Three Stars

This is the latest in a series of blogs from the teacher cohort.
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By Lindsey Lamm

Just in case you didn’t know, I’m a hockey fan. Tickets, jerseys, autographs, road trips, random hockey player sightings at salons & Target – we’ve got it all at my house.  Every NHL game culminates with the “Three Stars of the Game,” the top three performances from that particular evening. Sometimes, these stars are based on numerical data from the game. Other times, the stars are determined by the narrative, or specific events, within the game.  Sometimes, the stars are home team players. Other times, they are away team players. Regardless, the three stars tell the story of the game that particular evening. I’d like to use the same format in this blog post. The “game” about which I’m going to speak is The Fluency Project’s trip to the Windy City this past December.  The ten of us were ALL OVER Chicago in the less than 48 hours we spent there! It would take PAGES to recap everything we did and learned. Instead, I’m going to give you my three stars of the trip (and some honorable mentions because I can). Let’s get to it. 

My Third Star of The Fluency Project Takes the Windy City goes to Schurz High School – Thank you for welcoming us! Your food lab inspired an expansion to an entire room dedicated to hydroponics, aquaponics, and indoor gardening at my elementary school. Your MakerSpace is top-notch, and photos are being used to help design our own here in my district. Your library is one of the most beautiful places I have ever had the pleasure of visiting.  Thank you for allowing us to see all of these wonderful things in action. It truly was the culminating activity of our trip in that we could actually see everything about which we learned happening in spaces just like ours. Be sure to follow @SchurzFoodLab, @jaimeguerrero_, and @libraryrain for updates!

My Second Star of The Fluency Project Takes the Windy City goes to Shedd Aquarium. Wow. The student-centered programming is unrivaled! There are such great things happening there, and the fact that weekend programming is available is awesome. I think this is my second star, though, because of the tool they showed us they use on field trips. Shedd Aquarium has their own program that is tablet based for students to use on field trips. The students, as they are looking at the animals, are asked to annotate their trip based on a series of research-based questions. The feedback is given to the teacher after students are finished for further exploration. I think this resonated so much with me because of how many trips I’ve attended where the kids do rush just to get through things and look quickly. We have the technology to write these kinds of programs for our kids that also are attending field trips. In particular, I have a trip to the Heinz History Center that would benefit greatly from one of these programs, especially because the WIFI signal is good within the Heinz building. I cannot wait to go and try to write the questions myself for future trips to use. This is not something I would have done without seeing and doing it myself at Shedd Aquarium. Be sure to follow them @SheddLearning on Twitter. 

My First Star of The Fluency Project Takes the Windy City goes to each and every Mikva Challenge student and mentor in the room at McAuliffe Elementary School on Friday, December 16th, 2016. Thank you for welcoming a group of ten strangers with open arms. Thank you for your honesty and bravery in sharing and speaking freely. Thank you for being yourselves in that room without putting on an act (besides your incognito names). Thank you for everything you are doing to restore adult faith in adolescent students. You deserve so many more thanks, but I would be here for an entire page just thanking you instead of sharing your words. As unprofessional as this may look, I’d like to just share the words of the kids in the following bullet points. Their words are in bold print, while my personal anecdotes are in brackets to differentiate between the two. These kids, simply put, are amazing. 

•How are you going to help anyone if you can’t even think for yourself? 
{Insert jaw hitting the floor here, as this was maybe the third sentence shared}

•People don’t know how to have their own opinion.

•Some people ask just because it’s “polite.” Only ask how we are if you really care. 

•People are pretty awesome when they are who they are.
{I think this may have been the group consensus for best quote.}

•Our behavior is why we can’t sit where we want {in the cafeteria}. 

The issue about which the students were speaking was the seating arrangement in the cafeteria. Students wanted to sit wherever they wanted, but kids are separated by parent volunteers into girls sitting with girls and boys sitting with boys. The students spoke freely and passionately about all the reasons they felt this was unfair to them. However, this quote resonated with me because not once did the kids lose sight of their actions that may have caused this rule in the first place. I thought that spoke volumes about the character of these students. 

Since, this trip, I personally have been researching the Mikva Challenge in an attempt to recreate this group at my school. Again, it would take PAGES to share everything these kids did to make an impression on me. If you do nothing else, be sure to follow @QuaBeeny4Change (Q, the adult leader of the Mikva group), @Rdbelville (Ryan Belville, McAuliffe Elementary School Principal), and @MikvaChallenge for updates on these amazing kids. 

Honorable Mentions

•YouMedia – Harold Washington Public Library – THANK YOU for all the ideas, insights, and for opening up to us about your successful program. I can’t wait to see it influence our MakerSpace here at Regency Park.

•Jones Prep High School – Thank you for allowing us to share our thoughts with you and for welcoming us into your world. 

•The cohort members that made the trip - This trip would not have been the same without the questions, anecdotes, and perspectives that came from the entire group. I took as much from the discussions and questions as I did from the information being presented by our hosts. Hearing what people were hoping to do in their own schools to just the overall excitement that came with a group of teachers eager to learn made this trip exponentially worthwhile. As humans, we learn to assimilate to our surroundings. Because this group was so eager to learn, I guarantee I learned three times as much as I would have on my own with the same experiences. 

THANK YOU to everyone who made this trip so memorable! I came back completely invigorated and ready to implement awesome ideas all over again.