Geoff Mulgan: "A short intro to the Studio School"

 
Director of the Young Foundation (@the_young_fdn) and UK government employee, Geoff Mulgan (@geoffmulgan) delivers a TED Talk on a powerful re-imagining of education:  Studio Schools.  Designed to "address the growing gap between the skills and knowledge that young people require to succeed, and those that the current education system provides," Studio Schools prepare young adults for the global economy and encourage them to take inquiry- and project-based learning to the next level (quoted content taken from the Studio Schools website).  Mulgan shares more details on these institutions below:

First of all, we wanted small schools -- about 300, 400 pupils -- 14- to 19-year-olds, and critically, about 80 percent of the curriculum done not through sitting in classrooms, but through real-life, practical projects, working on commission to businesses, NGO's and others. That every pupil would have a coach, as well as teachers, who would have timetables much more like a work environment in a business. And all of this will be done within the public system, funded by public money, but independently run. And all at no extra cost, no selection, and allowing the pupils the route into university, even if many of them would want to become entrepreneurs and have manual jobs as well. Underlying it was some very simple ideas that large numbers of teenagers learn best by doing things, they learn best in teams and they learn best by doing things for real -- all the opposite of what mainstream schooling actually does.

What do you think of the idea of Studio Schools? Do you think that they are needed? (Research exists to justify them.) Please post in the comments section below.

Description of image:  A mock-up of a Studio School.  Photo located at www.studioschooltrust.org.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the image above.

"This Is Genius," by Ryan Lotocki

What follows is a spoken word poem by student Ryan Lotocki (filmed by: Nick Stroczkowski and Kurt Schlewitt).  Rather than provide an introduction for this video, we will remain silent and allow it to speak for itself.

What did you think? Please post in the comments section.  * If you would like to consult a transcript, please see below: *

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School Sucks. Now don’t get me wrong I believe everyone should have a general education. But when I know how to solve quadratic equations with imaginary roots graphically and am not sure how that applies to life… Or better yet, learned Cleopatra slept around, but never heard the history of my own city- you've failed. Now I’m not trying to sound cruel, but we live in a generation that would much rather smoke a joint then show up to school and to be honest, I’m tired of placing all the blame on them. I mean are we just pawns in a chess game waiting to accept their fate? Could the whole point of High School simply be just to graduate? You tell us to follow our dreams but have a plan B and don’t you see? The more you try to protect the children in this way, the more you reject the gifts they are trying to portray. See, school is a project in which students never get the chance to project their abilities. Having to follow a curriculum and take required classes, while stereo-typically the kid with high grades and glasses will make it into college and is more intelligent. Well, how about the student whose “Ingenious”, “In ordinary”, “Innovative”, “Intellectual”, “Incalculable”, “Inquisitive”, and has good intentions to change the world with his passion. I believe educating him would be something along the lines of ineluctable.

Take a musician for example: See to him, a score on a math exam will never mean as much as the score in front of him. Why waste his time trying to count and measure when he can already count each measure with just the tap of his foot- See this is genius; watch as the bow grazes against the instrument and his fingers pluck and pull at each string appropriately that creates a sound that just makes his body sway. But if he is controlled by a bell that just rings I guess you could say the school’s pulling his strings.

Or how about the cook with only a seventh grade reading level. If his ingredient list is not written in MLA format I think he’ll do just fine. Does his grammar matter when where you choose to dine is on the line and I’m not talking about margin. But when it comes to margarine and butter he actually knows the difference. He couldn't care less about the sophisticated words coming out of his mouth and more about the food going into yours- See this is genius. And if that doesn't fill the Hunger Games appetite you couldn't even think the Grapes of Wrath might.

Some Brilliance is as simplistic as hitting a ball. It doesn't matter if her science grade is an atrocity because I've never seen anyone spike a ball with so much strength, precision, and velocity, and the only elements she need know are those of speed and surprise, but to her parents’ eyes sports are just a waste of time- See this is genius. Practicing for so long she has little time to study for chemistry the only question remaining is, why can’t you be more like your sister Emily? What’s the matter? Kind of ironic though because like life, when it comes to school versus education every things the matter.

Putting children on an assembly line that has checkpoints. Where there only goal is to get us from point A to point Z but if we only get to F then we've failed. Plus our values and gifts are locked up and jailed. And why do we take tests? To tell us we’re wrong? It’s a number, not my wife. There is so much more to life than a grade in a book and what even of the SAT I just took. Because we all receive a number or a grade if you will, but our answers are locked up in vaults. Was the point to learn, or the thrill? And Common Core won’t solve anything so take a chill pill. We are not here to memorize facts but figure our future; and if the future holds taking a test to see who’s the best I want no part in that, there’s a fact. Now while I’m speaking to adults, I’m relating to the youth. I’m not pointing out your faults, but showing you the truth. Stop labeling us by standards and put us all on an even playing field. But let us choose our positions based on our passions, values, and where we can be proactive. Make schooling less multiple choice and more... Interactive. Because maybe your exponential at math, but that’s not how he functions because we all don’t have the same mechanics. Or possibly, you rock at science but in her opinion she’d rather not fill her head with space.

We are all sculpted in a different way. All made with different values, ideas, and clay; and if during my day, the only offered opportunity is continuity I could never get the chance to say: I am genius.

Brandon Busteed: "What can schools do?"

 
Speaker, author, social entrepreneur, and executive director of Gallup Education (@GallupEducation), Brandon Busteed (@brandonbusteed) possesses vision.  He has set his eyes on creating "a national movement to measure the educational outcomes that matter most, connect education to jobs and job creation, and to promote a paradigm shift from knowledge mastery to emotional engagement in education" (for the source of this passage, click here).  This is no short order, especially concerning the resistance so often seen by educators in the classroom as well as the turbulent "emotions" surrounding Common Core.  So where does a concerned student, parent, or educator start?

Busteed begins to answer this question in the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) (@NAISNetwork) video above.  Although he offers several cogent points, one in particular proves particularly striking:

There's a lot of things that schools can do. There's a lot of things that adults in any kind of mentoring or coaching role can do.  I mean, one is we need to change what we value. ... If we really care about people being engaged in what they're doing and thriving in their well-being, we would refocus our priorities on things like spending more time allowing students to explore what they're good at.

What do you think of Busteed's talk? Please post in the comments section below.

Ramsey Musallam: "3 rules to spark learning"

 
As we enter the spring, the last months of the academic year hang blissful and ominous before us.  Will we have the energy to endure? Will our students succumb to senioritis?

Fortunately, an answer has come from our personal learning network in the form of Ramsey Musallam (@ramusallam).  Chemistry teacher at Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep in San Francisco, CA, Ed.D. recipient, and manager of the Cycles of Learning blog, Musallam has had time to consider this question across fifteen years of teaching.  In a TED Talk delivered in 2013, Musallam critiques contemporary trends in education and argues that teachers must assign themselves a very specific purpose:  cultivators of curiosity.

You know, questions and curiosity like Maddie's are magnets that draw us towards our teachers, and they transcend all technology or buzzwords in education. But if we place these technologies before student inquiry, we can be robbing ourselves of our greatest tool as teachers: our students' questions. For example, flipping a boring lecture from the classroom to the screen of a mobile device might save instructional time, but if it is the focus of our students' experience, it's the same dehumanizing chatter just wrapped up in fancy clothing. But if instead we have the guts to confuse our students, perplex them, and evoke real questions, through those questions, we as teachers have information that we can use to tailor robust and informed methods of blended instruction.

What did you think of Musallam's presentation? Please post in the comments section below.

Nikhil Goyal: "Why Kids Hate School?" @ TEDxBFS (2012)

At the age of 19, activist and author Nikhil Goyal (@nikhilgoya_l) has accomplished no small amount.  An activist and champion of self-directed learning, Goyal has spoken at Google (@google), MIT (@MIT), Yale (@Yale), Stanford (@Stanford), and the University of Cambridge (@Cambridge_Uni).  He has appeared on various news stations, has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and has even authored the book One Size Does Not Fit All:  A Student's Assessment of School.  In this #TED Talk delivered at the Brooklyn Free School (#TEDxBFS) in 2012, Goyal begins by speaking about the shortcomings of school.  Although he is perhaps too strident and jumps from topic to topic using quotes, he does offer an organic vision of education that considers not only educators, administrators, and parents but also students themselves as its policymakers.

'Education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.'  Let me say that one more time.  'Education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.'  ... Because we have to get over this notion of education prep and move to life prep.  We have to create an educational society where learning is democratized and where kids are natural learners.  Where we're tinkering with the world.  Where they're changing things, they're pushing the human race forward.
...
Around the world today we're watching millions of young people that are under the age of twenty-five collectively protest for self-expression, transparency, and the sweet taste of freedom.  What we're doing to them is we're not giving them a voice.  We're not letting them speak out.  We're putting them on the sidelines.  What I like to say about public education is that we have 'the kids table' and we have 'the adults table.'  At the adults table, that's where all the decisions are made.  It's like Thanksgiving; we're separated.  And really, that's how it is.  We need to have one table where we have kids and adults.  What we offer, most importantly, kids, is a fresh perspective.

Thoughts? Please post in the comments section below.

Ned: Repurposing a Truck

After months of patient waiting and research, Ned finally located and purchased a suitable truck.  He has recently begun to apply his knowledge of automotive studies by repurposing the vehicle.  Here are the specs on the truck, affirmed by Ned himself:

The truck is a 1983 C10 Chevy Scottsdale Stepside with 5.0 L V8 engine (brown).  It was used as a scrap truck for a garage in South Norwalk, CT.  The vehicle "runs like a Swiss watch"; there are no significant problems affecting it, the frame is perfect, and everything - on the whole - is solid.

Toward what end is Ned repurposing this truck? He reports that he will restore it halfway and then customize it with a - 2.5 in. drop on the front and a - 4.0 in. drop on the back.  He also plans to increase the horsepower from 305 to 440.  He wishes to replace the rims with a straight black or gun metal set, and he will apply a new color (once he weeds through the myriad of choices that await him).  Overall, he states, he wants to transform the vehicle into a genuine muscle truck.

Ned conducts this work every school day.  After checking in with the IP team, he works throughout the morning with the Maintenance Crew to refurbish the bed, run stress and exhaust tests, etc.  When he is not actively working on the truck, Ned pours over automotive catalogs in search of parts and otherwise continues to explore automotive studies (by reading Stephen King's Christine, for instance).

               

What do you think? Do you have a recommendation for Ned or a question that you would like to ask? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of images:  All photos taken by Ned on site with the Maintenance Crew.

John Seely Brown: "Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production" (2008)

In his A New Culture of Learning:  Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, researcher John Seely Brown (@jseelybrown) explores imagination, play, and innovation as they can influence current education paradigms.  In a brief video talk, he breaks down some of his theories:

What could we do better in schools today? ... We have to kind of find a way to get today's kids to embrace change.  We have to get them to want to constantly learn new types of things.  And the catch, to me, is somehow we have to find a way to get kids to play with knowledge.  To play with finding information.  To play with creating knowledge.  Not always believing that it's already known, but basically being willing to believe that maybe they should be able to create knowledge on the fly by experimenting with things.

And...

So I think we can construct new kinds of learning environments.  Not only are we learning with and from each other, not only are we teaching each other as well, but we're actually understanding that authority - to some extent - lies in whether or not this thing I've just built is as good as I think it could be ....

What suggestions do you have for students and teachers who wish to implement more "tinkering" and "playful" scenarios in the classroom and in life? Please post in the comments below.  For Maria Popova's (@brainpicker) article on A New Culture of Learning available on Brain Pickings (@brainpickings), please click here.

Description of image:  A child "tinkering" away.  Photo located at graphics8.nytimes.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above picture.

Cameron Herold: "Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs" @ TEDxEdmonton

Speaker, author of Double, Double:  How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less, and an influential source in increasing the revenue of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? from $2 million to $106 million in just six years, Cameron Herold (@CameronHerold) is - first and foremost - an #entrepreneur.  Four years ago, he delivered a TED Talk (@TEDTalks) at TEDxEdmonton (@TEDxEdmonton) during which he called upon parents and teachers to alter their rearing and educational practices in one fundamental way:  by instilling entrepreneurial skills in ALL children.  Herold, after all, "has been a entrepreneurial innovator since launching his first company at the age of 21" (passage taken from Herold's bio); he began acquiring business strategies at a very young age, so he understands the importance of nurture AND nature in developing an entrepreneurial mindset.

Herold goes on to frame a sort of psychological and educational profile of entrepreneurs.  Does this sound familiar...?

I just came back from speaking in Barcelona at the YPO global conference, and everyone that I met over there who's an entrepreneur struggled with school. I have 18 out of the 19 signs of attention deficit disorder diagnosed. ... Attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder. Do you know that bipolar disorder is nicknamed the CEO disease? Ted Turner (@TedTurnerIII)'s got it. Steve Jobs has it. All three of the founders of Netscape had it. I could go on and on. Kids -- you can see these signs in kids. And what we're doing is we're giving them Ritalin and saying, 'Don't be an entrepreneurial type. Fit into this other system and try to become a student.' Sorry, entrepreneurs aren't students. We fast-track. We figure out the game.

Are our dyslexic students/​children predisposed to greater entrepreneurial prowess? Do you have a strategy, lesson plan, etc. to help our kids practice innovation in life and in the classroom? Please write in the comments section below.

Description of image:  Herold delivering his "Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs" @ TEDxEdmonton.  Picture located at static.squarespace.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above photo.

Sir Ken Robinson: "How to escape education's death valley" @ TED Talks Education (2013)

More words from  English author, speaker and international advisor on education Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson):

Not far from where I live is a place called Death Valley. Death Valley is the hottest, driest place in America, and nothing grows there. Nothing grows there because it doesn't rain. Hence, Death Valley. In the winter of 2004, it rained in Death Valley. Seven inches of rain fell over a very short period. And in the spring of 2005, there was a phenomenon. The whole floor of Death Valley was carpeted in flowers for a while. What it proved is this: that Death Valley isn't dead. It's dormant. Right beneath the surface are these seeds of possibility waiting for the right conditions to come about, and with organic systems, if the conditions are right, life is inevitable. It happens all the time. You take an area, a school, a district, you change the conditions, give people a different sense of possibility, a different set of expectations, a broader range of opportunities, you cherish and value the relationships between teachers and learners, you offer people the discretion to be creative and to innovate in what they do, and schools that were once bereft spring to life.

For a post discussing Robinson's "RSA Animate:  Changing Education Paradigms," please click here.

For a post discussing Robinson's "How schools kill creativity," please click here. 

For a post discussing Robinson's "Bring on the learning revolution!," please click here.

Sir Ken Robinson: "Bring on the learning revolution!" @ TED2010

Four or five years ago, English author, speaker and international advisor on education Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson) delivered a TED Talk in which he criticized the linear, factory model of education.  In such a system, Robinson explained, educators/​schools employ static curricula to lead students to a pre-determined "output" or skills base.  He went onto to assert that the world needs a supportive, agricultural framework of education that supports children as they organically formulate answers to their own questions using a personalized curriculum.

We have moved closer to Robinson's conception over the past five years.  BUT...have we enacted the revolution that he demands?

But, you see, there are things we're enthralled to in education. Let me give you a couple of examples. One of them is the idea of linearity: that it starts here and you go through a track and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life. Everybody who's spoken at TED has told us implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, a different story: that life is not linear; it's organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us. But, you know, we have become obsessed with this linear narrative. And probably the pinnacle for education is getting you to college. I think we are obsessed with getting people to college. Certain sorts of college. I don't mean you shouldn't go to college, but not everybody needs to go and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.

...

There's been a lot of talk about dreams over the course of this few days. And I wanted to just very quickly ... I was very struck by Natalie Merchant's songs last night, recovering old poems. I wanted to read you a quick, very short poem from W. B. Yeats, who some of you may know. He wrote this to his love, Maud Gonne, and he was bewailing the fact that he couldn't really give her what he thought she wanted from him. And he says, 'I've got something else, but it may not be for you.' He says this: 'Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.' And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly.

For a post discussing Robinson's "RSA Animate:  Changing Education Paradigms," please click here.

For a post discussing Robinson's "How schools kill creativity," please click here. 

For a post discussing Robinson's "How to escape education's death valley," please click here.

Peter Gray: "The decline of play" at TEDxNavesink

In following TEDx Talk, author, American psychologist, and research professor of psychology at Boston College (@BostonCollege) Dr. Peter Gray discusses play as well as our children's and students' access to it.  He suggests that, since the 1950s, there has been "a dramatic decline in children's freedom to play with other children" without the presence of adult supervision (passages taken from the YouTube (@YouTube) description offered by TEDx Talks).  He also notes a "dramatic increase in anxiety, depression, feelings of helplessness, suicide, and narcissism in children and adolescents" and hypothesizes that this trend is directly influenced by the decline of play.  Ultimately, he argues that "free play is essential for children's healthy social and emotional development."

The particularly chilling aspect of this talk is that Dr. Gray's message was delivered only six months ago.  Occasionally we are able to construct for ourselves a kind of barrier in which we are able to rationalize danger simply by measuring the passage of time.  For example, a person might be able to defuse the call-to-arms offered by a video concerned with antibiotic resistant strains of diseases merely because the video was released several years earlier.  Even if no measurable and substantial progress has been made, time in itself gives the viewer the illusion that things have improved.  But this video, so pivotal to the emotional states of our children and students as they learn in school right now, allows us no such buffer.  The question remains, then:  what can we do to change this? What plans can we immediately initiate to alleviate this problem and bring more unstructured free time back into the lives of young people?

Sir Ken Robinson: "How schools kill creativity" at TED 2006

Eight or nine years ago, English author, speaker and international advisor on education Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson) delivered a #TED talk in which he called upon schools - especially U.S. institutions - to begin to divest themselves of those practices that limit creativity.  Instead, he urged, schools must begin to deliberately nurture the development of students' imaginative capacity.

What follows is a blurb from Robinson's talk as well as a link to the full speech.  Thank you, Trey, for locating this video and bringing it to the attention of the IP faculty:

Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason. The whole system was invented -- around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an artist. Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. More people, and it's the combination of all the things we've talked about -- technology and its transformation effect on work, and demography and the huge explosion in population. Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

For a post discussing Robinson's "RSA Animate:  Changing Education Paradigms," please click here.

For a post discussing Robinson's "Bring on the learning revolution!," please click here. 

For a post discussing Robinson's "How to escape education's death valley," please click here.

"STOP STEALING DREAMS," by Seth Godin at TEDxYouth@BFS

Direct Marketing Hall of Fame inductee, author of 18 books, and creator of Yoyodyne and Squidoo (now known as HubPages), Seth Godin is a comprehensive thinker.  He speaks towards "post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything" in a blog (@ThisIsSethsBlog) that has become one of the most popular sites of its kind throughout the world (quoted content found on Godin's bio).  

In the following #TED Talk delivered at the Brooklyn Free School (#TEDxBFS) in 2012, Godin speaks toward what education is currently and how it needs to change.

It's up to each of us to make a difference.

For a post discussing Godin's "Reckless abandon (is neither)" blog post, please click here. 

"Why Daydreaming is Critical to Effective Learning," by Katrina Schwartz

Katrina Schwartz (@Kschwart) offers fascinating thoughts concerning how children best learn.  One of her more memorable passages is the following:

'Children shouldn’t be overly scheduled,' Levitin said. 'They should have blocks of time to promote spontaneity and creativity.' Without that time, kids don’t have the mental space to let new ideas and ways of doing things arise. Daydreaming and playing are crucial to develop the kind of creativity many say should be a focal point of a modern education system.

For the rest of the article, please click on the following link:  http:/​/​blogs.kqed.org/​mindshift/​2014/​10/​why-daydreaming-is-critical-to-effective-learning/​

Sudbury Valley School

Sudbury Valley School (@SVS_School), a democratic learning environment located in Framingham, MA, places great value upon student initiative.  Pupils not only decide what and how they learn material, for they also organize their own schedules and participate in the administration of the school.

In the following 2009 documentary, staff member Daniel Greenberg expresses some concern about limited personalization in schools.  He argues that a whiff of independence merely "seduces you into thinking that [that] little bit of freedom, when you're really being manipulated, is the real thing.  And that opens you up to being manipulated your whole life."  I believe that Greenberg would be impressed were he to note the extent to which IP values academic freedom and personal responsibility.

"I don't see any reason to treat children different from other people.  My experience is that they are human beings just like everybody else.  And to view a child - certainly after they become articulate, when they can make some judgment (which is usually about four or five) - to view a child as any less competent to make decisions for themselves than adults...that's ridiculous." - from Daniel Greenberg, Staff Member

A Kindred Pedagogy

Fairhaven School - a democratic school located in a suburb of Washington, D.C. - strives for a similar balance between freedom and responsibility that Kildonan's IP program values.

http:/​/​blogs.kqed.org/​mindshift/​2014/​10/​students-lead-the-learning-experience-at-democratic-schools/​?utm_source=​facebook.com&​utm_medium=​social&​utm_campaign=​npr&​utm_term=​nprnews&​utm_content=​2035

If students designed their own schools...

Thoughts on a Tuesday evening:  stop "teaching" &​ start "listening."

The Power of Student Voice

At the end of IP Week, the students each presented their findings in two distinct ways: a Keynote in front of their home group and a visual exhibit for the entire school.  Overall, they experienced a lot of success; walking among the various projects, I was impressed by the multitude of topics and displays.  Most of the students seemed genuinely excited to show me what they had researched.

Perhaps the most important step of the entire process came when we asked the students to reflect on the experience of working independently.  After all, the goal of IP week was not a digression from traditional classes, but rather an opportunity for students and faculty to investigate how we, as a community, learn best.  The questions we posed forced the students to analyze, critique, and reflect upon the week in its entirety.  I truly believe that no piece of this process has been more enlightening than reading what the students had to say.

Delphine wrote:

The one thing that surprised me the most was the excitement I had for school... and the commitment I had.  I never once got bored and I got more work done then I have ever had before. Some people might say I seemed like a crazy person by the way I was running around. But that constant movement that I had made me the happiest I ever had been at school. My mind was racing with ideas and questions that I had to answer on my own and that's what surprised me the most.  

Other students talked about their increased levels of engagement and their excitement over their topics, like Dillon who said, “I didn’t know I could love school this much. Everyday I woke up I didn’t think I was going to school. I didn’t know I could love one certain thing this much.”

Not all the students had an easy time, however.  Some really struggled with the freedom and independence IP week offered.  Nevertheless, their reflections demonstrated an ability to recognize their learning needs.  Patrick wrote, “It was way overwhelming to me. I like the structure of a classroom and the guidance of a teacher's direction.”  In a school where teaching self-advocacy is a legitimate concern, our students’ ability to know their preferences and limitations when it comes to learning is of the highest importance.  In that way, experiencing failure is as beneficial as experiencing success.  For instance, Nicole reflected on how crucial her physical workspace was to her finished product, saying, “My favorite part of IP week was being able to stay in the art barn, an environment in which I work well.”  Tess wrote:

Two things I learned about myself during the duration of IP week are, one, that I can surprise myself. I like getting directions and following them; I wasn't sure how I was going to do when I had the opportunity to go about this as I please. I learned that I did okay. I also learned something about other people. I did not know that some people were interested in the same things that I was until I saw their project. This made me see them in a new light which I enjoyed.

But hearing what students got out of the week was not the only benefit of reading their reflections.  They all had worthwhile and inventive suggestions for improving a number of aspects of the project, from the schedule to the presentation requirements.  Filipa suggested changing “what we need to hand in at the end to a paper.   The student would have to write out their question and answer it and it would be optional to do a power point.”  August suggested having the week twice in a semester, “Instead of just having one week for the semester, you would have two separate IP weeks to become engulfed in a question.”  Nate suggested restructuring the schedule to allow for better focus, “My least favorite part about the IP week was how we had to split up the classes, like when I had IP the first period then right after I had math study hall... pretty much when you’re in the middle of your work and it gets cut off by another class.”

The feedback offered by our students will be pivotal in structuring another IP week in the spring and the full program next year.  After writing so much about what and how the students were learning, it feels great to be part of such a rigorous learning process myself.