Harrisburg School District

If your district was the fastest growing district in your state, would you see it as an opportunity to transform or would you simply hold on for dear life and hope you can weather the storm? For Harrisburg School District in Sioux Falls, SD, they saw an opportunity.

Adding 350 kids per year and building a new school every two years, this upper midwest learning environment was fortunate enough to have a cohort of leaders who were willing to ask, “What if we did things differently?”

Harrisburg’s journey began six years ago with a high school principal who wanted to rethink how the school day is structured, making it more fluid. Admittedly, they put the cart before the horse, causing friction between the parents and the school board. This was a defining moment for Harrisburg’s transformational journey. Rather than shutting everything down and going back to “normal,” the school board decided to have parents and their children opt in to this new kind of learning.

That lesson in community enrollment allowed the district to begin a more robust learner-centered transformation journey three years later in 2016. This time around, they were going to work from the bottom-up, starting with a cohort of 94 learners and four educators at Freedom Elementary School. And, the cohort was opt-in from the start.

Knowing each family chose to participate in this transformational effort, Harrisburg had a unique opportunity to honor the guidelines passed down from the state, while at the same time creating new structures and practices to move from a school-centered system to a learner-centered one. During this exploration, they realized many of their traditional practices were simply that—tradition. There weren’t many laws on the books that dictated how they implemented learning.

At the top of their to-do list was creating an environment that promoted learner agency—allowing young learners to access completely new ways of thinking. A robust strategy using the 16 Habits of Mind followed. Harrisburg leaders believed as these habits develop over time, young learners can be released to explore their interests and passions more independently.

When people hear about elementary-aged learners becoming independent and accountable, working in a socially embedded environment where grade levels are non-existent, they question whether or not that’s actually possible. To put that question to rest, the district’s Innovative Programs Director, Travis Lape, has a story to share.

Lape received a phone call from a man whose daughter attended Freedom Elementary. While building a table from IKEA, the man grew frustrated by the confusing and inaccurate DIY instructions. He said some choice words during the ordeal, and then something amazing happened. His daughter, sensing her dad’s anger, said to him, “You need to persist and strive for accuracy to put this table together.” Those were her exact words. She took two of those 16 habits and quickly saw how they applied to an everyday situation.

As Harrisburg continues building out their learner-centered structures and introducing them to older cohorts of learners, they want to include open-walled learning through the implementation of internships. Ten hours a week, learners will be out in the community working with mentors in professions that relate directly to the young people’s personal interests and passions. Harrisburg School District is on an intentional and iterative journey that, thanks to continuous support from district and school-level leaders, has the potential to become a shining example in years to come.