Inquiring Minds – The Fabric of the Carpet

The 13 current Edmonton and area

sites of Inquiring Minds share an application process for the 2020-21 school year and are bound together by an approach to learning. Nothing more; not extra funding or staffing, no higher order administrative structure.

The website says “Children learn best by doing. The Inquiring Minds partnership offers teachers an opportunity to move their classroom to a community site for a week of hands on, multi-sensory learning. Student learning is enhanced by meeting curriculum expectations through meaningful connections to the real world.” The website also uses the descriptive phrase “week-long, site-based, inquiry programming”.

Those ideas work together to create the essence of this approach. It’s not really a whole new world. It’s just the fascinating world that can be discovered at a site. Inquiring Minds banded together because they share this learning idea. It is an organic connection. Each site has its own individual funding and administrative organization. The diverse coordinators come together monthly to share ideas related to this approach, but there is no overall business unit or funding model in Inquiring Minds. Like the learning ideas they champion, each site handles those things in its own unique way. Inside the larger organization that is home to each program, the magic of the site and pride in the learning it facilitates help create meaningful connections to the real world.

If you want to raise the “hackles” of an Inquiring Minds program coordinator use the words “field trip” to describe your understanding of their program. While there are many places (some Inquiring Minds physical locations also welcome teachers and students to other programs that might be called field trips) providing very focused experiences for anything from an hour to a full day, the approach of Inquiring Minds is to slow down and open up the multi-facilitated learning available at that physical space. Site-based means to “be” at a site and introduce as many different curriculum connections as might to be possible in a week’s worth of full days.

Week-long has recently morphed to 5 days with the education school days (instruction days) calendar leaving fewer whole weeks. Most program coordinators use a creative approach to provide 5 consecutive instructional days. The point is to bring students and teachers often enough to the space to allow time for observing, connecting and reflecting with a variety of people and things, traverse the breadth of the space and get behind the scenes. Overcoming first impression newness and allowing for visit-revisit connections settles sensory stimulated brains and provides deeper learning opportunities. Inside this practice we like to say, “Students and teachers end up owning the space”.

The big idea behind an inquiry approach in a learning rich environment is the power of ENGAGEMENT of students; what “catches the eye”, fascinates and creates a willingness to spend time slow looking naturally leads next to lots of questions. With more time those questions lead to the process of seeking answers and that can lead to (with nurture or without) connections making curriculum objectives come alive.

One of the reveals at each site is an introduction to jobs many of us, adults included, know little about. A key component of each program is the people who work for the larger organization. Tying curriculum to the everyday skills and ideas of occupations can give reason or purpose to certain aspects of learning. In Alberta we refer to these curriculum connections under the term, Career and Life Management or CALM.

All the programs hope against hope that participating teachers will use the experience as a central part of a year long connection to learning. Facilitators offer educators ways and support to divide the school year into 3 parts: 1. before we go, 2. while we are there and 3. what we can do with what we learned.

And all Inquiring Minds sites champion the use of a journal as a primary research and reflecting tool.

The next 13 posts will be about individual sites. Our current “interesting times” gave me the opportunity to phone chat with a variety of program coordinators. There is nothing like a personal perspective to see a whole new world.

Hang on to the fringes and tassels. Here we go.

Hook, Line and Sinker for building journaling practice

I’m excited!

I can’t help it.

It is back to school time. Today I spent 75 minutes with 12 wonderful teachers who are preparing to bring classes to the brilliant Edmonton Inquiring Minds site called U School.  I wanted them to feel inspired, empowered and eager to begin the skill of journaling. I could have talked the whole time but that is always my problem; I know that telling is not really the path to true enlightenment. So I tried to spend at least some of our time writing and walking.

These are the links to some of the ideas, websites and books I mentioned.
Boost your metacognition and brain vocabulary and read Brain Rules by John Medina. The brain science is so clear about how effective this is for learning.

Hook – Get a big idea that grabs you then find a collection of things your students can touch and/or experience to make a start. Today, I took in my personal horse collection but suggested Dollarstore seashells or free-for-the-picking-up-outside right-now spruce cones. One of the teachers mentioned collecting smooth rocks and then using them to create story stones. (Google “story stones” to see some lovely ideas).

A good collection needs to have at least 6 items more than kids in the class so everyone has a choice. If you are smart, things are not too breakable or expensive. Back in my ICE School days I filled a bin with old skates Sports Central was going to throw away. I have used old and new small things from the farm to prompt inquiry and writing about agriculture.

Check out the videos at Edmonton Inquiring Minds by Gillian Kydd about writing and drawing about objects. 

A great book with lesson plans around a variety of objects is Inquiry Based Learning Using Everyday Objects by Amy Alvarado and Patricia Herr.

Write about them. Connect them, reflect on them, observe them, wonder and sketch them.

Line – Take journals, pencils and get out and walk with your class. One of the teachers today suggested a one-time, year-long blanket permission to cover walks with-in a six block radius of the school. Great idea. She also mentioned making the job of caboose or back gate keeper one of the regular rotating class jobs. She has a bright safety vest for that student to wear and they love it.

This fall is an excellent time to walk and connect with the federal election. Watch for lawn signs, count them, see if the number changes. Take a look at this lovely humorous video called Election Signs by Edmonton Journal photojournalist, Ryan Jackson. Then look at his behind-the-scenes of its creation.

The City of Edmonton has created a wonderful resource called Make a Better City. It includes a set of activities centred on walking the neighborhood in the section City Scene.

Looking for prompt ideas for the walk? My favorite collection is How to be an Explorer of the World (this link is to one of my favorite blogs about books and how I found this book in the first place) by Keri Smith. Or check out the Write About website. It is free for an individual teacher to register and has some organized opportunities for joining groups based on interests.

Or maybe just inspiration? Consider Alexandra Horowitz’s On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes. Think about inviting some experts on your walks. Ask them lots of questions.

So, take some walks. Write about them. Stop and sketch on them. Map them when you return.

Sinker – All the brain research is supporting engaging learners and taking them deeper. Let your big idea include doing something that makes the world a better place.  Plan some action because of it. Write some letters, make some videos. Here again Make a Better City has some suggestions in the section Make it Real.
Michael Norton has done research that discovered spending even a small amount of money on something for someone else makes us happy.
Create something to share.
Consider a pop-up museum event. Invite parents to bring in an object related to the big idea for a celebration of learning. Get your students to view the museum and you guessed…write about an object, connect it, wonder about it, sketch it.

I want to be wise

I am at that stage in my life where my goals each day line up fairly well with how I decide to spend my time. Not perfectly of course – there is ALWAYS laundry and dishes. I am a married 60+ woman and did not do the proper significant-other vetting on these topics 40 years ago. 

And, as far as I can tell, there is never enough time to read all the books I want to read.

I chose a kind of semi-retirement to spend time with my grand-daughter and my years have shown me how to do that well, better than I did with my daughter and son. The “new” word describing this is intentional. These are the lessons of parenting we get to improve on when we grand-parent.

Recently, Brain Pickings sent me a piece on Barry Schwartz’s Practical Wisdom. This is an excerpt of the six core qualities of the person endowed with telos that Schwartz and Sharpe outline:

1. A wise person knows the proper aims of the activity she is engaged in. She wants to do the right thing to achieve these aims—wants to meet the needs of the people she is serving.
2. A wise person knows how to improvise, balancing conflicting aims and interpreting rules and principles in light of the particularities of each context.
3. A wise person is perceptive, knows how to read a social context, and knows how to move beyond the black-and-white of rules and see the gray in a situation.
4. A wise person knows how to take on the perspective of another—to see the situation as the other person does and thus to understand how the other person feels. This perspective-taking is what enables a wise person to feel empathy for others and to make decisions that serve the client’s (student’s, patient’s, friend’s) needs.
5. A wise person knows how to make emotion an ally of reason, to rely on emotion to signal what a situation calls for, and to inform judgment without distorting it. He can feel, intuit, or “just know” what the right thing to do is, enabling him to act quickly when timing matters. His emotions and intuitions are well educated.
6. A wise person is an experienced person. Practical wisdom is a craft and craftsmen are trained by having the right experiences. People learn how to be brave, said Aristotle, by doing brave things. So, too, with honesty, justice, loyalty, caring, listening, and counseling. 

Awhile back, I was approach to provide feedback on survey items for the type of program that is so near and dear to my heart. I was flattered because it made me feel “known”. The package arrived and I eagerly opened it. I was a little taken aback by the heftiness, but I thumbed through the forms. Each survey item was stapled to a long feedback form; 49 items in all. As I thumbed, I could feel my jaw tighten and my forehead furrow. I drew in my breath and set them down on my desk. Better get myself into the proper space; I had to pick Anisha up in ½ hour and this would take some time.

Something that has increased with my semi-retirement is my ability to procrastinate. I plunge into stuff I enjoy and leave things I am less enthused about (laundry and dishes and recently taxes). These papers sat a few days and then I touched them again. I had two hours and it seemed a perfect time to begin. Once again I decided to do a read through before writing. I had probably misjudged the nature of the activity and just needed to get my brain to the right spot. As I read, I realized I did not know enough about the program. So I did a little online research – deadly because I went from there to my favorite website to catch up on those ideas I know I will find there and love. Then a quick look at Twitter (there is rarely a quick look at Twitter for me). The time was gone and my work was not done. I fired off some emails to get some more information before I tackled it again.

Now the calendar is beginning to become a factor. The researchers want these back, the Easter long weekend is a week away, my Mom 300 km away is sick and needs help and if truth be told, I don’t really like surveys. 

I examine this feeling about surveys. I remember my days as a classroom teacher administering student surveys for Edmonton Public Schools to my class and filling in the teacher version myself. The teacher edition had, for years, the words "fairly much" as a choice on the scale - it drove me NUTS. I pick at the scab of resentment and displeasure with the results which I knew did not accurately reflect my or my students' “attitudes and feelings”.

So I go online and read about Likert scales and chat with some colleagues. None of this helps. Instead my resent grows (what a useless emotion).

When I know the calendar will allow me no more room, I select a morning time block and plow in – I will just get through them. I hate each item, can’t form any constructive criticism, the time drags and I seem to get nowhere. Why can’t they just use the kids’ journals or talk to them? Why is it not enough for a teacher to say what they think because of what they see? The survey is looking for program support of the boxes of subject areas. 

This is the antithesis of type of learning week-long, site-based programs so effectively do - sending student brains to a deep place of learning where neurons do not follow pathways to brain sections marked math or science or art. Neurons just build connection after connection between the stimuli from the real world and those connections form understanding.

This survey does not get IT!! Man, if I get this distraught it is a good thing they are not asking me to administer it.

I finish while Anisha is napping that afternoon. I know I have let down the folks asking for my “wisdom” but I push the forms in their pre-paid postage envelope and toss it in the mailbox on our way to a cleansing visit of the Muttart Conservatory. The new feature pyramid display has roses and Anisha’s middle name is Rose and we can hardly wait to get there.

Based on the six core qualities of a person endowed with telos, on a Likert scale of 1 indicates no wisdom to 5 indicates wise, I have to score myself 1L