Dalton start in Ukraine

Evgen Miroshnichenko from Kiev, Ukraine is a psychologist and teacher.
He works in the Open (alternative) education and he took the initiative
to start a Dalton Kindergarten in Kiev.
He wrote to me:
We plan to open a small preschool in September 2012. We want this to be the start to open a primary Dalton school. Now there is an active building of new school and we wait for decision about what kind of methodological content will be used in it. We really want it to be a Dalton technology.
To realize this, we want to organize a detailed familiarity with the existing schools. So I would like in March or April to make some educational journeys.
In the near future the intention is to actually visit the current Dalton School and carefully review the principles and techniques of training. It is desirable to immerse ourselves in the process, to get an experience. Advise, how to do this?

Of course I was very enthousiastic about this initiative, because in one of my seminars three years ago in Warszawa I've met a group of 12 teachers from Ukraine.
This can be the follow up.

My answer to Evgen:
Good to read all your activities and initiatives.
There are many possibilities to visit Dalton schools in several countries and of course the best one is the original: ‘The Dalton School’ in New York!
In Holland we stayed very close to the original model of “The Dalton Laboratory Plan”. It’s very simply summarized by Helen Parkhurst herself when she writes “Dalton is a way of living”. In Holland we have complete Dalton Schools in primary and secondary sphere.
During our participation in implementation processes in the centre of Europe, we discovered that the courage and possibilities to change the educational characteristics depends on the loyalty of school boards and the education inspectorate. Also the local tradition in education influences the processes.
But educational reform depends most of all on the potency of educational leadership of the head teachers. Some schools are using only Dalton elements and didn’t change the pedagogical structure and teaching strategy. In some schools some traditional teachers are blocking educational experiments of advanced teaching.
Many schools in Czech Republic have implemented Dalton elements.
The Dalton development in Austria, Germany and Poland is more consequent in staying close to the origin of whole school development.

I keep you informed here in my Daltonblog about this great inititive.
Delegation from Ukraine during an OMEP conference in Warszawa 2009