The Beginning of Progressive Education

Progressive education didn't spring from one single source but rather evolved from a confluence of ideas and movements, primarily in Europe and the United States, spanning the 17th to the 20th centuries. The term “American Progressive Education” was coined in the 20th century by John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Caroline Pratt, and Lucy Sprague, and it has been supported by recent neuroscience research, which acknowledges that a child who has autonomy—a voice in their own education—learns best.

It's important to note that progressive education has taken various forms and interpretations over time. While some approaches emphasize individual freedom and creativity, others focus on social reform and preparing students for democratic citizenship. However, the core principles of child-centered learning, active engagement, and critical thinking remain central to the philosophy.

Traditional education often focuses on memorizing facts and figures, preparing students for standardized tests. Progressive education takes a different approach. It believes that true learning comes from active engagement, exploration, and discovery. Instead of passively receiving information, children in progressive classrooms are encouraged to ask questions, investigate, and construct their own understanding. Students pursue their curiosity, develop compassion, cultivate courage, and enjoy a level of autonomy.

It’s All About the Learner, the Whole Child

Child-centered learning is at the heart of progressive education. The curriculum is designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each child. Teachers act as facilitators, guiding students’ learning journeys and providing support where needed. Learning is personalized and relevant to the child’s world. Progressive education also emphasizes hands-on, experiential learning. Students learn by doing, through projects, experiments, and real-world applications. This active approach fosters deeper understanding and makes learning more engaging.

Developing critical thinking skills is a priority in progressive schools. Students are encouraged to analyze information, evaluate different perspectives, and solve problems creatively. They learn to think for themselves, rather than simply accepting what they are told. Collaboration is another key component. Students work together on projects, learning to communicate effectively, share ideas, and respect diverse viewpoints. This fosters social skills and prepares them for collaborative work environments in the future.

Progressive education recognizes that children are more than just their academic abilities. It emphasizes the development of the whole child, including their emotional, social, and physical well-being. Schools often incorporate arts, music, and physical activity into the curriculum. Progressive classrooms often operate on democratic principles, where students have a voice in their learning and classroom management. This fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility. While assessments are still important, progressive schools tend to use a variety of methods to evaluate student learning, including portfolios, projects, exhibitions, and self-assessments. The focus is on understanding a child's growth and progress, rather than just assigning a grade.

I asked AHB Community School Executive Director Sasha Cesare to explain the unique school’s approach to middle school education. In response, she submitted this guest post, written collaboratively by staff and other community members, including insights and images gathered from AHB teachers and real, live students.

What can middle school feel like? What should middle school feel like? Sadly, in our culture, it is often the accepted default that tweens and teenagers are “difficult,” and middle school is just basically a rotten time. “Everybody gets through it. You will too,” is often the response of even the most caring and connected parents.

But what if you don’t accept that? What if you expect something more for your child in their middle years? What if you continue to expect your child to be enthusiastic about and dedicated to school, and you expect school to continue to engage, nurture, and challenge your child?

What would that look like?

“Every morning I am happy to come to school and have fun with my best friends!”
“Always fun, not boring. Always, just fun.”

These quotes are the words of middle school students at AHB Community School, a progressive K–8 school in Central Austin that has been providing a creative and collaborative educational alternative for Austin families since 2004. In those 15 years, we have learned a few things about how to keep middle school students involved, challenged, and happy, while preparing them for the target high schools of their choice. It is not the only good model for educating young adolescents, but it’s a model worthy of study.

The AHB Community School Middle Years Program (MYP) is a four-day-per-week (with optional fifth day) program designed for students aged 11 to 14, working together in what is known internally as the “Delta” class. The MYP, built on the best of international and national standards, emphasizes intellectual challenges, interdisciplinary understandings of the world around them, and a sense of belonging and service to one’s community.

Specifically, the AHB Middle Years Program is built around five key tenets:

Inquiry-based, interdisciplinary projects
A student-centered curriculum
A developmentally appropriate social-emotional learning (SEL) environment
A community-minded, service-oriented focus
Strong academics

What does that look like in the classroom?

Here’s a week in the life, as described by the MYP teachers:

Currently, the MYP students are studying world geography as their theme, and therefore, along with map work, we have math, reading, and writing work that all relates to our world studies. Each week, students have the opportunity to explore the part of the world on which we are focused through cooking, art, theater, poetry/literature, music, architecture, politics, and/or wildlife. We are learning about the building of the Panama Canal, the endangerment of the Amazon rainforest, and mining of precious metals in Africa by researching, presenting to, and teaching one another in small groups.

In math we did some algebraic arithmetic in the African language of Hausa, which is spoken by 40–50 million people. Students had to decipher what value each Hausa word meant in numerous equations using substitution. We then got into small groups and tackled a major algebraic and logic problem where we had to create a formula for how many fields were required to feed a community in Africa when concrete numbers were not known. The overall goals were to be able to manipulate variables even when the values are not known and be able to work with them in terms of each other. Each group did an amazing job and made huge conceptual headway in terms of learning how to think algebraically.

Later, we switched gears and did a Lorax Stock Market Game project that included reading Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, coming up with potential rules for the Once-ler to have created a sustainable business and environment, taking the Once-ler to trial and acting out the trial complete with judges, attorneys, jury, foreman, a bailiff, the Lorax, and the Once-ler. We also discussed the concept of environmentally responsible investing and how the students could diversify their own Stock Market Game portfolios to be more diversified, including incorporating more “green” organizations into their teams’ stock holdings.

In Language Arts we are learning how to write descriptive settings that use effective figurative language and how to develop an integral setting as a “character” that drives the characterization, plot, and mood of a fictional story. We are researching real-world geographic locations as inspiration for settings and creating different types of maps to illustrate settings for these original narratives.

Throughout each week, our students apply the concepts of theme to the learning objectives and are able to exercise significant choice in their projects.

—submitted by Kirsten Coleman & Alice Elder, the MYP co-teachers
Together, they have over 15 years of experience teaching at AHB Community School.

What do the AHB middle school students have to say about this model?

About the inquiry-based learning and interdisciplinary projects:

“AHB has a great way of teaching kids about how to tackle problems.”

“The Delta teachers make understanding tough subjects a more community-centered and in-depth experience by including captivating projects into the curriculum.”

“AHB makes learning as fun as can be by doing project-based learning, which is better than sitting around doing worksheets.”

About the student-centered curriculum:

“Students are engaged because we have choices, responsibilities.”

“The teachers will teach you according to your intellectual level, not your age/grade.”

“The students get to have a major say in upcoming projects.”

About the developmentally appropriate SEL environment:

“We do a lot of group projects that help you interact with your peers and get better relationships with them.”

“There is both freedom and structure.”

“We have daily recess time and get to be outside.”

About the community-minded, service-oriented focus:

“We do Hope Food Pantry every month.”

“We do projects that are aimed at helping our community.”

“We did science fair projects that were about solving world-wide problems.”

About the academics:

“AHB is academically flexible but also pushes the students to the point of being ready for high school.”

“AHB is very good at preparing children for high school. It meets children at their level and tries to teach them in the best way possible for that kid. I have been here seven years and I have never experienced feeling unprepared for a certain task or assignment.”

“Some [students] are better at math, some at language arts, and we really accommodate that.”

A Different Paradigm for the Middle Years

Every stage of childhood and the coinciding parenting phase has unique challenges, but the AHB Middle Years Program challenges the assumption that school bores “big kids.” We are convinced, and see daily evidence in our classrooms, that 12- and 13-year-olds can be just as smiling, curious, and energetic as our youngest learners. They simply need a classroom and teachers that grow with them, taking on the delicate dance of both nurturing and challenging the students as needed.