A Week at Opal School

  Today, looking out over the Vermont landscape of white snow and bright sun, I am full of new insights and thoughts.  I returned home last night from the third intensive seminar that I have co-facilitated at Opal School of the Portland Children's Museum. The last two years have been sponsored by Butler University and this year, I worked with Lesley University.   It is a privilege to spend such quality time observing students and teachers in action, learning through dialogue with the Opal teachers, and reflecting on shared reading during the course of a week.  Opal has created a way of doing school that is truly remarkable in today's world of standardization, pre-determined outcomes and limited definitions of success.  Every time I am at Opal, I see this more clearly.

I have been privileged to work with three institutions who are working to create a new kind of school for the future that we are all living into.  Part of the mission of Butler University College of Education is to prepare students to lead schools toward what they should be, not to perpetuate schools as they currently exist.  Opal is a place that opens doors to the way school might look if the intellectual and creative capacity of students and teachers and parents were truly valued.  Among the core values of Lesley University's Graduate School of Education are: Democracy, Community, Equity, Inquiry and Leadership.  Opal School embodies these core values in every part of their teaching and learning community.

I have been fortunate to work with outstanding educational leaders for the last three years from Butler University, from Lesley University and from Opal School: in particular, Ena Shelley, Dean of the College of Education at Butler University; Yvonne Liu-Constant, assistant professor of Early Childhood at Lesley University and Matt Karlsen, Teacher Researcher, and Susan MacKay, Director at the Museum Center for Learning at Opal School.

Next week, Yvonne Liu-Constant and I will co-write a reflective post on our shared experience at Opal School as Ena Shelley and I did last year.

For now, please enjoy some of the highlights of the week at Opal School through the images here.

Birthdays

Today is my birthday.  And, it is also a snow day.  Beautiful, quiet, fluffy snow has been falling all day on Boston.  I have spent the day mostly alone...Ashley is working in Memphis, Tennessee with Hutchison School.  I watched the snow, I spoke with friends who called me, I took stock of my year.  What a year it has been...starting with a big fall and a three month recovery in Vermont. This year, I am glad to be in Boston for my birthday, glad to be back on my feet and out in the world.  Grateful for all of our good work with schools and to be close to our family.  I love the east coast...traveling on Amtrak, getting to know Boston, reclaiming Vermont as home, weaving together country and city life and our life of working with schools with enjoying so many treasured times with friends and family.

It seems improbable to come full circle around the year and arrive at yet another anniversary of one's birth.  How does it all happen so fast? How do the years go by, round and round?  Looking back and looking forward.  It is supposedly linear, this progression of years, but rather it seems cyclical, like a merry-go-round, like a spiral, like a the petals of a rose.  I like to think of this life that way...learning  as we go, up and down, around and around, picking up bits and pieces, revisiting people and places, settling down more and more into the steady beat and rhythm of our breath, of wind and weather, of the seasons.

That is the way it feels to me now and I am again, grateful for all of it.  And, grateful for another birthday.  Happy February.

Vea Vecchi and Documentation

I have been working a lot lately with different groups of teachers, preprimary and elementary and middle school, on documentation of students’ learning.  Typically, there is a daunting intimidation factor in moving into this largely undiscovered area.  Some common questions are:    This is for doctoral students, not classroom teachers...right?       What’s the point?       How do I know what to note?       When I get it all down,how do I know if it is important? 

Yesterday I was rereading  In the Spirit of the Studio.  In an interview with Lella Gandini (page 139), Vea Vecchi, the first atelierista in Reggio Emilia, Italy, talks about documentation as follows:

Documentation has been a fundamental element in our evolution.  Its is a tool that nourishes our own research, our attention, and our desire to discover.  Observing and documenting the strategies of understanding and discovering, ways of reasoning, and the processes of learning of the individual and of children in small groups, are all extremely rich aspects of learning.  In this regard, there are scholars, such as Edgar Morin (1999), who contend that even if we are aware that all of the processes of understanding cannot be foreseen, the only way to begin reflecting on them is to make these processes visible.  It is a paradox that we must be willing to accept.

This is liberating!  Vea, one of the great teachers of Reggio Emilia, declares that she starts from a place of NOT KNOWING.  She starts from the ACT OF OBSERVING, of looking for the ways of reasoning.  Certainly she probably has some hypotheses as to what might happen if....  However, she is focused on following what ACTUALLY HAPPENS.  By observing what actually happens, (notebook and camera in hand), she collects the evidence of learning.  Afterwards, looking at the evidence, she (with the help of her colleagues), can discover the patterns and processes of learning.  In Morin’s words, that which cannot be foreseen, can be discovered in reflection.

Set up the scene (blocks, dramatic play, clay in the studio, science experiment, a reading assignment, etc.)

Observe the students...listen...photograph...perhaps insert a “wondering” question as a provocation for them to think about...write their words...note their actions.

Lay out your observations...reflect...on your own...and with colleagues.  What happened?  What patterns do you see? How are your students learning? What are their strategies? What are you learning by observing them? How will what you learn and observe enrich both your teaching and your learning?

Compose your thoughts and images about what you discover.

Wonder what might happen with another group in the same situation. Wonder what would happen if you changed the situation by _____? Beginagainmichaelfinnagin.

A New Year's Walk in Winter Wonderland

This holiday, we were lucky to spend a whole ten plus days with our family including, of course, Asher, our grandson.  One of my favorite memories is a walk through the snow and sparkle trees one morning with Asher and his mother and our daughter-in-law, Caroline.  We were in the midst of the fluffiest, lightest snow that poofs when you blow it, and it was piled on top of branches that were also covered with a quarter of an inch of ice.  It was a blue sky, full sun day.  Everything and everywhere was light.

We headed down to Otter View Park, near our house in Middlebury, where there is a trail that leads to Otter Creek, (which is really a river), through a wetland and bog.  All was frozen, all was silent, all was winter at its most magical.  Asher says, "AWOW!" and "snow" and "more."  We walked, we watched for birds, we pulled the sled, we played with the snow.  We went at Asher's pace.

I will remember the  morning like an image in a snow globe that you turn upside down and watch as the snow inside the glass falls and swirls around a scene of children, and houses and evergreens.  This day takes its place with my many snowy memories.  This is a day that will always come to mind when I walk the path to the river, when poofy snow lands on my shoulders and hat, when I hear a toddler exclaim at the beauty of the moment.  Fresh eyes, present moment, outside, winter, memories.  Welcome to the winter of 2014.