Mission
Nuestra misión y filosofía en español
The Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School was founded in 1995 as a Massachusetts Public Charter School.
• To engage students in a school that uses experiential, hands-on activities, the arts, and interdisciplinary studies to foster critical thinking skills and a joy of learning.
• To sustain a cooperative, intimate community of students, staff, families and local community members, which guides and supports the school and its educational program.
• To cultivate children’s individual voices and a shared respect for each other, our community, and the world around us.
Philosophy
The Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School was founded in 1995 as Massachusetts
Public Charter School. Our educational approach is grounded in knowledge of children’s development and in a commitment to teaching creative, critical thinking skills, and strong basic skills to kindergarten – 8th graders.
At HCCPS, we believe that children construct their understanding of the world through direct experience, with teachers serving as guides and resources. We create an engaging and joyful learning environment using an interdisciplinary, project-based curriculum. Emphasis is placed on asking children and adults to reflect on and document the learning process. The expressive arts play a critical role in the academic and social curriculum, and create a common language that brings our community together in meaningful ways.
HCCPS welcomes and relies on family involvement. Children, families, staff and community form an integrated, interdependent system whose governance structures guide and support the school and its educational program. Beyond academic curriculum, children learn essential life skills through participation in an intimate, whole school cooperative. Involvement in the local environment and its communities inspires learning and encourages social and civic responsibility as well as stewardship for the earth.
Parents and teachers help children to care for and respect themselves and each other. We strongly believe that cultivation of each individual voice within a community leads to inclusion of and respect for differences and multiple perspectives.
The Co-op
Hilltown is structured as a volunteer parent cooperative. Parental involvement is an essential factor in the school, both because of the belief that education is enhanced by strengthening the ties between school and home and because of the limited operating budget created by the small size of the student body. Parent contributions not only help us to keep costs down, but allow a flexibility, richness and diversity in the school which we might otherwise not achieve.
Parents become members of the coop and are eligible to vote at the cooperative’s annual meeting and to elect the school’s Board of Trustees. Parent representatives serve on the major decision-making bodies of the school (the Management Team and the Board of Trustees) and on many policy-making committees.
Parents are strongly encouraged to volunteer in order to become more actively involved in their children’s educational environment and for the good of the school as a whole. The ways in which parents can contribute are as varied as their skills and interests as you can tell by looking at the volunteer form that all parents are asked to fill out by the first day of school. They may work on subcommittees of the Board of Trustees or school task groups defined by the Management Team, volunteer to work with particular teachers either in the classroom or at home, contribute to building and maintenance projects, or help with administrative duties from their homes. The Community Coordinator is available at the school to help parents find ways to contribute.
History
The Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School was started in 1995 by a group of local parents, artists, and educators who sought to bring an educational alternative to the rural hill towns of western Massachusetts. These pioneers were grounded in the belief that children are our most valuable resource and schools, as a result, our most critical institution. They felt the traditional elementary school structure did not provide what is essential to the optimal education of children: a partnership of parents, teachers, and students. Our founders envisioned a school with the following five elements (excerpted here from the school”s original charter school application):
1. A child-centered approach to education.
“Creative thinking can best be encouraged in an environment in which teachers are not mere dispensers of information but rather models, resources and guides, helping children to develop their own ideas and solutions” (Duckworth 157). This relationship between teacher and student embraces the innate curiosity and rich potential of each child, rather than focusing on the student”s lacks and deficits. It also accommodates a wide range of individual learning styles, providing each child with the means to most effectively pursue his or her individual learning.
2. A collaborative approach to education.
To maintain the motivation and self-esteem of teachers, they must be empowered to make their own decisions and trusted to direct their own teaching. A cooperative, interactive school environment, in which teachers are not isolated but are in dialogue with other teachers and administrators, allows for a cross-fertilization of ideas and provides students with a model of teamwork.
3. A thematically unified experiential curriculum fully integrating the arts.
This approach, drawing from a pre-school model in Reggio Emilia, Italy, recognizes the arts as “critical tools for creative learning and self-expression” (WMHCSC 1994, 7). The arts provide a unifying language with which to explore all subject matters. Rather than dividing the curriculum into discrete, scheduled subject units with rigid time constraints, the curriculum emerges from students” interests and is linked through the study of general themes (rivers, for example). Beginning with student interests and integrating the curriculum heightens the learning process and allows students to see the interconnectedness between the sciences and the humanities.
4. Family involvement as integral to the educational process.
Parents are critical to the successful education of their children. But in most schools, there is not an open door policy; parents are not welcome in the classroom at any time. Moreover, because a curriculum is prescribed, there is less room for parents to add their expertise or bring in what they can offer. A successful school environment must provide parents with ample opportunities for in-depth, meaningful connection with their children”s experiences.
5. A school experience integrated into the rich fabric of our community and rural environment.
Stimulating scientific material lies just beyond the walls of any school. In the hill towns, there is a wealth of wilderness and agricultural resources. Utilizing these resources not only offers new curriculum opportunities; it also fosters respect for the earth.
The founders set out to create a learning environment with an emergent curriculum, integrative arts, and a high level of community involvement, all of which would build students” self-esteem, enhance critical thinking, and encourage curiosity. Charter School legislation afforded us the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of such an education, in a public school unburdened by traditional hierarchies and systems. This child-centered approach, focusing on the needs of individual children and following their creative impulses, became the backbone of Hilltown”s educational philosophy, and was complimented by the school”s commitment to governance by a parent cooperative using a consensus model for decision-making.
JEDI Statement
HCCPS aspires to center justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) into our school’s policies, practices, and culture. We strive toward being a safe and equitable school for all current and future students, staff, and families of all identities related to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, ability, neurotype, or other aspects of identity. Hilltown seeks to center JEDI in the culture, policies, practices, and curriculum of the school at all levels. With humility, we commit to continuously evolving as individuals and as a school by critically examining how societal power and privilege dynamics play out in our own community. We also commit to evaluating our progress with JEDI efforts and taking action to improve areas of need. Finally, we commit to courageously leaning into discomfort acknowledging that it is a necessary part of dismantling inequity.
Furthermore, we believe JEDI work should go beyond the promotion of “celebration of difference” or “tolerance” and needs to critically examine and intentionally address the effects of historic and current systemic racism and other forms of institutionalized oppression. Prioritizing JEDI at Hilltown allows our community to meet our stated mission by working toward ensuring that students across identities and life experiences have access to what they need to succeed. Part of this work includes collectively creating an environment and culture where all students, families, faculty, and staff members from all backgrounds and abilities feel a sense of belonging and feel welcomed, heard, and valued in a responsive school community. By committing to these values and practices, Hilltown is better equipped to serve all of our community and to better ensure that all students can thrive.
adopted March 2024
Definitions
Justice
Process of dismantling barriers to resources and opportunities in society so that all individuals & communities can live a full & dignified life. These barriers are experienced disproportionately by marginalized people, who experience racism, classism, sexism, ableism, etc. Justice is action oriented towards change, requires working through discomfort, and is not simply awareness-raising work.
Equity
Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means allocating resources to ensure everyone has access to the same opportunities. Equity recognizes that advantages and barriers—the ‘isms’—exist. Inequities can be rectified by providing adequate resources to those who experience more barriers and disadvantages.
Equity provides adequate resources to those who experience more barriers and disadvantages by recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.
Diversity
The wide variety of shared and different personal and group characteristics among human beings. Diversity also stands for the practice of including people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and different genders, sexual orientations, abilities, etc.
The differences between us are based on whether we experience systemic advantages or encounter systemic barriers to opportunities. The concept of diversity includes acceptance and respect of individual differences.
Inclusion
The aim of inclusion is to embrace all people irrespective of race, gender, disability, medical or other need. It is about giving equitable access and opportunities and getting rid of discrimination and intolerance.
Fostering a sense of belonging by centering, valuing, & amplifying the voices, perspectives and approaches of those who experience more barriers based on their identities. Authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power.
Inclusion promotes broad engagement, shared participation, and advances authentic sense of belonging through safe, positive, and nurturing environments. Inclusion is key to eliminating systemic inequality.
(Adapted from JEDI Collaborative)