“Schoolmunity” is what Parents need in a Post Covid Era School? 

By Sami Majeed

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“Schoolmunity” – A community composed of parents, students, and the school that brings it together to create the brightest futures. 

There is a recession of trust in our schools. Like receding waves, a low tide. Parents are weary of enrolling their children in new schools, many holding legitimate reservations about re-enrolling children in the school we had come to trust. Many even turning to homeschooling their children. COVID certainly is to blame. The Census bureau did not mince words: “alternative school arrangements has suddenly exploded.”  

“Exploded.” Strong language from an agency whose dull writing normally puts the “bureau” in bureaucracy. 

What is causing this? 

Parents are worried and looking for schools with the ability to meet the physical, emotional, and social needs of their children.  

Parents want to be happy with their choices. What has made parents happy are: 

• Feeling like they are part of a community with the school, they are a participant in their child’s education.  
• Other concerns show an importance on climate itself, connected teachers, nurturing environments, and of course, 
• Challenged students by wide arching curricular choices and deep thinking demanded inside the classroom by caring teachers high expectations.  

So, what should parents look for in a school?  Community + School = Schoolmunity 

Schoolmunity:. A community of parents, teachers, students, administrators, who work together to enhance the growth of children, ensuring their physical safety, social emotional learning through wide ranging and challenging courses. 

The Community Part of Schoolmunity: 

Parents should look for a school with a community focus. Like Matryoshka Russian nesting dolls, communities should exist from the classroom, to the school, the school’s parents, children, and faculty, and even to the community at large. The school community depend on the wisdom of the parents, learning from them a slate of issues that schools can provide to their children.

The School Part of Schoolmunity:

Parents should look for a school that attends to all the needs of their children, from their physical and safety needs, their social and emotional learning needs, and the need for children to use curiosity and critical and creative thinking to 

Schools should inoculate children against potentially physical, social, and emotional harm–offering immunity.  It also challenges each child, exposing them to Euclidian Geometry and also to the art it inspired: Escher, Mondrian, and the art of Ottomans.  The community aspect focuses on, invites, and indeed depends, on the wisdom of the parents.  It focuses on physical needs and safety of each child, keeping them safe and protected.  It also recognizes that humans are beings developed academically as well as socially, emotionally, etc.  Schools should recognize full child development and their approach should reflect this important aspect.  

Community at Self Development Academy: 

It is amazing to see the lineage that abounds at Self Development Academies and Preschool. Teachers who were two-year-olds when then they started at Self Development Preschool are now teaching for us 20 years later! It’s nice to see the once children at SDP, are now parents, bringing their own children back to SDP.

Knowing staff as the source of unconditional comfort and love for them, they now bring their own children for that very reason, assured by their experiences that their own children will have the greatest upbringing: they’ll be safe, they’ll be socially engaged, they’ll learn emotional coping skills, and yes they are verifiably certain that their children’s curiosity and thinking will be challenged and nurtured.

School at Self Development Academy: Social Emotional Learning + Physical and Safety Needs 

Possessing multiple masters in different sciences, Dr. Majeed has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to the safety of children, predicting their safety needs before legislation, policy, or common practice finally catches up. Not surprisingly, parents have reported fewer concerns with COVID here than they have with other schools. This is wonderful validation of internal reports of fewer COVID cases here than elsewhere.   

In addition to parents testimony that their children are safer here, we are building upon our current social emotional learning program, which teaches mindfulness, empathy, perspective-taking, amend-making, and cognitive behavioral changes. We are using the community of the classroom to reinforce positive behaviors. Still in its pilot program classroom students compliment each other for demonstrating coping skills, proper student behavior, and even inquiry based, active thinking and engagement. 

The “Self Development” in Self Development Academy refers to the full developmental capacity of each student.  The “self” developed.  This is a school that recognizes that students bring their emotional, social, and physical selves to school.  And that they are growing in those areas as well as academically.  An approach that addresses all “selves” has been repeatedly shown to one that is more successful than one that attempts to syphon parts of the self, as if you could be peak performance and empty bellies were a possible combination. 

We have found that bright minds are discovered by the most nurturing education specialists, that truly, as our tagline implies at our school a child’s genius is unlimited.  The selves and their needs attended to, each child is able to grapple with the rigor of our curriculum. Ours is one of two complementary aspects: a wide ranging curriculum of challenging, advanced courses taught in a socratic, philosophical method that asks not only what the answer is, but why it is so, why isn’t it a different answer, and what if we applied it to a different domain.  

The “Self Development” in Self Development Academy refers to the full developmental capacity of each student. The “self” developed. This is a school that recognizes that students bring their emotional, social, and physical selves to school. And that they are growing in those areas as well as academically. An approach that addresses all “selves” has been repeatedly shown to one that is more successful than one that attempts to syphon parts of the self, as if you could be peak performance and empty bellies were a possible combination.  

SDA is “Schoolmunity” Defined: 

SDA is the definition of “schoolmunity.”  Certainly true because it is an invented word by SDA but also because its very essence and its factual existence demonstrates it.  Our philosophy is of one of high expectations and horizontal leadership: multiple minds make for the mightiest.  Nothing exemplifies the fact that our system of high expectations inside a nurturing environment, informed by the community than our community now. It is a community of former students bring their children, former students becoming teachers, former students teacher former classmates children.  

Knowledge and community, branching, grows, expanding, exploding with bright futures and the brightest minds.