To encourage dialogue and reflection about the role of curiosity and imagination in the learning process, our topic/question for the dinner table is: How can your imagination and curiosity help you learn? Willful Imagination (Week of 11/28/21) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
It was lovely to have several days to press pause, adjust the pace, and get off of the proverbial ‘treadmill’ so that we can hopefully recharge a bit (as I write this, I wonder when was the last time that I felt ‘fully charged’?). We spent Thanksgiving with Katie’s family and have enjoyed time for walks, reading, reflection, yoga, and what we hope to be the end of leaf pick-up!
The three posts below are ones that speak to the importance of taking a new lens/approach to some of our practices and rethinking our individual and collective approach. They underscore the role and importance of curiosity and imagination in this process, and I hope they help to spark ideas, foster questions, and elicit actionable steps we can take to support all of our learners as we move forward...
We Have to Prepare Students for the Next Level, Don't We?
by Rick Wormeli (@rickwormeli2)
Some universities blame the poor academic performance of their young adult students on the poor quality instruction they think students received in high schools. High schools blame the middle schools, middle schools blame elementary schools, and elementary schools blame their students’ gene pool. It is stunning how similar their commentaries are to those recorded by educators 100, even 1,000, years ago, and yet, here we are, still progressing.
In all subjects, we have students with different readiness levels, all presenting widely varying backgrounds, and all in different states of emotional, intellectual, and physical maturation. Most of us work in schools set up as factory models, however, based on the 1892 recommendations of the Committee of Ten who established a standardized curriculum and the idea of high schools and their different hour, different class, cattle call.
Building on this already dysfunctional approach is the sense that the primary purpose of each grade level is to prepare students for the next grade level: We have to get these students ready for high school! We have to get these high schoolers ready for the working world or college! Drawing from the factory metaphor, it is as if each station on the curriculum conveyor belt is built to make sure the products are ready for the next station on the conveyor belt.
Young adolescents’ internal mind space rallies around the here and now, not the later. For them, every effort is made to survive the day and navigate the week, not assure college placement in six years. A constant focus on future benefits of current learning is often frustrating for young adolescents.
Let’s stop the nonsense that we cannot differentiate or assess with nontraditional formats because teachers in levels above do not provide those experiences, and thus, students will be unprepared for the unfamiliar. Instead, let’s live up to what actually works: teaching students the course content and skills in whatever ways lead to their continual development, and helping them mature as individuals and learners so they can flourish in varied learning situations, even those devoid of effective teaching.
Middle level schools are vibrant, intense environments with unique needs that are very different than those of high schools, colleges, or the working world. Perpetuating the factory model of schooling by importing policies from high schools and colleges to our middle level schools because we think it prepares students for what is to come is uninformed and ineffective. Let’s be experts in 10- to 15-year-olds instead, and even better, let’s manifest that expertise in our classrooms daily.
Roots and Shoots
from The Character Lab
At the root of all learning is curiosity—questions you want to know the answer to, for no other immediate reason than you’re dying to know.
New research shows that it is not only curious questions, but also interesting answers, that further enhance learning and memory, particularly as children grow into adolescents. In other words, teenagers are smarter when they’re tackling topics whose questions and answers fill them with wonder.
You’re never too old, or too young, to puzzle over something you don’t understand, to figure it out for yourself, and then, with shining eyes, to share your discovery with people you love.
Let’s Not Return to School, Let’s Move Beyond It
by Tony Jackson and Jordan Shapiro in Getting Smart
What education system do we need not only to prepare for the future but also to ensure the human race has a future?...it is time to rethink the ways we center young people in their education. How can we reframe the conversations about learning, community support, and policies that will really allow our children to flourish and reach their full intellectual and human potential?
First, if students don’t understand themselves, they can’t understand others. And without empathy, there is no working together, no collective prosperity.
Second, we should embrace the notion that learning happens everywhere, all the time. Recent research on youth during the pandemic shows that given the opportunity and the right support, kids take learning into their own hands.
Third, let’s rethink where the power and responsibility for education lies...Only by sharing power and responsibility for education, in a radically cooperative fashion, can we transition our children to be the makers of a 22nd century worth living in.
Taking the comfortable path of least resistance back to normal imperils our future. We need a new, inclusive approach to education for the 22nd century. Our children’s future and the future of the human race depend on it.
One actionable step I have been thinking about is how we must continue to start by meeting students where they are - not projecting, but starting where they are. In order to do this, we must ask questions and listen - and, with this in mind, I am sharing more responses than I typically do to last week’s question...
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What are you thankful for?
- My family
- family
- I am thankful to have a roof over my head.
- My family and friends
- School friends and family and food ,hot water and clothes
- I am thankful that we get to go to in person school this year
- My friends, My family, my Education, shelter, and food
- My friends and family and food
- My family and friends, god and earth
- My family, my health, my family's health and the hard work going into our new home
- I am thankful for my education, home, food, drink, friends, family, and happiness.
- my family, friends, food, water, my house, and my dog.
- My family
- My family, my activities, my things and opportunities in life.
- I'm thankful for education
- Family, friends, shelter, and food.
- Family and friends that love me, having food to eat.
- That we are back full time in school
- Modern day western medicine
- I am thankful for everything I have.
- I am thankful for my wonderful family! For my kind friends and lovable puppies. I am thankful for the beautiful place I live in and the delicious food I get to enjoy!
- Family, friends, food,water,shelter
- A family, an education, friends
- Family, food and Friends
- family and food
- I am thankful for my amazing family (mom dad sister and dog) and Mr. Kennedy, Mr Kennedy is amazing he has taught me so much and I really appreciate everything he has done for me. (he coaches my town soccer team)
- I'm grateful for my parents and my dog, Lexi.
- Something I am thankful for is that I am physically healthy.I am also so thankful for my best friend because she is always there for me and me. I know I can trust her and it helps me so much to have a friend like her. Those are just so things I am thankful for.
- Animals And My Family
- I’m thankful for my family, my brother is supe supportive of me and I’m so happy my sister is okay after a hard year.
- I am thankful for my family, friends, my dance classes, my pets, my education, and my health
- Basketball and family
- I am thankful for my family.
- My basic needs are being met, and having a community I know I can lean on if needed.
- I am thankful for air conditioning (strangely).
- I am thankful for my health, and of course my family.
- My family.
- I am thankful for all my friends and family, my home, food, water, clothes, my friends and family are healthy.
- I am thankful for my family, my friends, my house, my food and my education. ALso that i am able to do gymnastics.
- I am thankful for my family, my friends, food, shelter, comfort, school, education, activities, dance, and basketball.
- My family, my pets, my best friend, friends, house, food, running water
- my family, friends ,food and health!
- Food and me and my family’s health
- My family and my new position here at Blake. When you look forward to coming to work it seeps over into every aspect of your life. I am Thankful for that!
- Food, Family, Friends
- My family,friends,food,dog
- That I have friends and family that care about me and that I'm happy.
- I am thankful for my family
- I am thankful for all of the new friends I have made in the past few months.
These next few weeks will be busy (yes, I know all weeks are - but, the holiday season brings more elements each year), and I hope we can help one another to be purposeful in our pursuit to foster imagination, curiosity, and growth. At last week’s faculty meeting, I shared these take-aways that one listener had from one of Glennon Doyle’s recent podcast episodes - Kelly C. passed them along to me - and they serve (and will continue to serve) as an example for me as a ‘mirror’ for me to self-reflect, observe from a different lens, adapt, and grow...
1) "Crisis functions as an accelerator."
COVID, our crisis de jour, has nudged people to leave careers, end marriages, decide to have children.
If there was an issue, COVID may have shone a spotlight on it.
In my life, what was a crack became a chasm.
And it wasn't just me.
2) "Deserving is the wanting of the deprived."
Ever say "I deserve this nap, drink, new dress, hug"?
How is it different if you say "I *want* this nap, drink..."?
There's no deprivation in wanting. There is deprivation in deserving.
Catch yourself when you say "I deserve..."
3) "The speaker is defined by the listener."
I started to learn this when I joined #ship30for30 earlier this year. @Nicolascole77 taught me to write for an audience.
And this quick turn of phrase hit the lesson home.
How I speak should depend on who I'm speaking to.
** When moments of clarity shoot through the crowded universe, grab them.
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat