Category: PYP

Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

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Last week, I sat through student interviews for our school scholarship program. Students could win scholarship awards for Learner Profile, the ATL’s, and Action. It was fascinating to hear young 6-8 year old children summarize what they believe were some of their best qualities and why they do what they do. But the learner profile award was the most telling. And learner profile trait that made me cringe the most when I heard a student talk about it was caring. Caring? I hear you say. I know. It’s a surprise. Let me explain.

First of all, whenever I hear the students talk about learner profiles, it reflects greatly on the teachers, aspects of the school culture, and family values. Children mirror the learning community.

I heard numerous students talk about how they do caring things because they hope others will appreciate them and extend care back to them. In fact, what they described was being generous in order to initiate reciprocity. I recognize that this concept of reciprocity is apparent in my host country’s culture. People often refer to this as Guanxi. Western cultures refer to it as Quid-Pro Quo. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.

Several years ago, Adam Grant wrote a really interesting book called Give and Take. In the book, he makes a compelling argument for why doing good is not only smart, but should be our goal. Generous and caring people in studies demonstrate better life outcomes, such as greater career success, improved relationships, and health outcomes. Even though he may enumerate many ways doing good is beneficial, that should not be why we are caring and kind.

I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I don’t want to be a book spoiler, but Grant explains how people may look like “givers” but are actually “takers”. He uses the example of Kenneth Lay and his abuse of power that ultimately bankrupted the company and left his employees jobless and without pensions. But on the outside, he looked like a “good guy” because he was charitable. I think this is a prime example of using generosity for optics and is the danger of what can happen when “caring” is miscommunicated and reinforced in our society. Clearly, this man had an intellectual understanding of kindness and generosity but not the emotional intelligence to be able to demonstrate ethical behavior and true responsibility for his employees.

We need to do better at educating our children’s hearts, or this pattern repeats itself in our society.

IB is supposed to be the framework that can adapt to any context in which it finds itself, whether a public or private institution or the values within a nation or town. We are flexible and respectful in how we approach curriculum design. Although I think it’s important to navigate the curriculum through these complex lenses, I think the learner profile is where we might need to take a stand. What do I mean by that? I mean, that has a particular definition of what it means to be caring, and guess what?-It’s not a quid-pro-quo protocol. Take a look:

As you can see, we don’t do caring things because we expect good things to happen to us in return. It’s not about filling our spiritual coffer with good karma or our bank account with money. We do good things because we want a better and more peaceful world. Caring simply for the sake of being caring has no benefit other than knowing that we are helping the world be a better place. Money isn’t the goal. Service is. And we must do that in our schools by explicitly developing empathy-building skills. I recognize that we may be swimming against society’s current paradigm, but it matters. It’s worth the effort. Don’t you agree?

So, if you are an educator who has been promoting the status quo of a “taker” (ie: I give so I can get) in sheep’s clothing, take a moment to reflect on where that type of behavior leads to our society. Let’s go back to the definition of this Learner Profile and refocus CARING on using our empathy skills to inspire our young learners to create systems, products and services that make a difference in our future.

**If you have any great resources that help others to make the connection between our minds and hearts, please share them in the comments below. Sharing is Caring, right?!

From Posters to Practice: Cultivating PYP Classrooms

From Posters to Practice: Cultivating PYP Classrooms

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As I walk through the halls of a school building, I am always looking for evidence of the culture and beliefs of the learning that takes place there. When I open a classroom door and peek my head inside, there is a lot of data: the furniture arrangement, where the teacher’s desk is (or isn’t), the classroom “decorations” and signs that thinking is taking place, and whether posters/charts on the wall are fixed or ever-changing, as well as who is creating the “decorations” in the classroom. The whiteboard is actually one of the most telling places in a classroom. It often includes the schedule and topics for that day, as well as the teaching points in a lesson. Sometimes I see student names on the whiteboard, and it makes me wonder why they are on there. 

As a coordinator that was new to my school, these walks made me question where we were as a school in terms of our implementation of the program. You see, I remember in my early days of being a PYP practitioner, my PYP coordinator insisted that I had the Learner Profile on display as well as the Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry. One of my new-to-the-PYP colleagues HATED this and thought it cluttered up her classroom wall space, encroaching upon her word wall and anchor charts.  I personally never resented this ask and always enjoyed finding fresh ways to display unit of inquiry work, but this debate about prioritizing our framework in our classroom environment has left an indelible mark. Should we, as pedagogical leaders, insist on having the framework on display? 

I’ve sat on this question all year long. Carefully observing classrooms and reflecting on whether or not elements of our program are being showcased in our learning areas, and whether or not that translated into better practice. To be honest, my view is still mixed. 

Is it a POSTER or a PRACTICE?

Display posters from Teacher Pay Teacher or Twinkle can just be a static fixture to appease the “PYP Gods”, as one teacher liked to refer them. But when I twisted his arm to post the Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry during the unit, his practices with concept-based inquiry improved. He referred more to our elements and started to use these teacher-centric materials as manipulatives. It could have been an odd coincidence, but I would like to believe that because it was in his eyesight, it was a reminder to ratchet up his inquiry approaches and refer more to our learner profile and approaches to learning as well. However, I had another teacher who had beautiful displays of the PYP jargon but never shifted from a very teacher-centered learning environment. Student agency?-that was only for students who were “good listeners” and “respectful”. So displays are hardly a telling sign of the quality of the practices. 

Why am I reflecting on this, you might ask? Why do I give a hoot about classroom displays? Well, anyone who has recently gone through or will be embracing an onsite IB evaluation visit understands why I am contemplating this. The environment of our schools provides an essential clue into our classroom practices and the overall “strength” of our PYP program. 

What are the telling signs of a constructivist classroom? As a PYP coordinator, making edicts on how our classrooms “should” look like I think would miss the goal of developing our skills as PYP practitioners. Instead, I think if teachers carefully examined the Life Long Learning Strand of the 2020 Standards and Practices, they can begin to think about what this could look like in the classroom environment. Here is a little brainstorming I have done as I think about what might be on “display” in our learning environments.

Lifelong learners 1: Students actively develop thinking, research, communication, social, and self-management skills. (0402-01)

This standard is about our Approaches to Learning–how are students learning how to be lifelong learners. Some examples of “artifacts” in a learning environment might include:

This “next level” KWL chart develops, not only attributes of the Learner Profile but supports the AtLs.
  • Students’ responses to Visible Thinking routines such as See, Think, Wonder, Creative questions, Feelings and Options.
  • Research questions posted
  • Anchor chart with peer feedback sentence starters
  • Student examples of solving math problems in different ways. 
  •  Compliment jars or boxes.
  • Interactive displays that support emotional regulation, decision-making, or collaboration skills.

Lifelong learners 2: Students demonstrate and reflect on their continued development of the IB learner profile attributes. (0402-02) 

This standard is about living the learner profile. Some examples of “artifacts” in a learning environment might include:

  • Student responses to Visible Thinking routines such as Step Inside, Red Light, Yellow Light, or Imagine If.
    From @kjinquiry
  • Split-screen learning objectives. (The “what” we are learning + the “who” we are becoming through the “how” we are learning).
  • Anchor charts with co-constructed success criteria or checklists.
  • Student-designed learning goals.

Approaches to teaching 1: Teachers use inquiry, action, and reflection to develop natural curiosity in students. (0403-01)

An interactive “unit wall”.

This standard is about our approaches to inquiry. Some examples of “artifacts” in a learning environment might include:

Approaches to teaching 2: Teachers focus on conceptual understanding to support students in developing their ideas. (0403-02)

Teaching dictionary skills with the Key Concepts.
  • Students’ thinking that emerged when “unpacking” the Central Idea or Lines of Inquiry.
  • Daily/weekly guiding questions are posted on the whiteboard.
  • Unit of Inquiry “Word Walls” that display the big ideas and key vocabulary.
  • Using the Key Concepts as opportunities to solicit student thinking and questions.
  • Student examples of work math prompt
  • Concept maps, which can be as simple as a mind-map, Frayer model, or more complex like a Visible Thinking Routine like Color, Symbol, Image. 

These ideas are hardly an exhaustive list. Moreover, any simple search on Pinterest will provide LOTS of visual examples of these ideas, and I love heading over to Sharing the PYP blog to see great models of practice. But I think what we really need to keep in mind is that these elements of our PYP program are not just classroom decorations, but living documentation of the robust learning that is taking place within its walls. Steeping our walls in the artifacts of learning shouldn’t be viewed as a chore, but a joy to curate all the wonderful moments we create in our learning communities by putting our PYP principles into practice.

The PYP Planner: The Challenges in Designing an “Enhanced” Collaboration Tool

The PYP Planner: The Challenges in Designing an “Enhanced” Collaboration Tool

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Ever since we decided to give one of the “enhanced” planners from the Programme Resource Centre a try, we have been reflecting on our planning process. Do these planning templates actually “enhance” our planning process? Moreover, how might our planner be a reflection of Who We Are? Between our frustration with the “enhanced” template and our school’s own initiatives, we thought it would benefit our planning if we co-constructed our own PYP planner.

The Process

In order to approach these questions, we used design thinking to navigate our discussions and our guide us on this journey. As you can see from the graphic below, it is not really a linear process but one that involves constant dialogue and reflection along the way.

Empathize and Define

We launched our discussions during teacher in-service days when we had a fair amount of time to explore and worked in mixed grade-level groups. As you might know already, schools can either use one of the planners provided by the PYP or develop their own planner based on the collaborative planning process. We started by examining the current “enhanced” planner that we had adopted earlier that year and had groups discuss its Pros and Cons, carefully considering…

  • The different elements of the PYP framework in the planner
  • The amount of “boxes”
  • The layout
  • Visual elements like colors and icons
  • The leading questions
    • Do they help your planning conversations? Why or Why not?

These conversations lead us to think about what is the purpose of the PYP planner and its role in collaboration. We took some time re-reading and reflecting on the IB’s document about the collaborative planning process before we researched different templates that other schools had created. Groups analyzed the templates and took notes on what they liked about each planner. Based on these conversations, we came up with some criteria that we wanted to in our own planner:

  • The essential elements of the PYP UOI planner.
  • Color coding for collaborative phases to help them know when they needed to be dipping back into the planner.
  • Some links to helpful documents or terms in case people had doubts about what to put in boxes.
  • Sections that clearly defined what the specialists were doing in their classes.

Ideate

Groups began to sketch out ideas and started to create their own versions in their teams. They could use either Google Docs or Google Slides to create their template. Their creations lead to many interesting conversations and lively debates. Eventually, we came back together and teams analyzed each other’s potential prototypes and we voted on one.

Prototype and Testing

The purpose of a prototype is to provide a representation of what a “final” design could be like. It gives the opportunity to analyze potential flaws and where there might be improvements. With this in mind, we gave the agreed-upon prototype a spin during our upcoming UOI planning. After the teams had a chance to use it, I met with them to discuss what they liked and didn’t like about it. I took notes and then made adjustments to create a final draft planner. I shared the draft planner and got feedback on its elements again. I created an exemplar and through that process, I continued to make revisions that supported our school’s goals.

Implement

During the course of this year, we have been using this final version. There are things that have worked and didn’t work with it. So even though we went through many iterative cycles, it’s not easy to create a planning document.

Do Betters

If I had to do this all over again, these are the areas that I think deserve more “air time” in the overall design of the planning document.

Collaborative Practices: To think that a one-size-fits-all planner is going to improve collaboration is naive and, in hindsight, I think an examination of our collaborative practices would have been a better place to start. Not only would it address the EMPATHIZE component better, but would have helped us DEFINE what we really needed in order to truly personalize our planner.

Connecting the head with the heart: Although our template definitely supports more understanding of the content in different subjects, supporting transfer is really tricky. Thinking through how we can get students to acquire knowledge and skills throughout the inquiry and make transdisciplinary connections is really a big goal of our learning framework. Moreover, how might their learning transfer into action? This is definitely something that we have to put front and center in our re-design.

Cultivating and Curating Curiosity: Evidencing the learning on the planner has been the hardest part of the planner to fill out. During the inquiry, teachers rarely remember specific questions that students asked unless they are captured on sticky notes or posters. Using digital platforms to upload pictures or learning artifacts is often a better source of documentation than our planners. This is an area that we must unpack more and consider how we can support assessment practices that develop learner-centered approaches and inform teachers.

I’m sure more ideas and reflections will emerge as we work to co-construct a meaningful PYP planner that supports our goals. I’m wondering what other considerations might be out there, but am hopeful that they will emerge as we move forward during the re-design of the planner.

A “Think Aloud” about Supporting Interventions in a PYP School’s Programme of Inquiry

A “Think Aloud” about Supporting Interventions in a PYP School’s Programme of Inquiry

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Have you ever looked up synonyms for the word INTERVENTION?

There are 711 similar words….from “meddling” to “treatment” from “interference” to “support”. And the broad range of related word meanings also brings up a multitude of potentials for designing a reading intervention program at your school.

Developing this program is in response to teaching our learners after a full school year online. We want to be ready to get them growing as soon as we can get them onto campus. We want to ensure that they accelerate when they return. We are currently bringing in Reader’s Workshop (aka developing a LOVE of Reading) along with Leveled Learning Intervention (aka the SCIENCE of Reading).

But intervention models typically require those kiddos who need more support to get pulled out of class (Tier 2 and 3). You wouldn’t pull them out of literacy, nor would you pull them out of math, so what would they miss? Their Unit of Inquiry (UOI) time? Hmm…I’m not a fan of that. Because if you add something to your program, something else has to be eliminated, right?

That’s what I am grappling with right now……and I think back to those words “meddling” and “interference”–is this what is going to happen to transdisciplinary learning?

So I’ve been considering how we might use our UOIs in service of students getting the support so they need to feel confident and capable. And since many kids’ growth has taken a hit from learning in a pandemic, I am thinking about a whole school UOI that could be used for our intervention time, but not just to address their deficiencies, but to explore their assets too! What could a UOI like that look like?

Personal

Timely

Goal-orientated

Empowering

Effective

Joyful

That’s what I want for our learners.

What Transdisciplinary Theme?

So I’m starting to think about how we would design a unit like that? My first thought is that this would be developed as a Who We Are and it would need to target many facets of the theme descriptor:

Identity, Relationships, Beliefs, Responsibility, Community–are some concepts that might show up in a UOI

Okay…..so let’s start with some potential Central ideas:

Knowing about who we are as learners can help us to set goals, develop independence and build a strong culture of support. 

Healthy communities develop a strong culture of cooperation, goal-setting, and compassion in order to achieve their objectives.

People’s curiosity and desire to learn can create opportunities for personal growth and build relationships in a community.

Challenges provide individuals and communities opportunities to reflect, problem-solve and develop resilience. 

Discovering who we are can help us to define who we want to become, as individuals and as a community. 

Alright, that’s enough brainstorming for now. There are many possible trajectories in the Who We Are theme.

As I consider the viability of this, we want something that provides breadth so that we focus on the LEARNER, not just on the subject matter. And, although this UOI could be used as a placeholder on our schedules for reading intervention time, we could also use it for math intervention or opportunities to EXTEND their learning. We must be careful to balance deficiencies with assets, spotlighting what makes them unique and helping them to develop self-awareness of who they are. I really need to sit down with teachers to hear their ideas and come into alignment so we can really put something solid on paper. Then grade-level teams can add their polish and shine to any of these potential central ideas and create their own lines of inquiry.

How long?

Once we nail down the Central idea, the next step is to determine the length of the unit. And how might we schedule this? We wouldn’t do it as a typical 6-week UOI!  This will need to be a year-long UOI because we would need a substantial amount of time to work with students.

Lets’s say you take a week to launch it and then provide 1 day a week for intervention (31 weeks on our school calendar) roughly would make this a 5 1/2-6 week UOI. Hmm…that could work, And then different grade levels can use different days of the week to make it easier for our reading interventionist to do “pull out”.  Although once we analyze our student data, we might need more time in certain grade levels, so, although this might be a whole school UOI, the approach might look different. We might need a steady blast of 4 weeks long in Grade 2, for example, and then pull it back to one day a week. So knowing our learners and being flexible will be the key. Even if we do this as a whole school, we don’t have to have the same timelines for each grade level. Could be messy but we have to think about what students need.

Considerations..

The final thing that I wonder about is if we did this as a whole school UOI and scheduled it accordingly, then could we do a multi-grade collaboration, in which teachers could have students move more fluidly between classrooms in order to engage in different kinds of learning? Oh, that could be cool if teachers were open to sharing students. hmm…lots of possibilities, although this would need to be post-pandemic when folks can venture out of their “pods”.

Definitely some food for thought.

I’m excited about providing more support to learners as they develop into strong readers and writers, but I want to make sure we don’t subtract from other areas of the curriculum. I want to honor that we are a PYP school first and foremost, and we embed additional support strutures because we believe in learners’ capacity to grow into flourishing human beings.

As I shared in the post, Should Fear be the Basis of Decision-making in Schools? , I want to do things not because we worry about learning gaps, but we have hope for the future and wish to create a new way forward in education. Although the whole concept of “intervention” is based on looking at what the student is missing, I wish to shift this approach in order to find some new truths in evaluating data.

This is the first draft of my thinking, but as we work together in our learning community, I see a lot of possibilities to cultivate a different ethos around this topic.

Any ideas or suggestions? I’m all ears! Please share.

Thinking About How to “Make the PYP Happen” Online

Thinking About How to “Make the PYP Happen” Online

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Here we go again! Schools are beginning their 2020-2021 school. For many of us, this is another time at the bat to try on this thing called “online learning”.  Last spring, online was an “emergency” learning situation, but now we must have a more planned approach. Even those schools who are are coming back face-to-face still might see an uptick in numbers of COVID and be forced back into remote learning. Uncertainty is the new normal.

So this means that teachers have to get good at using technology in a thoughtful and intentional way. For our school, we have really been digging into the question of how do you do the PYP online? During our school holiday, I read Teaching and Technology During a Time of Crisis which provided stories about the myriad of approaches to dealing with the sudden shift to online learning. And as I read through these experiences, it got me wondering about how might these experiences be articulated through the lens of “Making the PYP Happen ONLINE”.

Hmmm…

Now that many of our schools get another crack at this, I think we must be truly reflecting on how our PYP students will experience learning differently than in other schools online. What is the difference in our pedagogical approaches?

Well, let’s be clear what online learning is NOT for our students:

It’s rather obvious that we don’t do an inquiry into “worksheets” or stop teaching certain subject areas because it’s too “hard” to do online. It’s not a bunch of choice boards either and calling that “agency”. These things might have been okay during “emergency learning” but now that we face prolonged online learning, we have to be much intentional and develop skillfulness in teaching in this new way.  It’s also not asynchronized lessons only (Google Classroom, SeeSaw, Schoology, etc..) or parking kids in front of a screen and doing synchronized lessons only (Zoom, Google Meets, Microsoft Teams). Why?  Because the heart of who we are as PYP educators is a firm belief in social constructivism.

Social constructivism: pedagogical approach that believes that knowledge is something that a learner ‘constructs’ for themselves, rather than passively absorbs.  Students construct their knowledge through conversation and interaction, with each other and with teachers. In this way, students cultivate a better understanding of concepts when they work together and discuss ideas. (Piaget + Vygotsky)

So, as we develop our online learning plans 2.0 and transition into hybrid learning we must keep in mind that students need time to construct meaning on their own and through group discussion. This is why we need a balance of synchronized and synchronized learning experiences.

So after reflecting on this, I sat down and considered the tech tools that classrooms might use to not only increase student engagement but also provide for social interaction online. This 2×2 matrix represents some of my thinking when it comes purposefully using technology to support the PYP online. I also thought it might help teachers think about what platforms they might need to not only get good at for student engagement but also for developing relationships online. Obviously this doesn’t represent every app out there and there’s a lot of nuances missing in how apps can be used, but I wanted our teachers to be thinking about purposely choosing platforms to support social constructivism, whether it was through a synchronized lesson or through synchronized learning. So let’s take a look at some apps and how they might support social constructivism.

Google Jamboard (Free)

If your school has a Google for Education account, it is typically in your suite of apps and is very easy to use. We use Zoom for our live synchronized lessons but when using the Zoom whiteboard in breakout rooms is really different to save and share work. So, Jamboard really comes in handy to promote small group discussions–whether brainstorming ideas, solving math problems, or doing visible thinking routines–this is a great platform for capturing student thinking.  

Pros: Whether you are using Google Meets (need a chrome extension for Breakout rooms )or Zoom, you can have students using this collaborative whiteboard through synchronized lessons in order to share ideas and develop conceptual understandings. It has basic drawing features, the ability to add images, sticky notes, and a variety of backgrounds to support different kinds of learning. 

Cons: Only provides for 16 “touchpoints”, which means that you can only have 16 persons working on a Jamboard at a time so this makes it tricky for a whole class to work on one Jamboard. No audio or video features so student thinking can only be captured in written form. Thus this wouldn’t be good for asynchonized learning. 

FlipGrid (Free)

For synchronized learning, this is one of the best platforms to have a “conversation” online. Students create video responses in order to discuss a topic or describe how to solve a problem. This has soooo many learning applications, that every teacher really should have this tech tool in their teacher toolbox. I’ve used this from everything like a Reader’s Workshop partner reading to sharing unit projects. How you use this platform is only limited to your imagination. 

Pros: Easy for teachers to create discussion topics and can embed a lot of content from other apps. Students love making and engaging in video responses but have the chance to “cover their face” with an emoji in order to protect privacy. Flipgrid has also added written responses as well for those truly camera shy. Also, has assessment embedded into the platform, making it easy to get feedback and have a well-round academic experience online. 

Cons: App smashing can sometimes be clumsy. For example, when students shared a Google Slide presentation, we had permission issues due to restrictions with our Google admin set up. That was more of a Google hiccup than a FlipGrid one–but you always need to test your boards to see their limitations. Also, since their recent updates, boards aren’t as easy to respond to now with their required email sign-in, making code sharing not as simple as before. If you use this with young ones, consider creating a “private” passcode that is easy enough to type in so that young students can make responses. 

Padlet (Free, but limited)

There are so many ways to use this platform, whether you share a padlet during a live lesson to facilitate a discussion or during an asynchronized lesson.  This also has many learning applications: you can curate resources for students, engage in a discussion, or collaborate on a project. 

Pros:  Super simple to use which makes this good for younger as well as older students. Just click on the page and add your content. As you can see in this image, there is a variety of content that can be shared. 

Cons: Adding content to the board is easy but making comments on this content is very limited, especially in the Free edition. So if you want students to make a comment on something shared, it has to be text-based. If you upgrade and get a paid account, there are a lot more features available but I don’t see how responses can be more versatile in this regard. 

Voice Thread (Paid)

This app makes me wish I was still “in the classroom” and not a dedicated PYP Coordinator. On their website, they claim “VoiceThread is a platform where students develop critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity skills.” After looking at some of the projects on Voice Thread library, I can see how you take a typical video lesson and amplify through creating interaction for students. 

Pros: Teachers can upload, share, and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files and videos. Over 50 different types of media can be used in a VoiceThread, so you can literally have a discussion ON a particular piece of content. Students can comment using either a microphone, webcam, text, phone, or an audio-file upload.

Cons: For $79 per year or $15 per month, you better be committed to using this or you’re throwing your hard-earned money away. Also, I think teachers would need to spend a weekend, at least, at figuring out how to create and train students at creating responses. It’s a robust platform but may need some time to figure out how to use its bells and whistles. 

Parlay (Paid)

I came across this platform when researching new tech tools for online learning. I really liked its concept of chunking discussion into parts, making this very useful for social constructivism. If you look at how discussions are structured, students are provided a provocation and prompt in which they must reflect on it in written form. Then other students can engage in written discussion and provide peer feedback. Then, in the next phase of the discussion, students go “live” during a “roundtable” on Zoom or another video conferencing platform.

Pros: It has a solid approach to developing deeper learning through a process of critical thinking and discussion. 

Cons: You will notice immediately that this platform is better suited for older students because it relies on discussion forums and it frames discussions around a “course” (seems like the target is high school and college students) so test it out during PLC to have teachers think about how you could approach this with intermediate grade levels. 

Although there are lots of choices out there for apps to increase student online engagement, I hope teachers value interaction as a “must-do” for PYP instruction. Hopefully, this blog post provides some food for thought. 

What apps or platforms might you recommend for cultivating social constructivism through online learning? Please share!
Are We Asking “Beautiful Questions”?

Are We Asking “Beautiful Questions”?

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We are hard-wired to be curious. Have you ever been around a little baby before?  When a newborn begins to realize that they have a body and becomes fascinated with their hands, they study them intensely. They put them in their mouths, they linger on different textures, wanting to squeeze them to feel them oozing through their fingers.

We are born curious, our brains pattern-making machines, trying to make sense of our environment, both outer and inner. Our schools shouldn’t be a place where student questions go to die.  Schools should be a place where curiosity is nurtured and sustained.

visual questionsIn  The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead,  Warren Berger pronounces “I am a questionologist.” I love that! When you look at the graphic that summarizes Berger’s book, you get a sense of possibility that deepening our inquiries can create through broad questioning techniques. The questions are not complicated, but the path they lead you on can branch into new avenues and creative opportunities. As educators, we should not only be modeling these broad-reaching questions but encouraging tangents of thought through open-ended questions.

A poem comes to mind which reminds me of the wonder and inspiration within the power of a question. Its words penetrate my soul and awaken the child within me, the one with a million “whys”.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

When I consider the excitement of beginning a new unit of inquiry, despite its familiarity, a fresh set of questions always come to mind. Just like the students, I am there with them, embarking upon the inquiry, seeking new understandings. I want to “live the questions” that Rilke speaks of, knowing that curiosity is a way of being in the world, experiencing awe and elegance in the search for answers. It is more than a pedagogical approach, it is a way of being. 

the searchSo to develop our “questionology” is not only important for our classroom culture but it when you think of it, it generates well-being. To question is to shake hands with possibility, and possibility opens our focus, inviting new information into our awareness.  So this drive to wonder is what makes us  “inforvores”, and is a psychological need. In fact, science is beginning to show that if we are not organizing our classrooms in such a way that spark interest, we are literally deadening the brains of our students. I’d also like to add that our own teaching practice becomes joyless when life is all answers and no questions.

So let’s take a page from Berger’s playbook and start generating opportunities for curiosity by asking more “beautiful questions”. It’s a habit worth cultivating.

 

 

 

What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP)

What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP)

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Where do good ideas come from? From a lot of bad ones, I think. We have to experiment and be willing to get “messy” in order to challenge ourselves. We have to be vulnerable. And, so I am sharing a very rough draft of some new thinking that I am exploring when it comes to our Programme of Inquiry. 

Last week, I meant to work on my Google Training series, but instead, I got the notion about how to rethink our Program of Inquiry with Future Thinking.  Inspired, I started sketching out possible approaches. Eventually, I created a Google Doc and started thinking about how I might map out the Programme of Inquiry (POI) based on the big WHY of a school’s mission. That became my starting line.

Excuse Me While I Make a Point

Pardon my digression.

Have you noticed that a lot of schools are really vague and general about their Mission?  I think the standard practice of trying to distill our mission into marketing taglines makes it harder to define our success as a school. For example: Inspire. Challenge. Empower. 

Inspired to do what? Challenging doing what? Empowering to do what? In my mind, these taglines create a state of “vanilla”, in which your school is, at best, average, instead of being a unique community of learning. I think this vagueness provides an incomplete map of why our school is so vital to the overall landscape of education.  Not just in our city, but in the world. We need to think bigger than our school bubble.

Back to the “Start”

Since I was present at our school’s recent Visioning session, I am aware of all the lovely conversations with staff, parents and students about “What’s the Best that Could Happen?” for our 5-year plan. Sustainability was a major theme that came out of those discussions and is a part of our strategic plans. Thus, I feel that our curriculum’s goal should be driven by what a school wants to become–the future they hope to build in 5 years.

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The 5-year plan now becomes a living document, as our curriculum can actualize the potential within our community. Sustainability, as a collective desire of the stakeholders, is going to be the “Rome” to which all roads lead to. In fact, it’s not a road, it’s a 4-lane highway, in which the Sustainability Compass comprises the lanes in which our curriculum will drive: Nature, Economy, Society and Well-being. What’s cool about this is that it’s been mapped against the UN’s Sustainability Goals which helps to promote them.

Sign Post #1: Guiding Conceptual Themes

Before looking at the POI, I want you to notice in the POI that I have included a grade level “Guiding Concept” that came from out of the Enhanced PYP discussions. Although I think of this as the tool for coherency and alignment, I love how Lisa Verkerk refers to it as the “red thread” that weaves units together. That’s a beautiful metaphor that describes how grade-level units have an overall conceptual theme that navigates the direction of each transdisciplinary theme’s inquiry. In this way, it makes it easier to map out the sequencing of units, because you consider which unit needs to come first in its understanding and then decide which one is the hardest, to help you to designate the order by conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #2: Layout

Sarah Osborne introduced me to another way of setting up the POI which has helped me to observe patterns of articulation of the descriptors within a transdisciplinary theme. When you just tilt this document on its side, sort of speaking, you get a whole new perspective on your Programme of Inquiry. Gaps begin to glare.

Although this is not a complete POI, once completed, it is a thing of beauty to see how coherent and infused it is deep conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #3: Central Ideas

I have a lot of strong opinions about central ideas which you may already be aware of if you read the blog post: Central Ideas: The Good, The Bad and The Messy. How the Primary Years Program Can Rethink and Define Them. However, I have to thank 25-year Reggio veteran Marianne Valentine  for helping me to consider how very broad central ideas are important for play-based learning as it opens up for more personalized inquiry and evolving your role as a teacher into a researcher. So, with that in mind, I have some central ideas that are succinct for a reason. Although I cringe when I read central ideas that sound more like slogans (ex: Ideas revel possibilities), they can be powerful tools in allowing certain units to go into a variety of directions and have their place in a POI.

Sign Post #4: Solution-Focused

I am really inspired by the work of Glenn Hayres, Jen Friske and Lynn Cuccaro with their diligence in writing units of inquiry that are solution-focused in directing a POI to create problem-solvers as students. I love this intention and I think it amplifies agency when we not only bring the world’s problems to the children’s attention but empower them into action. No doom and gloom. We can cope with hope. (Cheesy, I know, but couldn’t resist.)

However, this is a skillful endeavor, and I am still working on developing this skill. But I like a challenge and enjoy giving it a try.

Before you peek at the document, I have another POI that is following this approach. Very much a draft! And the one below that is another POI I created as a warm-up for the Enhancements. It’s an “old” way of thinking about a POI, but I go back to it to steal ideas and reference it to see if this purpose-driven POI is really any different from past ones I have created.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mQRFkpM8Z8V2KwRqvnFX294sm5dWY8g7dIkenP0oeck/edit?usp=sharing

 

This is a work in progress, clearly. I still have some “Future Building” to work on. But I am sharing this raw POI skeleton so you can start thinking about how your school can use these features in creating a POI template that is motivated with bigger ambitions than covering content in order to prepare students for MYP. One thing I have yet to do is to collaborate–something that is really necessary with designing a POI. You need lots of perspectives and ideas to tap into the genius and experience of others. Not necessarily with the whole staff, but definitely with the right people, can be exciting and fun.

Looking Back at the Map

Because I believe that our written curriculum is a major contributing factor to the ethos and culture within a school, I feel that a well-articulated POI is foundational for dynamic learning and teaching within a school. When this is fully fleshed out, I will have to filter this POI through that the school’s bigger “Why” and whether it will support our school’s goals. We always have to be challenging our POI. Furthermore, on paper this POI is in theory. When these units are taught, that is the really telling sign and the one that matters–What learning came out of this? What was its impact? We’d have to reflect and modify when necessary.

 

My hope is that your heart is leaping out of your chest with the possibility of how awesome your school can become when you have a written curriculum that is mission-driven and coherent. I wish for all of our schools to ask themselves What’s the Best that Can Happen?

In my mind, silence is accepting the status quo. Please challenge and extend my thinking in the comments below.

 

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

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Not everyone wakes up on a Sunday morning and sketches out ideas for a Programme of Inquiry (POI), but I’ve been reflecting for a while on my experience from last spring when I went to the IB’s headquarters in the Hague to help design sample POIs for the Enhanced PYP initiative (see the Teacher Support Materials that can be accessed in the MyIB section of the main page for those samples in PYP resources). During that time, our teams sat down and began to create POIs that were structurally synergistic, organized so that there was more conceptual coherence and personalized to the uniqueness of that school reality and age group. In the blog post, #PYP: What is a Successful Programme of Inquiry?, I articulated the intention that was foundational in creating those sample POIs, but I’m starting to consider this definition of “success” as my “first thinking” when I consider what it might mean to “enhance” something.

Probably all you English scholars know that the word “enhance” is a transitive verb, meaning that this verb is relational and influential. enhanced pypI find it an interesting word choice by the IB in its re-branding effort. So their call to “enhance” our Primary Years Programme has got me lingering on what it is that we want to elevate in the learning experience.  Visually, “Agency” has now become the symbolic heart of the PYP’s graphic. I think many educators are painting a picture of what that can look like in our classrooms; the blog called IB Educator Voices contains a multitude of examples of teachers pivoting towards an agentic pedagogical approach. Currently, I am enamored with Rick Hanson’s definition of agency from his book, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness , which I’d like to share with you:

Agency is the ability to look for ways to cause an effect. It’s a sense of internal freedom when you make something happen.

Hmm…..when I consider that interpretation, my eyes begin to widen its focus upon the outer ring’s message of this enhanced PYP graphic: “Building For the Future”.  Should we not, as PYP educators, be contemplating what sort of future we wish to build? We often undermine our influence of the big picture of how society and culture are developed over time through our educational paradigms. Educators have played a big role in creating the Millennial-generation, and we are helping to create the next generation of global citizens. We shouldn’t take these things lightly, and in fact, I think we should be much more intentional with our power and ability to transform our human experience and life on Earth. We should look for ways to cause an effect….because we have the freedom to make something happen. For example, it seems obvious to me that the intelligent and thoughtful people at the United Nation’s know this, which is why they have created a call to action with the #TeachSDGs movement. Our schools should be seriously considering how we might achieve those 17 goals by 2030, because this is certainly one way to shape our schools’ POIs which is in alignment with the PYP curricular framework and values of the IB.

A Second Thought

As I reflect back to that Hague experience, I feel that this initial approach to considering what it means to “enhance” the design of the POI is still ongoing. If you look carefully at those Sample POIs, you would notice that they don’t really deviate much from each other. Because at the end of the day, whether we were using national curricular standards or the IB’s Scope and Sequence, the challenges with using either the standards-based vs. concept-based curriculum results in more similarities than exceptions when creating the units of inquiries. I think this a testimony to the strength of the PYP framework and transdisciplinary learning with how translatable it is to a variety of educational settings.  However, when I read books like Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly and  How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil, I begin to wonder if our current POIs are teaching towards the past or preparing for the imminent reality of our students. Are we, as schools, engaged in future-building, with meaningful and forward-thinking POIs, or clinging onto industrial-age ideas.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with those books, so I’d like to share a quote that persistently plagues me from Homo Deus:

As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubject reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the 21st century, fiction might thereby become the most potent force on Earth…hence, if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that make meaning in our world……Fiction isn’t bad. It’s vital. Without commonly accepted stories about money, states or coorporations, no complex human society can function. We can’t play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can’t enjoy the benefits of the markets and courts without simliar make-believe stories. But the stories are just tools. They should not become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality.

Yuval Noah Harari, from Home Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

I’ve been marinating in those words for over a year. Curious about what could be the “story” we are telling ourselves now about our future and how we can use it as a “tool”. I know that some feel that the book Future Shock is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But what if we could choose another direction, one in which we meet the disruption that advancing technology will bring with creativity, grace, and intention. I believe wholeheartedly in that possibility, which is why I’ve been working on developing online courses for well-being in the digital age. I feel strongly that we should not resist technology but instead embrace it and use it to promote greater health and improve our relationships. That is the empowering “story” I wish to tell.

And today, I woke up, feeling alive, wanting to create a POI that was bathed in an over-reaching goal of developing well-being because I think that is the “fiction” I’d like to cultivate in the intersubjective (socially agreed upon) future reality of students. Here are the main 6 concepts that I feel need to be unpacked and gone into depth over the course of a student’s PYP experience within our 6 transdisciplinary themes.

  1. Sustainability (Production and Consumption):  because we need to shift from scarcity to ingenuity.
  2. Entrepreneurship: because we need to shift from profit-orientated goals to positive contributions in society.
  3. Computational Thinking: because we have to understand the algorithms of life and how we can co-evolve with exponential machine learning.
  4. Digital Citizenship: because online relationships and media are influencing us and our society. We need to navigate this reality skillfully.
  5. Social Emotional Learning: because attention and emotional awareness is vital to our health and is the new currency in our economy.
  6. Imagination (and Poetry): because creativity is the by-product of imagination, and we need to find more beautiful ways to express it.

I’ve started to create potential POIs that take these main concepts and build them out so that the overall force of the programme is one that develops well-bing: resilience, awareness, positive outlook and generosity. It’s really hard to translate these ideas into words without a fully fleshed out sample POI to show as a model but hopefully, the spirit of this quest has been communicated and I will have something completed soon that I can show as an example.

An Invitation

Now, whether you agree with me or not about what concepts need to be on a future-orientated whole-school POI isn’t the point but I do hope to open up a debate. I know in schools that are moving towards personalized learning culture, very broad and general central ideas are highly valued so that there is a lot of flexibility in the direction of a student’s inquiry. In my own experience, I am grappling with casting such a wide net with central ideas in the curriculum, uncertain if the overall outcome behooves the students and is manageable for teachers. But the purpose of this post is not to incite discussion around central ideas, but instead to provoke a re-examination of “the big picture” of your current school’s POI and reflect upon the future that you want to create through the curriculum.  Especially in schools that have authorized programmes, we need to be really challenging ourselves, moving beyond horizontal and vertical articulation. Perhaps this is my new working definition of the Enhanced PYP. I’m calling it “trans-articulation”. It’s less about ticking boxes and more about growing the future today, evolving consciously and actively within our curriculum approach.

As always, I hope you share your reflections, wonderings and concerns in the comments below.

 

A Different Kind of Practice for this PYP Educator

A Different Kind of Practice for this PYP Educator

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As a Primary Years Programme educator, we often refer to ourselves as “practitioners” not teachers. That’s an interesting choice of words, isn’t it? Does it make you wonder what it is that we practice?

As it is the beginning of a new year, we have an opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of last year and contemplate the goals of the 365 days that lay before us. Considering how I am fresh from a holiday mindfulness meditation retreat at Thai Plum Village, it’s easy for me to focus on who I want to become, not just what I want to do like “get in better shape” in the new year.  In fact, I have been contemplating what it means to be a practitioner and examining what I want to “practice” more in 2019, not just with the students, but with all the human beings that I am in contact with. There are 3 things that I’d like to become more proficient as a “practitioner”.

Practice #1: Patience

My daughter just turned 9 years old on December 27th. Future (6)During her celebration, I always remember how I actually went into labor on December 25th, Christmas Day, but it took her 2 more days to make her entrance. That pretty much sums up my daughter for you. She likes to take her time. She’s cautious. She saunters. She has a mind of her own. And at times I feel frustrated and eager to “get going”–a phrase I use with her often. Naturally, this sort of tug and pull with time can create tension and frustration between us. So it makes me wonder what other relationships do I need to practice more patience in and in what situations does the need for exercising patience arise?

I think of moments in which I lean into my students, stopping to listen to them fully. This is what often is the fodder for a “teachable moment”. But as I ponder these “Teachable Moments”, they don’t have to be miraculous events in a lesson. I think there are numerous opportunities to allow time for understanding to organically emerge through our interactions.  But I watch the clock, thinking about our schedules all the time. Of course, this is just one dimension of developing patience in daily school lives. What if I tried to do less to accomplish more in our inquiries, instead of trying to march through our “standards” and “learning objectives” so I can take a breath and provide more space for them to share and reflect. I know this will take more skillfulness in asking questions and planning provocations, but if I am patient, if I am deeply listening to students, I know that these skills can naturally develop. I don’t have to read the latest and greatest professional books, I can just pay better attention to my learners. They are my best teachers. They are my professional curriculum.

It also seems obvious, but a pregnant pause during a conversation with colleagues would also genuinely help me to be more attentive to the ideas and concerns of others. I don’t have to rush in and share a thought or opinion. I can be patient and listen. I can also be patient when it comes to email replies or tasks to be ticked off my to-do list. There is really no shortage of opportunities to practice patience in my work-life.

Practice #2: Joy

If you were to ever meet me in person, I often say “Happy Monday.”..or Tuesday…or whatever day it is when I am walking to my classroom in the morning. To me, it’s a pleasure and honor to get to do the work that I do; I don’t HAVE TO do it, I GET TO do it. I wasn’t always like this. I remember there was a time in which I taught High School that I dreaded Monday. I had to cultivate happiness and when you are a curmudgeon, it feels like an effort to see what is right in a situation. Sharing a smile is where I began. I would stand in the doorway, greeting my Integrated Science students, smiling and inviting them into class. If they smiled back at me–SCORE!!–I knew that they were ready to learn. It felt like a genuine accomplishment. It lifted my spirits and eventually transformed my experience of working with adolescents.

When I started working with younger students, especially the Early Years, it was really hard to be grumpy. If you come across grouchy, those kids lose interest in building a relationship with you. And I can’t say I blame them. So I learned quickly that I was better off singing a song powerplant.jpegor playing a game to get them to focus while I explained something. But those outward actions don’t hide the frustration and agitation going on inside. I had to learn how to calm down internally–still am, for that matter–so that I can bathe our classroom community in that calming presence.

A few years ago, I came across Brendon Burchard, a life coach who preaches that you have to “Bring the Joy” to wherever you go. I honestly hadn’t considered that phenomena, and developing that level of energy and enthusiasm is a life skill that I think all of us should master. It sure makes life more fun and interesting. Here is a quick video on this concept if you are keen to learn more:

Nevertheless, I have been working on “generating” joy on demand. If you go to a Zen retreat like I did, it becomes very easy to learn how returning to our breath is an opportunity to find happiness in the present moment. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to stop, breath, and tune into the present moment. I practiced it for a whole week, and I intend to continue practicing it. There is joy in simply being alive when you connect to the present moment, slow down and look deeply into the situation. It’s very hard to transcribe this experience to you so that you can see how beneficial this practice is for you. But any opportunity to learn mindfulness is advised and I would recommend You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh to be a lovely place to start.

Needless to say, becoming more mindful is an opportunity to practice joy in the classroom. Years ago, when I was forcing myself to smile, I had no idea how I was laying down neurological tracks in my brain for peace in my body.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Read more: Thich Nhat Hanh

Smiling literally changes us, sending off a cascade of chemical signals that tell our bodies that indeed there is something to be happy about. And I have noticed that my smile turns into laughter: quiet chuckles and boisterous guffaws. I wish to practice more of this joy-on-demand this year, and, more importantly, teach it to students. Who knows, maybe I will lucky enough to articulate well to adults, who have more fixed ideas and stories around joyfulness.

Practice #3: Understanding

This practice might be the hardest for me. I know in the PYP, we talk about developing empathy and perspective in our students, but as an adult, our judgment and self-righteousness are hard to shake off at times. At least for me, if I am being honest.

But I am beginning to appreciate that I often don’t have enough information in order to form an opinion about something or someone. I need to practice understanding, taking time to ask questions and observe a situation more closely before drawing a conclusion. It doesn’t happen in one conversation, in one meeting. It takes time, and, again, deep listening, in order to develop clarity.

Let me give you a current example. I have a student that I am pretty sure has dyslexia. The statistics are that 1 in 5 students have it. Seeing how I have 18 students in my class, there’s a high probability that at least 1 student in my class has it, so I am biased to be looking for this reading difficulty to start with. This student has many of the features of dyslexia, but I should not be quick to label him. I need more time to observe and reflect on how he sees words, writes letters and numbers, and hear sounds. We’ve already started interventions with him, so we have to continue reflecting on his response to these approaches. In other words, I need to truly understand him in order to teach him since he learns differently than average kids–which is really what this label of “dyslexia” really means. But he is not the only student that deserves this. All students do.

So for me, developing understanding goes beyond examining data, it is an appreciation for the motivations and emotions of each student–and for my colleagues for that matter. Understanding the “why” behind the behavior, including my own, is so important in cultivating enriching interactions. Approaching others with curiosity and a “beginner’s mind” can help renew my relationship with them and cultivate a fresh perspective of situations, providing me with greater awareness and opportunities to explore different approaches.

New Year or Same Year?

As I carefully consider how I might approach being a teacher and a PYP practitioner differently, I know that there will be moments of genuine effort involved in order to create a NEW YEAR. Because if I just continue repeating habits and behaviors of the past, the calendar may say that it’s a new year, but in truth, unless I change, it’s the same year all over again. It is my intention to develop myself emotionally, as well as intellectually, as I embark upon a new dimension of my professional practice.

Perhaps you have begun to consider who you want to be as an educator as well. What do you want to practice more of in the year to come–what emotions or attitudes do you want to cultivate? Feel free to share in the comments below so that others can be inspired by the energy of your commitment.

I wish you a genuinely Happy New Year.

May you be well.

May you be safe.

May you be peaceful.

May you be love.

May you be happy.

The Only Thing You Need To Do To Develop Student Agency

The Only Thing You Need To Do To Develop Student Agency

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Every school is trying to define and articulate how they are developing “Agency” in their curriculum, but I’m going to tell you the only thing you need to know. I’ve come to realize that it’s not that complicated. First of all, if the term confuses you, change it to “Independence”, because that is what it really means. Don’t overthink this jargon. Now, simplifying this term should help you to realize that you don’t need to create huge innovative initiatives at your school. In fact, I believe it doesn’t begin with our heads, it starts in our hearts. So what is the ONLY thing you need to develop student agency (i.e. independence)?–It’s TRUST. So ask yourself right now, Do I trust my students?

That’s a really important question so sit with it for a minute because our level of trust gets communicated with our words and actions (or inaction) toward our students every day in our classrooms. Have a think about this quote from Peter Johnson, author of Choice Words.

When you figure something out for yourself, there is a certain thrill in the figuring. After a few successful experiences, you might start to think that figuring things out is something that you actually can do. Maybe you are even a figuring out kind of person, encouraging an agentic dimension to identity. When you are told what to do, particularly without asking, it feels different. Being told explicitly what to do and how to do it–over and over again–provides the foundation for a different set of feelings about what you can do and can’t do, and who you are. The interpretation might be that you are the kind of person who cannot figure things out for yourself.

A few weeks ago we had a parent meeting, and there was a lovely debate about what was “better” about teaching through inquiry vs. traditional methods. Parents questioned why education was moving in this direction that felt “slow” to them. “What has changed since we grew up?” was the essence of that sentiment. Perhaps you could say that technology has taught us teachers that we are not the beacons of knowledge anymore–but I replied “brain research”. In my opinion that is really the heart of why we are shifting because inquiry-based approaches have been around since the time of Socrates–maybe even longer. This approach isn’t new either, it’s really an ancient technology that is making a comeback, if you will, in education. However, now we have evidence that our brains get wired differently when we have passive vs. active learning experiences. Since these ideas are still under research, not many schools develop metacognition through the use of using neurological terms like synaptogenesis and neural plasticity, but I do think that the term Growth Mindset has become more commonplace which reflects this phenomenon. Having a Growth Mindset is the key to cultivating the confidence that encourages this “agentic dimension to identity”, as Peter Johnson calls it.

So what does trust look like? We’ve filtered it down to 3 things: giving students more choice, voice, and ownership in their learning. And because we are educators, we feel the need to unpack this, create criteria and continuum that demonstrate the growth of these things in our classrooms.  If you are not sure what I am talking about, here’s an example:continuum-voice-web

It’s a great reflection tool for us when we examine the culture of learning in our classrooms and schools, but this is not in and of itself the means by which agency is developed–we are not trying to force kids into action (not that these teachers are suggesting this with this infographic but I know there are some school leaders who may take it that way) just so we can say that we are ticking the box when it comes to “Voice” with student agency. Truthfully, our kids come with lots of “voice” when they first arrive at school–we can just “shush it” out of them. I know, I am an Early Years educator, and there are lots of gentle and not so gentle ways of doing this; it’s a burden to consider how much our classroom culture shapes their identity and confidence level in these formative years.  But their voice is the expression of their thoughts, and when we suppress that, we limit their motivation to think and contribute to problem-solving situations. Furthermore, if we never offer them choices, then there is no practice in making good decisions, which means “ownership” is void. How can you “own” something you never have the privilege of thinking carefully about and solve problems around? I’m sure you can relate to this through your own experience.Future (5).png

In my mind, this quote from Ron Ritchart really summarizes the work we do to not only create “cultures of thinking” but foster agency. When we promote students making connections and the mindset of “I can do this”, it is no longer a question of IF they will take action, it’s just a matter of WHEN. And we have to TRUST that too–that time is on their side.

Recently we had a student-led Performing Arts assembly that was outstanding. It was extraordinary because every element of that assembly was created by students. Our performing arts teacher, Graham Baines (aka PYP Chef), provided the props and structure, but otherwise, it was purely the students. They’ve been working on a personal “dream goal” for months, spending break time, lunchtime and after-school time to practice and perfect the performance that they designed independently or in collaborative groups. Here is one of the fun student performances–an audience favorite:

It was such a stark contrast from previous assemblies which felt awkward, tense (at moments) and contrived, from the teacher written MC scripts to the songs performed to the order of the acts. This one was energizing, fun and inspiring. There is no doubt that other students will be eager to put in the effort and time to improve their “dream goal” and perform for a large crowd just like this. Also, imagine how those students feel with having such wonderful success, which they get to completely own. However, Graham had to completely trust the students and relinquish control of “the show”, even if it meant that his reputation might be diminished as a teacher in our parent and teacher community.  I have high regard and appreciation for that level of vulnerability and visible courage, as he broke the mold when it came to providing this opportunity to students.

So, with that in mind, how can we not only let go of trying to control everything and trusting students but how can we get more of their thinking expressed in general? Because when we give them space, I truly believe that they will exceed our expectations and their own.

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