UPGRADED LIVING MAGAZINE MAY 2020 – WRITTEN BY KEVIN DOLAN: “Education came into a bright spotlight in the mid-nineties. The thrust rallied around a simple battle cry—schools should not be an assembly line where we send students through their day and hang information on each of them. In 1999, Alfie Kohn published a book titled, The School Our Children Deserve. Not surprisingly, the book challenges “the way the ‘back to basics’ philosophy of teaching treats children as passive receptacles into which forgettable facts are poured.” Ten years later, an inspired group of teachers on the Pleasant Valley and Chico High campus designed and implemented a public charter school with the expressed interest of answering this call to action to give children the school they deserve. The public charter, Inspire School of Arts and Sciences, opened in the 2010–2011 school year. The challenges were huge and the enthusiasm high enough to fend off the resistance surrounding it. In that first year, the paradox became firmly in place that these students were definitely getting the education they deserve. The irony is now they are asking for help to get the matching campus in order to have “the school these children deserve.” READ MORE