After School MicroSociety®

What is it?

With MicroSociety®, school is society, a thriving, modern-day, mini-metropolis—complete with a government center, entrepreneurial hub, non-profit organizations, consumer marketplace, University and community gathering spaces—created and managed by students and facilitated by teachers and community mentors. It is the place where students are empowered to disrupt the status quo.  It is learning at the highest end of Bloom’s Taxonomy learning objectives – application, synthesis, analysis and creativity. Student responsibilities and activities occur in seven MicroSociety®® Strands, each intentionally designed to connect societal activity and real world endeavors to standards-correlated academic content while making school relevant to kids’ lives. Contrary to traditional academic disciplines which have no immediate application to daily life, the Strands – Technology, Economy, Academy, Citizenship and Government, Humanities and the Arts and HEART – are based on professions and create a practical relationship between knowledge and experience.

How does it work?

MicroSociety® incorporates all domains covered in the classroom during the instructional part of the day. The job of each MicroSociety® citizen is to continue to build content area knowledge and develop the soft and hard skills, processes, and habits of mind needed to thrive in every domain. During the first few weeks, students explore citizenship and the building blocks of community.  They write resumes and interview for jobs of their choice before receiving training at Micro University. Ultimately, students move from theory to application and for part of each Friday 3-hour session, they begin the process of creating and managing their own small town and business ventures. Together, students face real challenges that arise, experiment with different strategies for addressing them, and embrace failed attempts at risk taking until new solutions are discovered. In turn, these real world connections provide a meaningful rationale for classroom learning. As students innovate and devise novel approaches for governing and new economic development solutions to keep their economy thriving, they convince skeptics of their potential which in turn builds trust. Over the course of the school year, the society becomes progressively more sophisticated and students grow into aware and responsible global citizens, and dynamic collaborators and communicators.