The IDEA Blog

Democratic Education in a Time of Terror

This is a guest post by Matthew Knoester, a National Board Certified Teacher and former teacher at the Mission Hill School, and currently Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Evansville. Matthew recently wrote a book about the Mission Hill School, entitled Democratic Education in Practice: Inside the Mission Hill School (Teachers College Press, 2012) and edited a book called International Struggles for Critical Democratic Education (Peter Lang, 2012).

The events that took place in Boston on Monday leave so many of us grasping for words. Who could have done this? What does this mean? What should we do? Adults and children alike wonder about many of the same questions. And we grieve…for the dead…for the wounded…for the dark cloud over what has been and should be a joyous occasion in Boston. The outpourings of care and connection, from vigils and prayers, to the work of doctors and nurses, to the many law enforcement officials and others who continue to contribute ideas and evidence on how to solve this crime, are attempts to make what is broken whole, although we know we cannot bring back those who have been lost.

I can’t help but be reminded of another time, when I was a 4th and 5th grade teacher at the Mission Hill School in Boston on the morning of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. It began as a normal Tuesday, the second week of the school year. I happened to step out of the classroom to make a copy in the office and casually asked the school’s office manager, Marla, how she was doing. The look on her face was bleak. “Not well,” she said, “two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center.” At that point, that was all she knew, so I returned to the classroom. I conveyed the news to the student teacher with whom I was working, Tori. Students were quietly working on a variety of projects. We let them work as we discussed our options. We finally decided that we wanted to be the ones to tell the students, not let them find out on the...

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IDEA Voices: Beth Sanders on Digital Learning Tools and Democratic Education

IDEA Digital Organizer and Social Studies teacher Beth Sanders uses tools such as Twitter and Google Hangouts in her classroom every day. This great video showcases a whole class worth of learning shot as part of Powerful Learning Practice's Virtual Classroom Visits series.  Sanders and her students are using these digital learning tools to deepen their understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, and this video showcase their work on The Upstander Project. This project is driven by the essential question, "How can an individual influence the path of a nation?"

In this description Beth shares the learning that happened leading up to video and her learning goals for the lesson presented.

At this point in the project students have worked in small groups and become experts on a particular Civil Rights Movement. Students participated in an EdCafe teaching each other about the movements and then wrote Evernote reflections before moving on to the individual Upstander part of this project. They used Americans Who Tell the Truth to choose their individual Upstander after completing a webquest and indepth research on the portraits. Students then completed individual research in Evernote with Americans Who Tell the Truth as a major resource and have been doing daily connect and reflect tweeting throughout the project.

In the video students are preparing to participate in a Google Hangout (Skype is the term used in the video) with Robert Shetterly, the founder and artist of Americans Who Tell the Truth. Mr. Shetterly and Beth connected through his organization’s Twitter account developing a relationship that enabled this learning activity. The purpose of the lesson is for students to become experts on the mission statement and driving philosophy of Americans who Tell the Truth so that they are prepared for the Google Hangout while also creating a personal connection.

The technology tools students will be using are: Twitter, Haiku Deck, Skitch, and Google...

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Mission Hill Chapter 6: Spring Harvest

This is a guest post by Laura Thomas, Director of the Antioch Center for School Renewal, the service division of Antioch University New England’s Education Department. Laura is currently involved in research around the experiences of students and educators in rural environments, particularly in the areas of social justice, problem based learning, and technology integration. The author of Facilitating Authentic Learning, (Corwin Press, 2012), she blogs at The Critical Skills Classroom and can be found on Twitter @CriticalSkills1



In Chapter 6 of A Year at Mission Hill, we get to witness the abundant spring harvest that comes after months of hard work, creating and maintaining a community of learners and when meaningful reflection, collaboration, and learning by children and adults is both the product of and the vehicle for building and deepening connections.

The learning community at Boscawen Elementary School (BES) in Boscawen, New Hampshire is reaping a similar harvest as spring comes to Northern New England.  Just north of Concord, Boscawen serves approximately 300 students in grades preK-5.  Like Mission Hill, commitment to creating and maintaining this community is driven by teachers’ desire to serve all kids well, but is also supported by district commitment to the International Baccalaureate (in 2010, as art of a district-wide initiative, BES became a candidate school in the IB Primary Years Program) as well as to the Critical Skills Program, an instructional model in which the learning community is a foundation for inquiry driven learning experiences.

I spoke with Millie Pike, 2nd grade teacher, about this commitment.  “Just like anything else that is created, (community) needs to be cared for and nurtured or it will fall apart. We spend so much time together in an elementary classroom, it is important to get to know each other and work with each other collaboratively to be productive. In order for students to take the risks in learning that I...

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IDEA Voices: Okaikor Aryee-Price on Newark Civil Disobedience

When I think of Newark, New Jersey, affectionately known as “Brick City” by the locals, I think of my birthplace, my mother’s hometown and where my siblings and I spent a good portion of our lives with our Grandmama, who often reminded us of “The Struggle.” The struggle as a young girl growing up in Mississippi, the struggle that continued on when she migrated to the North for a “better” life, and the struggle her only daughter endured growing up as a young African American resident of Newark during the 60s.   

When many hear the name “Newark” they recall memories of that fatal summer of 1967, better known as the Race Riots, where young disenfranchised African American and Latino residents responded to the tensions that were building because of endured feelings of powerlessness and a lack of voice in key areas of their communities and lives. The city has struggled with all of the ills associated with large urban districts, years of corrupt politicians, extreme poverty, failed corporate school reforms, and State take-over of their public schools, but they press on. Their resiliency humbles me. 

In contrast, Newark is home to a rich history of music and art, stunning architecture, Branch Brook Park laced with the smell of cherry blossoms on Spring and Summer mornings, and beautiful human beings who are often silenced by those in authority. 

Newark is no stranger to civil disobedience, and the residents are no strangers to undemocratic policies that no human being should be subjected to.  So it came as no surprise to me that the students of Newark would answer back with acts of civil disobedience when it was reported they would stand to lose over $50 million dollars in school funds, school closures and teacher and administrator lay-offs.

So, full of frustration, and desperation, on April 9, 2013 at 12:00pm the Newark Student Union staged a citywide walkout for all Newark public high schools to protest corporate school reform, budget cuts that have...

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A Year at Mission Hill Wrap: Chapters 4 and 5

Like any other school trying to deliver on the promise of full inclusion, Mission Hill has good days and bad days. Yet it's clear from the video that the bonds between the faculty are sufficiently strong to weave a comprehensive web of adult support that will help all children learn.

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The Measure of Human Connection: Thoughts from a Mission Hill School Parent

I ask my son if he is surprised that a film series has been made about his school. Yes, it’s surprising, he acknowledges. Not that the film is unanticipated. He was there when it was made, has met the filmmakers, touched their equipment. The completed artifact, however, is another thing entirely. Watching it, my son’s eyes track the images with peaceable intensity. He could be watching our street from a neighbor’s window: seeing the familiar, unusually framed. Every so often he smiles, and names a friend. When he sees himself for the first time, he jumps in his seat. The film was captured only a year ago, but he looks so much smaller back then, a first grader shambling down the corridor, one pants leg tucked into a rain boot, the other fully draped over.
 
In moments when an educator addresses the camera directly, he attends to the speaker with renewed absorption, struck, again, by the extraordinary viewpoint on his teachers, I assume, but he corrects me. No, he says, it doesn’t seem unusual to him, at all, to hear his principal and teachers talking about what they do, as his principal and teachers. He explains that his teacher goes to meetings sometimes, and when she returns he and his classmates ask about it. She tells them. So, he knows about this stuff. He has heard about meetings with district workers. He has heard about internal planning.
 
Now I’m the one who is surprised. He and his peers feel at liberty to inquire about staff meetings. How about that? And this sense of access is rewarded—with access. That’s news, too. Whatever information their teacher shares with her students would have to be tailored; I can only imagine how that goes, their inquisitiveness, her balance of truth and discretion. But here is an aspect of these situations that is self-evident and, to me, remarkable: the...

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A Taste of China in Boston

This is a guest post by Matthew Knoester, a National Board Certified Teacher and former teacher at the Mission Hill School, and currently Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Evansville. Matthew recently wrote a book about the Mission Hill School, entitled Democratic Education in Practice: Inside the Mission Hill School (Teachers College Press, 2012) and edited a book, with a chapter about Mission Hill School, entitled International Struggles for Critical Democratic Education (Peter Lang, 2012).

The most recent chapter of the film series A Year at Mission Hill captures a small school’s use of a school-wide thematic unit to create an immersion experience for children. Focusing on ancient China, the 6-minute video depicts intellectually stimulated and cheerful children painting Chinese characters and water color designs, researching Chinese artifacts, expressively dancing with Chinese fans, cooking and eating Chinese food, and much more.

Interested to know what she thought, I asked a close friend of mine from China what she thought of the video. She genuinely liked it, but also said that if her child went to this school, she would certainly supplement knowledge of China with what her children were learning. In other words, although children were immersed in explorations of Chinese culture and knowledge, they were doing so at a beginner’s level, with little prior knowledge (except for the older students, who had studied ancient China four years previous).

The standard for knowledge of China from a Chinese national is understandably high, but I would argue that the introductory nature of the cultural explorations depicted in the short film also vividly portray students as their curiosity of deep and rich ancient history and Chinese culture is aroused. I have had the experience of teaching ancient China through a three month-long theme at Mission Hill, and teaching ancient history to students for a much shorter time from a textbook, and the...

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IDEA Voices: Nancy Flanagan shares Ten Things Legislators Should Know

IDEA organizer and EdWeek Blogger Nancy Flanagan was recently asked, "Wouldn't it be great if there were a guide for legislators to making useful education policy?" 

Taking the question to heart, Nancy offers 10 suggestions on her blog, Teacher in a Strange Land.  Here are a few:

#1) You don't know education just because you went to school. Even if you were paying attention in high school, your perspective as a student was extremely narrow and is now completely obsolete. Study the issues, which are more complex and resistant to change than you think.

#2) Plan to pay many non-photo op visits to lots of schools. Do things while you're there. Read with 3rd graders. Sit in on a high school government class or small-group discussion about Shakespeare. Play badminton in co-ed gym class. Take garden-variety teachers out for coffee after your visit; let them talk and just listen. Resist the urge to share the "good news" about legislation you're co-sponsoring. Ask questions, instead.

#3) Take the tests that kids have to take. Then you'll understand why "achievement data" and what to do with it are sources of high anxiety for public schools, teachers and students.

#5) Examine your assumptions. When teachers roll out unsubstantiated chestnuts ("no wonder he's the way he is--just look at his parents!") it's lounge talk. When elected officials say clueless things, voters pay attention. For example: " Incompetent teachers are being allowed to teach and substandard service is being tolerated." Whatever your deepest convictions about unions, teacher pay, urban poverty or kids today, check those biases at the door. It's your job to represent everyone in your district, not just the people who agree with you.

#9) Big and bold gets headlines, but tinkering around the edges gets results. Want to raise teacher quality? Don't endorse firing the "lowest" quintile, publicly rank-ordering them in the newspaper, or bringing in untrained but photogenic Ivy Leaguers....

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Defining a Learning Community

While all schools share aims and goals, processes, and procedures and possess distinct common cultural characteristics, a learning community seeks to do something slightly different.

To borrow the metaphor of a ship, the mission and ethos of a learning community provides a rudder against capricious environmental shifts, keeping the ship on its course towards its destination.  The shipmates work as one to harness the winds and care for the vessel.  A learning community has a strong yet flexible ethical and pedagogical structure that balances diversity and unity, so that ideas can be challenged and members can grow--but not succumb to fracturing.

In a learning community, the child moves through classroom environments that are distinct and unique, and yet the experience of learning, the way the child is treated and taught, the materials and activities, and the set of agreements are a manifestation of the whole school ethos.  Teachers weave and children perceive the thread that runs through this variety of experiences and ties together this whole enterprise of learning. ...

Joining together around the work and play of learning brings the definition of a learning community to new depths.  Teachers and children can marvel at the multiple perspectives they all bring to these common sets of ideas, events, knowledge, and skill bases and yet be affirmed in their collective experience.

Diversity and unity through a common ethos and direction--that is what learning communities are all about.

Do you agree with Michelle Hughes' definition? Add your comments here.

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Towards Arts Integration: #YearatMH Chapter 5

This is a guest post by Laura Thomas, Director of the Antioch Center for School Renewal, the service division of Antioch University New England’s Education Department. Laura is currently involved in research around the experiences of students and educators in rural environments, particularly in the areas of social justice, problem based learning, and technology integration. The author of Facilitating Authentic Learning, (Corwin Press, 2012), she blogs at The Critical Skills Classroom and can be found on Twitter @CriticalSkills1

Getting from traditional schooling to something more akin to what we see in A Year at Mission Hill takes hard work and commitment, but it also opens the door for unanticipated joy and powerful learning by both students and teachers.  As Mission Hill teacher Kathy Clunis D’Andrea notes, “To be in a field where you’re not just teaching, but you’re learning on a daily basis? That’s huge.” 

The Monroe Consolidated School, a small PK-8 school in rural Monroe, New Hampshire, follows the teaching practices of the Expeditionary Learning Schools and Responsive Classroom.  Over the last four years the administration and staff have undertaken the journey towards the “depth over breadth” described in Chapter 5 of A Year at Mission Hill.  I spoke recently with Jennifer Corkins, Integrated Arts Specialist and 23-year veteran of the Monroe School community.

As small rural school, flexibility and problem-solving skills are a requirement for teachers who want to succeed. After years of utilizing a revolving door of itinerant specialists, administration and staff decided to restructure staffing and instruction to build a more coherent, arts-integrated experience.  “We used to have teachers visiting the building one- or two-times per week to teach art, library, technology and music, but those folks didn’t get a chance to get to know the kids or really connect to what was going on in the classroom.  They did what they could to integrate, but it was...

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