Tag: design-based approach to learning

The 3rd Teacher: Messages in School

The 3rd Teacher: Messages in School

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As I walked my daughter to her summer camp’s team table in the lunchroom, I noticed that there were signs on the walls. Since I am an educator, I love coming into schools to examine the clues about the school’s culture. (Student art is my favorite!) 3rd teacher malaguzziBut I stopped and gawked at the walls, having busy parents brush past me, I was mesmerized by their PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports) posters: large, realistic with students posed. No colorful mascot with catchy graphics. It was the kids. The character traits that the school focused on were:  Safe. Trustworthy. Accountable. Respectful.

I was too stunned that I didn’t take a photograph, but now I wish I could share the poster that had transfixed me: Respectful.

The Poster: Imagine a group of students, about 5 of them, mostly white but there’s a mixed-race kid thrown in for diversity, standing complacently at the camera with fingers pressed against their lips. “Shhhh” is what I hear.

My heart feels a pang. Respect=Quiet. Really?….Really?

I think to myself, “Judy, this is the cafeteria. Maybe they just want the students to use quiet voices in the lunchroom. Calm down”. This self-talk doesn’t help much. So I take a deep breath as I exit the room.

Why does THIS bother me? Why do I feel such a strong reaction to this image?

As I buckle my seat belt in my car, I sit with this feeling for a moment: Anger?…nearly…but not quite that charged…Disappointment…yes, there’s a hint of that..but I decide on Frustrated Confusion. “Frustrated” because it combines mild anger and disappointment. “Confusion” because I feel puzzled by what this image is suggesting.

In school, every inch of its campus should be designed to promote learning. Loris Malaguzzi, an Italian early childhood psychologist and founder of the Reggio Emilia’s preschools, was the first to recognize that the environment is the “Third Teacher“. Students often are influenced by what they see, hear, smell and feel, and more and more in education, we are designing learning spaces with this in mind. So, in my mind, these posters, which we know were created to teach what “respect” looks, sounds and feels like are particularly confounding because the message they communicate. The children are co-constructing conceptual understanding that respect is the equivalent of silence: Children should be seen and not heard. Is that the message that they really want students to embrace as they grow as a learner?

Because I am in a state of “frustrated confusion”, I decided to go to the school’s website later on that evening and research if they espouse a compliance model of student behavior. However, this is what I found out about the demographics and the values that they want to instill:

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The Lifelong Guidelines are: Truth, Trust, Active Listening, No Put Downs, and Personal Best

The Life Skills are: Integrity, Initiative, Flexibility, Perseverance, Organization, Sense of Humor, Effort, Common Sense, Problem-Solving, Responsibility, Patience, Friendship, Curiosity, Cooperation, and Caring.

 

Those “Life Long Guidelines” and “Life Skills” are really lovely, right? So how do those posters support their overall aim of character development in children?  In my mind, these posters are in direct opposition to the Life Guidelines and Skills they want to develop. I mean, how can we develop Trust and Truth to create Friendship, Problem-solving, and Caring, for example, without dialogue? In a lunchroom, in which conversations and discussions are not controlled by the teacher, this is a very important place to create those attributes. It is a critical communication center and a learning environment that schools should be designing with care and deep consideration.

As we prepare to open our school doors to students, we must not take lightly the role of the 3rd teacher in creating our learning community. As administrators, we need to ensure that the messages we share with children are consistent with the values we want to instill. Also, as teachers, we need to have the courage to advocate for this alignment-first with modeling it in our own classrooms and then reminding others in our learning community of the important function of our learning environment.

 

#Change in Education- Leadership through Design: How Schools can Rethink and Reimagine Themselves

#Change in Education- Leadership through Design: How Schools can Rethink and Reimagine Themselves

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Four years ago I made a study of Design Thinking, taking courses, reading books and trying to figure out how I could bring it to our youngest learners. (Psst…I think it’s the Secret Ingredient to Student Agency.) My passion for it has not stopped. Beyond projects and products, however, I think schools could use this thinking approach, not just in our classrooms, but in every area of our school. Why? I think often schools make hasty decisions before really taking the time to really brainstorm possibilities and thoughtfully enact change. With a design-led approach, you can improve and amplify collaboration and innovation in schools through human-centered research, starting with empathy, considering the needs of the user or the audience of your “product”. It’s not about YOU–it’s about THEM!! I love that! It’s really the whole point of education–serving the needs of others.

Here is an overview from the d.school in which you can see how design thinking is a major departure from how school leadership might undertake challenges.

design slide

Currently, our “MakerSpace Man”, Al Gooding is utilizing this approach with a redesign of our primary playground. He is collaborating with Grade 5 and Grade 9 students to create a more interactive and engaging playground with our students. Although this project is underway, you can see how the primary students are “testing” out the materials, which included bricks, bamboo, tires, and rope. For a week, they collected data of how others used the equipment and what challenges there were to this sort of play.

As you can see in the video, there’s been immense enjoyment and creativity. It’s gorgeous to see how play has been transformed through this project. Now those Grade 5 and Grade 9 students are going back to the “drawing board” to reflect and continue to research ideas before unveiling a reworked design of what our playground could be like.

So if Design Thinking can be applied to our learning spaces, what else can it be applied to?

Hmm…..

I’ve been thinking a lot about report cards lately. It’s a topic that is near and dear to my heart, especially if you read my blog post on #ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP. Naturally, I feel it’s worthwhile to take the time to analyze this entrenched assessment and reporting structure. So how might we approach a redesign of this?

  1. Define: Who is the report card for? Is its primary user students? parents? other schools?
  2. Empathy: Survey members of the community, such as students and parents FIRST. If they are the intended audience of this important document that provides feedback and articulation of a child’s intellectual and emotional growth, then we need to know their thoughts on it. What do they like and dislike about our report card? What do they wish it had on there? What do they wish we could eliminate?
  3. Brainstorm: Have staff get together and examine some of the information gathered. This can be a group of volunteers or this can be whole staff endeavor. We need a diverse group of thinkers and perspectives in the room so we could start playing What If?  This stage takes time–it’s not a 15-minute exercise. Creativity and divergent thinking require research and a touch of silliness so we can break out of the box of convention. We also need to consider how we create “teams of thinkers” so we can have groups that come up with a variety of strategies. We may even want to have students involved in this brainstorm–it’s about them, right?–they might offer some really great insights and ideas so we should value their voice.
  4. Iteration: We create mock-ups of what a re-imagined “report card” looks like. (I know in my mind right now, I’d create a more visual report card with infographics or some other visual design that would communicate better than a bunch of educational gibberish that is often put into reports.)
  5. Design Sprint: Share our best prototypes with our parents and students. What response do they have to them? What questions do they have? What needs are still not being met? (Can we meet those needs?). Then we go back to the drawing board, armed with their ideas for our staff to reflect upon to create a prototype.
  6. Unveil the Prototype (Test): Staff uses the new “report card” to communicate the learning. Teachers meet with parents to discuss the report to ensure they understand the information about their child’s learning. Students need to express their opinions as well. Do they think the report card summarizes their growth and learning well? Why or why not?
  7. Feedback and Moving Forward: We analyze various factors within the reporting process, such as how much time it took to “manufacture” the report, how well did the parents understand the report and how meaningful was the feedback system? What other challenges do we need to address? Do we still need to iterations to this or shall we continue with our re-designed report card?

Did you notice?

When we think about the “Enhanced PYP”, a design-led approach naturally cultivates formal and informal leadership within a learning community. There are voice, choice, and ownership on every level–admin, staff, students, and parents (perhaps even others outside our community). I believe that as we move forward in our quest to put “principles into practice”, we prioritize creating new ways in which we deepen our relationships within our schools and create a culture of inclusion.

I hope through these two examples of our playground and the report card, you might begin to see how design thinking can be transformative in leading change and innovation in your school.

 

#IMMOOC: Prototyping the Classroom to Reflect Values and Guiding Principles of our IB Culture

#IMMOOC: Prototyping the Classroom to Reflect Values and Guiding Principles of our IB Culture

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Our attitudes steer our decisions and build momentum in everything we do. A space is at its most sublime when it reinforces and encourages desired values. The first step in designing a space to support particular attitudes is to define those attitudes. – From the book, Make Space, by d.School

I have come to realize that our learning space is more like a living breathing organism, which changes and evolves. It’s always going to be a prototype of the changing learning needs of students. In one of our last IMMOOC ,Kayla Delzer, a flexible seating expert, discusses the importance of cultivating “workspaces” that provide students with opportunities to learn best.  Anyone who has worked with me knows that my classroom setup changes at least ten times a year. However, instead of shifting a table or bookcase, I decided to take all of the classroom furniture out of the rooms and start all over to get a fresh start and churn up different energy in the learning space.  I’ve been looking at the student data that I have gotten from surveys and student sketches of their design ideas, as well as reflections on our timetable to get an idea of their interests and feelings towards different grouping strategies. I understand that the data that I get from those surveys and diagrams are just a snapshot because the learning environment will shift as our culture of learning shifts.

So then I’ve decided to think about how I could use our classroom as a provocation and context of our current Sharing the Planet unit. I’ve been working on “natural vs man-made” and wondering how I can elevate their love of nature and our environment. In one classroom, I took as much of the plastic and industrial looking furniture and replaced it with wooden furniture that we use for outdoor seating in our corridors.  However, I left one of our classroom spaces with all the normal school furniture in it. I wanted to see how the students responded to the change of environment.

This is our first prototype, but it has been fun to see how the students behave and respond to the changes, even if they cannot articulate it. I have to say that is incredibly hard to take the “man-made” out of our learning environment and so this idea will have to continue to grow and be refined. But when I think back to the original quote from the book Make Space, I want the next prototype to really support the value and love of our environment–what makes our Blue Planet worth appreciating and how can we still be “human”, with our deep desire towards progress and yet honor the other conscious living organisms and their plight to survive? In our IB programmes, we have a strong emphasis on how humans must negotiate our roles and responsibilities in sharing finite resources with other living things.

The aim of all IB programmes is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world. -From, What is an IB Education–

I wonder how I might continue to create this awareness in our students and how I can use our classroom environment as the context to develop this appreciation. Although this is the first prototype, taking cues from the flexible seating playbook is helpful, but trying to bring nature back into the classroom is not an easy task, yet this challenge is a fun one. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I am keenly open to it, as collaboration really helps to make an idea stronger. So I welcome your comments below.

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