Verdi EcoSchool

Centering the powerful relationship between young people and the community they live in is a key feature of Verdi EcoSchool, which offers a learner-centered environment to the Melbourne, Florida community. What they are today is a natural extension of their origin story as an intimate learning space created by a small number of local families who wanted their children to experience learning that leveraged community resources and prioritized the voices and choices of young people.

Verdi EcoSchool defines Melbourne’s entire local arts district as their campus. With this open-walled take on a central learning hub, they are able to provide daily, immersive learning experiences that draw from and draw out learners’ unique passions, interests, and curiosities. With young learners at the center of Verdi EcoSchool’s design, powerful learning opportunities crop up in the most unexpected ways.

For example, while exploring their community, a group of young learners came to their advisor with a keen observation. The trail featured many plaques celebrating historical figures and their contributions to the area. But, they were all older, white men. The young learners, who did not see themselves or their culture in Melbourne’s history, wanted to know what contributions people of color and women made toward the growth and development of the city.

In this moment, they were calling for a personalized, relevant, and contextualized experience and exercising their learner agency by owning their learning journey, rather than being passive participants.

This marked the beginning of a long-term project that, thanks to Verdi EcoSchool’s competency-based framework, was seen as an entirely relevant learning opportunity. It fit perfectly inside their place- and nature-based learning philosophy.

Along the way, these young learners were fully immersed within a socially embedded context where peers, advisors, and community members were all seen as learning partners. The knowledge, skills, and dispositions these young learners cultivated during their preliminary research on Melbourne’s history was just the tip of the iceberg for where they wanted to take things next. Once they discovered the story of Zora Neale Hurston—a prominent Black female literary figure—they wanted to figure out how the community could honor her legacy.

Today, because of these brave young people, a city council vote is pending to install a permanent plaque commemorating Ms. Hurston.

A dynamic and powerful story of learning, this is but one example of the learning opportunities young people have at Verdi EcoSchool. With adults driven “to cultivate lifelong learners who view themselves as resources to and for the continued vitality of their community,” learning is relevant to who young people are as unique human beings. They are empowered to pursue original and boundless learning pathways with the support of their immediate and school family, community partners, peers, and whoever else wants to contribute along the way.