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Interactive Presentation by Dr. Gopal Krishnamurthy, Monday 3rd August
Collaborating to build a microschool model
An Educational Commons for students, teachers, parents, and other learners.
An Educational Commons for students, teachers, parents, and other learners.
About
About
The learning center's base is at Regen Tropics, Oak View, (Ojai-Ventura route), California.
The intention of the learning center is to shift from a conventional notion of school to a living laboratory for transformative learning.
Exploring both the ‘outer world’ and the ‘world within’ and their relationship and interaction.
The environment does not promote: (i) reward and punishment, (ii) the avoidance of failure in the pursuit of success, (iii) conformity to authority (external or internal - i.e. our own conclusions and beliefs).
The intentions, curriculum, and pedagogy of the center are rooted in directly exploring the world and not on applying abstracted theories and methods of practice.
Transdisciplinary curriculum exploring questions and themes.
Dynamic structures and schedules responding to a rapidly changing world
Beginnings and endings reflecting impermanence.
Operations
Operations
(Please note the following structure is pliable to change drawing on the intentions, questions, and priorities of the participants including the children, teachers, parents, and wider community members. The operation is intentionally small to ensure close relationships, pliability, and individual attention).
(Please note the following structure is pliable to change drawing on the intentions, questions, and priorities of the participants including the children, teachers, parents, and wider community members. The operation is intentionally small to ensure close relationships, pliability, and individual attention).
Below is a provisional iteration/version of how the pilot learning center works. We will start operating from August 26th, 2026 with a maximum of 15 children, 4+ yrs, in a multi-age learning environment with a minimum 3 day/week commitment.
A day in the life of the school:
A day in the life of the school:
9am Arrival & Circle Time
12pm Lunch time
3:30 Circle Time
4pm End of Day
Circle time: movement, singing, dancing, noticing, sitting quietly, announcements, wonderings, and sharing.
Exploring phenomena: students engage in interdisciplinary, hands-on, and minds-on explorations in diverse subject matters - centering explorations relevant to local and global themes and challenges.
Dialogue Circles & Inquiry Blocks: dialogues rooted in core questions of the week/month.
Independent Learning Pods: time for self-directed reading, writing, drawing, movement, making, and other explorations responding to the child’s individual explorations.
Reflection Time: journaling, drawing, nature walks, and group sharing.
Walks.
Weekly/Monthly Structures
Weekly/Monthly Structures
“Deep Dive” Days: extended time to explore community-linked themes (e.g., living systems, culture, storytelling).
Reflective Inquiry Sessions: small group or one-on-one reflection related to subject matters including human development, and social and emotional learning.
The root meaning of ‘school’ originates from leisure. The structure will prioritize a sense of leisure.
Teaching-Learning and Curriculum
Teaching-Learning and Curriculum
The curriculum is curiosity.
The curriculum is uncovered rather than covered - sustaining attention, engagement, and inquiry.
The curriculum is emergent in its meticulous attention to materials, phenomena, and the learning of the children and the educators. The curriculum and 'lessons' include intentionally planned and unplanned experiences and activities.
We learn deeply when we are genuinely curious about the world. Rather than dividing learning into separate school subjects, we co-create an environment where meaningful explorations naturally arise from experiences, observations, questions, conversations, play, collaboration, silence, and a deep sense of connection with the world and with one another. These questions become the starting point for investigations that may continue for days, weeks, months, or even a lifetime as understanding grows.
The teacher's focus is to: (i) be learning themselves (ii) make available and co-create environments for direct engagement with phenomena and aspects of the world (iii) understand how children make sense of the world - their observations, questions, ideas and how they carry them out, what they do (iv) observe, inquire, and document the process rather than the product of their work (v) explore the possibility of learning or unlearning that is not merely the accumulation of knowledge (vi) engage in a partnership with the parents in sustaining and documenting the above orientation at the learning center and at home.
The investigations listed below are not a fixed curriculum to be covered or completed. Instead, they represent rich areas of exploration that invite children into ongoing inquiry. Through these experiences, literacy, mathematics, science, the arts, communication, and social-emotional learning emerge and develop naturally within meaningful contexts.
Provocations/Opportunities, Inquiry, Investigations, Explorations
Sense of place
Sky and earth
Light and shadows
Soil, Rocks, Mountains
Water
Plants, Animals
People, Places
Body, Food, Health
Senses: Seeing, listening, touching, smelling, tasting
Cooking: Mud kitchen, Fire kitchen
Building and Making
Drawing
Math in the world and the world of math
Science in the world
Writing, Reading
Books (as reflective resources)
The world ‘within’
Sounds and Music
Silence
Other explorations as they emerge…
No list can capture everything children may become interested in exploring. Meaningful investigations often emerge unexpectedly from a child’s observation, a conversation, a walk in nature, a community event, a story, or an everyday experience, silence
Teachers: Sunsong, Amol, Gopal, parent participants, special guests
Gopal Krishnamurthy, Founding Director, Transformative Education Centre, and Director, The Learning Tree (Ojai Microschool).
Gopal brings decades of experience in teacher education, schools, universities, and education in India, the UK, and the US. He has a PhD in education, and served as university Dept. Chair & faculty, school director, and teacher. He sees Ojai as a crucible for wonder, not knowing, and deep inquiry.
Sunsong (Susan) Clark, Director, The Learning Tree (Ojai Microschool).
Sunsong's work entails developing rich learning environments where children pursue their trajectories of interest in an atmosphere of mutual learning alongside observant adults focused on understanding how the child makes meaning of the world around them and acts those meanings out. She holds an MEd with a concentration in the Reggio Emilia approach, and certificate in ECE. She spent 18 years homesteading off-grid in a small remote community. In addition, she is constantly amazed by nature and the everyday beauty of all kinds of things.
Amol Gejawar, Director, The Learning Tree (Ojai Microschool).
Twelve years of expertise in natural learning, ecological restoration, organic farming, alternative architecture, and traditional craftsmanship, have cultivated Amol's diverse and impactful career. His commitment to sustainability and community-focused initiatives continues to drive his work in these interconnected domains. He holds a Bachelors in Engineering. Amol brings years of experience in educational leadership, and the observation and education of children.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How much will it cost for my child to join The Learning Tree?
This is not a for profit operation. Nevertheless, the running costs of the center incuding the livelihoods of the teachers need to be covered and parents and others contribute financially or in other ways that support the center. It is important that the ability to pay does not hinder a child and parent from joining.
Will my child be able to obtain grade level standards?
Depth, breadth, and learning excellence in all areas are core to the center. We hold the question - what does it look like for learning rather than the measurement of learning to be at the heart of a learning endeavor? Nevertheless, should the students and parents wish to work towards meeting standards, the center will support them with this. The documentation of the learning activities and experiences can be used towards addressing the standards.
Is this a project-based, play-based, nature-based, inquiry-based school? Will it be a structured, unstructured, or semi-structured school? Will it be a self-directed learning school?
It is important for us not to limit and restrict oursleves to branding and slogans. We do not see unstructured and structured as opposites nor strive to find a semi-structured balance between the two. We are interested in the question - structured or unstructured with regard to what and for what? Having said this, there will be project-based, play-based, nature-based, inquiry-based, active, silent, dialogic, independent, and collaborative experiences and learning.
A surprise occurence in Ojai
For an inspirational resource/starting point see: Video clips (below) of Rishi Valley School's RIVER, MGML (Multi-Age and Multi-Level), 'School without walls', with narration from Education and the Significance of Life - Krishnamurti.
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