Learning Space Design - 3rd Teacher

Owp/P Architects, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design. (2009). The third teacher: 79 ways you can transform your teaching and learning.I work in an amazing space. Heartside Neighborhood of downtown Grand Rapids, a stones throw from every genre of civic, non-profit, and business partnerships, and 250,000 community and global artifacts under the same roof- the Grand Rapids Public Museum High School opened last year and has a lot going for it.

As a new school in a remodeled historic museum building, our classroom situation brings up a number of design... challenges. For example:

Two classrooms, a commons space, and row of four "Denny's" booths (student moniker and it stuck).
90 students. 3 teachers.
Go.

I work on an integrated team with a social studies, and English teacher. We have a three hour block with all the students every morning. We break time and space constraints of a traditional building and schedule on a regular basis.

And yet, we need three "classroom" spaces on a regular basis to operate from. My goal this summer was to redesign the commons area between the two classrooms to be that space.

I had to get creative with a "before" picture, but here is a partial panoramic shot of the commons space during a Facebook Live video shoot with WeAreTeachers. Long story.


It was a commons space. General student work area for break out sessions. Can it be redesigned for a science class to meet a few times a week for updates, direct instruction, workshops, assessment "prove it" areas, small group collaboration, and even a few science demonstrations?

Maybe.

Here's the new layout this summer.



Three sub spaces (happily aligned to the three square light fixtures). Loosely related: campfires, caves, watering holes.

1. Whole group space in the back left corner. Movable screen, ample (but tight) seating for everyone on soft furniture. Used for meetings at the start of class, sharing updates, and mini lectures.
2. "Regular" desks and work space. Limited area with a seat, a desk, and almost rows? It's the space between the pillars.
3. A round table area. Some of the only exterior windows in the whole school. Unfortunately looks out to a brick wall. 

The two walled classroom spaces flank either side of the commons, more individual soft furniture work spaces wrap each pillar, Denny's in down a little hallway, with the teacher "Board Room" opposite. A sink, counter top and storage area make up the last wall. 

Time to analyze with The Third Teacher. (I was gifted this book a long time ago, I wish I remember the context).

9. "Let the sunshine in... increasing daylight in the classroom has be shown to cut down on absenteeism and improve test scores." Well... that's pretty tough in our history building. Most of the windows we do have are glass blocks. The skylights are kind of cool though. I find myself spending most of my prep time in a room that has real windows.

10. "Shuffle the deck. Change up the locations of regular activities so children can explore new surroundings with their bodies and their minds." Check. Even with three "classroom" spaces we regularly break the flow and utilize the Design Lab space and also have regular excursions outside the school building. 

12. "Support great teaching. Free teachers from the traditional desk at the front of the classroom and encourage new settings for teaching and learning." A teacher desk? Nobody in our school has a teaching desk. What is a teacher desk?

15. "Display learning. Posting student work, both current and past, up on the walls tracks progress in a visible way." Needs work. We do a lot of science learning on paper, sticky notes, and chart paper, but ultimately track it digitally on Trello and Google Docs. I want to build in more physical learning artifacts around the space. 

16. "Emulate museums. An environment rich in evocative objects triggers active learning by letting students pick what to engage with." Dude. We work in a museum. We do have curated display cases around the school with artifacts relevant to current project themes, but I have work to do here. 

18. "Unite the disciplines. Art and science need each other. Discoveries happen when the two come together so give students places for cross-disciplinary work and who knows what creative genuis will flourish." Amen. Let's get a beer and swap stories sometime. 

19. "Bring the outside in. Transport the community, landscape, and faraway places in to the classroom with visuals and objects that call them to mind." Good grief. I have to stop here. Whether it's Downtown Grand Rapids Inc, The Rapid, Clothing Matters, City Hall, GR Neighborhood Summit, Grand Rapids Whitewater... this is happening at the Museum School. We say "the community is our classroom." It's already happening and we are growing. 

Owp/P Architects, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design. (2009). The third teacher: 79 ways you can transform your teaching and learning.

Innovative Learning Experience, Feedback & Gear Change

I set out to learn how to program a Raspberry Pi, use it for students to collect sensor data on environmental solutions, and basically solve all the world's problems.

About that...

One of the many nuances of my work is helping students with crazy ideas create actionable pathways (and there's also the part of spurring on students who are convinced they don't have any ideas). Sometimes the pipe dream comes to fruition, but often in unexpected ways. Often times we make dents, but fail and move on. I'm finding that I love being a generalist, but jack of all trades master of none stinks sometimes.

My Raspberry Pi attempt flopped. I'm still processing how I feel about that.

Around the same time, we did a PD week at school with one day focused on deeper integration with our largely untapped maker space tools. We rotated through a series of peer coaching sessions with a vinyl cutter, laser, engraver, and even wood carving hand tools. Of course, I made a cliché mini-van sticker.

Nate Langel 

I hash out a lot of my learning in this video overview (and self-taught my way through speeding up video clips in Adobe Premier!), but the social element of that experience is becoming my largest takeaway. I viewed the Raspberry Pi endeavor as a lone ranger project. There's obviously a place for that in my life, but the disconnect from my professional team is probably a big part of why I didn't get off the ground.

Fast forward a week- I find out that my science colleague is working on a Python script that will automatically pull proficiency data from our student project management software into a class level competency spreadsheet (we use business world tool for co-planning projects with students, it just doesn't spit out the academic-y stuff we still need). I leaned on another teacher for support with the vinyl cutter, and have clearly found a collaborator for my Raspberry Pi ideas. 

Needless to say, my Innovative Learning Lesson plan changed gears, and netted me two tracks of  feedback as well. I received some technical resources and pointers on the Raspberry Pi end, and questions about UDL implications and grounding with the vinyl cutter. The UDL feedback really pushed me to consider the multiple means of engagement the vinyl cutter and other physical logo creation tools afford the Green Solutions project, namely student ownership and motivation.  This project still needs a lot of work, but it is good work. 

7 Weeks of Learning in 25 Photos

Seven weeks. Twenty five photos. Lots of learning. Here are the categories.

On bikes/off bikes. This is a pretty even breakdown.

Home/abroad. From backwoods and urban Michigan, to leading a PBL training in rural Oklahoma. 

Lively/doomsday. We caught tiny frogs and conversed with a barred owl, but also found the local 1958 nuclear war contingency plans.

Natural/built spaces. First time hikes and bike trails, first time classroom layouts. 

Old/new. Hundred year old house. New tub drain. 

Individual/Family/Professional Team. Makes for full days. Good days. 

Kind of Like a Twitter Chat Almost

It's a weird moment. A full circle moment. Maybe a moment that should happen more often.

I lead an educational technology class for pre-service teachers as an adjunct professor. Like any other ed-tech class we have a Twitter Chat task. Now I'm in grad school and I need to join a Twitter chat. Weird.

But it is summer. A fleeting glance at the "back in my day" #pblchat feedback didn't show an recent organized meet up or discussion. Neither did #miched.

#excuses.

It seems somewhat serendipitous that I received an invite to a think-tank/design meeting for "West Michigan PBL Network," and I'm going to reflect on it in lieu of a Twitter chat. Bear with me, I think this works.

Here's what I'm taking away from sitting, standing, presenting, pacing, and hand waving in a stick note littered, chart paper scented meeting room at Grand Valley State this morning:

Three musings of what this West Michigan PBL Network thing is or might be.

• Leaders from Kent, Ottawa, and Muskegon County ISDs realized they all have different PBL initiatives and pockets of success. Why not combine forces?
• Those leaders decided to put some PBL teachers in a room, give them vague prompts, run design thinking protocols, and then just see what happens. 
• An underlying assumption seems to be that if teacher are the ones empowered to orchestrate and design this network, it might actually be effective in spreading the PBL mindset to more schools and classrooms. 

Three personal reflections on the nature of professional learning in the education field.

• I don't really use Twitter. Don't tell anyone. I used to, and it was transformative during college and my first few years teaching. With connections established, my PLN growth and encouragement happens on Voxer, conferences/school visits, consulting work, and new opportunities like the PBL Network design team. 
• We discussed a bunch today about professional learning living in both physical and digital spaces. I kept thinking back to Edcamp conferences and was saddened thinking about the death of EdcamptGR. Maybe it could be resurrected? Maybe the unconference format, or a hybrid with PBL 101 tracks combined with a digital social platform could be the foundation of the West Michigan PBL Network?
• Hot take: slack isn't the answer to fostering meaningful online engagement and teacher collaboration. So far I've used Slack with middle school students, teaching college education students, for a graduate class, and with the PBL consulting/training organization I work for. When Slack came up in the meeting today, my immediate hunch was "no." Slack is a real time messenger, not a discussion and networking platform. Voxer facilitates voice discussion, sharing stories, and depth. I want to dabble with Twist, and see if offers a different way forward. 

Ok, so it's not a Twitter Chat. One of the ISD leaders in the room today was a co-founder of the #miched chat back in the day- maybe it counts? :)

Low Pressure Learning

Well, my Networked Learning Project took a different but pragmatic direction in the last few weeks. It's been the quite the season of plumbing projects at my household, and I've decided to give some intentional reflection to my learning process. A few months ago we had a house sewer line issue with tree roots (that really stunk), and more recently a three year old decided some Lego guys wanted to go swimming. That toilet re-seating project has brought on a renewed sense of urgency (sorry). My century old house is a plumbing disaster waiting to happen, and believe it or not, my graduate class has actually helped move thing along (sorry again).

Riding on the success of the toilet unclogging Lego Man Rescue Misson I turned my attention to a long neglect leaky faucet in our upstairs bathroom. An Amazon order and a few YouTubes later I had installed a new faucet and felt as confident as a Mario and Luigi. Replumb the whole house? Why not?

Yeah, so I haven't gotten that far, but have definitely made strides. Most of my current piping is a hodge-podge of copper and galvanized, the later of which is very much needing replaced. I've gutted a back closet of the house to expose the pipes and am ready to purchase the new PEX pipes for the job. Along the way I've tackled a tub drain replacement and more unclogging in P-traps. It seems like a never ending battle but I'm finding that it's coming one that I enjoy.

I'm amazed at how a small success with anything plumbing related has motivated and even excited me to try to bite off bigger aspects of the project. I had no idea that a special tool was needed to replace a tube drain but one This Old House video later, I'm thinking "oh, I got this." There are clear implications here as I head back to school in ten days (!!!) and work with students. I want them to taste some kind, any kind of academic/project/problem solving success because I'm sure they will want more.

I made a screencast highlighting some of my plumbing escapades. It got a bit long, but I think even here my excitement and confidence becomes a bit evident. I received a new 3/4" inlet to 1/2" 3 port closed manifold from Amazon yesterday and it was almost like Christmas.

Just a Food Web Lesson Plan

Let's get down to business (to defeat the Huns).

Sorry, not Disney- ecology.

It's lesson plan time in one of my graduate class and I chose a facet within our integrated Neighborhood Research project. The project centers around students collecting secondary and then primary research data and stories on a chosen social or environmental issue in Grand Rapids related to fall out from the Industrial Revolution. Within the project we built a series of ecology content/skills modules and this lesson fits into the module concerned with food webs and energy pyramids and trophic levels.

Here is the current draft and the summary:
Students will compile chosen Michigan plant and animal species from the Habitats exhibit at the museum into a digital food web/energy pyramid using Coggle. 

And here is a quick reflection on the draft plan in light of Hobbs (2011) digital competencies.
Access: Working at the museum is an incredible opportunity to access physical artifacts, exhibits, and enhance digital research. I am excited about going to the Habitats exhibits as students select (like a sports draft) their Michigan species. I think this tangible connection makes the digital research on advantageous traits and behaviors and trophic levels more relevant to students.
Analyze: I don't have a CRAAP test or similar currently planned for students. I'm not sure I want to focus deeply on that skill in this phase.
Create: I think that Coggle might be a possible digital venue for our class to make a food web. I need to trial it out a bit more before landing on it.
Act: Ultimately our digital product is not a very authentic one, however the principles of interdependence and ecological cycles should flow into the broader integrated research project.

Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin/Sage.