1. What is the story that needs to be told?

2. How do we process all the information to find the story that will engage the reader?

In this milestone, we speak with Danielle Kurtzleben. Danielle Kurtzleben is a political correspondent assigned to NPR's Washington Desk. She appears on NPR shows, writes for the web, and is a regular on The NPR Politics Podcast. She is covering the 2020 presidential election, with particular focuses on on economic policy and gender politics.

Before joining NPR in 2015, Kurtzleben spent a year as a correspondent for Vox.com. As part of the site's original reporting team, she covered economics and business news.

Prior to Vox.com, Kurtzleben was with U.S. News & World Report for nearly four years, where she covered the economy, campaign finance and demographic issues. As associate editor, she launched Data Mine, a data visualization blog on usnews.com.

A native of Titonka, Iowa, Kurtzleben has a bachelor's degree in English from Carleton College. She also holds a master's degree in global communication from George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.

Hyperlinks in conversation

This meeting was held to explain and go over the first two sprint cycles of the book creation.

Anna wrote the text for our book last year on Riva. This was an opportunity to learn from her, make a new connection, and help students with the process of unpacking the document provided by Michel.

Kelsey Vandercoy works as the Outreach Educator for the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA.  Her main duties are speaking with K-12 students and adults about a variety of topics in art; from learning about famous artists to highlighting the next great exhibit at the Figge.  Kelsey enjoys working with such a wide range of ages and experiences; each day is an adventure of what’s going to happen next. When she’s not working at the Figge, Kelsey enjoys reading, playing board and video games, and consuming as much chocolate as she possibly can eat.  She lives in Davenport with her husband and fluffy, fat cat, Chloe

Art. Power and influence…when we observe and analyze, it helps us understand stories from our past…

This video explains the process to begin to sift through all the research and information to be able to identify what is the story that needs to be told for the project.

This slidedeck contains all the visuals and story pitches from each group involved in the project.

1. Students will copy their slide 6 from the deck above to this slidedeck.

2. Students will use the Flip link to record their voice narration with the video showing their slide.

While it is hard to document every single time we made a pivot in our plans and teaching(which happens almost every single time we have a lesson and meet with an expert), we wanted to mention this shift in strategy here. 

This change completed impacted everything for the better.

While we had plans for the mind map above, in the end we shifted our thinking of Michel as a hero which us lead us down a path of the Hero Journey concept by Joseph Campbell.

Students were struggling with what details to keep, how to organize flow, etc. By using this structure they were able to compartmentalize key aspects.

In our plan we divided the two classes into two groups to tell two stories of Michel and then work together to agree on one story where teams would then be formed to focus on one page of the 10 page book requirement.

The power of student owned and driven learning exploded from this moment forward.

Evaluate & Prioritize…narrow down ideas & experiences…defend and justify 1)WHY it stays or goes 2)what needs to be shared in text versus what can be represented visually 3)determine the details that need to be present in order to help others see and experience the moment

The educators in this project established a culture of learning from day one of the school year. By the time we reached this point in this project the students literally asked if they could just take over the class to figure out the story. The following video is one of two days where they came to library per routine, organized themselves, and just set to to work to craft the story. 

There was zero setup, prompts, or planning. It was literal magic from an educator view to watch them completely take the ownership of the learning. 

And this is 6th grade. 

The video is one segment on one of the days where I figured it would be good to capture these magical moments that happen with good teaching and culture.