The IDEA Blog
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.
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...
IDEA Voices: Digital Organizer Beth Sanders on Teacher Prep and Student Voice
IDEA Digital Organizer Beth Sanders responded via the IDEA Facebook page to Scott Nine's quote from the Time Magazine article on The Independent Project.
"“If we think about what it means to take our young people seriously like this, it raises a lot of questions about how we prepare our teachers and train them to listen and engage. How comfortable are we as a society to think about education and knowledge as less of a final answer, and more as something we are constantly learning about?”
First off, I am only 3 years out of a teacher prep program at a state university and never once, not once in any of my classes was I ever engaged in critical dialogue about what it meant to listen; I mean really listen to our students. It honestly wasn't until I joined Twitter as a first year teacher and began jumping into edchats, and following groups such as IDEA that I really began to think critically about what student centered learning and a true democratic education actually meant and how I could create a place for my students to not only express themselves freely, but actually be heard and then help them create action based off of what I've heard.
I have become increasingly aware of the necessity for teacher prep reform in general, but specifically in relation to student voice as I begin to have student teachers come into my classroom asking about my behavior plan, why I call my classroom a partnership, why I say we are all teachers and students in this room, why they hear my student's voices way more than they hear my own and when they hear my voice it is most often posing questions. I have a lot of hope for what teacher prep could become, but we've got to stop being a society that says "it's all about the kids" and then not listen when the kids have something they need to say, and something they need to see to change for them to get the most out of their education and life.
How can teacher programs better help teachers truly listen and engage...
IDEA Exec. Director Scott Nine on the Independent Project
Hot off the presses: Time Magazine article on The Independent Project at Monument Mountain Regional High School. IDEA Exec. Director Scott Nine is quoted on the power of engaged learning, particularly in this school within a larger public high school.
“Giving young people the chance to directly engage in their own learning is rooted in a tremendous amount of research [showing] that is actually how we learn best,” says Scott Nine, the executive director of the Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA). ”It is not surprising to me that this is a powerful experience for these students. What’s exciting is that it’s happening inside of a larger school, because it demystifies the idea that this kind of experience couldn’t be available to more young people. When we think about the world our young people live in, the core competencies of autonomy, belongingness and confidence are the building blocks of what we need in our society.”
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Nine says the project questions many of the ways we view education, and train our teachers. “If we think about what it means to take our young people seriously like this, it raises a lot of questions about how we prepare our teachers and train them to listen and engage. How comfortable are we as a society to think about education and knowledge as less of a final answer, and more as something we are constantly learning about?”
“Take the Test” Action in Providence Sparks Dialogue
Last weekend, the Providence Student Union (PSU) held a "Take the Test" action, where several dozen community leaders, policy-makers, scientists, and professors took an abbreviated form of the Math NECAP exam, the passing of which is required to earn a high school diploma in Rhode Island. From the PSU press release announcing the event (thanks to Diane Ravitch for posted it in full):
“We expect this event to prove that people are more than test scores,” said Leexammarie Nieves, a sophomore at Central High School and a member of PSU. “We also want these community leaders to get a sense of what students are going through with this new policy.”
One of the test-takers was RI Senator Gayle Goldin (D), whose reaction was described by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post blog The Answer Sheet:
She said the test questions don’t “capture the depth of thought and critical thinking and creativity which is what I think we actually need in our work force.
“I would much rather hire students who have the creativity and strategic thinking to pull together this effort in which 50 Rhode Island leaders will take this test than” students who sit in class and get prepared to pass “the NECAP with flying colors,” she said.
Check out this compilation of links and articles about the event put together by PSU, including articles in the Providence Journal and on WPRI and NBC. One of the links takes you to the strong reaction to the test-takers from Rhode Island State Education Commissioner, Deborah Gist, who said:
"It's deeply irresponsible on the part of the adults, especially those who are highly educated," she said. "They're sending a message that it can't be done or that it doesn't matter."
This prompted some back and forth on Twitter between Commissioner Gist and Keith Catone, who works on community organizing and engagement in New England with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Here's some highlights:
And
Kudos to PSU, including...
Mission Hill: All learning is social and emotional!
“Could something as non-academic as the social-emotional well-being of children have an effect on something as academic as the study of science or math?”
“Academics don’t exist in a vacuum. Yet a frequently held belief is that schools have to choose between children learning emotional literacy, or learning to read a book. Schools like Mission Hill realize that this is a false choice.”
But to take this point a step further: I find myself questioning why so many members of our society presume that social-emotional learning and academic learning are, or should be, separate things.
Why do so many of us, even those who take social-emotional learning seriously, subordinate it to “academic” learning? Why do we feel it necessary to use academic success as a justification for our attempts to teach children how to be kinder, fairer, happier people?
And when did it stop being obvious that things like kindness, fairness, happiness and compassion are valuable and worthy in their own right?
The truth is, an “academics-first” approach to teaching and raising children is kind of backwards. The things we really want and need in life—the material things that help us survive, the social relationships and the personal fulfillment that make survival possible and worthwhile—are actually the most important. The skills we learn and the work we do are only important because they help us to secure what really matters to us.
In other words, academics are important because they support our physical, social and emotional lives, and thus our survival. So to define the value of social and emotional learning based on the extent to which we can prove it enhances academic learning is to miss the point entirely.
Virtually all of the teaching and learning...
Mission Hill and the Emotional Well-Being of Children
As a former teacher at the Mission Hill School, it has been wonderfully moving to see the depictions of Mission Hill in the beautifully wrought videos created by Tom and Amy Valens and produced by Sam Chaltain. While I was a teacher there, and since--as I became a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and now as a professor of Education, among other “hats”—I have struggled to describe the school, its many unique features and the way the adults in the school strategize and address the various challenges they face as educators in an urban public school, and in a deeply unequal society.
People with whom I have spoken about the school often ask, “is it real?” and “how do you know it works?” Well, I wrote a book about the school, trying to answer those questions but now these film clips have provided color, sound, and a vivid but concise new way of illustrating important aspect of what the school offers. Most importantly, perhaps, the videos raise questions. What awakens the mind of a child? How can teachers create a culture that communicates care and respect for the personhood of each child? These questions do not have easy answers, of course, but the videos begin to answer the questions, and the website points to additional resources.
Lately I have been speaking about the Mission Hill School, and the important set of educational topics the story brings along with it, with an increasingly international audience. Last week I spent several days in New Orleans, where I...
Carrying Our Candles Through the Wind
I’ve studied many solid and successful models of education and met with passionate change-makers who, in a variety of forms have created the kinds of schools and learning environments students and teachers dream of. I have felt the conversation in my home state of Oregon shifting toward possibility, toward the sort of narrative open enough to embrace learning and growing as it manifests itself in all kinds of communities. People in power were listening and real change was in the air, or so I dared to believe.
Armed with the knowledge of alternative approaches to education and inspiring relationships with a wonderful group of progressive educators, I stepped up, with my knowledge and all this hope, to do my share of the work. I could see the young people I know immersing themselves in the kind of meaningful learning that they can’t get enough of. I got excited, and motivated, and told everyone who would listen about my hopes. I was ready to change the learning world, ready to give to the future what I was never able to offer to my own kids or to my students. It is easy to be hopeful in conversations with IDEA teammates, progressive educators, my friends and fellow students at Goddard College, with the movers and shakers who have created...
Getting Ready to Grow: A Year At Mission Hill, Chapter 4
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
It’s seed starting time here in Northern New England. We still have months until the last frost of the winter, so all across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine hopeful gardeners are planting seeds in back rooms, basements, and kitchen windows. We’ll tend them, water them and worry over them until May, when we’ll begin the “hardening off” process. We’ll slowly and carefully introduce the plants to the outside world, helping them to adjust to the conditions under which we hope they’ll survive and thrive through the growing season.
This same process is mirrored in the Chapter 4 of A Year at Mission Hill. As an “inclusion” school, there is an expectation that all students will be welcomed, valued and celebrated as an integral part of the learning community. At the same time, however, they are supported through clear expectations and boundaries - what Mission Hill teacher Kathy Clunis D’Andrea calls “love and limits.”
But what do we mean by “inclusion?” According to Antioch University New England’s Holistic Special Education faculty Teri Young, “Inclusion has lots of different definitions, but mostly it means teaching children of all abilities and challenges as part of the same learning community. No matter how small the faculty is, no matter how committed they are, figuring out what inclusion is going to look like is hard work.”
This commitment to doing the hard work of creating a place where everyone is valued is mirrored...
SEIU 21LA in New Orleans Leading the Way
A powerful new report out by the SEIU Local 21LA of New Orleans surveyed school service workers and students, revealing the poor conditions they face every day, and proposes valuable changes that would make schools better and more inspiring places both for learning and working.
The research and report itself is a model of democratic community-led change: led by SEIU 21LA Chief of Staff and IDEA Senior Fellow Jayeesha Dutta, a diverse group of students and service workers from age 9 to 74 were brought together to design and carry out this Participatory Action Research project. Showing the potential of schools and communities to act as researchers and organizers, the report, "State of the Schools," is a landmark both for how it was done and what it says.
Jayeesha Dutta provides important context in her introduction to the report:
Many of the array of changes happening in New Orleans schools are nationally known - however there is one issue that has attracted little notice: the impact of decentralization of the New Orleans schools on school service workers job security and standards of living, alongside the erosion in students sense of stability at their schools with a constant influx of new faces instead of trusted individuals they recognize who take care of them. Further, we all know what determines success in school is not limited to what happens in the classroom. Time and time again, studies have demonstrated an indelible connection between the achievement gap and poverty; yet there is pervasive and persistent downward pressure on the wages of working families.
The report shows that students believe the food they are being served is not of high quality, that they want more hot food, and most especially they students want to be involved in the decisions regarding the food served in their schools. The survey also found that school service workers are paid too little, receive poor benefits, that many have no paid days off, and that the supplies and...
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