Below is a comment I left on Tom Barrett's blog in response to his posting of "Do You Have a Class or School Blog." Tom is an amazing educator and willing collaborator from Nottingham, England, and I learn much by what he has put out there. Thanks Tom! His post prompted me to reflect on what we have built at Kimmel Farm in just four months. Honestly, this is the first chance I've had to truly reflect on this now that we've started our holiday break. It truly is amazing now that I think about it. Here's my comment.
One of my "BIG 3 Goals" this year is to integrate blogging as part of the instructional routine at my new school. I was lucky enough to have been offered a job to help open a brand new school after spending over a year building a new mindset and trying to build connected classrooms at my former school.
Opening a new school completely equipped with Activ Boards and other technologies was a daunting task. Access is not an issue here which made the "sell" a bit easier. Furthermore, I have a deep belief that blogging has power in every subject area and every grade level. While our class blogs are in their infancy, the staff embraced my vision for blogging and we now have 21 class blogs setup (linked off our school's main blog) and slowly growing into powerful teaching and reflection tools. There are others who still want to start their blog so that number will grow. We only have around 25 regular classes this year.
My plan is to support and help our teachers at Kimmel Farm Elementary grow their blogs in the coming year and get a handle on just how powerful they can be to support not only writing, but also creative expression in any curricular area through digital media that STUDENTS and TEACHERS create. I'm so proud of the way they've embraced blogging. If you look at the blog list off our school's main blog http://kimmelfarmelem.blogspot.com you'll see they're made an investment in this tool. We used blogger because that's the product our district leaves unfiltered and recommends we implement. The biggest impact is that this is a way to showcase to parents and district leaders what we are doing. More importantly the students are excited to comment and participate in the ongoing discussion. Later, we'll add blogging buddies - hopefully from around the globe.
Here is a quick video with three reasons Tom thinks blogging is important from his post entitled Why Bother Blogging. I think the faculty at Kimmel Farm gets that this has tremendous potential and are now willing to explore these options. For a brand new school that is building culture and community this is a huge step forward. This is one building block for what we can become - perhaps a cornerstone (to borrow the words of Tom Barrett).
embracing blogging
The Question of Motivation
We're in an age of data-driven education. Thanks to brain-based research we now know more than ever about how students learn and what causes those neurons to "fire," and we work hard to implement proven methods. Still, with all we know, sometimes it's very difficult to find what motivates students. When a teacher works long and hard to design learning activities they think will be engaging and fun, and students respond with apathy it's tough to swallow.
Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind - Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future and Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, is set to release a new book Dec. 29th entitled Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Pink previewed some of what will be in his book earlier this summer in Oxford, England in a 20 minute talk at a TED Conference, and although his talk was applied to business, the content has huge implications for education.
At Kimmel Farm, we're building our school around problem-based learning through the support of our business and education partner, CERTL (Center of Excellence for Research, Teaching and Learning at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine). PBL is not a new approach to teaching. Some of the principles date back to the early 1900s. But it is an approach that takes into account student interest, prior knowledge, and connections to the real world of the learner. Through PBL, students are more self-directed, and teachers become less authority figures and more facilitators of learning.
The question of motivation won't be entirely solved by PBL. It's not a panacea. It will, however, bring into play much of what Pink speaks of in his TED talk at our school. Hopefully it will help our students overcome the "functional fixedness" that could make them less prepared for our uncertain futures. With PBL, students will have more autonomy in their learning as it is more group and self-directed. Students should strive for mastery using PBL because it should be lessons that matter to them and connect to their lives. Students should feel purpose when engaged in PBL scenarios because they are working as social units to solve something important to the group/class.
This is a student-centered approach where our students will engage in real-world problems, learn to forge functional relationships to gain reasonable solutions, and focus on multiple solutions instead of one right answer. These are all life-long skills that need to developed for success in any of life's endeavors, and at any age or stage of learning. The hope (and research says) is students will gain confidence and thus become more motivated with each PBL experience. Motivation will no longer become the question. We'll be addressing it through teaching style, high expectations, positive social interactions, and the culture of learning we create.
Dedicating A Building
Photos by Denise Brodeur
On Monday, November 9th Kimmel Farm Elementary was officially dedicated in a ceremony held at the school. It was an event carefully planned and executed. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Superintendent Donald L. Martin Jr. Ed.D led much of the program, which was highlighted by student performances by our kindergartners, singing lyrics written by our own kindergarten teacher Shayne Madison, and a group of 5th graders who performed an instrumental piece directed by our music teacher, Robert York. Thanks also to WSFCS School Board Member Marilyn A. Parker for her dedicatory address.
We were honored to have the invocation delivered by Reverend James C. Newsome of nearby Friedberg Moravian Church. We were also honored have Dr. Stanford Hill of the Center for Excellence for Research, Teaching, and Learning, affirm our partnership and dedication to making Kimmel Farm Elementary a model school for Problem Based Learning.
We honored the previous land owners, LA and Jean Kimel Topping and Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Miller, who agreed to sell the land so our school and neighboring Flat Rock Middle could be born. The building was presented by Perry Peterson of Peterson/Gordon Architects, PA and that was that. Our building was dedicated - "officially" open for public use.
The ceremony itself was formality, but it left one important question unanswered. To what are we dedicated?
We know we're committed to problem based learning and using the technology we're so blessed to have in our building. But really, to what we are dedicated is still an open-ended question. The answer to what we are dedicated is yet to evolve, and the challenge therein is for us to decide as educators and students what we are going to become. It's an ongoing conversation we need to have, and an issue on which we should reflect often. Too many schools don't.
As we honored the previous land owners we stated we thought it important to record our history as it unfolds, but also to gather the history of the place prior to the school being built. We're named Kimmel Farm Elementary for a reason, and we want our students to get a sense of the history of our land to give them purpose, identity, and a sense of pride.
We plan to host a celebration at the completion of our first year and seal a time capsule with contents that have yet to be created by our students. It will be interesting to see what we choose to put inside that time capsule, and to determine when it will be reopened. Perhaps it's something we seal, open in 10 years, reflect, add new products, and reseal for opening 10 years from then. Whatever we decide to do we'll only be putting snapshot of what we are to be in that first time capsule. Only when it's opened will we have some answer to what we have been dedicated.
Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks once said, "Sometimes you have to create the thing you want to be part of." All we know is it's great to have that opportunity, and exciting to think of what we can become.
