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.

Inquiring Minds

Site Coordinators Feb. 28, 2020

I can’t help it but the words from the Disney song, A Whole New World , keep rolling through my brain as I sit to write. Yes, I watched a few of the different Duos (my goodness that word has taken on a new meaning for me in the last 3 weeks) performing the song since it was released in 1992. This math inclined brain of mine jumped to make a connection with that year. 

Gillian Kydd, in Edmonton we refer to her as the god-mother of Inquiring Minds, was early in her role as a science consultant for Calgary Board of Education. She met in the fall of 1992 with people at the Calgary Zoo. By January of 1993 she helped a teacher and class take the first steps onto that site every chilly day for a week. She began weaving a magic carpet of education, something with a “new, fantastic point of view". In 2002 she took me for a ride that showed me “a hundred thousand things to see” and left me all these years later saying “I can't go back to where I used to be”.

This "whole new world" we find ourselves in today, was not even comprehensible on Feb. 28, 2020 when the group in the photo above spent the afternoon connecting with teachers at GETCA. The opportunity to talk to teachers this way, was something new and from my observer's view point, a great success. It is safe to say, many of us hugged, shook hands and spoke to each other well inside the 2 metre acceptable circle of today’s in-person social distancing communication guidelines.

My heart sang, all afternoon.

I told everyone I just came for the T shirt. I LOVE the new logo. But I really came to see some of the old and new faces of the site coordinators. Being truly retired means I don’t go to those facilitators' monthly meetings and I do miss them. 

Great energy crackled down the long display table and the smiles on everyone’s faces spoke to an amazing current of connection.

I was inspired. I decided to write a fly-by snap shot on each of the 13 sites of Inquiring Minds and post them here.

Early in the week that was school spring break in Edmonton, I met an alumni teacher of Inquiring Minds in the Safeway parking lot. Standing at least 3 metres apart we discussed the strange new paradigm teachers found themselves in and he asked if I thought he should still apply for a site next year. “Absolutely,” I said. “We have no idea what the school year will look like in the fall. If you don’t apply you won’t have a chance to access that rich world of learning.”

Then I reminded him of all the skills his “inquiry focused” “blank journal” equipped students can bring to their remote learning for the rest of this school year.

For the next few posts, join me, as Inquiring Minds biggest fan. I want to “open your eyes, take you wonder by wonder, over, sideways and under, On a magic carpet ride”.

“I can show you the world, Shining, shimmering, splendid” of Inquiring Minds. 

I invite you to take a brief bird's eye peek with me. It will not be technologically wonderful; just words to hook you, set your teaching imagination in motion, glimpse a hidden gem.

You can start by checking out the application at the Inquiring Minds website. It could be your magic carpet to a "whole new world" of learning.

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

Holy Temporal Anomaly – where does the time go?

I have been itching to write a post on this blog for the last couple of weeks and when I come to finally start, I discover I have not added a thing since Aug. 2012. When I read that last post, it seems like it was just yesterday.

Don’t get me started on where that time has gone.

What I am excited about these days is how much good stuff just keeps happening in the universe of Edmonton’s Inquiring Minds. Applications were up all around and 2013-14 looks like another great year.

In my little corner over at the Edmonton Journal, EJ School hosted 6 weeks of remarkable learning and lots of that learning was mine. In spite of (or maybe because of) the constant, unrelenting pace of change in the world of journalism, EJ School combined the opportunity to develop the tools of media literacy with exploration of the business of journalism in an engaging environment surrounded by history, current events and the downtown world of work. Together with the great teachers and the students who came with them, I got to explore downtown Edmonton and the Jasper Ave “retro-fit”, observe the sports department through the NHL lock-out, dig into the history of many downtown buildings, check out the view from the Castle Rock offices high up in Manulife Place, stand next to the Pulitzer Prize won years ago by the Edmonton Journal, view a thought provoking photo exhibit titled Inclusion & Exclusion at Enterprise Square, watch an epic curling match at the Brier, discover the spirit of service to others at the Marion Centre and celebrate the 100th birthday of the Edmonton Public Library.

I also got to know some of the journalists at the Edmonton Journal. Monday, every week the class on site was treated to a tour by Karen Unland, orchestrator of the innovative project called Capital Ideas. Then Karen would demonstrate good interview techniques on some staffer. Tuesday and Friday mornings during an activity that came to prove itself a classic for understanding the basic skills of observation and interview and metaphorically titled “Fly on the Wall”, small groups of students spend ½ hour in some working area of the building. Crime desk, the morning editors' meeting, advertising, marketing, front desk, security, publisher’s office, Block 1912, linotype machine, Capital Ideas and the occasional journalist’s desk became perfect practice locations for students. Then the process of the small groups sharing what they discovered helped everyone understand the nature of distilling and refining interesting information to communicate to others. Friday, after the editors' meeting Barb Wilkinson would drop by to explain the process of designing a front page for the print version and the class would get its writing assignment to create their own class front page.

Some afternoons were spent sketching in the Atrium or mining the wealth of riches inside Malcolm Mayes’ editorial cartoons.  At least once a week an opportunity was devoted to a more in depth interview with a staffer. Learning about the skills of storytelling in photography from Ryan Jackson, the insatiable curiosity that powers Paula Simons, the unusual route to crime reporting taken by Jana Pruden or the memorable sports events covered by Curtis Stock proved to be inspiration for page after page of student notes in their reporter style journals. For me, hearing Paula recount the story of Morris “Two Gun” Cohen reminded me that often truth can be more astounding than fiction.

I am already incredibly excited about a new group of teachers and the classes coming in 2013-14.

Holy Temporal Anomaly.

Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens

Something incredibly wonderful happened to me this week. I met Frank Oppenheimer.

He said some things that spoke to my soul from years of observing kids in rich learning environments:

“The Exploratorium was conceived as a place to teach and learn, primarily because these are things we all like to do. It is the way we bring up our children, take our friends to the top of a hill to see the view, or call out, when we are walking through the woods ‘Hey, look, there’s a deer.’”

“This show of reality represents a basic honesty that is surprisingly important effect on learning.”

“No one flunks a museum.”

There is a stack of books from the library that I am working my summer way through. Summer reading was one of my all time most restorative activities during my active teaching time. I did not consider the summer break well started until I had spent at least a few days that first week nose deep in a novel from breakfast until supper or even lights out bedtime.

When I was growing up, my mom would occasionally request the removal of my nose from a book to get something done. During my university days, I reread The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings each year during my summer job bus commutes. Then I taught for 8 years before starting my family and so I had time to create a July tradition around summer reading. Family changed some aspects of this (no more dawn to dusk reading) but this summer I have reveled in it in a new way.

In late July, my husband got a total knee replacement and I had hospital and home time to spend nose deep in books again.

In the early 1990’s my husband and I enjoyed the opportunity to visit San Francisco for a conference related to his work. I checked out Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and discovered the Exploratorium. I could not believe such a wonderful learning environment existed. I tried to get there every time we went to San Francisco and have recommended it to many people as a highlight of a trip there. We planned a family holiday to San Francisco expressly so my kids could experience it. When I discovered a biography of the man who “made up” this rich world I knew I had to read it.

In the pages of Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens; Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up I found a kindred spirit in Frank Oppenheimer. Biographer, K.C. Cole has communicated her “perceptions” of this physics and education genius so that I feel I truly “understand” his life and times. Perception and understanding were key to Frank’s educational approach. Cole had the advantage of working with Frank over many years and experienced the development of the Exploratorium first hand in the role of a writer. She had contact with him right up to his death from cancer in 1985.

Her description of Frank’s early life, his experiences related to work as a young physicist on the Manhattan Project with his more famous brother Robert, his eventual blacklist for his stand (with the scientists involved) on not using the bomb which included suggestions for international atomic energy oversight and his eventual high school teaching job in Colorado all lead to understanding the cosmic synergy he brought to the development of his “woods of natural phenomena”.

Frank’s science was a life philosophy, a way of looking at the world and wanting to know more. Knowing more could only lead to better people and society. In his view there were no stupid questions and ultimately with time to touch, listen and observe, patterns were revealed, connections made and looking for answers brought understanding.

Summertime

Maybe it’s because yesterday was a rainy day and things were moving underwater slowly.

Maybe it’s because I am approaching my 60^th birthday.

Maybe it’s because I spent much of the last year looking at the world through my grand-daughter’s eyes.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s because I’ve returned from a week-long visit of family and friends on Vancouver Island that flew by quickly although each moment was deliciously relaxed and well spent.

Maybe it’s because I sat down for the first time in about a week and followed a Twitter string of connections that started with MariaPopova @brainpicker and her recommendation about “the mysteries of time perception” transitioned through (following Twitter connections always seems to make time disappear) fond memories of reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (a mind expanding experience for someone who had stated for so many years that she hated physics) and ended listening to Gershwin.

Time: a wonderful and valuable dimension of learning

Taking time is one of the basic elements of site-based education.

Time to watch, revisit, ask deep questions, reflect, collect.

Time to lay down connections deep in a brain.

I listened while driving Friday, to CKUA’s Don Hill explain the Roman origins of the “dog days of summer” and that made me long to hear every recording I have of Gershwin’s Summertime. Thinking about a white, Jewish male writing in an American black voice caused me to reflect on how it is universally true that human beings have much more stuff deeply in common than we have apart.

A desire to hear led me to YouTubes of a few of my favorite Summertimes and since I could not decide which I liked best right now, I link you to the young woman, Nora Jones, whose roots are in Texas and India and the mature black woman, Ella Fitzgerald, recorded in Berlin. This could go on forever and isn't  forever a mind blowing time concept.

Time as experienced through those wavy mirage visuals that lift off the pavement on a hot summer day. 

A mystery of perception indeed.

Science behind Getting Out of the Box

One of the things I am enjoying most about my recent exposure to Twitter is how almost every single day I follow a link that has some piece of research or academic type study to support why the experience of a site based learning situation is so successful for all kinds of learners.

Today, a tweet from Annie Murphy Paul sent me to her The Brilliant Blog which in turn sent me to find out about the research Angela Leung has done on creativity outside a box (literally) and guess what she found out – yes, “Each person completed a test widely used to testcreativity; those who were outside did the test better than people who wereinside the box.”

One of the elements I enjoyed the most about my ICE School days was the fact that we spend very little of our time in a conventional classroom setting. Each day of the week a group was with me, the teacher, class, volunteers and I were out and about, travelling around the 167 acres of learning that comprise Northlands.

While I always felt any walking was worth it for the exercise factor alone, what became clear week over week, was how student conversations while they walked and looked at what ever caught their attention tended to be so connected to what the teacher and I were hoping they might learn. Then when I had the opportunity to read what they had written in their journals about things they found interesting, were wondering more about or wanted to record so they would not forget or the little details they choose to web or sketch I was often amazed to discover they GOT some connection with hardly a word from me.

Just this week Edna Sackson’s blog Who Controls the Learning had a cartoon of a teacher drawing and then opening a window to the outside world. I printed it and now it is taped to the cover of my journal.