We are All People

“South Elementary” was painted boldly on the entranceway to the school. Entering the school required walking past a modest schoolyard with a concrete play area for recess and a tiny green space with prairie plants of the Midwest. Surrounded by a mix of middle class single-family homes and college rentals, the school was located just south of the town center and near a large mid-western university. Multiage education started in the late 1990’s when the principal spearheaded the push for this unique model of learning. Many of the classrooms in this school slowly became multiage options, usually combining two to three grades together. After a few years of two multiage classrooms, a few teachers and the principal began to explore the possibility of joining those two multiage classrooms together. After testing the joining of the two classrooms for one year, Steven Lewis and Lisa McConnell, former K-3 and 4-5 teachers, merged all grades into one learning community.