September 10, 2009

We Begin Again Anew

Dear Families,

The excitement in the Middle School is palpable. Old friends reconnecting, new friendships in the making, old skills and habits of mind strengthening and new worlds of ideas and ways of being unfolding. While the particular joys of summer may be starting to recede into the past, it’s our goal to make sure that the spirit of summer curiosity, creativity and wonderment continue on with us throughout the year.

I spoke with many of you yesterday as you left your family conferences and it was abundantly clear that you left knowing that your children are in most excellent hands. We hope that these first conversations lead to many more and to a powerful and supportive relationship with your child’s advisor as you ride the currents of the year to come.

As the Greek philosoper Heraclitus noted, “Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow,” so to is change a constant for those of us who find a home in a progressive learning community. While LREI like the river remains LREI, its “water,” the teachers, students, families, ideas, and curricula are always in flux; and this is what makes our community such a vibrant and challenging place to be. So as we step into the stream of these first days, the excitement of how we will change and be changed by the experience is an exhilarating one. That feeling was clearly in abundance throughout the Middle School.

While this week marked the first days for students, faculty were hard at work last week not only preparing our spaces, but also engaged in deep and profound experiences and conversations about our progressive purpose. Teachers across all three divisions offered workshops and trips for their colleagues as we explored how to refine and enhance our best practices. So “What happens when you put a bunch of progressive teachers together in a room?” While the shape of the question suggests a soon-to-arrive punchline, in this case, it marked the beginning of a profound professional dialog. Together, we worked towards a deeper understanding of the learning process and how to translate it into meaningful experiences for LREI students from the 4s through twelfth grade.

I close this first of many conversations that we will have over the course of the year with a list of the faculty offerings that guided our work last week. They speak for themselves and I hope that they provide one more window into the experiences that will guide your child’s learning each day. It’s a long list, but well worth the read

“Every Day Heroes” – We think today’s children are in need of role models and people to inspire them. When we asked our fifth graders who their heroes were, the same few names came up over and over, and they didn’t seem to take every day heroes into consideration. So, we designed a curriculum to help kids identify people they could emulate and feel inspired by. Using videos from the CNN Heroes contest we helped kids recognize everyday people who are making a difference in the world. We are now looking for ways to make this curriculum even more far-reaching and meaningful for students. Please come participate in our workshop and help us brainstorm ways to make this project more active and on going.
Finding your Inner Mathematician – Put on your math hats and reflect on yourself as math learners. How do we employ progressive approaches to empower our students to see themselves as mathematicians and become effective and confident math students. This workshop will guide your through a process of reflective self-awareness that is challenging, revealing and fun. The process will help students identify their strengths, weaknesses and learning styles. After we take our student hats off we will resume our teacher roles as curriculum designers and classroom practitioners. How can you use what you’ve experienced in part I to inform and improve our classroom practice. Come ready for stimulating dialogue appropriate for Lower, Middle and High School teachers.
Paper Towers – Problem solving, critical thinking, resourcefulness, and the capacity for collaboration – all habits of mind we aim to foster at LREI. In this workshop, you will put al these tools to work constructing the tallest freestanding tower using a limited supply of paper and tape. The emphasis is on teamwork, planning and structural integrity. Working in pairs teachers as students will figure out how to create a New York skyscraper using only 30 cm of masking tape and one sheet of computer paper along with a pencil, a ruler and a pair of scissors. You’ll have only 15 minutes to complete the task and you’re on your own! No instructions will be given how to attack the problem. After 15 minutes all building stops and attention is turned to each group as they then explain their strategy and design. After a short demonstration emphasizing principles of design. You’ll get another shot at it! Afterwards we’ll put our teacher hats on and consider how the lesson could be expanded upon, and how this example of problem solving and active learning can be applied to our own classes.
Dangerous Language: Banned Books, Censorship, and Student Expression — Throughout history, societies have repressed, censored, and banned books perceived to be “dangerous” due to their provocative subject matter, political extremism, or incendiary language. This workshop will introduce participants to some of these controversial books while also exploring how issues of free speech and censorship can be applied to our work as teachers, curriculum designers, parents, and activists. In particular, we will be discussing the important and at times problematic process of “selection” — for classrooms, libraries, and at home — as well as sharing our personal reactions to contemporary censorship cases. Though much of the content of this workshop originates from a high school elective course of the same name, we will devote much of our attention to children’s literature and applications across grade levels. Please come prepared to read, write, and discuss your own notions of “appropriate” and “dangerous”!
Introducing the Research Process in Middle School – How do you introduce the idea of research to middle school students in a way that makes sense to them developmentally? For years I have taught middle school students that there are 4 steps to the research process, but I want them to understand why the steps should be performed in this order, not just memorized. I ask 5th graders to use their powers of observation to tell me why the 4 steps are ordered the way they are, and ask them leading questions to make the connections between steps. Please come to my workshop and help me make this lesson even more relevant to what you do in the classroom and brainstorm other collaborative research projects.
The Handshake Problem: How do we “do math” at LREI? – What does a progressive math classroom look like? How can a math lesson be experience-based? How do you address a broad range of learners in a progressive way? What is the role of “skills” in a progressive curriculum? What does it mean to move towards mastery? How are conversations about math like (or not like) conversations about writing, social studies, or Spanish? The first math unit of fifth grade is an algebra unit – it draws from the extensive work with patterns in the lower school and introduces some of the more formal symbols and ways of thinking that students will use in later grades Participants will be presented with a few of the problems from this unit for us to approach first as problem-solvers ourselves, then as teachers. We will brainstorm answers to some of the questions above and consider the implications for our own classrooms.
Creating Caring Communities – How can we crate meaningful service projects, especially for our younger children that are connected to our curriculum, are hands-on and go beyond fundraising and clothing collections? The workshop will spend the morning baking together, and in the early afternoon will take what we have made to share with senior citizens who have lunch at The Caring Community, a program hosted by Our Lady of Pompeii Church just a block from school. Participants will have the opportunity to visit with the guests, most of whom come from the neighborhood and who represent not only the Italian Americans who first made up this turn of the twentieth century immigrant parish, but also the various cultures now served by the parish. After our visit we will discuss ways in which we might be able to develop ongoing projects with The Caring Community.
Catapults & Inquiry-based Instruction – Catapult yourself into a 6th grade science class as we explore the Interactive Physics computer simulation program. Enjoy the challenge as you play around with this incredible tool and discover how physics plays a role in the success of a medieval period catapult. This inquiry-based project will help participants go beyond studying science to becoming real scientists in the exploration of their own questions and ideas. Teachers of all subject matters are welcomed to join as the focus of this workshop is not the science content itself but inquiry-based instruction across any discipline.
Exploring the Diverse Community Around Us – Nick O’Han writes, “Irwin’s life-long commitment to social justice, inclusion, and preparation for democratic life remains fundamental to the life of the LREI community today. The culture of our school is marked by a pervasive respect for the dignity of each individual, and by respect and celebration of human diversity grounded in culture, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or family configuration.” How does our community serve its diverse demographics as well as those outside of this community? How can we empower our students to discover what we mean by a diverse, interdependent and inclusive community? First we’ll put our student hats and become young social anthropologists in search of signs of diversity and ways our community serves the needs of its members. Then, resuming our role as professional educators, we’ll break the morning experience down. Building on last year’s professional development work, we’ll explore the roles of allies, urban organizers, and active civic leaders in the life of communities, and consider how we can enlist and encourage our students to become active participants in this vital work of democracy. Designed for a third grade class, the workshop as appropriate for teachers of all grade levels.
Working to make The Museum of Natural History a Progressive Resource for our Classrooms – The American Museum of Natural History was founded under the belief that simple exposure to objects in collections would allow deeper learning and understanding of the world around us. How can progressive educators utilize this essentially traditional notion of the learning process? Over the past century and a half, the museum has worked hard to establish its image as a partner to schools – indeed at times, it has offered itself as an alternative and more successful model of education. The AMNH is one of many museum resources that we utilize in our work as teachers in New York City. How can we begin to think of it as a more progressive experience for our children when the collection is limited in terms of hands-on experiences? This trip will allow educators to experience the museum first as their students might, and then to brainstorm ways of building off that experience to bring the collections alive in an investigative, progressive approach.
A Trip to the Met: Using Art to Inspire Writing – Art can be used to foster literacy and creative thinking skills through writing activities. These can be based solely on observation or imagination, or a combination of both. Participants will choose three different works of art from any section of the museum. First they will sketch each artwork. Then they will write about them. Writing about a work of art is an imaginative transaction between the viewer and the possible worlds the artwork discloses. Participants can choose from many kinds of written interactions with art. Some examples we will explore include: a diamante – or diamond shaped poem; a “found” poem based on observation, theorizing and wondering about the works; a letter to the artist in which the viewer talks about what she particularly likes about the artwork and why, what it makes you think of, or who in the work you would like to meet ; a dialogue between the people/animals in the work of art revealing what they are saying to each other or what activity they just finished or are about to begin; a study of a person depicted in an artwork. After we share our writing and talk about the way encountering art registered on us as adult learners, we will collaborate on ideas about how this transaction of words and images can form the basis for developmentally appropriate curriculum in our classrooms.
Beyond Swastikas and Jim Crow – In this lesson we will visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s exhibit Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow, which chronicles the unique experiences of a few dozen German-Jewish intellectuals who, upon fleeing pre-WWII Nazi Germany, unexpectedly found teaching positions in historically black colleges in the American South. Once there, and face to face with the American hypocrisy of Jim Crow segregation of the era, these professors and their students embarked on critical intellectual and artistic exchanges in response to their shared experience of racism and injustice at a critical historical moment. The exhibit touches on many foundational topics in the eighth grade curriculum including, The Civil Rights Movement, The Holocaust, Jim Crow segregation, integration, and resistance to injustice. Additionally, this trip will also help the eighth graders find meaning in our year’s theme, “Choosing to Participate”, which invites them to consider themselves much alike the people and communities we study, people who have been powerful in the face of odds and agents of change in their lives. As these issues are central to the mission of LREI in all three divisions, the workshop welcomes Lower, Middle and High School teachers
“Chords of Caste”: The Slave Galleries and the Meaning of Freedom — Along with the African Burial Ground, Historic Weeksville and Abolition Place, the preservation, restoration and interpretation of the historic “slave galleries” in St. Augustine’s Church on Manhattan’s Lower East Side Research has transformed our understanding of the African-American experience in New York City. The Slave Galleries offer clues to the development of race relations during the years following New York State emancipation in 1827. We will visit the church and experience the confines of the galleries, which constituted a particularly insidious version of the widespread practice of segregated seating in Northern churches prior to the Civil War. Such seating arrangements were one aspect of the systemic racism that in effect replaced slavery as a way of creating a racial hierarchy in virtually every Northern, and nominally free, state Frederick Douglass and others compared this system, which spanned a wide range of laws, policies and informal social arrangements and attitudes, to caste systems around the world. A trip to the slave galleries provides students with a moving experience. It also offers a critical perspective on the conventional narrative so many of us learned – and many students continue to learn: a triumphalist narrative that enshrines virtuous northern states altruistically freeing enslaved Southern Blacks. The sad reality, as the slave galleries demonstrate, was that for many African Americans freedom was but “slavery by another name.”
Exploring Urban Spaces: The Public/Private Connection – Many of the most prominent urban public spaces in America are the product not of urban planners, but of developers and architects who create these spaces in order to build taller or cheaper buildings. We’ll be visiting some of these spaces, exploring our reactions to them, and discussing how similar visits can be used to inform our students’ understanding of the built environment that they inhabit.
All the Places to Love: Developing and Nurturing a Sense of Place – How can we empower our students to “think geographically?” How do we empower our students to explore their neighborhood and in the process help them both build a sense of community with their classmates and develop meaningful connections to the larger global community in which we all live? Young people participate in their own ‘lived’ geography all the time. They develop a sense of place from their first moments of consciousness and expand it every day of their lives. Geography in school can both draw on kids’ expertise in using their own mental maps connecting them to the wider world of people, places and relationships that all occupy places on these maps. This workshop will encourage us to slow our pace and focus our perspective on what is right in front of us. The goal for us and for our students is cultivation of a deeper and richer sense of our surroundings and our personal and social identities. Our approaches in this workshop will involve: photography, sketching, recording, visiting stores and talking with storekeepers – what Lucy Sprague Mitchell called “intake.” Back in classroom we’ll engage in block building, drama, dance, song writing about neighborhood – ways to comprehend, interpret and symbolically express the meanings yielded by the morning’s experience. Finally the class will consider ways that such exploratory activities can lead to social action. Join this workshop and consider the results of our adventure in “human geography.”
Diverse Queens – With over on 150 languages spoken within its borders, Queens is New York City’s most diverse borough. This whirlwind tour will take in a few of the most vital examples of that diversity, as well case studies of three very different stages of New York’s development and history: Jackson Heights, Sunnyside and Long Island City. We’ll start with Jackson Heights’. The scene of incredible social and cultural diversity, a polyglot community made up of scores of immigrant groups who have arrived over the past two decades making it one of the most dazzling neighborhoods in New York. Then we’ll visit a utopian community from the 1920’s, walking through the private gardens and garden coops of Sunnyside, the first Garden City built in the United States on the British model. Sunnyside was built as affordable housing for the working class. It will be interesting to see who lives there now. Finally we’ll move back in time still further and visit what was the “gold coast” in the first heyday of American industrialism in the decades before the Civil War. Long Island City, today appears to be a distinctly post-industrial landscape, but gentrification has encroached on the artists’ lofts, which revived the neighborhood in the lean days of the 70s and 80s. Be ready for the inevitable surprises that come with urban exploration along the way, the food, music, the sounds and sites of urban life, that assault the senses as nowhere else in Diverse Queens.
The Irish Hunger: Famine and Society – This workshop will explore how the Potato Famine changed Ireland. Using primary source documents and census data we will examine the impact of the famine of the 1840s on individuals and on Irish society as a whole. Later we will visit the Irish Hunger Memorial. The memorial is a monument to those who perished during An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger), and is a symbol to highlight areas of the world affected by hunger today. When we return we will discuss how to enrich the lesson and to develop its relevance to ongoing issues of global hunger, malnutrition, and famine.
From the Little Red School House to the Little Red Lighthouse – Built on its present site in 1921, the Little Red Lighthouse may be the most famous of New York State’s 100 or so surviving lighthouses, including 16 on the Hudson River alone. After the George Washington Bridge was constructed in the 1930s it was determined that the lighthouse was no longer needed and it was deactivated and scheduled for demolition in 1947. Millions of children and their parents, charmed by the 1942 children’s book, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge cried out in protest saving it from destruction. It was later deeded to New York City. Today a trip up the Hudson River on the newly completed bike path affords a magnificent study of continuity and change in the nation’s greatest port. Join in a bike hike from our Little Red to the one alongside “the great grey bridge.” We’ll walk around the grounds and photograph, sketch, video and collect botanical samples to share when we return. In case of rain, we’ll travel via mass transit to visit the site and to do the same activities. Just show up with appropriate gear : Bicycle, helmet, lock (In case of rain: Umbrella, wind breaker, rain boots) and LOTS of stamina! Optional: camera, video camera, sketchbook and some refreshments for energy along the way!

Be well,
Mark