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This is the latest in a series of blogs from the teacher cohort. - By Jennifer Sylves Lanas Despite having just crossed the threshold of the first quarter, our enthusiasm is still pretty infectious. We are entering the time of year that we’ve looked toward with mounting anticipation, and perhaps just a modest amount of apprehension: project proposal and action plan season! Needless to say, everyone in Cultural Literacy III has something to look forward to over the next few weeks. In quarter one, our juniors in Cultural Literacy III (Contemporary American Issues) read Kekla Magoon’s How It Went Down and paired it with close-reading and empathy building techniques. Along with preliminary research and narrative storytelling strategies, our Holy Family Academy students ideated wrestled with real-world issues present in the novel and inspired by their own experiences. In turn, students submitted project proposals ideating upon these issues with the goal of bringing the story to a wider audience, promoting awareness, understanding, and empathy. Ultimately, to become change agents we must first be ambassadors of deeply personal stories inspired by literature and life. To evaluate each other’s work, we adapted a tuning protocol by Agency by Design. It is a systematic way to look at student work and offer feedback to reflective practitioners. My dear friend and colleague, Kristin Alvarez is a member of ABD’s Pittsburgh cohort. When she taught this to our Holy Family Academy teachers, I immediately began thinking of how I might be able to hack it for our Cultural Literacy students to use. The resulting activity yielded some of the best peer-review conferences that I’ve witnessed in my teaching tenure. Admittedly, it is a challenge facilitating so many different projects among three sections of Cultural Literacy. In a few instances, I am coordinating meetings with teams of students spanning multiple class periods. Moving forward, we are utilizing at least one class period per week (70 minutes) as well as taking advantage of our flexible schedule that gives all juniors a one-hour block of lunch and Independent Learning Time (ILT) three-days per week. Some teams and individuals are more enthusiastic about continuing this process of guided inquiry and project-based-learning than others. These motivated teens are writing podcast scripts, blogging at home, and sketching-out plans for storyboarding mini documentaries or constructing robotics projects. In order to facilitate the project and continue the pacing of our contemporary issues curriculum, we have project benchmarks throughout the month of November and the early part of December. I would be a liar if I said that 100% of our students are on-board with this departure from the traditional “culminating project” model that we are all accustomed to. We spend one class period per week studying a mentor text or conducting primary source investigations in addition to the one period that we devote moving forward on our PBL goals. Considering that we only meet three sessions per week, it is imperative that everyone do their collective part to stay focused. I have to be a reflective practitioner and flexible in terms of timing and scheduling. It’s not as though I pitched the project timeline to our juniors and their joyous shouts of approval ensued a celebratory parade down Ohio River Boulevard… Had that occurred, I would request that we ride unicorns and invite sasquatch, chupacabra, and a leprechaun to preside over the festivities. Without a doubt, I consider it a preliminary victory for our students to take control of the story of their learning. They are engaging in deeper learning, becoming experts in the topics that they have selected. I have become a student in the world that they creating--whereby they are expert researchers and designers of an experience that will educate others. At this phase in the process, our juniors are now looking for an authentic audience to share their work and expert knowledge. I could not possibly be more proud of our students. Needless to say, perhaps I have the most to look forward to and to be thankful for this November.
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This is the latest in a series of blogs from the teacher cohort.
- By Kristen Fischer & Wendy Steiner We bring you Dear Fluency Project in the spirit of Dear Data, by Giorgi Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. See more here. Dear Kristen, I have been thinking about data. I know, I know, I am an English teacher and what English teacher thinks about data? Ever since we started our #thefluencyproject journey together, I have been thinking about data in a new way. I was thinking it would be fun for us to send each other notes with data about ourselves and pertaining to our students. Here is my first attempt: 16-Number of Years I have been teaching 14-Number of Years I have been teaching in the Carlynton School District 1992- the year I graduated from the Carlynton School District 93- the total number of students on my rosters this year 10- days we spent at CMU together 600-minutes we spent in the car traveling there and back and discussing how to use Fluency 10-the approximate number of sleepless hours spent enthusiastically thinking about Fluency 78-the number of student surveys completed and submitted by my students for review Wendy --- Dear Wendy, I love it! Here are some of my numbers: 11 - Number of years I have been teaching 5 - Number of years I have been teaching in the Carlynton School District 9 - the minimum number of different houses or apartments I’ve lived in since graduating from Richland High School in Johnstown in ‘02 83 - the total number of students on my rosters this year 70 – the number of emails filed under “Fluency Project” in my email 4 – revisions of the assignment sheet for my first big fluency-inspired inquiry-driven assignment 3 – number of times I’ve broken my bedtime rule (no school-related thinking after 8PM!) because I’ve been thinking about Fluency Kristen --- Dear Kristen, 63-Number of text messages between the two of us concerning Fluency 2-Number of units I have added Fluency Lessons to so far this year 6-Stations for my STEAM activity on the Middle Ages that you helped me with 2-Cathedrals that my students viewed using the THETA and Virtual Reality Headset 1-more month until our next Fluency meeting at CMU! Wendy --- Dear Wendy, 18 – Fluency-related tweets (hey, this is a lot for me) 6 – Fluency-related post-its around my desk right now 2 - Number of units I have added Fluency Lessons to so far this year (AP Language: analyzing USA today “Snapshots” and imagining the different narratives that data can prompt if left unexplained; & in Academic English: analyzing and mapping modern-day witch hunts, especially those fostered by social media) 17 – Bullet-pointed ideas for how I can use Fluency-inspired concepts in other ways These numbers do show some measurement of energy and thinking, but as I reflect on our “hall meeting” this morning, I am reminded that they don’t tell the whole story. My notes, devoid of numbers but overflowing with words like “metacognition” and “interdisciplinary,” once again showcase how my mind frames the world more linguistically than numerically, but also recognize how much we can’t capture in numbers. Kristen |
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