Open Education is founded on the work of John Dewey and Jean Piaget. Their work supports the belief that children have a fundamental desire to learn, that learning is constructed from experience, and that children have the capacity to conduct their own inquiries.
Open education recognizes that children learn by asking questions, investigating answers, and revising hypotheses in a continuous process of building understanding. Activities are structured to provide hands-on experiences that allow children to construct knowledge, individually and in small groups, at their own rate of learning. By learning to make decisions about how to work productively and to set goals for that work, students are both cognitively and emotionally engaged in their learning.
Fremont Open Plan (FOP) is a K-6 parent-participation alternative education program within the Modesto City School District.
FOP operates as a separate program in nine classrooms at John C. Fremont elementary school. The classroom environments at Open Plan are multi-age settings that encourage cooperative learning and social responsibility.
Modesto City Schools’ Open Plan Program started in the Fall of 1976 with four teachers and 99 students at Fremont School. This alternative program was established as a school within a school for any family within the district who wanted their children to attend. The program was and is maintained under the same funding resources, academic standards, conduct code and legal criteria as other schools in the district.
Today, Fremont Open Plan maintains approximately 200 enrolled students and nine teachers. Fremont Open Plan and Fremont Neighborhood join in many student activities, such as Chorus, Orchestra, Band, Student Council, Traffic Patrol, Resource, Reading Buddies, and Speech. All of us at FOP strive to live and grow from our disappointments and accomplishments as a committed team of students, teachers, parents, administrators, and support staff in an effort to offer a quality educational experience to our community of families.