Quarterly Workshops
Each new term begins with a school-wide workshop week, where students and teachers come together, face shared challenges, and work in silence on concentration, patience, and perseverance.
The workshops have become a crucial tool in our functioning. They are a way for the school to reconnect and interact; they set the themes which will be developed in different classes throughout the term, as well as setting the tone for the attitude we wish to have as a collective.
Independent learning
Usually, the workshops that happen at the beginning of each term are very guided and collective.
They love them because they are a great challenge that everyone faces (teachers included) three times a year.
This time, they thought of doing something slightly different, where the students would have more freedom and responsibility than usual. The students could choose their own theme and the way they wanted to approach it. They were given three days to work on it, after which they would present what they had discovered to the rest of the school.
Just as one cleans one’s home to restructure one’s thoughts, so it is with the school’s physical environment. Their insistence on beauty in all corners of the school has created a base they consistently come back to, as the habit of caring for a physical space and materials used quickly slips from the mind as everyone busies themselves with routine.
They seek to enhance the space, rather than decorate it, and through the attention brought, encourage the sense of observation and wonder.
Beauty has truly become a key in their approach to education.
The team proposed a list of ideas for themes to inspire them:
Arborescence – Aspiration – Clarity – Dance – Diversity in Unity – Energy – Equality – Generosity – Goodness – Gratitude – Humility – Perseverance – Progress – Receptivity – Sense of Wonder – Sincerity – Sound & Movement – The Bird – The Path – Transformation – Wilderness
For future workshops, the team adopted the “freedom within structure” approach. This would allow participants to decide the direction they want to take and how to get there, while we, as mentors and a team, provide support and challenges to help them grow.
The presentations are a great opportunity for students to prepare something to share with an audience, face their fear of public speaking, and organize their thoughts. It encourages them to decide what is interesting and important to convey. For the rest of the school, these presentations are very informative, as we often learn a lot—even as teachers—about topics outside our own fields of expertise.
Additionally, the team gets to observe their progress over time, from one workshop to the next, as they improve their ability to express themselves in front of others. Finally, a student’s enthusiasm and discoveries about a particular theme can spark curiosity in others and inspire them to explore new ideas.”
“So much of my life—film, clay, teaching, even swimming, saving my body—came from one simple Last School principle: if you are genuinely motivated, the world rearranges itself to help you. That’s how I ended up making films in the forest for my final year. That’s how I ended up teaching clay here today.”
~ Alumni, age 25
Areas of Focus
Areas of Focus