Summer School - July 1999
"TAPS brings together all the pieces of
school reform for me. It's the embodiment of a reflective teaching and learning
community. It's a relaxed environment where the stakes are high, but the
anxiety is low. Taking risks is the order of the day."
Today, we started the third and final week of our summer enrichment program.
Our program is called TAPS and it stands for Technology-Assisted Problem
Solving. TAPS is an outgrowth of our school's participation in the IBM,
Reinventing Education grant.
Our theme this year is "Pirates & Sunken Ships of the Caribbean."
Five of us are designing and teaching the program, we're called resident
teachers. We have about 45 kids attending regularly. We also have five visiting
teachers, one per resident, joining and observing us each week, for a total
of 15 over the three weeks.
Each morning at 8 a.m. we start our day meeting as residents to refine the
day's agenda and our division of responsibility. The visiting teachers join
us for what we call "transparent facilitation," where we discuss
our double-sided plan for student & teacher training.
Our visitors are encouraged to join the conversation and often do. Their
changing voices keep us in touch with their particular strengths and needs
vis-a-vis the integration of technology, thematic teaching and a whole host
of classroom concerns.
We are also joined by some recent graduates of our school. These soon-to-be-high-schoolers
work as our "grad assistants," and they run off copies and act
as gophers, but more importantly, they share their technical skills with
all of us. Our graduates have also warmed to the idea of transparent facilitation
and regularly chime in when we're discussing journal prompts or team building
options.
At 9, the TAPS kids arrive and we all file in to the gym for our community
meeting. This year, in the spirit of our theme, we're calling it a "crew"
meeting. We review the day's activities together, recap some highlights
of the previous day and introduce lessons during these early meetings.
All of the residents take turns leading these sessions and sometimes we
do it all together, like last week, when we role-played various learning
styles. We were asking the kids to think about their preferred thinking
and learning styles and we all became the embodiment of one that we liked.
I was Musical Molly and I wrote a song about pirates to the tune of "Yankee
Doodle." Another "mate" was Larry Lister and he had pirate
facts written up and down his arms and on numerous rolls of paper. We really
hammed it up and the kids enjoyed it.
Later in the classrooms, known this year as "cabins," we had kids
journal about the way(s) they learn best. We've revisited these ideas every
few days, posting responses on charts and "catching" students
when we see evidence of their thinking in action. We're trying to arm our
students with some self-conscious thinking skills that they can use in an
ongoing way, so we invest a lot of time explicitly focusing on this area.
The bulk of our cabin time is spent on lessons that involve the computers
and other print resources we have in our rooms. Kids have learned to make
spreadsheets and graphs of the ocean floor. They've learned about buoyancy
and density while constructing small boats. They've practiced touch typing
while researching facts about pirates and treasure on the web. And they've
begun to explore the effects of saltwater, deep sea pressure and chilly
temperatures on the precious cargo of sunken ships.
Our daily agendas are packed, but we've manged to squeeze in a visit from
a colleague who's certified as a SCUBA diver and a visiting archaeological
student. These speakers have added an authentic touch to our activities
and have sparked the imaginations of teachers and students alike.
After our time in the cabins, we regroup in the gym for our "daily
log," a sharing time, where it's not only acceptable, but "cool,"
to share things you've learned or to ask questions and experess frustations
you've experienced throughout the morning.
At this point we send the kids "ashore" and we return to my cabin
-- both resident and visiting teachers -- to review the day's events. After
a brief discussion we share lessons about internet usage, favorite resources
and/or a lesson on Hyperstudio or slide shows. We round out the day by writing
our own online journal entries.
TAPS brings together all the pieces of school reform for me. It's the embodiment
of a reflective teaching and learning community. It's a relaxed environment
where the stakes are high, but the anxiety is low. Taking risks is the order
of the day. We continually try new things and share our triumphs and our
"goofs" as a group.
Teachers have joined us on Monday making statements like, "I'm tecnologically
illiterate and proud of it!" and by Wednesday they're raising their
hands to tell staff and students about the spreadsheet they learned to make!
This type of honesty and enthusiasm is not often found during the school
year.
In a few days our program will end with an exhibition called "Pirates
On Parade." Members of the community, the students' families, our IBM
sponsors -- and hopefully the media -- will celebrate the students' accomplishments
with them.
So on Saturday, after it's over, after the cake's eaten and the certificates
are distributed, what will remain? Will the kids remember their metacognition
MO? Will they know how to design a project and find accurate information
on the web? Will they return to school in September with more self confidence
and an awareness of the benefits of working as team members?
And how about the teachers? Will they put their newly acquired skills to
use when school begins? Will they write off this experience as an "ideal"
experiment that cannot be duplicated in the real world of overcrowded classrooms
and lock-step rosters?
What about me? What can I savor and replicate, when I, too, return to the
real world? My new assignment as
a technology support teacher is supposed to be like TAPS -- but TAPS
during the school year.
I found out today that I'll definitely be teaching 10 sections or roughly
285 kids. When I asked if I could teach them for longer blocks, like maybe
a double period, I was told it was not possible. So my work is cut out for
me. How will I create a community within a factory model? How will I learn
not only their names, but their needs and talents? How will I show my kids
that teachers are lifelong learners, partners in this journey of discovery,
come September, when the halls are crowded, when the classroom doors are
shut, and the countdown to June 2000 has begun?
Next week I'm working at the Annenberg Institute on a seminar called "Making
Teaching Public," but after that I'll be free to think "creatively,"
or should I say subversively, about fitting my square- peg educational reform
ideas into the round hole reality of my inner city classroom.
I don't know what I'll come up with yet, but I know that reading about it,
talking about it with my colleagues, my students and their parents, and
writing about it here in my diary, will all play a big part in the ongoing
development of my/our plan.
In June, my kids listed "choice" as second only to safety in their
profiles of the ideal school. Given this valuable piece of information,
my goal will be the infusion of meaningful student choice into my curriculum.
It should be a real balancing act when the standards, testing and grading
requirements are brought to bear, but it's a challenge I'm looking forward
to tackling.
Deb's Diary Will Return in Early September
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