(Free No.2) If I could create a new elementary school...

"You are in charge of creating a new private elementary school. You can do whatever you want with almost no limitations at all."

This weekend I met a friend who is faced with a question like this. What would I do with a challenge like this? What would you do? The question is fascinating and mind-boggling. Not ever having taught in an elementary school, it is difficult for me to know what is possible and what is too idealistic, so I do not claim that the list below is final or realistic in any way. It is just based on my own experiences in various schools in the US, Japan, and China, and based on what I have heard and seen about good learning for children. So here goes:

10 Things An Elementary School Should Do:

1. Students would collaborate and share ideas, and learn to develop their learning as a community of learners who cooperate in challenging and supporting each other.
2. Teachers would collaborate and share ideas, but respect each other's professional freedom to innovate and experiment with new ways of teaching. 
3. The model of learning would be based on developing individual potential and creativity in a variety of diverse ways rather than one-size-fits-all industrial model of education that aims to produce a certain set of similar individuals.
4. Students would learn to be real readers and writers who love to read and write their whole lives. They would read a lot of self-selected books, write about those books, and talk about those books with other people while being challenged to try new genres when they are ready. They would write pieces on self-selected like authors, stories, poems, opinion essays in various genres that they learn about and publish their works openly in supportive community of classmates.
5. A lot of classes would be based on projects that are brainstormed by students and carried out by students. Projects that make a difference in the local community would be especially encouraged.
6. Classes would have connections to students in other classrooms, schools, countries to get other ideas. Competence in intercultural communication and also IT and digital media literacy will be needed for this.
7. Students would clean their own school and also do cleaning and other volunteer service in the local community.
8. A love of nature would fostered through having a garden, forest, pond, and other environments where students learn to coexist with plants and animals in a harmonious way.
9. Students and teachers will get out of the classroom often to explore what is happening in the world around them. I guess this means field trips...but it would be as simple as having class outside, or in the local community, or in a different venue from the regular classroom. Why not have music class in a senior home, or science class in the local sewage plant, or a math class in a super market. Visitors coming to classes should be encouraged as well.
10. The main goal will be a love of communication and learning and the necessary personal, social, and intellectual development to make that possible at the maximum potential of each individual in the community.

I'll have to think about this more, but I guess this will do for a start.