Baby is coming…

In a mere 72 days, our family will increase in size 50%. The additional 50% will begin life somewhere around 8 lbs, and consume approximately the next 18 years of our lives.  I am so excited.

We’ve been working like mad to get the house ready for the new arrival – so far, 500 sq. feet of bamboo flooring is down, with just 225sq. feet left to go. The filthy old carpet has been removed, as well as the vintage linoleum tiles located underneath the carpet (no asbestos in the backing – phew!) We’ve received numerous hand-me-downs from our siblings and siblings-in-law, and have ordered a crib. We’ve decided on an unfinished Canadian made birch crib. With all the talk of the VOCs in paint, carpet, underlay, heck, pretty much everything, we’ve decided we’ll finish the crib with some sort of food-grade oil. With the carpet gone, and  low-VOC environmentally friendly bamboo on the floor, we should be doing our best to limit our new addition’s contact with all that is environmentally evil. We are going to do cloth diapers (there is some debate over this one, if you poke around the internet) but as we are inheriting most of the diapers, it seems foolish not to use them. Also, we use Pink Solution for laundry (and all our household cleaning), and it has no phosphates, which is one of the criticisms of the soap used to launder cloth diapers. We also have a high-efficiency front-loading washer, which should minimize the water used. We did buy some disposables, but they are compostable (whether or not our bin will be able to handle 8-10 of these a day for the first couple weeks until we can move to cloth is unknown.) And, yesterday while buying a water bottle to replace my sadly lost (and much dented) Klean Kanteen, we picked up two stainless steel sippy cups which, though we won’t need for some time, were half price. So, onward we move…after this (long) weekend, the flooring in the baby’s room should be done, and we can start getting that together.

At work, my job has changed somewhat, as I’ll be working half-time for the next ten weeks to coordinate the development of the learning model for the shared facility that will house the new school. The goal is to open the building (which will integrate many human services with the learning program of the school) in fall 2011, which seems like a long time away. However, we are hoping to be able to implement the grade 9 program next year, to iron out some kinks, and then implement grades 9 and 10 for the year following. The school will combine project-based learning with service learning and cognitive apprenticeships, and house around 400 students grades 9-12. It is very exciting to be a part of the program development – I have been so lucky in my career to continually land myself in really engaging teaching environments.

While many schools do project-based learning, or have apprenticeships, ours will be the first to fully integrate the learning into the daily operations of the facility, which will likely house a library, a food store, the community association, a health clinic, and a police station. It’s a great challenge to get all these partners to come to a common understanding, but there are some great, visionary people in leadership positions with the parties involved, and  they see the potential benefit to those in the community, and are willing to work through the difficult pieces.

In addition, I’m finishing up another masters class (just one class and a thesis left after this one!) It’ll be nice to be able to focus solely on my thesis proposal – however, I’ve been able to tailor almost all of my coursework thus far towards my area of research (project-based learning with “at-risk” youth), which is nice.

So, nothing dull about my home life, or my work life — who could ask for anything more?

Project-based Learning – independent or collaborative?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about project-based learning, and the potential it holds for transforming the landscape of education. Since Dewey first challenged the methods of scientific curriculum making preferred by Tyler and Bobbitt almost a hundred years ago, scholars have been saying that what we do in schools needs to be relevant to students. Yet it still is not. PBL provides the chance for educators to take content that is prescribed by a provincial government, and place it within a real situation or scenario for the students.

The literature on PBL is limited, and somewhat contradictory – some practitioners claim that student-led inquiry is at the base of all authentic project-based learning. Sometimes in this context it is related directly to Science, and called problem-based learning. Whole schools are based on inquiry or constructivist learning, with varying levels of student direction, such as Zoo School, Avalon School, or New Country School to name just a few. Other call project-based learning Project-Based Service Learning — here, projects may or may not have a basis in inquiry, but the end goal is for students to provide a service to the school, the larger community, or even the global community. PBL also relates to Place-based Learning, another way to describe learning that takes place outside of the school, often as part of providing a service.

Other people who advocate PBL cite the benefits of students working together towards a common product, performance, service, or solution. In my experience with students coming from poverty, this is the ultimate benefit of PBL – the engagement and belonging that comes from working with other students towards an end goal, mattering to these students, and ultimately being depended on by these students. Middle-class students generally already have this sense of belonging in their lives – whether they belong with a sports team, their family, or a club or group outside of school. Our students, however, don’t always have avenues to build these feelings of belonging. If we can build this feeling of belonging at school, then students have a compelling reason to attend.

Another concern I have with student-led inquiry is that our students, especially in grades 9 and 10, don’t really know what they are interested in. They don’t have the life experience to know what is out there – often they have barely left their own neighbourhood. During the Dinner Theatre, we had students who couldn’t tell you two things they liked besides television and video games discover that they loved cooking, or acting, or set-building.

I think that any implementation of PBL would have to carefully combine both independent, student-led inquiry-based projects with structured, teacher-led projects. I see it as a contiuum, with students starting with structured projects where they “Discover Their Passion” to steal a term from Sir Ken Robinson, and moving towards more student-led projects by grades 10/11/12 (or whenever they’re ready for them.) Even within the context of teacher-led projects, there is room for students to have choice. One quick example – we’re looking at running a photo-journalism project later this year. While the form of the project (producing a newspaper and everything that goes along with it) is structured, the actual content of the paper will depend on student interest. However, if a student had never taken a photograph, or written an article for a specific purpose, how would they know they liked to do these things?

So this is where I find myself, on a Saturday morning, homework done for the day but not the weekend, trying to reconcile student-led inquiry with structured large group projects. What a geek.

A chance…

The city I live in has a public transit system that is under review. As a white, middle-class, car-owning, carpooling member of society, I know very little about it. What I do know I have garnered from conversations with my students. Below are some fictional, though representative, conversations:

Late Student (enters with 7-11 Slurpee): Sorry I’m late.

TeachingChris: What’s up? Sleep in?

Late Student: Yeah, and I missed the 7:40 bus.

TeachingChris: 7:40? But it’s 9:30.

Late Student: I know. It takes me 55 minutes to get here on the bus, and the next one doesn’t come until 8:00, so I decided to walk and save the $2.10.

TeachingChris: Where’s my slurpee?

Though $2.10 isn’t the student fair – it’s the adult fair – a few students have commented to me that they don’t have a student card and don’t want to risk getting hassled by the bus driver when trying to pay the student fare. (The school issues student cards, but they aren’t used for anything school related, and are often misplaced.)

Late Student #2: Hey Teaching.

TeachingChris: It’s 11:30! Where have you been?

Late Student #2: I got a job.

TeachingChris: That’s cool. Where at?

Late Student #2: Superstore. Way up in the North End.

TeachingChris: Do you work late?

Late Student #2: Yeah, until 12, stocking shelves. Now that they’re open until 11, we have to work later.

TeachingChris: That explains the late part.

Late Student #2: No, I would have been on time, but I missed the 12:10 bus and had to walk home. It’s the last one.

TeachingChris: Walk from Superstore? That’s far.

Late Student #2: I didn’t get home until 2:30. So I slept in.

TeachingChris: Yikes. If you talked to your manager, would they let you out a few minutes early to catch the bus?

Late Student #2: I’m going to have to ask.

A lot of our students work, and the bus often stops running before they are done for the day. For example, on Sundays, the busses run from 11 until 6. If you work early or late, be prepared to walk, or take a taxi (which makes working a moot point!)

When an email came out advertising the public consultations about the transit system, I knew this was a chance for to empower the students. I talked with a colleague, and we decided that we would see if our SRC would do a survey of all the students, compile the data, and take it to the meeting. They were happy to do it. There were three meetings scheduled – one in the trendy, near downtown neighbourhood south of the one I teach in, one in the far northwest of the city, and one in the far southeast. We decided to go to the third one, in the southeast, so that we’d have time to get as much data as possible from the students.

All totaled we had around 70 surveys returned, and there were some emerging themes that the students pulled from them. The four interested students who were able to go (the meeting was in the evening) divided the main ideas up, and we headed to the meeting. At the meeting, my colleague briefly introduced the students, explained their process for gathering data, and turned the mic over to the young women. One by one, they outlined their main point, and followed it with an illustrative example. Their concerns were:

-         Safety when waiting for the bus at night

-         The cost

-         The frequency of busses on Sundays, holidays, and late at night

-         The hours busses operate

-         The attitudes of the drivers when trying to bring a stroller, baby, and shopping bags on the bus

The great part of their presentation was that the new plans that were unveiled prior to the students speaking covered almost all of these areas. The students did a great job explaining the point of view, and the moderator was very encouraging and accommodating. We even got a little mention in the newspaper today. Other than our students, there were no other young people, and no First Nations people at the meeting. The women were very proud of what they did, and the hope is that they wouldn’t be afraid to speak up in a public scenario like this again. This morning, the school received the following email:

My daughter and I attended last night’s Transit meeting and I wanted to let you know that the group of students that were in attendance from your school represented their school very well. They were well spoken and raised some very valid points.

Nice!

Minneapolis Reflection: “Zoo School”

Over the next few days, I am going to be doing some reflecting on my trip from last week. I went down to Minneapolis with a team of teachers to look at some alternative learning models. I say alternative just because they are different ways of looking at how we can engage students – not to marginalize what is being done.

School of Environmental Studies – “Zoo School”

The first school we visited was the School of Environmental Studies. Since it is located on the grounds of the Minnesota Zoo, it is affectionately known as “Zoo School.” Students are drawn from four neighbouring high schools – they are actually still technically students at those schools, and return for some classes and extra-curricular. All students in those schools have the option to apply to come to Zoo School for their grade 11 and 12 years. Students are chosen based on a lottery, however, due to the neighbourhoods that feed Zoo School, most students are middle class.

Though it is over ten years old now, and starting to show its age, the physical layout of Zoo School was striking. You enter into a large, open space with massive south-facing windows is used as a whole school meeting space, the theatre, the cafeteria, and to dry out tents (to name just a few uses.) While we were there, tables were being set up with displays students created for Earth Day.

Organizationally, the students are broken down into 4 houses – each with about 100 students. The houses are on the second floor, and are broken down into a large meeting space (which can be divided smaller as needed) and a workspace for each student, including a lockable cabinet (to avoid the need for lockers.) Off the larger space is a computer lab, a teacher-work area (there are no teacher’s desks in the other spaces) as well as one Science lab shared by two houses.

What was most interesting about Zoo School was the collaborative, project-based approach to learning. Each house has a group of teachers dedicated solely to that house. This creates a smaller school environment within the larger school. Teachers use the State standards and outcomes to decide upon big questions to be answered by the students – mostly, they relate to the environment and Science. These questions then inform everything the students do in the curricular areas. Teachers representing all core subject areas work together in a house, and each teacher is responsible for making sure that the standards and outcomes in their area are being covered. The students are very independent (they are grade 11 and 12) and have a lot of say in how they attack a specific question. One question one house was exploring was “What is the relationship between water and organisms?” Students were given the freedom to consider the question from many different angles, using different sources and media along the way.

One thing that really struck me as powerful was the way that staff members are placed at Zoo School. If a member of a specific house staff leaves, the other team-members are involved in choosing of a replacement. What a great way to ensure that staff will work well within a learning model.

You can read more about the program and school design here or check out their website here.

From this visit, I started to see how space can be used differently to meet student needs. I also am starting to see that for success in engaging students in a learning model, you need to have staff members who have a shared vision and work well together. The principal of Zoo School has been there since it opened – this longevity has helped create a culture of collaboration at the school.