Kicking Off Back to School — Betsy’s Blog Day 1

The Rethink School Tour is off to a great start! Throughout this tour, we’re visiting with parents, teachers and communities who are rethinking education in a tangible way to improve it for their students.

We began the day in Casper, Wyoming, at Woods Learning Center — a school that is teacher-driven and student-centric. Woods’ teacher-driven model means there is no principal and instead the school is led by a collaborative team of teachers and staff. Since the Natrona County School District offers open enrollment, parents get to decide which public school options best fits their child’s unique education needs.

I enjoyed taking questions from the students at Woods Learning Center.

And, the students feel empowered, too! Woods emphasizes service learning and lets the student body determine what extracurricular activities are offered. I’m told some of the popular activities include art club, bike club, cooking club, drama club and woodshop.

After Woods, we headed to St. Stephens Indian School which is located on the seventh-largest Indian reservation in the United States. This school is dedicated to meeting the educational needs of its students while also remaining committed to their Native American culture and traditions.

I appreciated the opportunity to hear ideas and solutions from St. Stephens’ faculty and students first-hand.

The Department’s commitment to our nation’s Native American communities is unwavering. No child’s education should be determined by their family’s income or ZIP code. It is so important that these bright and engaging students have the chance to learn and grow in an educational environment conducive to their culture and needs.

After meeting with some local leaders in Denver, our final stop of the day was a backyard cookout with homeschool families in Littleton, Colorado. Two of my four children were homeschooled for a while, because my husband and I felt it was ultimately the best decision for them and for our family.

Listening to families tell their own stories on the educational choices they made for their children.

These dedicated families have selected the educational environment that they think best meets the needs of their own children. We should not stand in the way of their decision, but instead support and applaud the choices families make for their kids.

We’ll be in Colorado and then off to Nebraska tomorrow. I hope you will continue to follow along throughout the week, and check in on all of the unique innovators and learning environments we will be highlighting throughout the tour — just look for #ReThinkSchool.

Until tomorrow!

Betsy

Betsy DeVos is the 11th U.S. Secretary of Education.