Portfolio School

AT PORTFOLIO SCHOOL—A MICRO-SCHOOL IN NEW YORK CITY—grades, tests, and homework are relics of the past that have no place in today’s learning environments. Instead, as their name suggests, learners build portfolios of project-based work that are assessed based on peer, educator, and community feedback. The idea of “testing” is replaced with public exhibitions and professionally drafted publications. These young learners are building proof of learning through competency-based projects that ignore the traditional restrictions of one-hour schedule blocks, age cohorts, and seat time.

The leaders and learners at Portfolio School have a library of incredible stories they can share about their learning experience. Take, for instance, a fun project everyone participated in called Learning is Delicious. The overall objective was for each learner to build their own ice cream machine—but on their way there they unearthed learning and discoveries about temperature, states of matter, history of innovation, and the commercialization of ice. Through projects like these, learners develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to take complete agency in their learning. And, this all begins as early as the age of five.

Within every project exists a limitless opportunity to bring the knowledge, ideas, and history of the world into the learning experience. When a learner happens upon a problem, they are encouraged to ask questions and explore how to find the answer. These questions develop from personalized, relevant, and contextualized interests only the learner can wholeheartedly relate to. With each question, learners are able to use the socially embedded nature of their environment to ask any learner, educator, or parent (regardless of age or title) to assist them along their path of inquiry. This completely transforms not only the community dynamics of how learning connects between the school, home, and world, but it more specifically redefines the role of the educator.

Given the wide array of interests the learners express, the adults have to take on the role of learner just as much as the kids. At every turn, new research is being conducted to find out how the multi-faceted projects can all connect as one beautiful story of learning. Showcasing their authentic motivation to learn, educators act as role models for the kids to take on the same veracity in their learning. And, equally so, through the learners’ playful nature and eagerness to learn, they reaffirm why the educators have chosen to reimagine the idea of “teaching” altogether. At Portfolio School, the mission to transform education aspires to go beyond their small cohort of learners and reach every kid in New York City and beyond.