Welcome to Manhattan Free School

Learning

Manhattan Free School is a place for self-directed learners from ages 5 to 19. 

Students organize their education around their passions and interests, and in doing so learn faster and more deeply than in settings where students are forced to follow someone else's curriculum, sequence and pacing. 

If your child is an advanced learner in some domain, and you want to find a place designed for minimizing impediments and maximizing support for their learning and growth, you need to visit us!

Our Structure

In the 2012 school year, we're in the process of implementing the structures of an Agile Learning Center. This provides students with structure and support for the learning they choose to pursue. Students announce their intentions in the morning stand-up meeting, track their progress using Kanban boards, and work with a mentor/coach who supports their goals.

Just as business has been learning to adapt to our rapidly changing world, and is replacing old, slow and hierarchical approaches with dynamic, adaptive and responsive structures like Agile Management, Agile Learning Centers are upgrading education for 21st Century learners. Schools that can't keep pace with the rate the world is changing, certainly cannot prepare children for the world they'll be working in.

Our Governance

We recognize that learning to make decisions comes from actually making them, and the best way to learn to make things happen in the world, is to be an active part of making them happen. Students and staff create our structures, practices and rules in the School Meeting where we use leading edge collective intelligence practices to optimize the group behavior and outcomes.

Our School Board, called The Assembly, operates in this same spirit, including parents, students & staff in the strategy, planning and direction of the school.