Developing Community

Working Remotely and Joining a Community

In my community, many young families are moving to our gorgeous valley and working remotely.  They are choosing to live here because of the excellent schools, friendly neighbors, limitless outdoor recreation and safety of a small town.  One challenge is that many of these wonderful young parents are working from home and do not have a social office to meet new friends or connect with colleagues over lunch.  These families must reach out and make connections outside of work in order to develop meaningful relationships and feel connected to the community.  Joining and being a positive contributor to a community is a skill that students can start learning and practicing at a very early age.

Developing Community Skills in the Elementary Classroom

In "Building Community in the Classroom", Ellen Booth Church states, "By focusing on establishing a safe, secure, and nurturing environment, you are teaching children how to learn and are setting the stage for the entire year."  I agree with Church but argue that this learning goes beyond a school year.  Learning how to be part of a safe, secure and supportive environment is a skill that students will take into their future classrooms and careers.   

In "Back to School: A Surefire Strategy for Building Classroom Community", Anne Shaw defines "...three facets of a classroom and school environment: 1) the physical environment, 2) the emotional environment, and, 3) the academic environment."   Through her "rug talks", Shaw establishes and builds the emotional environment critical for learning.  In my classroom, students also enjoy chats on our rug where we offer "shout outs" to classmates, share "good things" in our lives, and practice being supportive listeners.   

In "Build a Community", Lisa Jo Rudy outlines activities that establish a positive classroom culture and develop STEM skills.   The most valuable part of these activities is the interpersonal skills that students develop through challenge and failure.  These activities would be useful to set the tone for collaboration, critical thinking and communication at the beginning of the school year, or as a team building activity any time of the year.  

This week, my students returned from spring break and I was overwhelmed by their compassion and kindness for each other.  It felt like they truly missed our classroom community and were appreciative to be back.  

My students understand that we do not all learn the same way and we all need different things to be successful.  For example, some need glasses, some need a special chair, some need a scribe and some need extra time for processing.  This will transfer into their future communities when they understand that their peers, colleagues and neighbors all have different strengths and needs.

My students have worked hard to develop and maintain a classroom culture of respect and inclusion.  They love our end of the day routine where one student (changes each day) shares who he or she wants to honor that day for being a respectful, responsible and safe member of our classroom community.  I often am overwhelmed by their generosity and awareness.  My students do a better job than many adults acknowledging a peer who deserves recognition or needs a pick me up.  They know how to thrive in our classroom and will take this into their future communities.

Resources

Church, E. B. (n.d.). Building Community in the Classroom. Retrieved March 30, 2017, from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/building-community-classroom/

Rudy, L. J. (2015). Build a Community. Instructor. Back to School. (Scholastic Inc.), 125(1), 60-61.

Shaw, A. (2013, August 13). Back to School: A Surefire Strategy for Building Classroom Community. Retrieved March 30, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/back-to-school-strategy-building-community-anne-shaw

Working with Parents

Research

El Nokali, Bachman and Votruba-Drzal (2010) explored the relationship between parent involvement and elementary students' academic achievement and social and emotional growth.  In their study, El Nokali, Bachman and Votruba-Drzal used questionnaires to measure how much parents encouraged education, how invested the parents were in education, and to explore the parents' educational attitudes (ex. Did parents and schools share similar goals for students?). (p. 994)  The authors also used standardized measures to assess students' academic achievement and social and emotional development and then looked for correlations between the parental involvement data, student data, and teacher ratings. (p. 995-6)  The study did not find a strong correlation between parent involvement and academic achievement. (p. 1000)  The study did find that "significant associations were detected repeatedly among parent involvement, social skills, and behavior problems in both between- and within-child models" (p. 1001)  Their research implies that it may be beneficial to involve parents in the teaching of 21st century skills.  Skills that are applicable to academic achievement (ex. critical thinking and creativity) but also focus on the social and emotional growth of students (through collaboration and communication).  

Parent Teacher Conferences

Last week, I met in person with parents of almost all my students.  These parent-teacher conferences allowed me to get on the same page with several parents and make a plan for working together to support their child's growth.  Overall, these conversations were positive and valuable.  One common question that came up was that parents weren't sure how to teach math the "new way" and they felt uncomfortable helping students complete missed work because they didn't want to "do it wrong".   I tried to alleviate some of this trepidation by explaining that any support was appreciated.  As I shared some examples of student work and pointed out where their student was thriving, parents appreciated the real world application of skills and that their students were gaining conceptual understanding and not simply rote memorization.  We talked about collaboration and creativity, thinking critically and defending thinking.  We talked about effective communication in the classroom and at recess.  I did not talk about preparing their child for the future but I did talk about preparing for the next grade.   I wondered if it was too early to talk about their child's long-term future.   Were our discussions too limited or appropriate for the age and time?

Parent Resources

In A Parent's Guide to 21st Century Learning (2012), the authors stress, "To be able to solve problems in our complex, fast-changing world, students must become nimble, creative thinkers who can work well with others." (p. 3)  The guide emphasizes that the 4 Cs do not override the need for strong academic curriculum.  Rather, critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity must be integrated into a strong academic learning environment to prepare students for future success.  The guide shares links to 21st century learning in action, such as John Hunter's "World Peace Game" at http://worldpeacegame.org/, and provides resources for teaching these skills outside of school, such as exploring mentoring and internship opportunities in a community.  The guide concludes by encouraging parents to learn more, get involved and share discovered resources with teachers.  

What Next?

As a new teacher, I often wonder how to integrate innovative resources with an already rigorous curriculum to provide the most valuable learning experience for each unique student in my class.  I wonder how many of my students would thrive in a project based learning challenge like the "World Peace Game" and which students (on one day or many days) would rather work individually in a calm and focused environment.  I believe in the game but I’m not entirely sure which students would benefit the most.  

In general, I feel supported by parents with any project that connects learning to real life situations.  I find these are the projects students talk about at home, work on while on the bus, and remember weeks later.   I wonder how much parents reflect on their own education and how they learned new information.  It certainly looked different from today's classroom.  I am inspired to communicate with parents more about 21st century skills and engage in meaningful conversations with parents to learn what they think about project-based learning and how they support the 4 Cs at home.

Video Resource

Check out John Hunter's Ted Talk about the World Peace Game 

Additional Resources

El Nokali, N. E., Bachman, H. J., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2010). Parent Involvement and Children’s Academic and Social Development in Elementary School. Child Development, 81(3), 988–1005.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation. (2012). A Parent's Guide to 21st-Century Learning. Retrieved March 23, 2017, from http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/guides/edutopia-parents-guide-21st-century-learning.pdf

For and Against the 4 Cs

For

The "4 Cs" are undoubtedly a popular and supported theme in the education world.  The National Education Association identifies these Cs as critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity.  Kathy Gomes, superintendent of Evergreen School District in San Jose, California (2017), argues that the 4 Cs are essential to learning as early as kindergarten.  Gomes claims, "The education they get now is critical to their future success".  Gomes refers to projects where students apply the 4 Cs as they solve a community problem involving stray animals or create educational videos for preschool students or community members.  Gomes is one of many educational leaders defending the 4 Cs as the foundation for exceptional learning.

Against

As I have been diving further into my research, I've searched for authors and educators who oppose the 4 Cs and project-based learning.  In his article, "The Reason Why Modern Teaching Methods Don't Work", William Reville, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at UCC (2015) argues that newer teaching models do not build on students' long-term memory and devalue the memorization of new knowledge.  Reville argues that, without practice and repetition, working memory information is lost.  Reville praises traditional, whole-class instruction to develop long-term memory and states, "Minimal guidance methods proceed as though working memory has no relevant limitations when dealing with novel information."  Reville refers to a study by Kirchner and others (2006) in Educational Psychologist.  
In "Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching", Kirchner, Sweller and Clark (2006), explore the research surrounding both "direct instruction” and “unguided or minimally guided instruction" and conclude, "Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective; there is also evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete or disorganized knowledge." (p. 84)
I disagree with the connection between inquiry learning and a lack of storage of new knowledge.  In my limited experience as a new teacher, I see my students referring to their prior learning every day and connecting recently discovered understandings to new problems.  I don't believe they are doing this because I helped them or required them to memorize previous learning.   I believe they are doing this because inquiry, experiential or project-based learning demands that students connect to their learning very early in the process.  They notice, wonder and then build knowledge through exploration.  They hold onto this knowledge because it means something, their learning belongs to them, not because they have been explicitly taught to repeat it and store it in long-term memory.  I also disagree that this is completely “unguided”.   I imagine that the most effective teachers of project-based learning and the 4 Cs are expert facilitators who guide students throughout the inquiry experience.

References

Gomes, K. (2017, February 15). Four Cs play powerful role in kindergarten schools. Retrieved March 14, 2017, from https://www.districtadministration.com/article/four-cs-play-powerful-role-kindergarten

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86

National Education Association. (n.d.). Preparing 21st century students for a global society. Retrieved March 13, 2017, from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf

Reville, W. (2015, March 02). The reason why modern teaching methods don’t work. Retrieved March 14, 2017, from http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-reason-why-modern-teaching-methods-don-t-work-1.2115219

Failure

One way we can help students prepare for an unknown future is to teach them how to make mistakes, fail and grow from these experiences.  

In the film, Most Likely to Succeed (2015), speakers claim that allowing students to fail and teaching them how to learn from their failures is more valuable than encouraging students to continuously thrive, succeed and get straight As.  Robert Gates, Former US Secretary of Defense, shares, "One of the key experiences in almost everybody's life is failure.  And it's something that I think, particularly a lot of high achieving young people toady, are not prepared for."  Lazzo Block, SVP of People Operations Google Inc., builds on this idea, "Dealing with failure and learning from it is actually one of the most important skills you can have."  In the film, both of these successful leaders argue that teaching students that failure is part of learning is critical to their future success.

For the 3 min 42 sec video clip "Failure and a Growth Mindset" from Most Likely to Succeed go to Failure and a Growth Mindset.

In the TED Talk, "Failure Is An Option" (July 29, 2016), guest speaker, Astro Teller, employee of X (run by Google), references JFK's dream to send a man to the moon.  Astro Teller calls his work a "moon shot factory" where employees are encouraged to dream big and then come up with plans to reach their dreams.  Employees are encouraged to spend time "breaking things and trying to prove that we're wrong", celebrating failure and then creating an even better big dream to explore.   According to the TED Talk, Google is also using this strategy of "chasing failure" to learn from mistakes and improve products.

For more, check out the full TED talk at Failure Is An Option.

If failure is a critical part of success, how are we preparing our students to embrace mistakes and failure?

In our recent Core Knowledge Language Arts (Amplify Education, Inc. 2015) unit, Eureka! Student Inventor students were required to fail.  In fact, earning a "failure wedge" was the only way to move on to round two of the unit.  Students were asked to identify the failures of famous inventors and acknowledge their own failures with their inventions and with peer collaboration.  Luckily, my students were eager and ready to complete this challenge because they know that failure and mistakes are an important part of learning.

During our first week of 4th grade this year, we explored lessons from the "Weeks of Inspirational Math" from Youcubed at Stanford University (2016).  As part of this exploration, we watched  "Mistakes are Powerful".  Check out the short clip at Mistakes are Powerful.  Since we watched this video, my students have adopted the phrase, "Good thing mistakes help my brain grow".  They use this phrase with themselves, with their peers and with me when I make a mistake or fail.  This simple curriculum and related classroom discussions helped set the tone for valuing mistakes and failure throughout our year.  Often our daily learning objectives include, "I can learn from my mistakes in ...".  My students now smile and nod when I say, "I hope you make mistakes today," or, "I hope you fail on your first attempt," because they believe this is how their brain grows.

References

Amplify Education, Inc. (2015). Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts®. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://ckla.amplify.com/site/home National Edition, Grade 4, Unit 5

Dintersmith, T., Leibowitz, A., & Whiteley, G. (2015). Most Likely To Succeed. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://www.mltsfilm.org/

TED Radio Hour. (2016, July 29). Failure Is An Option. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/487606750/failure-is-an-option

Youcubed at Stanford University. (2016). Inspiring Students to Math Success and a Growth Mindset. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from https://www.youcubed.org/#Weeks of Inspirational Math

What will the workplace ask for? Collaboration!

Questions that will allow teachers to take the next big steps toward preparing our students for anything in the future:

• What can we do better to prepare our students for a changing and unknown future?  
• Are we doing enough?  
• Who can we look at for guidance and inspiration?  
• What does learning look like this year?  Next year?  10 years from now?  

One way to explore these questions is by looking at future work opportunities.  Lathram, Lenz & Vander (2016) argue, "Due to technological and economic change, students in high school now face a very different job market and life on planet Earth than previous generations."  The authors suggest that project-based learning is the best way to prepare students for the many different jobs and projects they will engage with throughout their careers.   

In project-based learning students learn how to collaborate with their peers.   Collaboration will undoubtedly be a skill that employers look for in the future.   

In what ways are you teaching collaboration through project-based learning in your classroom? Please comment and share.

Reference
Lathram, B., Lenz, B., & Vander Ark, T. (2016). Preparing Students for a Project-Based World. Getting Smart. August, 23. Available at http://www.gettingsmart.com/publication/preparing-students-project-based-world/