Two Charter Schools

Come fall of this year, two new Albuquerque area charter schools will begin involvement with the international baccalaureate "instructional environment," as one calls it. The schools are the Corrales International School, the "environment" one, and the Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School. Both advertised for an executive director in the March 23 Albuquerque Journal. The Web sites are www.cottonwoodclassical.org and www.corralesinternationalschool.org.

Corrales will be in, surprise, Corrales, at 7227 Corrales Road. For now, Cottonwood is located at 1776 Montano Road NW, Bldg 3, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, 87107. Cottonwood describes the location as on the Unser Museum campus, "just east of the river."

Cottonwood will use the Paideia method as the framework for its instructional program, which will set the hearts of liberal arts fanatics pounding with joy and amazement. The program will be 15 -20% Socratic seminar, "a formal discussion based on a text in which the leader asks open-ended questions." Didactic teaching will get another 10 -15%. Didactic teaching sounds a bit like learning spelling lists and doing math homework to drill on methods. What Cottonwood calls the "coached project" will get the rest of the student time.

The international baccalaureate is the diploma awarded by the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West in Las Vegas, NM.