The Morning Commute: Thoughts On Teaching

Stone Soup!

Our first project comes from a great story about friendship and generosity, and what can happen when a community comes together.

Day 1: - Read Stone Soup (I’m particularly fond of the Jon J. Muth Buddhist version.) - Discuss making our own Stone Soup: what ingredients, who to invite, when & where. - Make invitations. - Create a spreadsheet & invite families to contribute an ingredient.

Building centers have become a first day of school staple ever since I asked myself: "What would I want to do on the first day of school?" and "How can I set a tone for what the rest of the year will be about?" 

5/20/16

“I love this part of what we’re learning!”

Me too! The kids were making slogans and contraptions to inspire thinking, collect and connect ideas, and, being SECRET headquarters, also ways to keep our Synergy Room under wraps.

Once again we turn our attention to creating the environment for our study to take place. Unlike the Mannahatta Museum, there are no elaborate constructions or painted panels — just signs and devices (Inspiration Machine, Powerful Thinking Wand, Gem Web, Mask of Creative Multi-Colored Thoughts) made of construction paper, string, foil. The environment they are creating is our headquarters for Team X, as we embark on saving NYC and creating a City of the Future.

Conceived of by progressive educator and Imaginative Inquiry expert, Kelli Dawn Holsopple (http://blog.communityworksinstitute.org/2016/04/29/ecstatic-learning-an-invitation/), as part of the Team X mantle that she created and piloted in my classroom at the East Village Community school in 2009, Holsopple’s ingenuity laid the groundwork for innovative thinking before “design thinking” and “maker spaces” became common classroom buzzwords. (See previous posts for more about Team X and the City of the Future project.)

What kind of brain waves do we need to have to solve this very complicated, very urgent problem? Agent X sends pictures of what is needed, which the students interpret as:

They then eagerly set out to write down slogans and make machines that will help us when we need ideas:

5/11/16

I love this lesson! A kick-off to a series of lessons designed by progressive educator and Imaginative Inquiry consultant, Kelli Dawn Holsopple (scroll down for more), I've done it for so many years now and know how great it is as a hook to begin our culminating City of the Future unit — excitement and lightbulbs go off every time, without fail, and it is electrifying: you can follow the energy being passed around the room as kids are immediately drawn into the drama of having to save NYC from destruction (video to be uploaded).

And then suddenly:

Milla: "Maybe WE can do something about it!"

(Agreement from the class)

Miles: "Yeah, but how?"

Ezra: "It's kind of like X's riddle from the beginning of the year about creating the future..."

We look at the riddle, conveniently located on the board behind me.

"It says 'learn from the past to create the future'..."

Oliver:  “Yeah, and that we can 'decide the fate of this island'..." Luc: "Maybe we can time travel to the past to find the answers."

"But we've been time traveling to learn about the past all year!" And then X's note appears, telling them that this has been their real mission all along. It's so gratifying when the drama follows the kids' discoveries and conclusions, not the other way around. Embedded in all X's messages — this time very prominently — is the Sankofa symbol. 

Why is it there? The kids recall seeing it at the African Burial Ground. Finally, this mystery is revealed as well:

Sankofa comes from the Akan words "San" (return), "Ko" (go), and "Fa" (look, seek, take). The symbol comes from a mythical bird that moves forward while looking backward. It teaches the wisdom of “turning one’s head to the past to build the future.”

We discuss how we have seen the gems of Lenape, Dutch, African, Jewish cultures — and that, in fact, there is no "best culture" (see previous post about the Lenape vs Dutch debate), but that we can learn from all of them.

We couldn't have scripted this any better if we tried! The real magic, of course, is creating the framework for all these profound insights to emerge.

Students are invested in this very powerful drama framework, conceived of and gifted to me by my friend and longtime collaborator, Kelli Dawn Holsopple. Her ingenuity in creating Team X and the mantle to save NYC is more than a culminating showcase of our study on early NY history — it is a call to action. One that is high stakes but real. One in which the solutions are deceptively simple for those who can dream, who believe, who dare — i.e. innovators — in short, kids. I have learned so much from Kelli, being a teacher of history, social justice, and of young, powerful minds.

For more on Kelli Dawn Holsopple’s work, see:

http://blog.communityworksinstitute.org/2016/04/29/ecstatic-learning-an-invitation/

The lesson that day finishes with he kids writing letters to the Mayor, suggesting that they solve the crisis for the city:

We came full circle today: the Dutch and Lenape friends, now about 25 years later, meet for the last time to talk about how their lives have changed since the English took over the colony. They discussed how, on the one hand, life has not changed much because the English allowed them to keep their land, property, way of life, and how trade continued. The Lenape kids, now as adults, talked about how some Native Americans in other villages have had to move because the English are building houses and farms.

While they speculated that it probably did not change their relationship much, they admitted that, in the end, the Lenape and Dutch people probably did not get close over the 40+ years of co-existing on Mannahatta, and that their personal friendship did not mirror the relationship of the rest of the Lenape and Dutch.

Laiali: “Our relationship was about trade. We came here to trade. [It was] not exactly friendship.”

Milla: “Lots of people think we’re very different, so that we can’t be friends because of that. But that doesn’t really make any sense. Even though we’re different doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

Narration: “The two friends knew that even though things did not change much since Dutch times, that there would be more changes ahead in the English colony. They did not know when or how often they would be able to meet again. They decided to gather some mud and clay from the riverbank and make a pendant of their lasting friendship on Mannahatta.”

Immediately some kids connected this to the half pendants they received on the first day of the study: “Wait, are these the ones we got in the beginning?”

Narration: “Perhaps one day, many, many years into the future, archaeologists in the year 2016 might find these artifacts buried in the ground somewhere on Manhattan and wonder what it means about the people who lived here.”

Students: “That is so cool!!”

Yes, it is.

4/28-30/16 

 I can't stop thinking about the photo of Roberta's two kindergarten students who came in wearing scarves on their heads. They came in on the last day of school, dressed as their teacher, who always wears a scarf around her head. One girl wore a black scarf, as Roberta does today, and one girl wore a blue scarf, “because Roberta used to wear more colorful scarves when she was younger.” After a lifetime struggle of wanting to be seen/understood/appreciated I recognize the larger implications of the lack of trust that exists when learners don't see themselves in their teacher. I can only go so far in teaching community values at both EVCS and LREI — the one being in the world of the projects, streets and disempowerment, and the other being in the world of financial success and power. Forget adding race, gender, identity into the mix. 

 *** 

Mckenzie's 1st gr — characteristics of heroes/superheroes & what 'admire' means, characteristics of people admired — thru people they know (eg. Grandparent) & read alouds — finding it in stories --> can use for EVCS 1st gr curr 

 *** 

Documentation parties:

- panels, printers going, washi tape, food

- during staff mtg times 

- Based on Reggio Emilia use of documentation 

 - Starting small — find 'the extraordinary within the ordinary'

-  pieces: narrative for context, transcript, pictures — small groups look at/discuss others' documentation 

 *** 

Re parent buy in/education -- parents taking on role of educating new or doubting parents -- book groups, inquiry groups, talking abt educational value of play, etc 

 *** 

'Ask me about' sheets that kids take home re something that happens in class ('ask me about how we solved the block table problem') 

 *** 

This one is for you, Dan! Dutch colonist, Joanna, reads her petition to the Dutch West India Company after Adrien vander Donck rallies them to make their voices heard. 

After a brief narration of the devastation that Kieft’s War caused the colony, Vander Donck (played by me) arrives on the scene to talk to the People: the colonists (students) give Kieft a report, and, without even needing prompting, they complain about how Kieft ignored their wishes and advice to maintain peaceful relations with the Native Americans, and suggest writing to the Dutch West India Company to oust Kieft. There’s social action for you!

4/21 The dinner table conversation is a great way to have small groups discussing an issue — different aged family members can provide multiple points of view — this can be fishbowl style with one group discussing & others watching, and then giving turns to each student to step in (tag team style) and take on one of the roles at the table as the conversation continues. Or, as we did yesterday, in our drama in which Papa comes home to discuss Kieft’s plans to wage war on the Native Americans (and, as a member of Kieft’s Council of 12 advisors, wonders what he should advise Kieft) have five dinner table discussions happening simultaneously. Papa (Teacher 1) poses the problem in discussion with Mama (Teacher 2), while the kids (who back then were ‘seen and not heard’) listen in and have their own side conversations.

We told the kids that we teachers, in the role of the parents, would jump around and sit at various tables to insert comments (questions/prompts) into the conversation, but they are to imagine we are talking at their dinner table. The role of Papa and Mama is not to do all the talking, but to, little by little, drop the issues/questions surrounding the debate into the kids’ discussions: Why does Kieft think war is necessary? What would war mean for the Dutch? For the Lenape? For trade? Are there other alternatives? It also allows us to provide snippets of background information within the context of the drama (eg. past skirmishes with Native Americans that show that relations were not always smooth, which were then used to justify the war).