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.

Blank Journal 101 - Rai·son d'ê·tre

If I knew in 1974 what I now know about journaling and kids and learning to read, write, do math, sketch, connect, contemplate and a wide array of other things I would have been quite a different  teacher my first day with my own classroom.

That first classroom; what a mind-blowing experience. I think my love of old brick buildings came in part from that 1931 structure on the corner of 112 Ave and 79 street.

I had giant windows which I loved and a gym in the basement with a nine-foot ceiling which caused me to be creative in my physical education lessons. Nestled next to the growing footprint of the Edmonton Exhibition Association (it was not calling itself Northlands just yet) and Borden Park I would learn about the inner city much as a science fiction character learns about new worlds. My middle-class upbringing and four years of university did nothing to prepare me for the alternate reality I discovered but that is another story.

In a short amount of time, I felt that my university education courses had not given me tools to help my Grade 5 and 6 students learn how to escape the cycles of poverty that shaped their lives and daily presented obstacles to the acquiring of even the basic skills in reading, writing and math. The CI (Curriculum and Instruction) courses I took never touched on the realities of engagement, individualization, brain development and certainly not how to use a blank journal. 

I would give anything to be able to go back and start that first day with all those students and a set of journals.

As I write that I now, I realize that is not fair to my whole post secondary experience – I had Dr. Buck, Iain Gunn-Graham and Rachel Kindersley to thank for modelling how to engage me and share the passions they had which fuel many of my interests to this day. I just did not appreciate that aspect of their work. Engagement.

I had arrived at the University of Alberta a “good student” with outstanding departmental exam results. I had learned to write the five-sentence paragraph and the five-paragraph essay, using a point by point outline form. I could write on any topic, even something I knew little about. I loved math and sewing thanks to some wonderful high school teachers and I had just begun to think about the world from a social justice point of view.

I am unsure of the Education course material now, but I cannot find a course called Blank Journals 101 listed anywhere (the Google search did show me lots of ideas for buying journals and prompts). On this first day of school 2019-20, with an uncertain approach to curriculum on the Alberta horizon I am going to write and post as often as I can about what I know about blank journals and their power for learning. And I will offer connections to the world of people who support this educational tool and concept.

Now, enough of the rear-view mirror.

I am making a vow to write myself every single day. Join me. Get started with kids. Have a great year.

To infinity and beyond. Buzz Lightyear

Honouring my teaching journey

I first saw Robert John Meehan’s inspirational statement “If you ask me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you without hesitation: I was born to be a teacher” in my early days on Twitter less than a year after officially retiring from Edmonton Public School Board. I could not actually retire from teaching.

My earliest memory of stating that I wanted to be a teacher dates to a time when I am about 9 years old. I was likely more interested in bossing around my sister, brother and cousins during the playing of “school” but the formal idea stuck. I was fortunate during my grade 1 to 12 experience to have what proved to be an amazing number of excellent educators from Rose Wollman (Gr. 1), Nancy Eng (Gr. 5), Ruth McQuarrie (Gr. 7), Daiyo Sawada (Elementary Math), Bill Tanasichuk (Science 10) and Lorne Sparks (Social Studies 10 and 30) whose collective impact formed my attitude that this was a profession to aspire to. While my Faculty of Education experiences in university were not all as satisfying, I did spend time in the presence of 2 master lecturers: Dr. Robert Buck (Classics) and Iain Gunn-Graham (Art History) who illuminated the power of story as a teaching tool and learned to love dance from Rachel Kindersley.

My first teaching assignment as an EPSB teacher in 1974 landed me on another planet, the inner city of Edmonton. The product of a basically middle class childhood and with nothing from my university training to prepare me for what I discovered was the childhood reality of most of my students at Cromdale, I threw myself into changing those kids lives. I had the great good fortune to be supported in my educational growth by a superior administrator, Len Fossum, who encouraged me to use my passion for physical education to engage my students. From there I found myself in the beginning days of early childhood education inside EPBS and learned the lessons related to use of theme as an organizing idea for educational activities and experiences.

In 1977, I was invited by the innovative EPSB administrator, Keith Muirhead, to be part of the staff he was pulling together to create the first fine arts focussed alternative elementary program in EPSB at Virginia Park. I came in as an early childhood dancing “expert” and added skills every day to my teaching tool kit. School wide collegial planning and opportunities to learn by observing other fine arts “experts” were integral pieces of my professional development. I became a teacher/librarian and joined the ranks of Best of the Best and worked on the development of a Focus on Research which lead to a Focus on Inquiry.

When my own children began to attend Virginia Park, I moved to Beacon Heights to update that learning resources collection and an initiative to manage it with computer technology. There I enjoyed the company of north-east teachers banded together to promote writing, a collaboration of schools called WOW (World of Writing) and planned and hosted several student writing conferences. I was given the opportunity to train in Balanced Lit and added another collection of tools to my kit.

And then in 2002 along came Edmonton Oilers ICE School, my dream job that I never knew would exist until I was given the opportunity to build it. Based on the ground-breaking work of Gillian Kydd and Open Minds/Campus Calgary, I was seconded to the Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation and asked to create a program inside the world of an NHL hockey rink, the Edmonton Oilers and Northlands. During that time, other site coordinators and I joined forces to create Inquiring Minds Edmonton to support each other in our truly out of the box facilitation roles. I retired from full-time work with EPSB (and Edmonton Oilers ICE School) in 2011.

My mother’s battle with cancer and the birth of my first grand-child made the lack of support to me (through any kind of supply teaching) very apparent. But my passion for and commitment to this type of work lead me to an opportunity to build EJ School (Edmonton Journal) and support the development of JUBE School (Northern Jubilee Auditorium), two smaller sites.

These days I use Twitter to promote week-long, site based, inquiry learning and what it means to 21st century learners. I enjoy the planning with teachers, scheduling and connecting of experts to students as much for my personal growth as for the benefit of a program. I believe passionately that learners need the tools of observation, interview and critical thinking to facilitate the essential brain activity of learning and require many diverse hands-on experiences for neuron development, no matter what age or stage of life.

“If you ask me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you without hesitation: I was born to be a teacher”

Backpack for a classroom - #yegdtkids

George Couros has been encouraging me to get back to my blog today (via Twitter - he and I have never met) and I am shocked to discover, not for the first time, that much time has past since I wrote something for this purpose.

Back in late April, just after the deadline for Inquiring Minds Edmonton applications had past, my friend and colleague, Linda Hut of City Hall School fame reached out to ask about a collaboration for 2016-17. She knew how to hook me because she was talking about rookies/veterans in her collection of applying teachers and she wanted to be sure that if she took rookies some of those vets would have a week somewhere. She knows I love master teachers and am always wanting to challenge them.

So we offered 6 of them (2 sets of pairs sharing a class and 2 singles) a week in downtown Edmonton (#yegdt) under my guidance with no fixed address or even much of a plan. They all accepted, without hesitation I might add, which filled me with nervous anticipation.

Could we make it work?

Jon Hall

Linda started sending me contacts from her deep metaphoric mental (cellphone connected) Rolodex for city-shapers and change-makers in #yegdt and I started beating the pavement – walking downtown as many different ways as I could and having lots of coffee with great folks from her list.  I did a Jane’s Walk with the mayor of 104 St., Jon Hall, in early May then visited inside his wonderful old warehouse turned lofts building during Open Doors Edmonton in July. One of my early connections was Chris Gusen of Make Something Edmonton who asked me to consider connecting with my teachers on 100 in 1 day (June 4) as an exploration project. I created an invitation and asked Diane Gurnham of ICE School fame to include her piloting teachers prepping for ICE School 2.0 which she was developing for her new classroom in Rogers Place. I also invited my EJ School teachers. This crew of 20 educators had an amazing morning, walking, talking, sharing ideas, looking at Edmonton past, present and future, loads of public art and imagining all kinds of curriculum connections.

I knew I could count on CKUA and the Edmonton Journal to share their spaces. I found out the Downtown Edmonton Community League (DECL) did not have room in their small offices but a door was opened across 103 Street at All Saints Cathedral Hall by Chris Pilon, their community engagement guy and DECL member. The roof stressed folks of EPSB Archives and Museum at McKay Ave were excited to cooperate. On a walk north from the Neon Sign Museum and Rogers Place, I discovered I could be at the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre in 10 minutes and the resources of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment Museum and the City of Edmonton Archives became a key part of each week.

Medicine Wheel
Garden

I learned we could daily acknowledge that the land we were exploring was Treaty 6 territory and traditional meeting ground for many Indigenous people: from Beaver Hills House Park thru the Medicine Wheel Garden to Iron Foot Place, from Alex Decoteau to Sharon Pasula, downtown resident and Indigenous Cultural and Educational Helper. We experienced Alberta’s birth as a province through history made real during Mr. Puffer Goes to Parliament. We talked hockey (I love to talk hockey history) and connected the first sitting of the Alberta Legislature to the old Thistle Rink among other hockey highlights. Maybe you heard they officially opened a new state-of-the-art NHL arena in downtown Edmonton.

Linda shared City Hall, Edmonton City Council and let us join her for a great view from the 16^th floor of the EPCOR building. I discovered the folks at Edmonton Emergency Relief Services Society were happy to speak about their story helping those touched by poverty, homelessness and disaster. We interviewed parents of kids at the DECL Urban Playgroup and we met with Michael Phair at the park named after him.

Chris Gusen at
Make Something Edmonton

We saw things that allowed us to touch on hard topics like war and homelessness. Then Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC) and Make Something Edmonton gave us hope when they asked students to create a model of something missing in downtown Edmonton.

This great group of teachers and their adventuring students walked and walked and walked. We lived out of our backpacks with journals and pencils at the ready, interviewing, observing, sketching and wondering. We ate lunch in a different location every day of the week. And no one complained. We gained a real appreciation of what such an unrooted lifestyle might be like. We were greeted one afternoon on our return to City Hall to catch the bus by a scruffy man who broke into a smile as we past and sang “Jesus loves the little children”. More than one student included that in their end of the day reflection.

There is one week left. And then this grand experiment will be over. I have learned so much and I am very grateful for the help and encouragement of everyone who believed and helped make it possible. Chiefly but not exclusively I feel Tolkien got it right – “All who wander are not lost.”

Kids Need to Talk

Talking has always been an important piece of processing for me. I have an extremely vivid memory from Grade 2 of a teacher who continually asked me to sit down and stop talking. In desperation she used masking tape to attach me to my desk chair and cover my mouth. This was back in the “baby boom” days of 35 to 40 children in a classroom and she was fresh from Junior E (a teacher training initiative that saw 19 and 20 year olds assume classroom duties after one year of post-secondary). It was my delight to meet her years later, teaching in the school where I was completing my teacher practicum. We laughed together when I reminded her of that memory.

Needless to say I have always had a soft spot for those who need to talk. From my early days as a classroom teacher I had a fairly high tolerance for chatter and often introduced a new idea with the phrase “Turn to your neighbor and talk about….” Recently We are Teachers posted “5 Fun Alternatives to Think-Pair-Share” and each alternative is a great strategy for using student conversing to further learning.

During my years facilitating the Inquiring Minds program called Edmonton Oilers ICE School I was introduced to the Jigsaw method by an outstanding teacher. I have often said that one of the greatest gifts of my time in week-long, site-based programming has been the opportunities to work beside and learn essential tools from skillful educators.

This instructional strategy has so much going for it. My recent reading on this topic revealed to me that the master mind behind Jigsaw was Elliot Aronson, a social psychologist and father of four, who in 1971 was distressed by the circumstances in recently desegregated Austin, Texas public schools. He worked with colleagues and students at the University of Texas and the University of California to research a small group cooperative learning technique that could synthesize principles gleaned from his years of work on small-group dynamics and social interaction. The goal was not primarily a learning objective, but rather to bridge the gap hostility created between children from different ethnic groups.

Jennifer Gonzalez of the wonderful blog, Cult of Pedagogy posted an excellent piece on Jigsaw last April. There is a video about the strategy and if you sign up to receive Jennifer’s tips by email you get a free copy of instructions for using it in a variety of ways.

I now look forward to her emails and have found many other pearls in them. She got me thinking about all of this when she sent me this great post last week called the Big List of Class Discussion Strategies. Take a look!

Teaching the Art of Interview

On the journey of my teaching career, it has been my privilege to witness the power of children interacting with other adults. From that moment in my second year when I realized my little (until then mostly silent) new Canadian from Korea kindergarten student had repeated several words in a row with eyes locked on our visiting guest cowboy “speaker” to the engagement of 12 year old boys coming to an understanding of molten lead from a linotype machine operator turned computer graphic designer, I have marveled at the pure magic of this type of interaction.

Over the last few years, I have been gratified to learn that the neuroscience behind this magic is being explored through research. I just LOVE reading that science has “proved” something I have “known” for years. 

Looking for a great read on Brain Science and teaching? I have just finished John Medina’s Brain Rules. Check it out.

Experts and learning-stuff-from-them is an integral piece of the inquiry cycle and learning in general. Interview as a structured time to get answers to questions is an important skill for all learners. It is one of the bed-rock activities of a site-based program. The opportunities of being out where adults work is part of a real world learning rich environment and some of those adults taking time to listen and answer student questions, provide ingredients that make for engagement and deep connection.

The beginning of the new school year affords a teacher one of those perfect times to introduce and polish interview skills. New faces in the class or school, summer adventures, expanding horizons or “How do you think the Oilers will do this season?” provide some interview teachable moments.

Jennifer Gonzalez, creator of one of my favorite education blogs, Cult of Pedagogy, posted an inspiring set of Ice Breaker activities for the start of a class year. 

Doug Lipman, a storyteller and teacher, has a great collection of steps to building interview skills, using story games.

And what can I say about Story Corps? Genius idea and I admire everything about it. Their work on developing the idea of asking very open ended questions of those closest to us to gather personal narratives is creating an amazing collection of …. great stories.

How about sending the art of interview home to collect some family anecdotes?

Use the students' beginning experiences of interview to teach designing better questions.  There is wonderful support for the questioning classroom at Teach Thought , another of my favorite education blogs.

You can Google “fat skinny questions”. 

Now get busy.

What’s stopping you?