I believe have an enduring value. I learned the value of freedom of spirit at the AME School, and benefited in many ways thanks to my time there.

Now I’m keen to read your reflections, whether you were a member of staff, a student, or a parent. What did you take away from the school? Did anything of value endure?