Most teachers have had, at some point, a vision about what they thought teaching would be all about. They pictured themselves in classrooms with interested and excited students listening in rapt attention to fascinating tales about dangerous midnight movements on the Underground Railroad. They envisioned young people eagerly gathered around a science table discovering the mysteries of how things work or experiencing the Ah-ha that occurs when the relationships between a set of numbers starts to make sense. And they saw in their mind's eye a child's joy when hearing praise for a creative story or science project, eager to work in suggestions for making the project even better. And the most visionary prospective teachers fantasized about the letter or phone call from a former student saying that a play she wrote was going into production, and it all started when she was a student in the teacher's creative writing class so many years ago.

For many teachers, there is a disconnect between their vision of a challenging and rewarding career and the day-to-day grind so rampant throughout the profession. Perhaps most ironic about the separation between the ideal and the reality of today's classrooms is that most teachers have the skills and motivation to do the kinds of teaching about which they once dreamed. Unfortunately, the lists, regulations, and other peoples' requirements that are imposed upon them "from above" have resulted in both a prescriptive approach to teaching and a barrier to creating a challenging and exciting classroom. Over prescribing the work of teachers has, in some cases, lobotomized good teachers and denied them the creative teaching opportunities that attracted them to the profession in the first place. In her 1997 study, Linda Darling-Hammond reported that most teachers felt their views of good teaching were at odds with those of their school districts. Seventy-nine percent of the teachers participating in this study indicated that concerns for children and for learning are central to good teaching, but only 11% said that their school district shared this view. A large majority of teachers (75%) believed that their school officials favored behaviorist theories of learning rather than theories that are more child centered and constructivist.

This guidebook provides a rationale and practical set of guidelines for a program that supports a different brand of learning from the approach that guides activities in many classrooms today. We call this brand "student-driven learning" and the vehicles designed to deliver this more creative method of teaching are enrichment clusters. Enrichment clusters are student-centered--directed by student interest and the development of authentic products for real audiences--and are based on both common sense and research that challenges the assertion that important intellectual growth can only be charted through an information transfer and standardized testing approach to education (Gentry, Reis, & Moran, 1999; Reis & Gentry, 1998 ). We do not think that all prescribed, textbook-driven, standards-based teaching is bad, nor do we criticize the current national movement to improve the achievement test scores of our nation's young people. We believe that a good education balances a prescribed curriculum with regular, systematic opportunities that allow students to develop their abilities, interests, and learning styles. This balance must be achieved in an atmosphere that places a premium on enjoyment and collaboration as well as opportunities to engage in first-hand investigative activities and high levels of creative productivity. Even within the current trend toward an externally determined, "top-down" curriculum, teachers must have some opportunities to teach in a manner that is more consistent with the ideals that attracted them to the profession. As one teacher put it, "I am tired of being the administrator of a textbook and the victim of a system that fails to recognize my talents and creativity. Enrichment clusters gave me the opportunity to do some real teaching."

The main purpose for developing an enrichment cluster program is to create a time and a place within the school week when student-driven learning is on the front burner of student and teacher activity. Although we would like to see more of this type of learning infused into the overall curriculum, the external forces that dominate most schools are simply too powerful to bring about massive, immediate change. Educational change seldom takes place at the center of things; instead, it evolves on the fringes where dedicated people exercise their judgment in the best interest of serving the young people for whom they are responsible. And successful change occurring on the edges has been found to seep its way toward the center. In the research we conducted on enrichment clusters (see Chapter 6), we found that many of the strategies teachers used to facilitate enrichment clusters found their way into everyday teaching practices in regular classrooms. Through strategies such as creative compliance and the infiltrator model of school change, we have witnessed remarkable changes taking place in mainstream classrooms.

Student-driven learning is based on an inductive approach to learning that provides students with opportunities to apply and extend the basic knowledge and skills that are the legitimate outcomes of a deductive learning model. Our aim is not to do away with deductive learning but, instead, to achieve balance between deductive and inductive learning. Introducing inductive learning into the school is important for several reasons. First, schools should be enjoyable places that students want to attend rather than places they endure as part of their journey toward assimilation into the job market and the adult world. Second, schools should be places in which students participate and prepare for intelligent, creative, and effective living. This type of living includes learning how to analyze, criticize, and select from alternative sources of information and courses of action; how to think effectively about unpredictable personal and interpersonal problems; how to live harmoniously with one another while remaining true to an emerging personal system of attitudes, beliefs, and values; and how to confront, clarify, and act upon problems and situations in constructive and creative ways.

All of America knows that there are two school systems in our nation. One school system--the one that serves poor and mainly minority students--has generally failed to make the kind of progress that leads to improved achievement, progression into higher education, and improved standards of living. Billions of dollars and massive reform efforts aimed at addressing the problem of poor schools have focused largely on compensatory and remedial models. Most would agree that the positive results of these school reform efforts have ranged from minimal to nonexistent.

America's other school system--the one that serves mainly middle-class white students--has, by contrast, been successful enough to produce one of the most affluent and productive societies in the history of the world. Herein lies the problem: Endless state regulations, overly prescribed curriculum, and horrendous pressures to "get the scores up" have caused both school systems to buy into using more and more highly prescriptive didactic models of teaching. As a result, schools continue to withhold high level learning opportunities from poor children, and they are now slowly dismantling those aspects of our successful schools that have contributed to our nation's inventiveness, entrepreneurship, and creative productivity.

Student-driven learning is important because our society's economic and cultural growth, even our democratic way of life, depend on an unlimited reservoir of creative and effective people. One idea for a new product or the innovative and entrepreneurial action that results in the start of a new business has the potential to create millions of jobs or cultural enrichments that contribute to a better way of life for untold numbers of Americans. A small number of individuals will always emerge as creative thinkers and problem solvers, but we as a society cannot afford to leave the emergence of such leaders to chance, nor can we waste the undeveloped talents of so many of our young citizens who are the victims of poverty. All students must have opportunities to develop their unique talents and potentials and to lead constructive lives without trampling on or minimizing the value of others in the process. We have no argument with the importance of basic skill learning, but without an equal investment in the teaching and learning that promotes talent development, leadership, and creative productivity, our society may unwittingly be letting our schools devolve into the kind of education system that resembles a third world country.