Annabel: Our Reflections on an "Edge Maker"

Annabel at work on her drawing.

The dust has now settled; we are into the second week.  Our learners have been abuzz in establishing their own learning spaces, cementing new friendships and collaborative networks, and acquiring necessary equipment and materials.   With richly diverse interests ranging across art and happiness, architecture, psychology, film trailer production, memory, recycling, Japanese, artificial intelligence (AI), horror, genetics and science fiction, nanoscience, international music/Maracatu, automotive engineering, criminal justice and baking, American military, and forensic science, our students will engage many learning opportunities over the coming year.  Having met with every one of them, the Edge Team could not feel more excited, more honored, to share the next months with our sixteen "Edge Makers."

Let us begin, then, by focusing on one of these.  Enter Annabel, a student who in some ways embodies the reason why Kildonan conceived the program in the first place.

During a recent interview, Annabel described her past experiences of learning in traditional classroom settings as "terrifying."  Classes themselves were not the problem, she said, and Kildonan's teachers and students in particular offered regular support.  No, avoiding a blanket statement, Annabel insisted that classes did not work for her specifically.  While in a classroom, she went on to explain, she felt as if she were sinking into her chair and not collecting information.  She wanted something different.  She wanted something that could help her learn.

Rewind one year and enter the Personal Project.  As the culmination of 10th grade (as well as the capping project of the MYP curriculum), Kildonan students engage in a yearlong pursuit of their choosing for about three hours per week.  Annabel launched an intensive examination into the tropes of Nickelodeon's Avatar:  The Last Airbender.  While enmeshed in studying the natural elements and the show's narrative influences, she concluded that this was the kind of learning environment in which she needed to stay.  Pushing this thought further, she concluded that Edge, if it were anything like the Personal Project, would constitute the majority of her studies in the coming year.

Annabel's drawing:  pen, ink, tape, paper
Drawing fragments moving toward a cohesive image.  In progress...

Fast-forward to the present.  Across all three meetings we have had with her last week, Annabel speaks passionately about the work that lies ahead for her.  Now selectively engaged in educational settings other than the classroom, she discloses that she feels safe to learn for the first time.  No longer in possession of the same guidance provided by teachers, she feels unfettered and ready to innovate.  With conviction in her voice, she articulates her desire to solve problems for herself.  She speaks about the present - the next two years - as a crucial period during which she will test and develop the skills to respond to life's problems independently.  Indeed, she has begun this necessary work already by creating a notebook system to help her organize her thoughts and her work, a learning space according to those conditions that will best support her explorations, and artwork that is perhaps reflective of her evolution as a thinker and young woman.  In all, she evinces intense motivation as well as the follow-through to act upon her interests; her curiosity proves vast, and she possesses the capacity to formulate complex, meaningful questions.

Though her year's work will ultimately be concerned with her proclaimed interests (utopias, dystopias, chaos, apocalypses, post-apocalypses, DNA, RNA, bases, and genetics), the real work - not unlike the "project" that each student will undertake, actually - will be herself.  Our role as the Edge Team, then, is to help her on this journey, to acknowledge her voice and create the conditions in which she will succeed (or "tilt the landscape," per Gever Tulley (@gever)).

Annabel is only one of our sixteen "Edge Makers."  Sixteen students with stories of their own, intellectual passions waiting to bear fruit, and dreams to enact.  What a rigorous, moving year it will be...

FINAL: Paige Explores Gamification

Paige demonstrated stellar tutoring instincts as she finished her phonics notebook.  She distilled her research into Orton-Gillingham by compiling  appropriate reading lists, and she looked to her own experience as a student to devise learning activities that visually exceeded the traditional emphasis on multi-sensory processing.  No less importantly, she did not lose sight of her intended  audience:  an elementary school student.  Early on she realized that she had to incorporate fun into her lessons:  "I started to think of the best way to make a student understand what I wanted to teach them. I wanted to make it fun because trying to teach a student - just sitting there, going over the rule - wouldn’t have been fun." She set off to bend her lessons towards a mock student's interests in order to build rapport and help solidify the lesson's content.

In order to reach these targets, Paige began to explore gamification.  According to The Engagement Alliance, this term refers to "the process of using game mechanics and game thinking in non-gaming contexts to engage users and to solve problems. Gamification leverages game design, loyalty program design and behavioral economics to create the optimal context for behavior change and successful outcomes."  If we break this definition down, gamification allows individuals to transform non-gaming scenarios using elements of games (e.g., points, tokens, virtual/​simulated reality, etc.).

As journalist and NYU (@nyuniversity) professor Adam Penenberg (@Penenberg) relates in a Forbes article, CEOs and companies have given this approach much attention in recent years so that they might improve employee competence and morale.  Indeed, as Penenberg relates, "Google (@google) engineers have been able to spend an in-house currency called 'Goobles' on server time—often a scarce resource at Google—or use it to bet on certain outcomes."  Microsoft (@Microsoft), too, "released a game, 'Ribbon Hero,' to teach users how to make better use of its Microsoft Office software."  In education, however, gamification is perhaps merely a new name for an old practice.  Teachers have long designed games in order to help students remember their timetables and alphabet, after all.  That said, their tools - and the applications for games - have changed with the advent of iPad classroom initiatves, MinecraftEdu (@MinecraftEdu), and video games more generally.

Paige began to design her Orton-Gillingham/phonics-based games with a healthy dose of design thinking.  She meditated upon their purpose and asked herself, "What should they accomplish?"  After concluding that the games would best serve her students in proving their understanding of a given language concept, she sequenced these recreations to the end of her chapters.  For the rest of the process, we invite you to consult Paige herself:

My first game [focused on] the rule of short and long vowels. At first I had no idea on what I was going to do. Then I thought I could make "Chutes and Ladders." After putting all the words [in], Mr. Bisson and I decided to play, but he wasn’t being himself. He was acting like a elementary tutoring student. He was all over the place. He was really excited and he wanted to get up and act some of the words out. This really showed me what my students might be like in class.

The next game I made focused on soft-c. This one was a little harder to try to come up with. I first thought I was going to do a tic-tac-toe game, but I couldn’t [figure out] how to make it work. Then I came up with just putting the words up and down, moving around the board that way, rolling 1-6, and having to do something based on the number you got (such as if you rolled a 4, you had to name different types [of the word]). I played with Mr. Bisson again, and this time was a lot different. He was a student that just didn’t want to do anything. He was against playing the game or even reading the words. So, I had to be very patient and not force him to play the game. I also just needed to give him time. He started to warm up a little, but he was still hard to work with. This showed me that I don’t need to always stay on the lesson plan I have. I can get off it because some days they might just be having a bad day and just can’t work.

Paige not only designed games but also tested them and grasped the value of remaining flexible as a teacher.  Having facilitated these learning experiences for herself - and as a high school student no less - she has laid the groundwork for an insightful career in education.  We are proud of Paige's progress and maturation this year, and we invite you to celebrate her work with us by posting in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  A graphic rendering of gamification.  Picture found at gravity4.com.  Kildonan and its Edge / IP program claim no ownership over the photo above.

Description of 2nd and 3rd images:  Screenshots of Paige's games, taken by Paige and shared with the Edge / IP staff.

"Are You Leading Change or Building a Platform for Change?," by Bruce Dixon

Please enjoy another Educating Modern Learners (EML) article below.

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Co-founder of EML and edtech consultant, Bruce Dixon (@bruceadixon) published an article on EML entitled "Are You Leading Change or Building a Platform for Change" (March 26, 2015).  Within the piece, he reconceptualizes educational environments.  He assures us that school leaders and administrators are not responsible for - and should not take on the task of - implementing educational change unilaterally.  Instead, he argues, a leader must "build a change platform—one that allows anyone to initiate change, recruit confederates, suggest solutions, and launch experiments."

This approach is radically egalitarian.  As Dixon explains, "the essence is that you are letting the team work outside of the normal hierarchy with a direct reporting line to senior leadership for the change effort."  To nurture this fledgling framework, faculty and administrators must be willing to challenge more than just traditional communication networks.  They must also be willing to question the physical environment in which their students learn, the curricula guiding student learning, and the assumptions about learning that we have held dear for over a century and a half.

Is your school ready?

For Dixon's article, please click here.  Please post in the comments section to share your views.

"Why Curriculum Constrains Learning," by Harold Jarche

We in IP believe strongly not only in championing the conditions that allow authentic student-driven learning but also in connecting with like-minded individuals and organizations.  One of these is Educating Modern Learners (EML), an educator's portal created by longtime educator and technological expert Will Richardson (@willrich45) and Bruce Dixon (@bruceadixon), respectively.  This site offers insights into the new learning contexts that teachers, administrators, parents, and students themselves must confront in the 21st century.

International consultant, speaker, and educational "subversive" Harold Jarche (@hjarche) published an article on EML entitled "Why Curriculum Constrains Learning" (April 2, 2015).  Within, he questions one of education's benchmarks.  He posits that "Curriculum is a type of confinement: a confinement of learning experiences. Defined content, isolated classrooms, and fragmented schedules of time, coupled with impersonal testing, are institutional bullying."  Though some may consider Jarche too strident, he encourages all of us - the IP community, Kildonan, parents, students, administrators, and others - to evaluate educational practice using the questions, "Do our students need to know anything? If so, what?" Once we begin to posit answers, we must consider various factors - organic learning environments, educational trajectories (their content, their presence), and others - in order to achieve the results we seek.

For Jarche's article, please click here.  Please post in the comments section to share your views.

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.

Sam Chaltain: "The Art (&​ Science) of Great Teaching" @ TEDxYouthBFS

 
Former educator, writer, and education activist, Sam Chaltain (@samchaltain) partners with schools and school districts "to help them create healthy, high-functioning learning environments" (passages taken from URL of Chaltain's talk).  In this #TED Talk delivered at the Brooklyn Free School (#TEDxBFS) in 2012, Chaltain highlights the recent changes to education and advocates the need for balance:  between teacher and student, art and science, and - most fundamentally - between understandings and applications of freedom.

...the biologists are telling us that life - whether it's an ecosystem or a public school system - is best organized by principles of ecology, not hierarchy.  The quantum physicists would tell us that change - whether it's a human being or a sub-atomic particle - is best understood by principles of relationship, not force.  And we should take heed that freedom - whether it's a teacher or a student - is best unleashed through simple, shared structures, not unbounded prairies.  This is the lesson that exists for all of us.  This is what the natural world reminds of us every day.  This is what Dewey was urging us to think about one hundred years ago.  And this is our road map forward:  art and science, individual freedom and group structure.

What did you think? Please post in the comments section below.

"The Radicalism of Conversation," by Jonathan Bisson

Let's begin on Friday, December 5th.  Ms. Charlap, myself, and Khaled (affectionately known as K.) had just settled down in the IP office to one of our formal meetings.  K. had just told us that he was researching children's literature a la J.R.R. Tolkien.  He had explained, like Tolkien, that there was no definable entity known as "children's literature."  All literature, he posited, possesses merit (even if certain stories, he went on to say, lack a certain sophistication that might relegate them to a sphere for children).  * To learn more about K.'s explorations in this area, please click here. *

All of a sudden, when I asked “why,” something erupted.  K. answered.  I, feeling dissatisfied, parried his argument.  He - looking positively ravenous - pulled up a chair, issuing forth a torrent of qualifications.  As we locked horns, I had the distinct impression of something irrevocable and fundamental shifting.  Fundamental to my expectations for the meeting, certainly, but to something else too.  Fundamental to education.  Fundamental to the behavioral expectations set forth in schools for decades.

Something died.  And we - student and educator - were to blame.  What happened?

On one hand, K. was still being “taught” at this moment.  He was gradually narrowing his conception of childishness to produce a specific definition of children’s literature and to explain how it might differ from “adult” literature.

On the other hand, however, he was coming to understand the radical notion that he could challenge conventional forms of authority.  And the source in this scenario? His teacher.  Me.  When he and I began our verbal battle, the traditional educational roles, that hierarchy between teacher and student, those weighted identities for which I had prepared myself at the beginning of the year as an educator new to the field…they proved untenable. 

I realized that I simply could not teach him. I began to understand that, at that moment and perhaps at every other moment before, K. and I did not occupy a space in which the roles of teacher and student made any sense.

So...where was the teacher at this moment?

Perhaps the question defies a single response.  Realistically, it seems rather silly, too, in its infantile grasping for some authority figure that can contextualize the situation. 
So...why not abandon that need altogether? Why not consider that the true authority of this moment rests with the act of #conversation itself?
Sure, it would be rash to say that “talking” is somehow innovative.  Having spent the last twenty years in various education systems myself, I remember receiving feedback on countless occasions.

But let me explain.

There is a distinct difference between talking to and talking with someone.  Students are often talked to in education; teachers do not advise but tell them, unequivocally, what opinions they should form, what questions they must consider, and what their learning objectives are.  Now, only now, are teachers beginning to alter that practice by talking with their pupils.  Only now are they beginning to allow their agendas to breathe, to speak not to dominate learners' arguments but out of a genuine interest in the ideas that they are formulating.

It is that domain, among others, that holds particular promise for the future of education.  As I walked away from that conversation with K., I felt consumed by the burning desire to know, to create more of those scenarios so that I could begin not only to understand my students on a "whole child" level but also to collaborate with my colleagues more meaningfully.  I left, too, with the enduring impression that conversation, real conversation, gloriously begins to separate "learning" from "schooling."  It begins to build that supreme level of engagement so sought after in classrooms; it works to instill personal passion.

Conversation, when distilled to its quintessence, builds stronger relationships.  To accomplish this, it cannot function divisively; it cannot preserve the traditional roles of "teacher" and "student."  Instead, it can only equalize.  Rapturously, it must only create "learners."

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For more reading on the power of dialogue in learning, please explore Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) and his two blog posts:  "Learning as dialogue" and "Teaching and learning through dialogue."

Description of 1st image:  A shot of the conversation between K., at left, and myself.  Photo taken by Ms. Charlap.

Description of 2nd image:  A roundtable consisting of teachers and students.  Photo located at www.vicsrc.org.au.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over this picture.

"Octolaunch," by Sandy Charlap

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.

"Octopus's Garden," by Matthew Philipose

"A Retrospective," by Matthew Philipose

Early birds get the worms….

The loons were not the only ones making preparations for the winter. The IP (independent project) room was buzzing with preparations of a different sort.   Perhaps it was my ignorance that prompted me to assume that everything would go awry. There was a sense of the gravitas, of taking on too much to chew at once. However, none of my anxieties came true. ‘IPians’ were on the ball from the get go. In an event such as the IP program first steps are the most arduous. Finding that topic becomes an obsession, and only an obsession would suffice. A conglomeration of ‘out of the box’ thinkers collected in one place. Young minds assuming such a responsibility from the very beginning, bent double, stumbling along the path to success in an Independent Project. So there they were, all engaged, in that first firm step.

By the first two weeks an amalgamation of sorts had taken place. Nearly all of the students had discovered their project title and proceeded to open the Pandora’s Box of their commitment.  Even the student that arrived three weeks late to school had apparently reached a subject for study. This was of immense relief and interest to me, as it showed what positive processes were in play at the very onset.  There is nothing like that success to keep us teachers going.

I imagined the topic for IP to be the head of octopus with its tentacles reaching out towards the history, science, math and literature of it. The chosen subjects for study varied as much as the students themselves.  Amongst them were titles such as Drones, physical fitness, Fantasy, illusions, Dyslexia, Automobiles and combustion engines, Real Estate, Charter Boat Fishing along the eastern seaboard for Tuna and Striped Bass, Music/​Sound engineering, Photojournalism, Generation and music, and (God help us) the abyss of knowledge!

Located amongst this buzz of activity, were my first days at the school this year.  As in any school, it was fraught with confusion, anticipation, excitement, trepidation, exhilaration, and many other emotions all mixed up in a quagmire of unreality merging into reality. Almost like the prayer in the Upanishads that goes like this: From the unreal lead me to the real, from darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to immortality…..and so on.

I was overcome with pride when I knew that the students in IP - despite their own confusion - had amalgamated their opening gambits in fine time. I felt like I needed to step up to the plate myself and handle the confusion with Confucius like equanimity.  My motto for those first few weeks was and still is: ‘go with the flow.'  My inspiration was the students in IP class.

Is it happening yet?

At 8:15 this morning, The Kildonan School officially started The Independent Project Week.  Faculty advisors were given copies of the student action plans and a master schedule of everyone’s whereabouts throughout the day was posted outside Mr. Zolet’s office.  The student groups were broken up without concern for question topic; the only deliberate action that was taken was to make sure the grade levels were evenly dispersed.  In my home group, I had two seniors, one junior, one sophomore, and two freshmen.  The topics being researched in my room ranged from juice cleanses to astrophysics.  I was pretty excited when I sat down to get started.

At 8:25 this morning, my excitement was tested.  The student sitting next to me, who was researching the process of creating and publishing an App, turned to me and said, “I gotta be honest.  I’m not too excited about this.  I don’t think I can do this.”  I gave him a pep talk and sent him back to his question.  Five minutes later, a fellow faculty member walked in, looking distressed.  “Are they supposed to be this quiet?” he asked.

Thus began a long morning of reassuring students, faculty, (and myself) that it was okay to be nervous, that our students were capable of independent learning, and that it was to be expected that in the early stages of research the room wouldn’t be loud and calamitous.  As I walked from group to group, students were quietly reading on their iPads, watching documentaries and how-to videos, taking notes on their findings, and searching for more information.  Some students took the time to interview experts on their topics (many of which were Kildonan faculty members) and it looked like the information was starting to pile up.

At 10:15, the same student who had told me he “couldn’t do it” started to explain to me why identifying your user audience was so important before developing an app.  Within the next two hours, he had learned about copyright law from Mr. Pendergast and was starting to play around with a game Mr. Stark suggested that developed an App for you.  Another student in my group was discussing the possible outcomes of using alternative ingredients, such as molasses or agave nectar, in place of white sugar in his chocolate chip cookie recipe. 

As the day reached its end, I was back to feeling good.  The students were certainly in varying degrees of comfort, but I’m a strong believer in the idea that real learning happens at moments of relative discomfort.  It’s certainly true for me as a teacher.  I’m a big fan of large projects, all of which are characterized by a chaotic “middle period” where I curse myself for ever planning something so big and vow to never try it again.  But then, tada!  My students pull ahead and the project is a hit.

So as day one of IP week comes to a close, I’m forced to reflect on the fact that learning is uncomfortable, unpredictable, inconsistent, and at times, down right scary.  I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and judging by the amount of work that was done in a day, I’m excited to see what our students have in store for us.