User:Aramintamd/Lew Marks

Lew Marks (1932 - ) Co-Founder of School Without Walls in Rochester, New York. http://www.schoolwithoutwalls.org

Before co-founding Rochester’s School Without Walls, Lew Marks taught English for 14 years. His first teaching position was in a junior high and a vocational high school in Brooklyn, NY. After 1962, in a suburban academic high and then Monroe High School in Rochester, NY. There, at the height of the 1968 riots, although most faculty argued for means to control the students, Lew and a handful of like-minded teachers, students and parents came to believe that the educational organization and content might themselves be provoking this behavior. They met weekly for more than a year, hammering out philosophy, organization and instructional modes that would free students and staff from the lockstep of the conventional school.

Lew became spokesman for the group and wrote the proposal detailing the School Without Walls. This proposal was presented to the Superintendent of Schools in January of 1971 and was approved by the Board of Education. The school opened in September 1971 as a public school with Lew as its first Principal. He remained with the school until his retirement in 1987.