So once again we are changing course. This doesn’t feel very organized to me. First, there was homework and then the message was- do not do the homework, do this instead, and then after we turned our attention to the “this”- we are not doing “that” anymore.
Makes it hard to invest for the “type A” personality and I’m left feeling some kinda way.
So now I am supposed to reflect on an activity I did this last month, our first two learning group meetings and talk about where my thinking is now. My thinking now is this endeavor is very disorganized. My thinking now is I want to divest a little until there is clarity of direction. I’ve been planning my curriculum for my two elective courses based on the spine of my curriculum, adding this work of Agency By Design, and our larger theme of making across the curriculum. I’ve felt a bit of stop and go.
My journey with ABD and these thinking routines started when I attended Project Zero, in Cambridge, during the summer of 2013 as part of my being hired at WIS. So for me, it is both this semester and four years in the making.
Now we are at the point during meeting number two where they want us to reflect, personally.
- What brings you to the work?
- What excites you?
- What is the work important?
What brings me?
The researchers used in the core of Project Zero are many of the same researchers that I was introduced to when I began graduate school in 1994 and who have been part of a 20-year ongoing conversation about curriculum and pedagogy in my previous school communities- a self-defined progressive school fully steeped in “progressiveness,” a Montessori School growing from PK-4 to N-8, and an N-12 Friends School, through the lenses of educational technology and administrivia- community organization. This artistic approach to teaching- with art, communication, collective wonder and community at the center of the learning is how I’ve come to understand “successful educational communities.” When I came to the Tregaron campus of WIS it took me some time to realize that “off-ness” I felt had to do with the sterile nature of the community as it was reflected in the physical environment of the campus. Our campus to me felt more like a museum where students also went to school, however, no one’s thinking or process was visible. Outside of the IB Art Show season in one of our buildings, the walls were bare. There was a building actually called “The Mansion” that was actively kept to look not like a school- but instead a Mansion, something my mother would’ve loved to rent for my wedding in the 1990’s. Here in 2010+ it was so stark to me because the school communities I had come from seemed further ahead in making their thinking visible- perhaps even too much so- then the school where I’d just been hired who had this explicitly stated goal.
The many theorists, pedagogies, and curricula that I’ve moved through all inform my approach and perspective now. From the foundations of American education and progressivism (John Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, Bowlby), experientially in a self-defined progressive school in Chicago, a self-defined progressive school in Manhattan (constructivism!!), a Montessori School (Reggio Emilia, Maria Montessori), a Friends school (Growing Into Goodness, Understanding By Design)
So, if you ask me what brings me it makes sense for me to tell you my longer arc, so you can see I’ve been walking in this direction all along.
What excites me?
Community. Being in a community (I work in a basement classroom, I am part of a department that is a collection and not a system). Being in a community actively engaged in talking about pedagogy and learning. Being in a community actively talking about how people learn, how we learn and reflecting on the process individually and collectively. This is what excites me. Talking about how we do what we do with each other, reflecting upon that and then going out and doing all of that again with the new insights and points of view gained through the conversations with my community.
Why is this work important?
Becuase it is through education that we can save the human species. I’ve given a variety of this same answer over time when asked why am I in education or why do I teach or why do I like to work with young people- the same because. I want us to evolve and survive.