Synergy-PBL: Questions are waypoints on the path of wisdom #CFTSI12 (1 of 3)
Appetizer Flights: Pre-Institute Assignment
On Monday and Tuesday, June 25-26, Bo Adams and Jill Gough are facilitating a ten-hour workshop at The Center for Teaching Summer Institute (#CFTSI12 on Twitter). With this post and two more (coming soon), institute participants and blog readers alike can find a three-part outline of our session (at least as we intend it before we start!), complete with links to many of the resources we plan to use.
Appetizer Flights: Pre-Institute Assignment
Choose a Flight or Mix-N-Match to Make Your Own Three-Part Assignment
Inspired by Flights, a restaurant in Memphis, TN (dined at during #MICON12), that expands the idea of a “flight of wine” into a full-restaurant delight, our pre-institute assignment and CFT-SI 2012 structure come to you in Flights – “dining triples” that can be enjoyed as presented or mixed and matched to design your own tasty, three-part experiences. Before the CFT-SI begins, please partake in one of the three flights below, or create your own from the nine selections. For instance, one learning-diner may decide to immerse herself in the “Cozy-Chair Reading” Flight and consume all three reading selections. Another nibbler might decide to combine “Peak Learning” + “7 Essentials” + “Geoff Mulgan” for a diner-designed flight. We want your dining learning experience to be a culinary-cognitive delight! Bon-appetite!
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The “Writing-Is-Thinking” Flight
- Peak Learning Experience – “Think about your own life and the times when you were really learning, so much and so deeply, that you would call these the “peak learning experiences” of your life. Tell a story (you may include pictures, symbols, or other icons, too) about this peak learning experience, and respond to the question, “What were the conditions that made your high-level experience so powerful and engaging?” If you have already engaged this prompt in an earlier workshop, please describe another peak learning experience in your life, or “copy and paste” a previous story/response. (adapted from 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, Trilling and Fadel, 2009).
- How We Hobby – Describe a hobby, interest, or passion that you WISH you had. How would you go about learning and developing this hobby, interest, or passion? Be specific and try to tell a story.
- Walking & Talking – Some would argue that walking and talking are two of the most complex human learning endeavors. Reflect on how your child or a relative’s child learned to walk and talk. Describe the experiences in some kind of recounting or storytelling.
The “Cozy-Chair Reading” Flight
- Reading from The Falconer re: Questions book excerpt
- “7 Essentials for Project-Based Learning” article
- “What PBL Isn’t, and What it Is: 2 Videos from High Tech High” blog post
The “TED School Design” Flight
- Geoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School (6:16)
“Some kids learn by listening; others learn by doing. Geoff Mulgan gives a short introduction to the Studio School, a new kind of school in the UK where small teams of kids learn by working on projects that are, as Mulgan puts it, ‘for real.'” - John Hardy: My green school dream (6:16)
“Join John Hardy on a tour of the Green School, his off-the-grid school in Bali that teaches kids how to build, garden, create (and get into college). The centerpiece of campus is the spiraling Heart of School, perhaps the world’s largest freestanding bamboo building.” - Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering (4:08)
“Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School. When given tools, materials and guidance, these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats, bridges and even a roller coaster!”
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Coming Soon…
Synergy-PBL: Questions are waypoints on the path of wisdom #CFTSI12 (2 of 3)
The First Course: “School Tools” – PBL for the Adult Palette
(Day 1 – Monday, June 25, 8:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.)
Synergy-PBL: Questions are waypoints on the path of wisdom #CFTSI12 (3 of 3)
The Second Course: “School’s Cool” – PBL for the Student-Learner
(Day 2 – Tuesday, June 26, 8:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.)
Synergy-PBL: Questions are waypoints on the path of wisdom #CFTSI12 (After 3)
Coffee and Dessert: What Will Sweeten Your Teaching After #CFTSI12?
(180 Days of Possibility in 2012-13 – Keeping the Conversation Going)
[Cross-posted at Experiments in Learning by Doing]
[Cross-posted at Synergy2Learn]
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And, my fabulous teaching & learning partner found my peak learning experience (from July 2010) on MOODLE!
“On July 3, my family continued a recent tradition – attending the Sunflower Festival in Rutledge, GA. At the Sunflower Festival, my sons played in a corn box – just like a sand box but filled with dried corn kernels. Watching them play, it dawned on me that the corn box was a pretty good metaphor for some of my peak learning experiences.
“First, my boys CHOSE to play. No one required them to play. Second, they simultaneously pursued their own interests and pursued play with others. They seemed inspired by other children’s ideas, but they had ideas of their own, too. Third, their imaginations were unlimited and creativity was just part of the mix. Sometimes the corn was the surface of a strange planet, sometimes it was ammunition, sometimes it was cargo that needed to be loaded with heavy equipment. Sometimes it was simply corn. Fourth, the wooden edges of the box provided suggested boundaries, but my children and others with them saw those boundaries as suggestions, not mandates. Spilling corn outside the lines was fun, and okay, too. (The parents struggled a bit with this though.) Fifth, problem solving was a repeated thread because “failure” was a normal and natural occurrence. But the corn box failures were not stuffed with all of the psych-weight that has come to be associated with that word. Intense play simply involved some failure and problem solving.
“Without doubt, learning to parent stands as my peak learning experience. I imagine nothing really can rival that. I hope I parent like the lessons of the corn box. Being an educator during the last three years, though, has been a close second. During this three-year period, I have been playing in the corn box of work. I am a bit dusty with that fascinatingly-textured corn dust, but I am having a blast. I am engaged with other teachers as we all dig deeply into being learners again – learners of the type like those kids in the corn box at the Sunflower Festival.”
Having engaged in the “peak learning experience” writing exercise many times, I looked for archived documents of my previous writing. I could not find the exact piece that I was searching for, but I wandered upon several other interesting reflections that I enjoyed stumbling upon. As I rediscovered some of my previous writing, I was reminded what a peak learning experience I encountered in my first year as Junior High principal. In so many ways, after a few months into the job, I felt like I had so much to learn in order to serve my faculty and students well. So, I developed a new method of reading and researching in the early mornings so that I could learn about assessment, faculty growth models, this thing called “21st century learning,” etc. I was motivated to learn deeply because I had 86 faculty, 555 students, and over a thousand parents depending on me for leadership. I knew my learning and service mattered to a lot of people.
I did find this piece of reflective writing, and I think it is in response to a peak-learning experience exercise in which I wrote about that first year as principal…
“9-9-11 10:37AM
What conditions were necessary for the peak learning experience to take place?
I felt more in control – I had choice. I wanted to know and understand and dig into something, and I determinedly worked to comprehend, experiment with, unfold, and inquire. I felt it had purpose – that it mattered, and I saw AT THAT TIME that it mattered. I learned because it mattered to me…not because someone told me it should matter or that it would matter in years. Sometimes I regret that I don’t listen to sage others about the possibility that it will matter later, but I think the lesson is more powerful when I have to learn that myself, yet with others on a similar journey. So that I can mutually sounding board and reflect with folks. Also, I had to struggle, and the fear of failure was less powerful than the fear of not eventually succeeding and learning from the iterative-process.”
As for a hobby, I wish I played the guitar. I tried before – in high school and early college, but I quit the endeavor. If I were to learn now, I think I would go to private, one-on-one lessons, and I think I would play the guitar a lot – practice playing and get my fingers used to that strumming, picking, and fretting again. I would rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. I would probably not read a lot about playing the guitar, but I would immerse myself in learning by doing. I would PLAY the guitar a ton in order to learn the guitar.
As for watching my sons learn to walk and talk, I am most struck by the memories of watching and listening to them fail. They wriggled and rocked before they crawled, and they crawled before they walked. Then, they tried to walk countless times and fell, over and over again. They used holds and literal scaffolding, and they never stopped trying. They were driven to walk, and we applauded every attempt and every effort. We clapped at the falling moments, and I wonder if the untalking child actually thought we were clapping for the fall!
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