What is The Hive?

Dominican Republic Part 2

The Hive School is daring to do things differently in education…

I am here to provide behaviour training for staff and to learn more about the self-directed learning process in practice.

What is the Hive School?

Safety, Value, Purpose.

A self-directed school in Cabrera, Dominican Republic.

The Hive is at least bi-lingual (English and Spanish), many languages are spoken every day, depending on the mixture of teachers and pupils who arrive for a particular session.

“This is not the traditional way of doing education. Traditional education is a ladder – children travel up the ladder with all of the others – it is restrictive for individuals and yet effective on the whole.”

On the first day of school we had INSET for the staff and a meet and greet for parents and carers, in which Principal Kate McAllister explained what The Hive Model is:

“It’s a a honeycomb, a patchwork – during your time here (one session is 6 weeks, families can sign up for as many or as little as they choose), you work on one piece of the patchwork. One at a time we concentrate on our piece – then we stitch it together.”

Unlike a British focused education that assumes (pretends?) that learning is linear and in-complete-correlation-to age, The Hive Model knows this not to be true, and so follows the more realistic approach of how life happens – we learn something in a place and a time, it may or may not relate directly to what we learnt before, it may be useful now, it may become useful as our life continues – whichever way, as we move forwards, this experience (positive, negative, neutral) will continue to inform who we are in the world, how we relate to others and our actions.

Principal of The Hive, Kate McAllister explaining the school’s philosophy in the Parent & Carer’s Meet & Greet

The timetable is based on 6 week sessions that follow the same pattern each time;

Week 1 : Getting to know each other, setting values for working together. Learning about one of 17 Sustainability Development Goals of the session.

Week 2: Begin working on project based on the SDG.

Weeks 3- 5: Pupils work on their self-directed project.

Week 5: Present/share project – depending on its medium; performance/powerpoint/installation/event etc.

Week 6: Reintegration and reflection

Circle Time – at the start of each day, pupils participate in a self-regulation activity to get them ready to learn, and repeat a similar activity at the end of the day for reflection of what they have learnt.

There are frameworks in place that shape how staff and pupils direct themselves and help others with learning.

For example, this simple reflective series of questions guides The Hive on what gets to be done next, spot problems and find solutions:

A mural in the main gathering space at The Hive outlining simple questions all staff and pupils can use to help them with their learning and community.

Kate, an expert on self-regulation for learning, explains why how you feel is such an integral place to start:

“How do you feel? – it affects how you behave.

How do you behave? – it affects how you interact.

How do you interact? – is affects what you do in the world.

What do you do in the world? – affects your wider community and our planet.”

The Hive School, May 2022

“Why does education have to hurt?”

The Hive School has developed out of the work Kate does with Darren Abrahams and the community within the Human Hive Global – within this space, alongside many other things, they have asked and investigated answers to the question: Why does education have to hurt?

This struck me because – yes, it does so often in the UK – for staff, for pupils, for parents and carers….

…and of course, if we agree it doesn’t have to or shouldn’t, what does that look like? How do you build that into a school? – these are the many questions and answers that arrive from The Hive School.

Kate finished her introduction with part of her own values for the school –

“Everything the children do should leave a legacy to help someone else learn.”

Not a bad learning objective for a Friday afternoon double period, curriculum, school or way of being…