All Aboard the Reggio Train by Guest Blogger, Bobbi Macdonald of City Neighbors Foundation

I had a chance to gather with folks at the Princeton Junior School in NJ for a great conference on November 15th.  I took the train with Bob Dietzen, the City Neighbors Hamilton (CNH) Awesome 5th grade teacher, and was met at the train station by the CNH Fabulous 3rd grade teacher, Marilyn Mullen, along with Jessica DiLorenzo, past teacher of City Neighbors, and grand connector who brought us all to New Jersey for a conference about working with the principles and practices of the Reggio Emilia approach in American Schools. Reggio Emilia is a small city in Italy with an amazing system of preschools that were founded by the villagers after World War II.  They sold the tank left among the ruins of their town and decided to make a school that would teach children to be true to their humanity, a school that would prevent the next generation from ever choosing war.

Louise Cadwell of the Cadwell Collaborative spoke to us about Reggio Emilia.  She identified 6 essential components of the work in Reggio Emilia that can be inspirational for our work:

1.  Relevant work and projects with students.  (If you are in the city – study the city!)

2.  Redefining the teachers role.  (Facilitator and reseracher and provocateur.)

3.  The practice of dialogue.  (“Dialogue is a conversation with a center, not sides.”)

4. The multiple languages of learning.  (How many ways can children express their knowledge?)

5.  The effects of the environment on learning.  (The classroom and school environment that allow us to do our best work.)

6.  The learning community.   (Teachers looking closely and reflecting on the complex work of teaching.)

We had a lot to learn together!  Ashley Cadwell gave a great workshop on school environment and setting up the classroom.  He shared lots of great ideas, one especially that I am bringing home on this train. “School can be like a home.  Home speaks of relationships that are comfortable, organic and evolving.”

Juliana McIntyre Fenn, author of Wisdom at Play and founder of the thirty-year-old Princeton Junior School was there.  She told us she is 78 years old.  She told us to remember JOY in our work.

A great day!  The train is pulling into Baltimore.  Welcome Home.

Postscript:

Bobbi Macdonald is dynamic leader in progressive education and founder of City Neighbors Foundation in Baltimore.  City Neighbors has founded three schools! City Neighbors High School , City Neighbors Charter School, and City Neighbors Hamilton.  Click here to see Bobbi's TedX talk, and click here to hear her speak on the importance of the school environment.  Bobbi, Ashley and Louise were invited to participate in a New Jersey Association of Independent Schools Symposium, Provocative Pedagogy, at Princeton Junior School a week ago.  It was an honor to be there and to speak on a panel with Bobbi and other educational leaders from Rider University, Bank Street College of Education and Princeton Junior School.  Ashley worked with two of the City Neighbors Schools last spring and wrote about it here.

Design Thinking Workshop at Moses Brown

In my last blog, I focused on Moses Brown’s exciting, inaugural school-wide project work, and their MB Challenge.  Here, I’ll highlight an experience I had at Moses Brown a few weeks ago with two stellar faculty from the Institute of Design at Stanford, Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft. The Scott Duo led a Design Thinking workshop for about 50 Moses Brown students, a mixed group of freshmen to seniors.  Their objective was to give the students an experience in generating ideas together...solutions to new problems.

Rather than give the students a problem to solve, the Scott and Scott asked the students to pair up, preferably with someone that they did not know well, to discover something about their partner...a story about a time when he or she created something new or something old.  Scott and Scott modeled the sort of interview they intended the students to have with each other.

After the interview rounds, the students were asked to reflect on their own on what they’d heard...to gain insights by thinking of what might be the deeper meaning behind what they’d heard.  From these insights they were asked to create some brainstorming topics, to flip the insights into questions.  Again, Scott Squared modeled the process.

With this individual exercise completed, the students were asked to rejoin their partner to review their reflections and their brainstorming questions.  Their objective was to choose one brainstorm question for each of them.

At this point, the pairs joined another pair, and conducted brainstorming sessions, four rounds, one for each question.  Ideas were written on sticky notes and gathered for the appropriate individual.  Here, Scott and Scott grabbed a couple of adults who were observing to join them as they modeled the brainstorming process.

The students were then invited to the center of the room to a table on which the Scotts had laid out a collection of plastic cups, pipe cleaners, post-it notes, duct tape, freezer tape, magic markers, et. al.  The students were asked to use any variety of the materials to develop their idea, from the brainstorming session, into a visual representation.  The next 20 minutes were filled with fabulous construction projects.

Each individual then presented their “model” to their partner.  Particular attention was given, not to the uniqueness or splendor of the creations, but rather to the idea behind it.  The presenters were trying to discover what was working in their idea, what could be improved, what new questions appeared and what new ideas came up.

Finally, each individual presented a two minute summary of their discovery to the whole group.

One student had invented for his partner, (who he discovered had diabetes and was struggling with monitoring himself in the busy school day), a new portable pouch that could be easily attached to his waste and would therefore always be with him, both as a reminder and for use.

This design thinking process is readily adaptable to many different contexts.  For more information you can visit the DSchool website.  You will find many resources there, including a free 90 minute “crash course.”  I highly recommend it.