Feeding the Writers

Recently, as part of my facilitation of a week of EJ School (Edmonton Journal) I had organized a poetry reading and interview for a class of Grade 6 students with Kevan Lyons, the Poet of Churchill Square. When we finished, I asked them to get up off the floor where they had been sitting for the last 40 minutes spellbound by the formerly homeless poet and go the tables in the Sunshine Café at SAGE (Seniors Association of Greater Edmonton) and write. 

I suggested they could start with “I just met Kevan Lyons…..”

And so, in a matter of a minute they were all seated; quiet, writing; coats and backpacks dripping off their chairs, cafeteria hum around them, friends close enough to touch elbows as they leaned on the small round tables. Quiet, writing. 

After about 15 minutes, I asked the teacher if she wanted to wrap it up since the yellow bus was sitting outside the door to take them back to their school. 

She said “Not yet. They’re all writing and I have students writing that have never sat this way to write all year.” 

Then she took one quiet girl over and read the shy writer’s journal entry to Kevan. They formed a lovely trio, their heads bent into each other, soft smiles and Kevan listened. I had a tear in my eye, really.

Kevan’s message about how writing healed him and helps him suggest a path of healing to others is powerful.

But just as powerful is the experience of watching children carry a blank journal out into the real world, slow down to take things in and sit to write. It is one of the simple but transformation things about a site-based program and I feel privileged every time I am there to witness it.

I was prompted to write this by a blog I read this morning from Deanna Mascle. She says some very interesting things about the waste of precious time preparing for standardized testing. I agree wholeheartedly with her on that topic and most who know me hate to get me started on it. 

But the words that really hooked me came near the end when she said: 

 "I get a little misty-eyed whenever I think about what we have accomplished together and what my students have achieved – ultimately because I remembered to feed the writer as I designed the class, assignments, and activities. Because I remembered to feed the writer, my students have achieved things they never thought possible."

Here, here.

The Case for Classroom or Meeting Place

In the last few months the changing circumstances of some of our Edmonton Inquiring Minds sites as well as the possibility of some new ones led to a discussion among site coordinators through email and at meetings around the topic of classrooms on site – from “what would be a dream situation” to “are they even necessary”. 

These days, much of the talk about classrooms is about how to bring the world into 21^st century learning spaces through the creative use of technology.  Brain research is showing us that concrete experiences in rich real world activities are actually the neuron synapse way to lay down the foundation of deep learning through connections. But a "box" out-of-the-box can facilitate it! 

So here is the case for a classroom out-of-the-box. 

I discovered early on in my ICE School experience that the space we called a classroom was used mostly as a staging area: a place to hang up coats, stow boots, lunches and backpacks, a spot to get away for a period of time from the distractions of real world work and noise (much of the space in an NHL hockey rink is in almost constant motion), touch some of the interesting artifacts of the game, check out my library of books on hockey, horse and history, eat lunch, access a bathroom, keep a water bottle (there are not many water fountains out in the working buildings of the real world) and leave a few things at the end of the day so they could welcome learners back to the “routine” of another day on the site. Much of the day unfolded somewhere else.

During the development of the ICE School program I realized that the experience of a site based program was to take an education “known” and turn it around (it is all the rage to call this process “flipping”). Spending 5 full days away from school moves students from the “Wow” of arrival to developing the ability to look longer and more deeply and facilitates seeing beyond the first impression. It takes a while to become calm and comfortable and a space to lay down the routine of coming and going plays a grounding role.

In the section titled “The Classroom or Meeting Place”, Campus Calgary/Chevron Open Minds’s generous sharing through Implementing the Open Minds Education Concept in Your Community – a guide states:

       It is necessary (my bold italics) to have a room or space that will serve as a base for the teacher and their students. They need a place for sharing journals, discussions and snacks/lunch, and where they are away from the other visitors and staff.

    

    Requirements

The following description is the ideal – this isn’t always possible.
·         a colourful, bright space. Classrooms that have a glass wall have been very successful as the public can see what is happening and the students feel more connected to the site
·        in some programs the students sit at tables in five or six groups. Many sites use trapezoid tables that can be rearranged easily into groups or other formations for other users of the space. If the chairs are medium height they can be used by all ages.
·         It’s useful to have a carpeted area so the teacher can have discussion time with the students sitting near her. A white board or easel also is helpful. An overhead projector and LCD projector may also be useful.
·         counter with sink, coffee maker, cupboards
·         coat racks and runner for shoes/boots
·         tables/counters for display of books/artifacts etc.
·         access to washroom facilities

The final words go to the godmother of week-long, site-based inquiry programming, Gillian Kydd. After reading the above she sent me this:

"Made me think back on all the “meeting spaces” I’ve experienced since the program began, from the damp smelly panda theatre at the Zoo which was the first one, to the dark storage closet at Glenbow, to the tiny conference room at the Calgary Arts Centre, to your colourful locker room type space at Northlands, to the small lobby at our local museum, to the old school house with pot bellied stove and minus 25 in Fort Mac, to the round windowed room at the top of the ski jump at COP, to the gorgeous glass wrapped sea to sky views in the OM classroom at The Rooms in St. John’s.
Many of the cramped ones have been replaced but you are right – they are simply meeting places – the real classroom is the world.
Love
Gillian"

The real classroom is the world. 
Amen.

Two Kinds of People

This past Saturday afternoon I walked through the verdant garden of my friend, John. His thumbs are a deep forest green and it was pure delight to stroll past each happy chlorophyll life form. His wife, Candice pointed me to a lovely white rose and my randomly connecting brain forced me to ask which early British branch of the royal family was associated with the white rose. While we cast about for an answer and before their tech-savvy son, Will, could check it on his incredibly smart phone, we bent to smell a blossom and there was a lovely white globe bodied spider. She (I say “she” because I immediately thought of Charlotte) had a slight pink mark and 8 long white legs, which carried her to the underside of a petal in the time it took me to say, “I wish Anisha was here.” 

Last summer, I read a biography of Frank Oppenheimer, Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens, which contained his observation on the rich learning environment he designed.

If you have time watch this interview of the author K.C. Cole. (51 min)

 “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’.

Yesterday, I Tweeted something I enjoyed from Joe Hanson (sadly misspelling his last name L): his wonderful answer to the question Why is a rainbow? His own website has many engaging posts and I love the name It’s OK to be Smart. Joe wrote a piece recently about Einstein and his elevator observation, that I can hardly wait feel. The next time I step into an elevator I hope to explore it, rather than take the ride mindlessly. I hope I am that kind of person (and I hope the same for Anisha) – the kind who says “Whooooa, that’s cool!”

I finish with this sweet quote from a letter Einstein wrote to his son that came to me via Brain Pickings.

  “That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”

Free-Range Brain

My brain lined up elements of my universe in an amazing way these last few weeks. My summer reading has taken me through a number of fascinating books and my brain started rolling around the phrase “free-range” to connect the diversity of topics. The bread crumb trail started when I hunted down and pecked at This Explains Everything by John Brockman, thanks to the bookshelf at Brain Pickings. Each short essay in this book is illuminating I am sure, although I did not read them all. That is the nature of hunting and pecking. But there is one I turned back to several times: Benjamin Bergen’s Metaphors are in the Mind. I wandered from it to a Berkley website where I learn, George Lakoff and others are studying language and there are courses to explore how the “human physical brain composed of neurons that function via chemistry, can give rise to human concepts and human language”. Complex, abstract this-is-how-your-brain-functions stuff explained by making connections to what is real and tangible –metaphorically. Which these folks are saying is how we “think”, really metaphorically.

And then, in that way life just takes over and if you have your eyes and ears open, the seemingly abstract becomes, via a great metaphor, the real and day to day. On July 9^th, two “free-range” stories converged on my laptop. Early in the day I read one by Sarah Boesveld of the National Post that says “the unforeseen consequences of allowing hipster farmers to raise chickens in their urban backyards” is abandonment of the animals because “People don’t realize how much work they (chickens) actually are.” In my quest to support agriculture of all kinds, I have been saying this over and over. The more people experience what it takes to produce food, the more they will appreciate farmers. Sadly, many people launch down a path of relationship with another living thing (chickens, rabbits, dogs, cats, spouses and even children) without having contemplated what it will actually require of them to make that relationship healthy for both parties.

Not long after, I receive an email about the Boesveld story from my friend in agriculture, Dave Fiddler, who suggests a course in chicken-care followed by licencing J This sends my brain scratching to the outstanding learning resource developed by the Community Standards Branch of Edmonton called Make a Better City.

Not to be confused with the Make Something Edmonton movement which is getting wings in ways no one could have predicted. And in spite of the volumes of sarcastic, ironic or lame Tweets that evolved into the absurd side story MacheteSomethingYEG, actual, interesting projects are beginning to fly. In practise free-range fowl are not known for their ability to soar, so here the usefulness of this metaphor may break down.

Hunting and pecking, I take a slight meander because a shiny little Tweet has caught my eye. It is from Paula Simons and is about her column of July 9. I love the way Paula writes and she opens this particular article with the phrase “I am a free-range Edmontonian.” Because I get “free-range” as a metaphor, my brain screams “So am I!” and I fire off a Tweet. I want to know if anyone is working on a T-shirt. As I read on, I see she is encouraging fellow Edmontonians to throw aside nationalistic attitudes to our little corners of the city and discover some new part of Edmonton. She says, “So here’s my challenge to you. Let’s call it Yegquest — #yegquest on Twitter and Facebook.” And in a matter of a day it is trending. I smile to myself as I follow it. I have, to this point in my life, never been part of something “trending”; as a matter of principal I have avoided trendy things. But this makes me feel good.

And now the whole Yegquest thing is “Storify”-ed. Thousands of the free-range Edmonton flock are out there hunting and pecking away at their city.

Free-range brained and Edmontonian. Where to next?

Time to Celebrate

June is one of those months full of celebration. Many teachers plan, facilitate and otherwise engineer celebrations of a wide variety and finish the school year exhausted and worn out. I know for myself when I was in the classroom, as the march through June continued, the juggle of progress reports with year-end activities usually left me a prime candidate for a cold the first week of July.

The job of site coordinator gave me a freedom from progress reports and the opportunity to spectate at a myriad of different year-end activities for the classes that had been part of my program. It was always a pure joy to sit back and watch the smiling faces and bear witness to the year of learning that had proceeded. As I let the diversity and creativity wash over me, I often found a little tear of joy in my eye.

This time of year, one type of celebration comes in the form of awards. The Edmonton Inquiring Minds’ site-based program at the Devonian Botanical Gardens called Green School was a winner at the recent Emerald Awards. Spotting the finger prints marking the outstanding programming by Emma Gilbertson, Deb Greiner and Antonella Bell (Deb's accepting photo is third at the link) caused my heart to swell as I watched the video clip. I smiled when I saw the coil bound journals and students sketching, not-so-secret signals to those of us who fan the flames of week-long, inquiry based programming.

Friday, June 14 the awesome display at the Citizenship Fair demonstrated a host of connections facilitated by the City Hall School program. I have heard the Energizer Bunny label bestowed recently on others but my money is on Linda Hut, City Hall School coordinator, as the true holder of that title. One of my favorite aspects of the event was hugging a number of the outstanding teachers who use Inquiring Minds sites to create a year’s worth of learning for their students. The Fair was the proof of the difference between projects and project-based learning, which I just received a Tweet about yesterday from Danny Maas.

One of the Edmonton Inquiring Minds' “master teacher” crew is retiring, Christine Zihrul. That is another June rite of passage – retirement functions.  I was unable to attend Christine’s celebration but if it did not include some fascinating photography I would be surprised. The first week I worked with Christine at ICE School she amassed over 1000 photos of her students’ active learning at Rexall Place (maybe back then it was still Skyreach Centre J).

Earlier this year the long-time program facilitator of the School at the Legislature, Diana Panizzon, retired. And at month end, Lorna Zucchet (she would say to kids that it was pronounced Zoo-cat, in a very cool convergence of appropriate things), program coordinator for more than a decade of Zoo School, will close that chapter of her career. Through the years of pioneering work we did, I felt so nurtured in the collaboration we shared.

In one of those Google search moments I fall victim to and cost me many minutes of divergent viewing I did not plan on, I discovered the perfect close for this blog.

Celebrate What’s Right With the World has a great 20 minute film – if you have time it is worth every second.

I echo Dewitt Jones: “I choose to celebrate. Why? Because it imbues me with gratitude, it allows me to see the best in people and situations, because it fills me with energy.”

Catch and Release in Inquiry

Here is the spoiler alert – this blog has a fishing story and a several fishing metaphors. Beware.

Soon after some of my first experiences teaching, I became aware of the fact that engaged students were way easier to “manage” (a nice term related to classroom control) than disinterested ones. This is not rocket science. Finding the right hook for lessons became one of my teaching goals.

I have a story to tell about hooks. It goes far back into my childhood. I lived at two different times in the idyllic foothills of southwest Alberta. Whenever I return to that landscape, I breathe differently and all the tension leaves my shoulders. This has been a fascinating personal observation since some of those years were filled with turmoil in my family. It has often caused me to reflect on the deep sources of resiliency found in a natural environment.  

Both of my Dad’s parents liked to fish. For my grandfather, George Shenton, I am confident it came from his childhood roots in the pastoral English countryside near Bollington, although he never told me that. I went with him to the cold, stony rushing little stream near our home at Twin Butte on several occasions. I suspect, I was allowed to go to get me out of the way of the afore mentioned turmoil, but at 9 or 10 I don’t remember caring about the why.

I did learn several life lessons from fishing.

Throwing stones in a stream does not make fishermen happy.

Fishing time is not really talking time. While my grandpa could spin a tale, he never did it when he was fishing. 

If you catch it, you must clean it. Soon after my first fish gutting session, I discovered I could set-up my line with a weight and no hook and stand and cast and reel in and watch the birds and shadows and slowly walk the edge of the stream and claim bad luck for not catching a thing. I assumed (for a few years) that my Grandpa was none the wiser to my ploy. Then one year on a family visit back to Pincher Creek in my mid-teens my deception was revealed during a story telling session, much to my embarrassment.  He had known all along. Only recently, as a grandparent did I really get it – but that is a different tale.

Back to the nature of hooks. Musicians have understood the use of a good hook, something to catch a listener’s attention and bring them back time and again to the lyric or melody. I have never heard a composer apologize for using a good tonal hook. All those related ideas like bait and lures just remind me that shiny, colourful, invitingly textured, intriguingly sounding, delicious smelling and all things food related can be used to draw a student’s attention. It is best for a good hook to be multi-faceted since learners can be a diverse lot, very unlike the schools of the fish species.

The powerful part of a good hook in learning, from hockey to animals to good literature is what happens after landing that learner. Release before death by boredom, I hope. After drawing them in, using the focus and attention to go deeper and plant some seed (sorry to muddy the water by mixing the metaphor but could not resist an agriculture reference) it is throwing them back. How do I facilitate the successful, independent integration of that fact, skill, concept or idea? Often, it is just trusting that the flow of the stream will carry them on to the next bend wiser.

Just recently, I met a former student. She was 6 when I had her in Grade 1. She is a charming 30 something nurse in Vancouver, now. She told me things she remembers clearly from all those years ago. Some of them are only shadows for me. You can never tell what will actually stick. It is so gratifying to know that somethings do.

Catch and release.

Citizenship

Our wonderful Edmonton mayor, Stephen Mandel, is a grandpa and retiring. I so get him.

Sure, most folks will think he has accomplished a great deal for our city, but I really think a significant thing he has done is make government appear to be a place where people who want to make our collective life together work for all of us, without sacrificing his mortal soul. He shared this with all his city councillors. Heck, my heart aches for the citizens of Toronto and Montreal. Mayor Mandel deserves the reward of quality grandpa-time – he earned it.

I believe we often get the government we deserve and that citizenship is first a responsibility. As a person who has voted in every election I was eligible for, I feel I can speak about the things that happen in government that I like and don’t like. Yes, I “held my nose” and voted PC provincially recently (a first time for everything). The experience that tipped the scale for me was hearing Alison Redford live and in person. Do I have some misgivings about that vote, oh yeah, but after collecting information about all the alternatives, I weighed my choices and exercised my franchise.

I am doing a small contract for the Community Standards Branch of the City of Edmonton in support of their comprehensive resource for Grade 6 called Make a Better City. If all the voters of Edmonton were exposed to these “lessons”, our city would be an even Better place to live. I am happy, and just a little proud, to help move the next generation of Edmontonians along the path of active democracy; an attitude of participation not “us against them”.

I will be using all the tools at my disposal to decide about my choice for councillor and mayor. This thing called the internet can make this easier. During the last year, I got to meet the Edmonton Journal photo-journalist, Ryan Jackson. He takes story-telling to a new level with his use of computers and images. Just for fun, go have coffee with the campaigning provincial partyleaders.

One lesson from the Plaka in Athens: democracy is best practiced in conversation.