Governance
We make important choices when we decide the kind of school for which we will prepare teachers. If, through the values we display, the processes in which we engage, and the places in which the preparation occurs, we prepare teachers only for schools in which teachers have little say over programs that are course-, textbook-, and classroom-bound, we can presume that they will fit comfortably into those schools, and perhaps only those schools. We can expect our teacher candidates to be fairly satisfied and unquestioning of the schools we now have. And we can presume that, should they eventually be moved to alter that environment, it will not have been of our doing. We believe that we will achieve the schools to which we aspire much more quickly if the young teachers who enter the profession have experienced and come to value community, democracy, individual empowerment, flexibility, diversity, and learning that is connected to real life.
One of many ways in which CoT attempts to practice what it preaches is its democratic governance process. Any CoT member can propose a change in the program's rules of operation. CoTers have developed a process for considering these proposals and subsequently voting on them. Every member of the community has a vote in determining how the program will evolve to meet new challenges. Sixty percent of the community must approve a proposed change for it to become a new rule of operation for the program.
A special case of the governance process is Words to Live By, a document that functions as CoT's covenant. Every new member of the community is asked to comply with its contents. Because of that condition, WTLB is a document for which we demand a consensus. Periodically, the document is reconsidered by the entire community and every CoTer must agree with the inclusion of every statement in it, or the statement must be removed from the document.
CoT Testimonials:
"Our program in itself is a clear example of making education, rather than receiving it.... I believe that teacher education must begin like this in order to pass along these same fundamentals to students."