San Juan School Has Big Agenda

While most public schools head back to basics, assign extra homework and focus on standardized test scores, a new charter school in San Juan Capistrano will discard just about every hot trend in education.

In an era of concern over social promotion, Journey Charter School in Capistrano Unified School District will move children to tougher tasks when each is ready, not by age. Most California public schools introduce phonics-based reading in kindergarten, and recent educational theory holds that perhaps phonics should start even earlier. Journey, on the other hand, puts off introducing letters until first grade and instead focuses on storytelling. And while other public elementary schools have introduced more letter grades, the charter school will do away with grades in the earlier years.

The Journey School, which won school board approval in February and which will open this fall on a portion of San Juan Elementary School, will meld standard public education with the philosophy of the private Waldorf school chain, which focuses on spiritual, emotional and physical growth.

Journey founders have visited the Waldorf School of Orange County in Costa Mesa and adapted many of the school’s ideas. To remain part of the public school system, however, the Journey program must spurn Waldorf’s traditional spiritual components and use letter grades to critique student performance.

As in traditional Waldorf schools, students will stay with the same teacher for several years, although possibly not as long as at the private school.

Waldorf schools do not assign letter grades. Journey’s elementary students won’t get them either, but middle and high school students will. Journey’s kindergarten lessons will use rhythm, play and storytelling, as do Waldorf’s, a teaching tool that will carry through to secondary grades, said Franci Sassin, Journey’s charter project coordinator.

Older students will get instruction in blocks--perhaps six weeks of science taught each day for two hours--instead of learning each subject every day.

And all students will participate in standardized testing, Sassin said.

“Basically, we say we’re a public charter school inspired by Waldorf methods,” she said. “But we really do feel that in other areas we’re in line with Waldorf methods.”

So far the county has six charter schools, and more probably are on the way, county officials say.

“In some sense, the charter movement creates a valve, releasing tension for traditional [public] schools by creating other opportunities and in some ways letting traditional schools off the hook,” said Colin Miller, education program consultant with the California Department of Education’s charter schools unit. Sometimes the reverse happens, Miller said: A successful charter school might see some of its programs imitated by the public schools.

Increasingly, districts are embracing staples of charter programs such as flexible calendars, parent involvement contracts, team teaching and multiple-grade classrooms, Miller said.

“[Journey] had a lot of community support,” said Crystal Kochendorfer, Capistrano Unified trustee. “A large number of interested parents wanted to try this charter school and they met the standards of the law.”

Journey’s free-flowing creativity appealed to parent Sharon Romeo, whose daughter Clara-Grazia, 5, will enter Journey this fall.

“In Journey, she’ll be learning science through singing, movement, dancing and visual arts,” Romeo said. “In a traditional school they just speak out the lesson and maybe there’s something visual if you’re lucky.”

Sharon Romeo didn’t like the bigger homework load, the rote memorization learning, the competition for grades and the anonymity of a large campus. And she didn’t think a vast school system would cater to her daughter’s short attention span.

“She’s interested in a lot of different things and is very social but is never attached to just one subject,” Romeo said. “You can’t give her a project and say, ‘Only do this.’ ”

The Dana Point resident considered local private schools and even home schooling before enrolling Clara-Grazia at Journey.

“It’s really experimental and hands-on,” Romeo said. “They find out what type of child they have and teach toward the child, which doesn’t normally happen in a traditional school.” She’s hoping the nontraditional teaching methods will curb Clara-Grazia’s tendency to leave projects unfinished.

“In Waldorf, she’s going to be exposed to many different ways to get the lesson across,” Romeo said. “She’ll get the repetition she needs to learn the concept, but the variety will keep her excited.”

Romeo predicts the flexible teaching structure also will complement her son Bennett’s steady, persevering learning style when he enters school. He is 2 years old.

“For him, the program will be good because they teach in blocks of one subject matter at a time, so he’ll be able to immerse himself in it,” she said.