1. The integrated curriculum is "Life in all of its manifestations." Community includes people, plants, animals, and all living things. The primary resources are the lives, experiences, relationships, questions, and concerns of the learners themselves.

2. An integrated learning community provides supportive, sensitive, valuing, responsive, accepting learning environments that enhance self-worth, creative intellectual endeavors, and responsible behavior. Ownership, responsibility, and accountability are assumed to be synonymous with membership in the community.

3. An integrated learning community is designed to reflect the interests and capabilities of the learner/students. The individual has as much power over her learning environment as she is capable of handling.

4. An integrated learning community is cooperative and synergistic. Everyone is both a learner and a resource for everyone else. Outcomes are designs to challenge the intuition, imagination, knowledge, and skills of the members, including the instructor.

5. An integrated learning community extends beyond the walls of the classroom.

6. Participants are involved intellectually and emotionally in the learning process.

7. Consistency and responsiveness characterize the learning community.

8. There is little or no fear and anxiety.

9. The learning community provides regular, consistent, and appropriate assessment through a variety of feedback loops.

10. A common purpose turns a random assortment of individual students, who happen to be assigned to the same classroom, into a genuine dependable learning community.

Robert Sweetland's Notes ©