CHAPTER THREE

Findings Part 1 Building The Classroom Community: Our First Project

As the students entered the classroom on the first day of school, Ms. Wong and I stood in front of our 56 students, the walls open between our two classrooms. We took in the sea of diverse faces, arriving from all over San Diego. This was anything but your typical classroom in a neighborhood school. These kids represented a diverse crossroads of the socioeconomic, racial and cultural identity of our city. It was like opening a puzzle box to find all of the scattered pieces. You could see the promise of their togetherness but knew that it was going to take some work. Although the semester focus would be a collaboratively designed project, building our classroom community was going to be the true first project. I had always held reservations about team-building activities and icebreakers. There is a part of me that has found them a tad cheesy and contrived. Of course, they have always worked on me as a participant. Who doesnt feel a sense of connection and belonging after a game of New Friend Bingo or Stand Up If? But this year was the turning point for me in terms of witnessing the power of team-building activities and icebreakers. As Springer explains, Going through the community building activities is not a separate curriculum piece; it is, in fact, an integral part of planning with students. We need to think in terms of the whole complex system and not expect pieces of it to work adequately if isolated from the others. (2006, p. 64) We used two of Springers ideas in our first week. They were important to building the foundation of what we would accomplish later in the semester.

Team-Building Activities: Pulse & Dream Big (Day 1)

If we wanted the students to know that this school year was going to be different than any they had experienced, we had to get them out of the typical classroom setting. On the first day of class, we led our students outside to a grassy park nearby. We arranged them in a circle (56 students in circumference) and asked them to link hands. Once in a circle, we explained the activity called Pulse. The idea is to send a pulse around the circle by squeezing your partners hand and uttering beep. Ms. Wong and I, standing in the center like circus ringleaders, fished for estimations on how quick we could go around the circle. Students excitedly wagered guesses and we echoed their responses until one student finally estimated 56 seconds (1 second per person). There was a consensus that this was the best guess. Next, we asked what actions would be

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required for us to be successful. Students shouted, We have to concentrate. Well need to listen carefully. Well have to act fast! Sure enough, after several rounds of Pulse, our team of students could pass the pulse around the circle in less than 30 seconds (beating our estimated time). Students got into it, challenging each other to go faster and concentrating harder. We even challenged students to face outwards and do it with their eyes closed. Each time, we got faster and beat our previous record. Of course, there was that group of four wily boys who tried to thwart the groups success with their humor by falling on the ground or pretending not to feel the pulse. But ultimately, they caved to the positive peer pressure of the group and we experienced success. To conclude the activity, Ms. Wong and I called a meeting right there on the field. Students gathered in a circle around us. This team meeting formation continued to be our way of gathering together to debrief activities and conclude our class. The team meeting was an open forum for our community to share ideas, listen to one another, solve problems and make decisions. We asked students, Why have we been able to decrease the amount of time in this game? After a quick pair-share, students developed some great responses.
Team facilitated by Ms. Wong

We pushed each other to go faster! It was positive peer pressure. Support! another student yelled. We all tried our hardest. We showed teamwork, another offered. Their responses were better than anything we could have constructed. And most importantly, they were coming from the students, not being handed down by

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teachers. Through the activity, they were able to arrive at key understandings about teamwork. Finally, we ended with a poem called Dream Big (see Appendix C for full poem). This excerpt extended some of the ideas from our Pulse game. Persist. Because with an idea, Determination and the right tools, You can do great things. Let your instincts, your intellect And let your heart guide you. Trust. Believe in the incredible power Of the human mind Of doing something that makes a difference. Of working hard Of laughing and hoping Of lasting friends Of all the things that will cross your path this year. Ms. Wong, another support teacher and myself read the poem aloud, as students read along. The poem communicates, Were going to do some incredible stuff this year! Well need to try our hardest, persevere and support one another if were going to achieve our goals. At the conclusion of the poem, we returned to our classroom to journal about the poem. Each time we did one of these team-building games, Ms. Wong and I called for a team meeting and What can we learn from this? debrief. The debrief was essential. Without it, the game was just a game. In Springers account of curriculum integration, all activities are concluded with a deconstruction session, used to promote metacognitive skill development. (2006, p. 37) Our debriefs helped make meaning out of action and pushed students to process and reflect (something we wanted them to do all year long). After the Dream Big poem, students responded to this prompt: 8/27/12 Journal Entry: Dream Big What are your big goals for 6th grade this year?

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It was exciting to read their goals for the year. Most students focused on getting an A+, putting forth excellent effort, meeting deadlines, and paying attention in class. This revealed the type of values these students developed throughout their elementary experience. There was an overwhelming emphasis on performance and compliance. However, many students included goals that showed a deeper concern with quality of work and character. Here are some examples: Overcome my stage fright. I will try to make rough drafts and correct my mistakes. I want to get to achieve different things that are out of my comfort zone. Another goal is to have an open heart to guide me to do a good thing. My big dream is to go to a school where everyone is friends and no bad kids and everyone treats each other the same way they want to be treated.

Further Team-Building Activities (Weeks 1 through 3)

Throughout the first three weeks of school we continued this communitybuilding process through a number of activities. We brainstormed what made a great teacher and an excellent student. We wrote in our journals and shared our hopes and dreams for the semester. Students developed character and learning goals for the semester. Each activity resulted in a whole team conversation and sharing of ideas. As a group, we constructed posters that summarized the big ideas from our conversations. By the end of the fourth week, I wrote in my journal: I never knew what a difference team building could make. At the end of Week 4 I can feel it making a huge difference. The sense of respect and closeness that we all feel on our team is striking. In my six years of teaching, Ive never felt this close to students. I have to believe this will pay huge dividends later in the semester as we design and do projects together.

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 The First Student Survey: A Baseline For My Research (Week 3)

As Ive described in my Introduction and Understandings, I pursued co-design and democratic learning to research the way it affected students attitudes about learning, sense of ownership, self-determination and confidence. In order to establish a baseline, I administered a survey three times throughout our project. The first survey was given at the end of week three. The survey questions revealed a great deal about these 56 students. The following is a walk through those questions, my thinking behind each one and what I found out. As you read these responses its important to consider that my students took this survey at the end of our third week together (due to a delay in their access to computers and my stubborn commitment to making it an online survey). Students were asked to reflect on their K-5 experience only. However, some of their short answer responses revealed a consideration of 6th grade. Regardless, these responses reflect a baseline for their attitudes and perspectives before the introduction of co-design and democratic learning.

Feelings About Learning At School

The first question, How do you feel about learning at school? showed that a majority of the class had positive feelings towards learning at school. Only three students responded that they were bored. Ms. Wong and I both observed a positive culture in the class. Compared to previous years, this group had far less behavioral issues and instances of disrespect towards each other. This surprised and encouraged me. One of my aims with colllaborative design and democratic learning was to increase students enthusiasm and sense of positivity about their learning. Now, the question

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became, Can co-design and democratic learning extend students positive attitudes about learning?

Experiences That Excite Students About Learning

The responses to the next prompt on the survey, Tell me about a time when you were excited about learning something (at school or outside of school) helped me understand what students enjoyed about their past learning experiences and what they consider learning. The following matrix categorizes their responses to this openended question: Described a traditional experience in classroom (assignment or lesson) Described an extracurricular activity (sport, hobby, etc.) Described a project (in or out of school) Described a field trip 22 16 11 5

Nearly 40% of the students wrote about a learning experience that took place in a traditional classroom setting (like a lesson or assignment). I wondered how collaboratively designed PBL would change their concept of learning throughout the semester. It was striking that roughly 60% of the students described a learning experience that went beyond the traditional concept. Our semester would be designed around a project that broke from a traditional experience (textbook units and tests). The data suggested that many of our students would be excited about this.

The Best Ways We Learn

The student responses to the next question, Whats the best way to learn about a book/topic? revealed a strong preference for student-centered learning. Interestingly, 50% of the class believed that the best kind of learning happens when students are working independent of the teachers instruction. 18 students supported an independent activity with questions prepared by the teacher. 9 students selected a lecture/notetaking scenario. Again, this showed that I had a sizeable number of students who might be receptive to take on more self-directed, student-centered learning. I was curious to see if co-design/democratic learning would open up more students to preferring a student-centered approach to learning.

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 How We Show Learning

With the question, Whats the best way to show someone that youve learned something? I was trying to get at my students concepts of learning. Is it in the end product? Is it the process of learning? Is it a grade? This year students would demonstrate their learning through exhibitions of projects (a type of presentation), student-led conferences and the work that they create. Our learning would be free of tests and the emphasis would be placed on quality of work and the process of learning, not grades. This question showed that students placed an equal value getting an A+ on a test and making a presentation. Creating excellent work came in at the bottom, with only 11 responses. Conversely, Put a lot of effort into your work was selected most (24 responses). This showed that students might not connect excellent work with effort. However, the fact that nearly 43% of the students connected learning with effort would come in handy as we engaged projects demanding high levels of student effort. I was interested in seeing if students would shift their focus from grades during the course of the semester.

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 How We Like To Be Grouped

Our semester placed an emphasis on collaboration and group work. The next question gave me an indication of what attitudes towards collaboration we could anticipate. 76% of our students demonstrated a preference for some form of collaboration (working in pairs or groups). Only 13 students preferred working alone. Collaboration stands at the core of democratic learning and co-design. I was curious to see if those preferring independent learning would change their preference after our semester project. My hope was that students would begin to see their classmates as a resource for learning.

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 A Sense of Control & Self-Determination

The following questions probed for how students felt about having control over and making decisions about their learning. My big regret was not structuring the questions with identical multiple choice answers because it prevented me from doing a true comparative analysis. But I think we can still learn something valuable from their responses.

The data revealed that 28 students felt control over their learning, but only 13 students thought that they alone should decide what they learned about. Similarly, 26 students felt that teachers had the control, but only 6 thought that the decision about what to learn should rest with the teacher alone. One thing that puzzled me was the single student who said that their classmates had control over their learning. A whopping 34 students believed that teachers and students should decide together. This boded well for co-design, which emphasizes negotiation between teachers and students.

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 Student Comfort Around Co-design

This question examined students comfort levels with activities that we would do throughout the upcoming semester. The responses revealed a general comfort for aspects of co-design, even though none of my students had done it before. Grading your own work garnered the least comfort from students. NOTE: I made two major typos when writing this survey question. In the third item, riled should be role and the Likert scale should begin with very comfortable in orange and conclude with Very uncomfortable in red. Both typos were verbally corrected for students taking the survey. However, I cant assume that everybody understood the corrections. Overall, the 1st survey hinted at an overall comfort with the types of learning approaches that wed be using in the upcoming semester. I was interested to see how students attitudes would change. My hope was to extend their confidence and enthusiasm for self-directed, student-centered and democratic approaches to learning.

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Community-Building In Action: The Family History Box Project

In the past, Ive made the mistake of trying to build a classroom community through discussions and activities that dont actually involve the students in the process of building community. Weve generated lists of ideas and made beautiful posters, but never done much with them. Furthermore, the process was usually teacher-centered and (looking back) probably didnt garner much buy-in from the students. This time around, I was inspired by Barbara Brodhagen, who offers a clear picture of community building throughout the description of her family history project (2007). Ms. Wong and I based our idea on hers. We called it the Who Am I? Who Are We? Project. The point of the project was to create a permanent installation of student work that showed our diversity and unity as a community. Students gathered artifacts from their family/cultural history and assembled them in a product that was shared with the class. In our case, Ms. Wong and I chose cereal boxes (which we painted all sorts of funky colors). Students interviewed their family members, gathered significant artifacts, created a timeline of their life (charting significant events), mapped their origins and wrote Students use pins to show the origins of an I Am poem. We assembled the final their families. product and displayed it for our back to

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school night, where parents learned about our upcoming collaboratively designed project and celebrated their students work. What I loved about the mini-project was the way it immediately helped our students (and teachers) make spontaneous connections with one another. This laid a foundation for the semesters project (which would require us to do the same with our questions). As we constructed our boxes, I visiting tables throughout the classroom and overheard a lot of exciting discoveries. Rochelle and Marcia shared their discovery. Our fathers are both from the same country in Africa Nigeria! Sam exclaimed, Mr. Shaddox, did you know that Grants grandfather was mayor of Coronado? Jack shared, Did you know Dimitri was in the newspaper when he was a kid? As I watched a group of students pinning their names on a world map, I overheard some neat comments. Whoah! Someone in here is from Afghanistan? His names Javen. Wow. Thats really far, huh? Two other students celebrated their classmates Mexican origins. Theres a lot of us from Mexico. Thats cool. Not only did the Who Am I? Who Are We? Project help us begin building our community, but it helped us establish a variety of norms: expectations for craftsmanship, protocols for classroom materials, organizing student assignments and most importantly, it allowed us to model and experiment with how we work together in the classroom. The project concluded with students assessing their own work another important aspect of co-design. We created a rubric that allowed students and teachers to collaboratively assess the work. This was all happening alongside some integral discussions at the center of our community building. These were discussions for building our Affirmations and the class Bill of Rights, which I will discuss in the following section.
Students designed and constructed boxes featuring artifacts of their family history.

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