Carriage House

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, The Barn Owls along with their teachers, have been reflecting on all they have accomplished this year, as well as what is still to come! We have seen so much growth from September up until now, physically and academically. From writing short paragraphs, to now writing fully developed stories with settings, character development and even dialogue. Kiddos are adding multiple three and four digit numbers as well as multiplying. They are using their phonics skills in reading and writing, practicing all of the different letter patterns they have learned since starting our “Phonics, Reading and Me” program in October. The Barn Owls have gone from little “fledglings” needing quite a bit of support at times, to full grown, independent “barn owls” ready to soar into the next year! 

Independence is something we have spent a lot of time building with The Barn Owls this year. We have guided them and supported them as they made choices and completed different projects throughout the year. Kiddos have been introduced to Project Based Learning and given the opportunities to branch out into their own student lead projects. This started in November with their Maple Projects and will conclude to the end of this year as they wrap up their Creek Projects.

When we first began this new type of project, students needed lots of teacher direction. The tendency to rely on a grown up to answer questions such as, “How do we get started?” “What do we do next?” and “Am I finished?” was deeply ingrained, and hard to let go of! However, with time and practice, a class culture has emerged in which these questions are fielded within peer groups and teachers are simply there to set the stage, facilitate next steps, and document the journey. Rather than following directions given by the teacher, the requisite skills for success in The Barn Owls’ classroom have become critical thinking, collaboration and self management in a group setting. Each Barn Owl has a rubric that outlines these criteria and in clear terms that the kids are responsible for knowing and putting into practice. Though this Creek Project work will culminate in an exhibition at the end of the year, the work will be far from complete. This project is open ended - it is a torch that is burning bright, ready to be picked up and carried by the next Carriage House group in September! 

“These are times to remember our power as teachers. In no other profession do people have the opportunity to literally create a parallel world– a world that is safer, fairer, freer. The four walls of your classroom can be the world we want, hope for, dream of, rather than the world we have now. It can allow children to practice the skills they need to create and to sustain a place where people are neither shunned nor labeled; a shared, public place in which every community member is treated as a free person, an invaluable person, a gifted and good and loved person.” 

-Carla Shalaby, “A Letter to Teachers” in Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

“Many of us have been socialized to understand that constant growth, violent competition, and critical mass are the ways to create change. But emergence shows us that adaptation and evolution depend more upon critical, deep, and authentic connections, a thread that can be tugged for support and resilience. The quality of connection between the nodes in the patterns.”

-  adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

These quotes, and the incredible thinkers behind them, are my guideposts as an educator. I do this work because I believe that each child I teach deserves schools that treat them as the whole human they already are. To not be seen as a bucket to be filled with information only I have deemed important, but rather a being to be nurtured and supported through the many processes and emotions of learning.

Randolph is a place that believes it is possible to be a school beyond what already exists. It is incredibly refreshing to be at a school where children - and adults- are asked to learn and think and be in different ways than have seemed possible in other contexts. Here, we are asked to imagine what could be-- within ourselves, our students, our curriculum, and our community. We're given space to collaborate, experiment, and grow.

This year has been one of figuring out what can be possible when the system is more adaptive and responsive to the needs of twelve 9, 10, and 11-year-olds. We have spent a lot of time thinking about and practicing how to be a community of respect and love. Considering how to put aside our wants for the needs of the community. Recognizing when we need to step up and help, or step back and make space. Practicing how to be in a community with people with diverse needs, identities, opinions, and desires from our own. Learning how to center curiosity when we are frustrated, ashamed, unsure, or convinced we already know all of the answers.  This is beautiful, and can also be a little messy.

At this moment, we are in the season of synthesis. Of putting the pieces together. Ideas we talked about at the beginning of the year are coming up organically, providing us with shared context to go into something deeper or with more nuance. Skills we’ve been practicing since the fall are becoming more automatic, and students need less adult support to remember to use them when the situation calls for it. We return to our work with fresh eyes, revising and expanding with support or based on what we now know. Things that were challenging months ago are no longer as frustrating. We are now finding new things to put our energy into learning how to do. Emotions that felt overwhelming are more manageable, with strategies learned and relationships to lean on in support. 

Children have are becoming more willing to take ownership of their actions, beginning to focus more on the impact of choices on others rather than explaining, defending, or avoiding. They are working more independently, coming to check in with me when they are excited to share something they have uncovered or when they recognize they could use my help. They are working together to deepen their learning, getting help from each other, and accomplishing things they couldn’t do alone. They are fixing the mistakes they make, asking the person harmed what they need and doing it more readily. And they are more aware and appreciative of the ways that they and their peers are working to make our community what we have imagined it could be.

This week, the kids chose their independent research question for our inquiry project. Each student has something they are excited to research that is connected to our (now revised and expanded) inquiry questions:

1) What planetary conditions are needed to support life?

2) What technology could we use to find out if life already exists on other planets?

3) What technology would humans need to be able to live on another planet?

4) How do humans know what we know about space?

Some examples of research questions are: What would living on the moon look like for children? What conditions do tardigrades need to exist? What constellation stories from other cultures have I not learned about before? What did the Dogon people know about space and how did they gain that knowledge?

We've spent the last few weeks collaborating with Siobhan on digital literacy and research lessons. Students are integrating what they've learned into their independent research, using background knowledge to formulate questions, checking information from multiple sources, and taking notes to reference when they put it all together. Close reading, vocabulary development, and phonics skills are being used every day as students make meaning of what they read. And students are experiencing that the more they learn about their topic, the more questions they have. 

I of course have more growing, imagining, and creating to do on this journey to become part of a school community that yearns to be something that doesn't yet exist. The possibilities are endless and they give me hope.