Teaching & Learning Blog

A Virtual Toast to PS1 Teachers

Summer days are long, but summer still speeds by.

Enjoy your time with your children. They are wonderful.

For this last blog of the 2018-19 school year, I want to present a virtual toast to the teachers at PS1 Pluralistic School.

Along with the comprehensive progress reports teachers just finished writing about the development of each child, teachers also write detailed self-reflections about their teaching each year at this time. They are long, about eight pages, and cover a wide variety of aspects of teaching and learning. It is my privilege to meet with individual teachers and talk about their work and these reflections. Every teacher acknowledges their strengths and examines their areas for growth. They are introspective and think about how they are going to study over the summer. Growing and learning are integral to who they are as professionals.

Many of the classrooms have created special mini-units for these last few weeks to keep students engaged and focused as they get summeritis. Walking into classrooms, I see students who are engaged and focused.

When the students leave for the summer, the teachers will attend professional development, clean-up their classrooms, and start to brainstorm curriculum ideas and themes for next year.

It is an honor to work with the teachers at PS1. Please join me in a virtual toast to them.

Studio Stewardship

Social Emotional Learning at PS1 (SEL) begins a soon as our students enter the school in Youngers. The program is ingrained at each cluster level, with teachers supporting students’ SEL in numerous ways. In the Olders cluster, the Studio Stewardship program supports a culmination of this learning for our students. The Studio Stewardship aspect of the SEL program is guided by Genevieve Mow, our Child Development Specialist and Chris Kuzina, The Studio director. This blog, written by Genevieve and Chris, provides an overview of the program.

Studio Stewardship has two main components. One component of the program is for Olders students to practice their leadership skills in an experiential setting with Chris. The other component, led by Genevieve and one of the classroom teachers, is designed to enhance students’ attitudes and beliefs about themselves, their relationships with others, and their education. The sixth-grade equivalent students participate in Studio Stewardship from September through Spring Break. After Spring Break, the fifth-grade equivalent students begin the program.

Chris: I mentor the Olders students, helping them work in the Youngers and Bridge classrooms as well as in The Studio. This year, Olders worked directly with Youngers on their various writing, reading and math centers. They also worked with the Bridge classes to help them with their Studio science lessons related to physics. This leadership gives Olders the opportunity to learn alongside and give guidance to their younger peers on a variety of different projects and learning goals. We are very proud of the relationships that are forming between age groups and the service that is being performed around campus. This not only helps our Olders students begin to value the power of generosity, but it also allows us to see where and in what capacities these students feel inspired in growing their leadership abilities and at the same time experiencing self and social awareness.

Genevieve: I meet with students together with one classroom teacher from each class to provide a structured forum and space for students to process their thoughts and feelings as they transition to adolescence. The groups are small to provide a space for honest and thoughtful conversation. There is a clear roadmap for discussion including managing stress, digital citizenship, values, and the upcoming transition to middle school. Students can also bring up other topics of interest as they arise.

In the class, the teacher and I sit in a circle with the students. Each class begins with an initial “check-in” to provide an opportunity for anyone to ask a question or bring up a subject to discuss. The conversation will always reference the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (www.casel.org), five core competencies, which are:

1.    Self-Awareness:

2.    Self-Management

3.    Social Awareness

4.    Relationship Skills

5.    Responsible Decision Making

Through discussion and role-play, art and games students learn about themselves, develop in their understanding and management of emotions to show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships with peers, and explore how to make responsible decisions. We hope that providing this learning environment for students to discover and discuss their feelings provides each of them the foundational skills that they will take with them to middle school.

Rigor

In her book, Rigor is NOT a Four-Letter Word, Barbara Blackburn (2008) states, “Rigor is creating an environment in which each student is expected to learn at high levels, each student is supported so he or she can learn at high levels, and each student demonstrates learning at high levels.” To create an academically rigorous environment, teachers must help students develop the capacity to understand content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging.

As I prepared this blog for publication, I walked through each classroom to find evidence of rigor. To provide a sense of continuity, I include here examples of rigor from Youngers to Olders, specifically in the subject area of Writing.

In Youngers, students wrote about the features of non-fiction text. This is the culmination of a long process in which students are required to identify characteristics of non-fiction text and to understand their purpose. From books about Antarctica to Matter, students are reading and writing to understand the specific structure of non-fiction text and the value of non-fiction to provide information. Rigor is evidenced in the varied levels of text that students read. Students wrote multiple drafts to address specific learning goals, from scribing letters correctly to ordering their ideas. On an ongoing basis, teachers meet with each student individually throughout the week to review their drafts and go over expectations. These one-on-one conferences ensure that students incorporate new concepts and provide a rich opportunity for each student to progress.

In Bridge, students wrote poetry inspired by paintings that they created. I include some here:

As you read these poems, notice the careful imagery, rhythm of the language, and sophisticated vocabulary. Teachers base their learning goals on the Teachers College Reading program to provide students with clear expectations and standards. In writing these poems students experienced multiple opportunities to move through the different stages of the writing process to take their pieces from rehearsal to publication. The finished product that you see here reflects the arduous process that an author goes through.

In Middles, students wrote non-fiction research reports about Monarch Butterflies. These reports are individual, detailed, and fact-checked. Teachers and students examined a rubric together that offered students detailed explanations for expectations. An educational rubric is a way to communicate expectations of quality around a task. They are typically divided into distinct sections that explain and illustrate the properties or characteristics on which the task is going to be evaluated.

In Olders, students worked to strengthen their understanding of inference and the importance of using text to support one’s argument. Looking at specific chapters of a novel, Olders students wrote about the inferences that they were making from the text and supported their arguments with specific and concrete examples. Once again, students were aware of the expectations and precisely what was required to create publishable-quality papers.

One bi-product of rigor may be cognitive disequilibrium. Cognitive disequilibrium occurs when there is a mismatch between what a student is currently thinking and new information that may not “fit in” to that way of thinking. This can be initially uncomfortable for learners and may result in a temporary dissatisfaction, or a feeling of unease. Equilibrium is restored when students expand their thinking to incorporate these new concepts.

This blog offers several examples of the academic rigor that takes place daily in our classrooms, from Youngers to Olders. The essential components of rigor: content acquisition, critical thinking, relevance, integration, application of concepts, long term retention, and student ownership of the learning is essential to all of the work we do at PS1.