The glow of learning

Have we forgotten how children learn?  Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post thinks so.  Her article, What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning  has much terrific food for thought and discussion.

She says, Watch your child's eyes, what makes them go dull and dead, what makes them brighten, quicken, glow with light.  That is where learning lies.  That can be our guide for every day at school - the glow in children's eyes tells us how we are doing as educators.  

Talk to gifted scientists, writers, artists, entrepreneurs. You will find they learned through keen observation, experimentation, immersion, freedom, participation, through real play and real work, through the kind of free activity where the distinction between work and play disappears.

When I watch children at Parker, I see the brightness of excitement and I hear and feel the energy and passion.  It is the secret of an effective school - one where people say "your graduates are the best, brightest and most interesting people!"

 

Beyond Books

6-7's practice the presentations they will give to executives at local
fuel cell company, Plug Power.

Raising smart kids isn’t about teaching to the tests; it’s about building brainpower. Kids who can seek information, connect ideas and apply what they’ve learned aren’t just book- or school-smart – they are life-smart.       ~ Four Skills Smart Kids Need to Succeed, Metro Parent

Parker is a school filled with kids who love books.  But they don't stop there.  During the last weeks of school, we witness the multitude of ways our kids move beyond "book-smarts" to "life-smarts".

• The 8^th grade thesis presentations were passionate and poised.
• 6-7’s STEM Week: students built hydrogen fuel cells and wrote persuasive speeches about how Plug Power should donate them to places in the world where there are humanitarian crises.  They will give the speeches on June 8 to Plug Power executives. http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Photos-Students-present-fuel-cell-project-6314833.php#photo-8119187
• 4-5’s had a great trip to Ellis Island. They are each taking on the persona of an immigrant to America, then writing and performing a play for their Show of Work.
• 2-3’s are studying China: writing research essays, learning Chinese music in English and Mandarin, accompanied by our Xingtao on the hulusi (traditional Chinese instrument) and creating scroll paintings.  They will be performing a dance for the Show of Work.
• K-1’s are studying Africa through stories, research about animals of the Savannah, weaving, song and dance.
• Pre K classes have taken field trips to Five Rivers and are delighting in the beautiful spring weather.  Teachers prepared a slide show highlighting the rich themes they explored this year.

Why hands-on?

From planting seeds to constructing fuel cells, we engage kids in hands-on experiences.  Why is this a good way to educate?

Psychologist and education reformer John Dewey proposed that learning through experience, and not by rote, was key to children's intellectual and social development.  We see this dynamic in action as children work together to construct understanding of the world around them and determine how to ask questions and solve problems. 

The efficacy of hands-on learning is obvious: from preschoolers' exploration of growing things - to 6-7's recent STEM Week spent constructing hydrogen fuel cells and creating persuasive presentations for executives at local company Plug Power.  Through taking care of our world, from the simplest understanding of what plants need to thrive, to the nuanced and complex advocacy for how fuel cells and other forms of sustainable energy can be used in areas of humanitarian crisis, children gain a sense of agency and responsibility.

 Education becomes relevant and vital and of course, very interesting.

Work worth doing

At the recent Next World Conference, Thomas Freidman hosted a panel on challenges in education.  Tony Wagner from Harvard's Innovation Lab said, "Content knowledge has to be engaging to kids.  If kids aren’t motivated, you can pour content knowledge in their heads and it comes right out the other ear."  Richard Miller, president and professor at Olin College said he hoped that "...students will leave school thinking about how they can change the world, not about what job they will get."

STEM projects are inherently motivating to most kids and there is a move in education circles to emphasize them as vehicles for igniting imagination, cooperation and innovation. We have certainly seen this to be true at Parker.  From the middle school's Engine Project, Rube Goldberg Challenge, STEM week and First LEGO League competition to designing water wheels in second and third grade, students love these projects.

There are also many projects beyond STEM that engage students.  It seems to be immersion and choice within a topic that are the most motivating factors.  Students, when given agency within a framework, gleefully embrace the biggest and most complex - or even small or tedious - challenges.

Witness the recent areas of study across the grades at Parker.  Students worked in and out of school, in their spare time, feverishly near the end, to build models of historic regional landscapes (2-3) or displays of historic change-makers (4-5).  Kindergarteners carefully researched, drew, wrote, and invited peers and parents to an exhibition about communities.  8th graders honed speeches and coordinated photographs, made soup and researched world hunger to mount their complex and compelling Empty Bowls event. 

Basic skills like reading, writing, and problem solving were practiced.  The content knowledge gained was topic-specific and rich in detail and nuance.  Students also learned those larger lessons that are embedded in the school's mission: passion, curiosity and confidence.  And they practiced values like responsibility and ethics.

In a curriculum designed around projects of all types, students get to do work worth doing.  What a difference it can make!

Catch the first day buzz...

I love the first day of school!  The eager faces, the excited buzz.  All the possibilities of the wonderful year ahead. 

At our teacher days before school started we read two articles:  How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn and The Challenges and Realities of Inquiry-Based Learning.  The first reminded us that students who want to make a difference in the world are highly motivated learners.  The second reinforced that students gain social maturity when they learn in a project-based setting. 

As the teachers talked to me about their goals for the year, both of the themes emerged.  Here are a few examples:

• 7th graders will have a weekly STEM workshop for robotics and coding, animation with Google Sketch Up, and game design with Scratch and GameMaker.

• In middle school health class, students will organize a Health Fair to educate the broader community about making healthy decisions and living healthy lifestyles.

• Students in all grades will practice mindfulness habits.  Linda Lantieri, author of Building Emotional Intelligence will help build teachers' skills at a workshop in December.

• In science classes students will practice specific habits of mind such as persisting, listening with empathy, and questioning.

• 4-5's will work on designing an improved, discovery-centered play space for the North Playground by generating ideas, conducting an interest and feasibility survey, and researching costs and funding.

And that's just a sample of what's ahead!

Show what you know

The school year culminated with many different products of children's learning, from a rocket launch to thesis presentations, essays about Hindu deities, and a Mexican hat dance.  There were videos for marketing space tourism companies and Spanish cooking shows, animated autobiographies and an online newspaper, to name just a few.

Here are links to some of the creative ways that Parker kids showed what they know.

Two seventh graders' Spanish Cooking Video: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3ZHSv9J8VsjNmloRWxnTUN5NlU/edit

6-7's Marketing videos to promote space tourism (part of STEM week):  https://sites.google.com/site/mathwithshelli/home/stem-week-at-parker  (I love the edginess of Sky High and Cloud Space!)

6-7's on-line news: http://parkerpurples.wordpress.com/
and   http://parkergreens.wordpress.com/

8th grade thesis presentations: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/parkerschool  password: rcp123 

Purposeful action in action

4-5's took their show on the road last week.  Their Bee Show that is.  They had prepared a thoughtful and beautiful presentation about honey bees, bee keeping, threats to honey bees, and more.  After a presentation here at school, they perfected their slides and talk and came up with a game, too.

The 4th and 5th graders at Doane Stuart were very receptive.  The waggle dance, part of the game wherein correctly answering bee questions earned each hive-team some pollen, was a big hit.  9th grader and Parker grad, Jack RP was on hand.  He originated the bee project at Parker. 

He loved seeing himself in the slide show - and gave the advice, "No matter if you are young or old, if you work hard, you can do anything!"

It was fantastic to see the kids take their learning beyond the classroom - purposeful action in action!

How do we motivate kids?

A preschooler explores the properties and movement of water and air.

A sixth grader designs his own project for the 3D printer with Google Sketch Up.

A K-1 team uses their knowledge of force and motion to move a ball with a LEGO robot.

An eighth grader leads her mother and grandfather through her portfolio and goals at her student-led conference.

How do we motivate kids at Parker?  Motivation has been a big topic in the education news lately and here are some great articles about what elements you need in school to create it.

How to Foster Students' Mindsets and What Keeps Students Motivated to Learn? both in MindShift.

These articles could have been written about Parker, along with another, Moving Towards Inquiry about Project Based Learning (PBL), that urges schools to use PBL as effectively as we do.

The methods and mindsets described by these prominent educators tell the story of how we teach at Parker. They are not just buzzwords and they really do motivate students.  Here are a few of the elements we weave into the life of the school. The pictures above show some of them in action.

• Inquiry
• Deep learning
• Student-centered culture
• Collaborative teams
• Integrated projects
• Hands on learning
• Topics relevant to students
• Self and peer evaluation
• Learning from failure
• Belonging to an academic community

These elements describe the tenets of the progressive movement in education. They are inherent in our mission.  We do them really well - and they work.  The education mainstream is finally catching on - and urging schools to be more like Parker.

Building, tinkering, and sharing - but it's more than that

I started out thinking I'd write about Scratch - the coding program that our Computer Club is working with under the guidance of our former math and science teacher Teresa Ferrer-Mico.  Teresa is completing a PhD and one of her projects is teaching kids Scratch.  Here is a great description of what Scratch is and why it's so cool to teach it.

But as one idea leads to another I started thinking about all the ways Parker kids are learning by doing, building, tinkering, and sharing.  It happens all over the school and it is leading our students to habits of mind that are vital to their success - and intimately linked to how they are naturally motivated to learn, as we now have proof from the research of neuro-scientists.  

Kids' minds thrive on solving problems, and when presented with appropriate problems (big, complex ones) and an openness to diverse solutions using a wide variety of materials, their motivation soars and their skills in agency, grit, innovation, and collaboration develop at astonishing rates. 

Examples: LEGO Robotics in all the grades; mounting a "pattern museum" in Kindergarten; inventing a better bee hive or building a wind powered machine in 4-5; inventing ways to clean up an oil spill in 2-3; building a bridge in 6-7 STEM.

I am excited about our kids and their futures!  Here are some comments from our alumni panel on Friday - they were mainly college kids (Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Bard, College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, St. Rose...) who answered the question, "What did you learn at Parker that helped you most in high school and college?"  I swear, we didn't script this. 

• Writing a thesis - I can write a great paper or essay
• Not having grades made me more self-motivated than other kids
• Small classes - I got to know my teachers so well, and in high school and college getting to know my teachers is a huge advantage
• Working with people - I'm better at that than most of the kids I encounter
• The advanced curriculum  - learning algebra and earth science let me move ahead in high school to accomplish my dreams quicker
• The close community and the connection with teachers gave me confidence
• Project-based learning - it's what the real world is all about - in my college and in my job
• Openness to other people and other ways of thinking has helped me to explore more
• Parker allowed me to learn about things I'm interested in and gave me the freedom to explore 

Creative Entrepreneurialism

Examining a bee under a microscope is part of the Bee Project,
understanding their complexity and importance in ecosystems

I just returned from two very thought provoking conferences for Heads of School.  One of the speakers was Dr. Yong Zhao of U. Oregon talking about the ideas in his latest book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students.  His remarks resonated because at Parker we are educating children in all the ways he espouses, through project-based experiences (he calls it product-based) that have a purpose beyond the classroom.  This kind of learning is inherently interesting to children and promotes a passion for learning more.  It involves flexing that creativity muscle in a myriad of ways that are left out of learning as it is expressed by teaching to the Common Core.

Great examples are the honey bee curriculum in 4-5, the goat wool weaving project in K-1, and STEM week and the archeological dig in middle school.  Each of these projects requires students to think independently, make connections across several disciplines and express their learning in multiple forms of media - so far beyond filling in a bubble for multiple choice responses that it's mind boggling!

Students work with our bee-keeping mentor, Tony as they learn to calm the bees with smoke and gather some honey.

How do we teach creativity?

Teams in K-1 designed and built bridges to support a cup of sand.

It worked!!!

The best creative works happen when we are trying to explore our world and make sense out of life. It is that sense of purpose that propels the creative process. 

So says John Spencer in Ten Things I've Learned About Creativity, a blog post in Education Re-Think.  He also says that creativity takes a lot of courage - the courage to overcome the insecurity of being wrong.

The kind of school atmosphere that Parker has, the kind that allows for re-do's, re-thinks, and do-overs as a regular part of learning is crucial for creativity to blossom.  Doing multiple drafts of a piece of writing, perseverance in LEGO Robotics, teams charged with real challenges, all these experiences accumulate to form a creative mindset. 

Spencer also says the joyful exuberance of play is often involved in creative endeavors.  You can see it in the children's faces in the photos - shared purpose, experimentation, the give and take of a small group:  it's pretty apparent how we teach creativity!

The products of deep inquiry

Rapid-fire movie trailers, interesting essays, cultural dances, colorful weaving, informative posters, life-sized hand-sewn animals, ethnic recorder music, vividly painted huts and dragons, green-designed homes, power-point shows, Masai poetry...

K-1 and 2-3 students showcased their knowledge and connections to Africa and China through all the disciplines and in the most wonderful of ways.  This morning each class presented a Show of Work to the Parker community. 

Also today: a final band performance and assembly, assignments for field day teams, finishing touches on graduation speeches... How did the end of the school year come so fast?!

STEM week

STEM Week!  6-7's are on track to design and build a bridge over the creek in time for a buddy hike on Friday afternoon.  Their tasks have included mapping the proposed site, role-play of group dynamics, working with structural engineers from international firm CHA, designing on Google sketch-up, measuring and sawing lumber, and documenting their work. The weather has been perfect.  I can't wait to see the next steps!

The task is the test

What does cheating mean to kids whose understanding of learning is that it is a cooperative endeavor? This year during STEM week, 6-7's at Parker will design and build a bridge over a creek on our school property.  Their multi-layered task is not unlike the type of problem-solving that UCLA students did when their professor challenged them to think differently about taking a test.  In Cheating to Learn, a fascinating article about the typical competitive, grade-based culture of many schools - where cooperation equals cheating - professor Peter Nonacs says, "The test itself becomes a learning experience – where the very act of taking it leads to a deeper understanding of the subject."  With project-based learning, the task is the test. 

Maximizing the brain's ability to learn

K-1's performed their version of the Jan Brett story The Hat at assembly this morning.  They read the book, adapted it into a play, made their masks in art class, constructed a house and a hedgehog burrow, practiced and performed!  It's a great example of learning that is "doing" and that has great meaning for the students.  They had to work collaboratively, problem-solve and cooperate, master skills in reading, writing, and speaking, and to wrap it all up they had an appreciative audience of peers and parents.  Well done!

Dr. JoAnn Deak, who was here on Monday working with teachers and presenting a program for parents and educators, had this to say, "Every interaction a child has, during the course of a day, influences the adult that child will become.”  She confirmed how we teach by backing it up with the latest in neuroscience research and she challenged us to think about how to educate in today's overly visual world of technology.

JoAnn was, as one teacher put it, "perhaps the best presenter I have ever had the good fortune of hearing!"  She recommended this resource: the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan organized a forum of the 5 best brains in education today and have made the video free for the public on their website. 
http://www.92y.org/pclivecast

Many schools have asked parents and teachers to view each of the five 45 minute sections and then come to a discussion.  Sounds like a great idea!  

More about innovative learning

4th grade math students explore together how to draw 2D representations of 3D objects. Students can then make drawings from their own designs for others to try recreating.

K-1's all contributed to this story about an unlikely friendship between a bobcat and a cat at Parker.  They are going to turn their story into a book.

This article in MindShift, 7 Essential Principles of Innovative Learning expresses how we teach at Parker.  Author Katarina Schwartz pares it down to 7 elements that correspond exactly to what we call project based education or signature experiences.

1. Learners have to be at the center of what happens in the classroom.

2. Learning is a social practice and can’t happen alone.

3. Emotions are an integral part of learning.

4. Learners are different.

5. Students need to be stretched, but not too much.

6. Assessment should be for learning, not of learning.

      7. Learning needs to be connected across disciplines.

I would take it one step further than she does, adding "8. Learning should result in purposeful action."  This concept includes projects that have a purpose beyond the school's  walls - learning that expands into the world beyond the classroom.  That is what gives the depth and meaning to activities that will excite students' imaginations and passions.

Projects, passion, curiosity

Science teacher, Kate Perry sent this wonderful article from Edutopia my way:  Change the subject: Making the Case for Project-Based Learning.  I urge everyone connected with Parker to read this - it really describes how we are educating students here.  While not abandoning the classic subject areas, Parker teachers collaborate and combine the disciplines for rich, interesting, connected studies of big questions and relevant explorations - that have real-life applications and audiences. 

Our graduates attest to the value of how they were educated at Parker: flexible, adaptable skills for an always changing future.  Thomas Friedman's editorial today echoes the same theme: the Passion Quotient (PQ) and the Curiosity Quotient (CQ) are now as important for economic success as IQ.  Passion and curiosity must be intentionally nurtured in school - and that is what a project-based curriculum like Parker's is doing. 

K-1 students have been studying crystals, rocks and minerals.  Today they imagined what lies below the surface of the earth: burrows, pipes, rocks, bones...endless room for wondering, testing and exploring.

4-5's study of lizards combines art and language arts: 2 and 3 dimensional work in oil pastels and sculpture and perspective-taking in writing.

Exploring the properties of motion and force: middle school science students build Rube Goldberg style machines: passion, curiosity and intelligence are all engaged here!

What is outside that informs the study of crystals?  Snow!  And there are animal tracks!

Real work for a real purpose

2-3's presented essays, three-dimensional models and murals showing the changing landscape in Rensselaer County from Native American times to today at the Rensselaer County Historical Society.  Their exhibit opening was held on Thursday night for assembled families, teachers and docents.  At the end of the evening, students presented items for a time capsule that will be kept in the museum archives.  This article about the event appeared in the Times Union.

Walt Disney

Joan of Ark

Amelia Earhart

Samuel Morse

4-5's presented a Living Museum of History Makers today.  Their displays included posters, PowerPoints, timelines, masks, artifacts, and oral presentations.

Having an audience raises the stakes for students - it enhances the quality and importance of the research and presentation and gives incredible meaning to the whole project!