Creating a Life Skills Space Within a School

13th June 2023Website Admin

Creating a Life Skills Space Within a School

Danielle Petar, Emily Bacon, Michal Geller

At Gesher we want our young people to enjoy school. We want them to enjoy learning with one another and supporting each other to succeed. We want them to have great experiences; to love physical and creative activities; to enjoy the unity of a shared faith; to find things in the curriculum that they can be passionate about; to be proud of their exhibitions of work and the real-world projects that make a difference in our community. And, of course, we want them to leave us with the best qualifications possible.

All that having been said, we are a school for young people, many of whom started their school career in a mainstream school which was not well equipped to support them. Parents (and young people as they mature) inevitably have concerns about how well they will cope with the mainstream life of employment and relationships and independent living. This is the world beyond Gesher.

And this is why we have developed a coherent, progressive and continuously evolving life skills curriculum. We are passionate about preparing learners to be assured and adept when they eventually progress from Gesher, as employees, friends, partners and citizens of the world. 

The Gesher Life Skills Space — from top left (clockwise): bed, wardrobe, lounge area, fully functioning kitchen with hot plates, toaster, kettle, microwave, blender, fridge, sink, dining table and chairs, cash register, desk and computer, ironing board and iron, and a ‘my body’ area with a mirror and personal grooming tools.

 

Creating a life skills space within a school

Ask ChatGPT what you need to set up a life skills classroom and you’ll be given a list of eight steps which include finding a space, making a budget and employing a member of staff. Do some of your own research via academic articles and practical textbooks and the same three themes emerge. Sadly, what the AI and the “old-fashioned” research tool don’t take into account is that schools are not generally known for having spare rooms, giant financial budgets, or bonus staff on hand to deliver extra lessons. It can therefore be difficult to know where to start with something like life skills, which generally falls largely outside the traditional curriculum subjects like Maths, English and Science.

In Issue Two of The Bridge, we featured an article about Gesher’s life skills curriculum, so we won’t pretend that we were starting from scratch when we created our life skills classroom space. We knew what our curriculum required by way of facilities. We also won’t pretend that we weren’t lucky enough to have a small space in our school, a modest budget and a skilled member of staff to deliver our sessions. Perhaps we made our own luck!

However, the journey we have travelled puts us in a position to share some of our insights in a practical and accessible way. We are also conscious that, as a result of our own journey, there isn’t a huge amount of practical advice out there for schools wanting to implement and integrate life skills-related learning. We hope this article helps.

Ideally you will find a space, but it can be a shared space.

How we’ve done it

We moved school sites in 2021 and, as such, were in the fortunate position of being able to include in our plans a dedicated space within our building for life skills – in other words, to give it equal claim in the allocation of space, rather than stealing space back from existing use. However, even the room we are currently using is a temporary solution which is shared with our library. (Although, of course, library use is a life skill, too!) To manage this space the room is carefully timetabled to allow for classes to use the library and for classes to use the life skills space. The room is also used for lunchtime clubs and school council meetings, and can be available as an extra learning space.

Things you could try in your setting

Despite the title of this article specifically referring to a space, there is no necessity for life skills to take place in just one place. We could have called it “Creating a life skills mindset”. Areas such as the lunch hall and the staff room (when not being used by staff) are ready-made life skills areas because of the practical and real-world activities that take place in them. The lunch hall, for example, can be used to practise setting the table and preparing food while the staff room is likely to contain a dishwasher, sink, and perhaps even an oven, making it an ideal environment for students to work on kitchen-based skills.

What’s coming next

One of the end goals for the life skills space at Gesher is to have a full-size, self-contained flat which includes a kitchen, bedroom and living area for students to be able to access during their life skills sessions. To do this we are keen to have students’ input to the design and to make it relevant to their interests.

Making good use of the space

How we’ve done it

Our classroom space is set up to emulate elements of a small flat with a kitchen area, a bed and a sofa. Within the room, each item is labelled to support the learning of organisation skills as well as encouraging independence. All of our students use the room once a week for their timetabled life skills lesson. In addition, we have a group of learners (known as our Life Skills Legends) who attend daily life skills sessions in the space. This gives them more time to practise skills and the way the room is laid out also means that skills can be practised in sequence. For example, when doing bedroom-related life skills, students can take the sheets off the bed, wash them in the washing machine, dry them on an airer and then put them back onto the bed.

Things you could try in your setting 

If you don’t have the luxury of having a classroom space where life skills teaching can take place, then an alternative could be to have smaller life skills-related materials stored in one place and accessible to staff. For example, items such as a kettle, a toaster and a blender could be stored relatively easily and used for food preparation skills, while items like hairdryers, straighteners and mirrors could be available for students to practise self-care skills. (We’ve included a full list of resources in the Resources for Schools section of this issue). These materials could then be used for in-school sessions. Activities which require large resources, such as a bed or washing machine, could be completed as part of homework tasks which are developed alongside parents. (It is a feature of our programme that parents are partners – deliverers and accreditors.)

What’s coming next

The next phase would be transferring some of the basic life skills activities into employment-related ones. For example, opening an on-site cafe run by the students would allow for greater independence around their food and drink preparation skills. Other examples are creating an allotment on the grounds, planning and running a school visit, or hosting an employers’ event.

Equipping the space

How we’ve done it

To furnish and equip the life skills rooms, we appealed for donations of furniture from our students’ families and friends, as well as a small amount of financial support from a community donor. Before adding anything to the room we involved parents as well as students to hear their thoughts about what should be included. The clearest piece of feedback that we received from both groups was that the room should be a place where students (as much as possible) could do things independently.

Things you could try in your setting

In the Resources for Schools section at the back of this issue, we have included a shopping list of items that might be useful for life skills sessions. Alongside each item on the list are ideas and suggestions for use. By no means do we have all the answers to these questions, so we would love to hear from you with further creative ideas. You can email us directly via [email protected].

Things that we would like to do…

Moving forward, we would like to incorporate more technology into our life skills sessions. In the first instance, this could involve using online banking and doing an online food shop. However, we would also like eventually to include working with artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT which, despite offering a rather generic answer to our opening question, will undoubtedly be a huge part of our students’ lives in the future.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • Is life skills education on the agenda for your students, especially the ones most likely to be challenged by the transition to life beyond school?

  • What ideas in this article have most resonance for you? What ideas does your school have that you could share on an email as suggested above?

  • If life skills is not currently a high priority in your school, who might you need to gather together to read this article (and the one in The Bridge 2) and to discuss possible ways forward?

Reimagining Assessment: Views From an Autistic Young Person

13th June 2023Website Admin

Reimagining Assessment: Views From an Autistic Young Person

Joshua Gross

Since the 1990s, the way we assess young people has been dominated by a culture of public accountability and competition, leading to the unhealthy belief that the grade is everything. The idea is now so important that many exams, like GCSEs and A-Levels are referred to as “high-stakes” tests because of the way they determine the next stage of someone’s life.

Those who create the high-stakes assessments claim that they are the fairest and most rigorous tool we have to demonstrate student achievement. However, the evidence used to back up these claims is often insubstantive (Richardson, 2022). One of the consequences of these high-stakes assessments is that young people’s outcomes are reduced to a number or letter which only reflects a very small proportion of their experiences and achievements at school and usually only in academic subjects.

Whilst this affects all young people, data has shown that, on average, autistic young people do not achieve the same levels of academic success as their non-autistic peers assessed in this way. The most up-to-date government data shows that 64% of non-autistic students achieved a Grade 4 or above in Maths and English, compared to 31% of autistic students – and this data is not a one-off. The same pattern exists in the previous three years’ data. While the statistics alone are striking, even more profound are the hidden stories behind the data. As such, in this piece, we share the reflections and experiences of Joshua, an autistic young person who has the lived experience of feeling let down and misrepresented by the current system and who has vital ideas on how it might be reimagined to prevent the same thing happening to others.

“The big problem with existing assessments is that they are the be all and end all when you leave school.” Joshua

The same idea is expressed in the opening sentence to this article and yet what this means for young people can often get lost in the statistics. For Joshua, who at the time of writing is applying for apprenticeships, the implications are clear.

“I can only put my grades, not the fact that I spent most of my A-Level time suffering through extreme mental health issues and that it was a miracle I even made it to sit the examinations, not the six times I almost dropped out and came back to them later… It becomes really difficult to come out the other side and still be a strong candidate when the only important thing is what grade you got.”

Joshua’s solution to this problem would be for schools to recognise the skills that young people have through a more flexible approach to curriculum and to assessment. In Joshua’s case, he has a talent and passion for computer programming and, while he was able to take this as an A-Level, he was still assessed within the constraints of that curriculum and the conventions of exams.

“In my A-level computer science class we had people who had never opened the Python Editor before and we had people like me who had made full video games in one day before… I would be running off doing these ultra-complex things at home that would never be recognised because they weren’t even remotely related to the curriculum. Like, I can make a video game using languages that the curriculum doesn’t even know exist. And I’m just sitting there doing these things, but none of them get recognition. I can do all this stuff and it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t what I was told I had to do. I didn’t fit that specific guideline and therefore it’s not good enough.”

By having a curriculum that is less constraining, less of a rule book, there would be more scope for teachers to work with young people in their area(s) of interest and strength, aligned with their passions. While this would have benefits for all learners, there would be particular benefits for some autistic young people who often have a special interest or aptitude. Recent research by King’s College London, for example, has shown that when adults are accepted as having a special interest, and where it is responded to positively, recognised and valued, this can lead to them excelling in the linked curriculum area (Wood, 2021).

As not all neurodiverse young people will have a special interest that can be assessed within school, it is also worth considering other ways in which a more flexible assessment process would be beneficial. Here, Joshua has further important ideas to share.

“Assessment as it is now is not actually really a test of knowledge, but more a test of memory. I found often that those kinds of assessments really did not work for me, but one that I really excelled in were the two B-techs that I took in Business and Digital Media. Instead of having this one assessment that you’re building up to and studying in unhealthy ways for, you’re working on it throughout the entire course. It’s not one giant thing, it’s a bunch of smaller things. Break one big problem down into a bunch of smaller ones, and suddenly it becomes less of a big problem.”

Joshua’s views about coursework are echoed in the academic literature, which has shown the pedagogical benefits of such forms of assessment, as well as the fact that students prefer it to exams (Richardson, 2015). Despite this, under the current assessment system in England, none of the Maths, English or Science GCSEs have a coursework component which counts towards a student’s final grade. As such, the work that a student does across two or three years of study is condensed and assessed through a few hours of exams. This in turn then shapes their future opportunities. Joshua considers this system to be a particular challenge for autistic young people as “Often the pressures of the school system can break a student so easily and so quickly. And it becomes really difficult to come out the other side and still be a strong candidate when the only important thing is what grade you got.”

There are two more things that we know about the lack of fit between the current assessment system and neurodiversity. One was well articulated by Joshua: “If you emphasise ‘standards’ and ‘standardisation’, then by definition this will not work for autistic young people who are, by definition, non-standard.” The other, which is linked, relates to the idea of “spiky profiles”. Autistic learners are less standardised, less conventional – they have great strengths alongside different challenges. An assessment model that emphasises the challenges (e.g. writing essays) and minimises the strengths and passions (e.g. technical capability, creativity) will serve both autistic youngsters and the system badly.    

Endnote

Joshua’s views are those of just one student, but the dearth of autistic voices in both the academic and non-academic literature in this field makes this a provocative contribution and one that we hope is built on by further activity in this area.

References

Richardson, J. T. (2015). Coursework versus examinations in end-of-module assessment: a literature review. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(3), 439-455.

Richardson, M. (2022). Rebuilding Public Confidence in Educational Assessment. UCL Press.

Wood, R. (2021). Autism, intense interests and support in school: From wasted efforts to shared understandings. Educational Review, 73(1), 34-54.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • What rings true for you in Joshua’s comments?

  • You will almost certainly have neurodiverse learners in your school. Might a small piece of research or a focus group with them help to unearth challenges they face to which you could respond?

Three Big Ideas for Assessment for Schools Hoping to Do Better

13th June 2023Website Admin

Three Big Ideas for Assessment for Schools Hoping to Do Better

Julie Temperley

1. Agree together the outcomes you value most for your learners (the knowledge, skills, values and characteristics). Which of these do you currently assess well?

Some things to try:

Run a whole school enquiry to surface what learning teachers, learners, families, and the wider community consider most important to be able to assess or demonstrate. Knowledge is sure to feature, but so too will skills like problem-solving, and characteristics like confidence and kindness.

Explore together how much time is spent in school on assessing learning that is not congruent with the things that you value.  Do you have the balance right?

Co-design with staff, students and stakeholders a learning dashboard that teachers and learners can complete together to track and communicate progress in knowledge, skills and characteristics important to everyone in the school and beyond.

2. Expand the range of assessment tools and methods used in school and grow teachers’ confidence and capability in their use.

Some things to try:

Group assessment – instead of awarding individual marks, teachers and learners agree assessment criteria for group work and, on completion, the whole group gets the same mark. This approach is especially useful in project-based learning, but can be applied to any group-work activity, and encourages the development of skills for collaboration, teamwork and shared responsibility.

Routinely include an element of self-assessment – learners use the same criteria as teachers to “mark” their work, then teachers and learners discuss the differences between their assessments and what might sit behind these.

Mastery learning – learners explore success criteria at the beginning of a unit of learning (perhaps using “exemplar work”) and make as many attempts at some or all of the assessments as they need to, in order to identify gaps in their knowledge and skills. They can then seek help from their peers, teacher or other resources to address the gaps. Learners do not move onto the next unit of learning until they are confident they have mastery and can pass the assessment.

A variation of mastery learning is repeating assessments but with reduced support, where success becomes a learner being able to complete similar tasks over time with an increasing degree of independence.

3. Engage a wider range of people and perspectives in assessment, including learners and their families – and ensure that teachers are all “assessment literate” to lead this.

Some things to try:

Co-design of assessment rubrics and criteria charts – teachers and learners work together to design a rubric that describes success criteria and sets out what good looks like. Rubrics like this are often co-designed on the basis of shared examination of an exemplary piece of work, identifying and agreeing what makes it so good. Rubrics promote learner agency and empowerment by giving learners a sense of control over their learning and how they are being assessed.

Learner portfolios – portfolios and learning passports record learning in a variety of ways, for instance using narrative and photographs and annotated copies of learners’ work to give a clear and detailed perspective on what the learner has achieved and why this is important to them. Recently, digital tools have expanded the range of evidence and examples that can be collected in a portfolio, to include video, audio and presentations, for instance.

Exhibitions of learning – there is a long history of exhibition or performance as a means of making achievement visible and assessing it. Art exhibitions, drama or music performances, sport, chess tournaments – there are multiple examples. More significantly, there are examples in the UK and around the world of schools where exhibition and learner portfolios are the principal forms of assessment.   

Final word

There is, of course, much more that we could add to this – and much more was contained in the Critical Friendship Group conversation from which this article was drawn. What all the suggestions have in common, though, is that they are driving towards assessment processes that facilitate growth, the exploration of oneself, deeper learning and self-worth. They are about creating – for all learners – hope for the future.

Acknowledgements

This article has been developed by drawing on contributions made in a Gesher School Critical Friendship Group by generous friends and colleagues who are expert in assessment and/or neurodiversity. They are:

Dr Amelia Peterson (London Interdisciplinary School)

Alison Woosey (Bolton Impact Trust)

David McVeigh (Head of Assessment Design at Pearson UK)

Kelly Sanders (Former USA school principal; consultant)

Joe Pardoe (School 21 and Big Education)

Joshua Gross (a neurodivergent school-experienced young person)

Anne-Marie Twumasi (Big Change)

We would like to take this opportunity to offer our sincere thanks for the time, energy and insight that each of our critical friends brought. Your advice and ideas are already making a difference.

Leaving Learners in the Dust

12th June 2023Website Admin

Leaving Learners in the Dust

Authored from the outcomes of a Critical Friendship Group discussion on Assessment, November 2022

Assessment, neurodiversity and some ideas for how schools can do better

For the team at Gesher School, who are committed to personalised, project-based and real-world learning for students with neurodiversity, finding appropriate, reliable and motivational ways to assess learning and to provide the feedback and recognition of learning that learners need to progress is an ongoing and very practical challenge.

Joshua, a recent graduate from sixth form college, explained his experience with assessment – on this occasion his A-Levels – like this:

“The big problem with existing assessments is that they are the be-all and end-all. You either fit the mould or you don’t and, if you don’t, you really are kind of left in the dust. Most people don’t fit the mould – and especially neurodiverse people don’t – so that does lead to problems.”

Unfortunately, Joshua’s experience is far from unique. Too many learners find themselves left in the dust by assessments that test the wrong things, at the wrong time, using the wrong measures.

And the cost of getting assessment wrong can be very high indeed, as Joshua points out:

“So often the pressures of the school system can break a student easily and quickly. And it becomes really difficult to come out the other side and still be a strong candidate when the only important thing is what grade you got.”

So what is so wrong with assessment? And why are these failings especially problematic and potentially harmful for neurodiverse learners?

 

Five Things Wrong with Assessment in Schools

1. Schools assess all learners at the same time

Partly because of the way the school year is constructed and partly driven by the drop-deadlines of national standardised testing at 16 and 18, assessments in schools follow a rhythm that is largely dictated by how much of the curriculum it is possible to cram into any given period. Learners study skills and knowledge through the curriculum and then teachers (or exam boards) use assessments, usually tests, to measure how skilled or knowledgeable learners have become after an allotted time has expired.

This model is so familiar that it feels like the only sensible way to approach the timing of assessment. It isn’t. In most other aspects of their lives where learning features, learners choose, with the help of their teacher or mentor, when is the right moment to complete an assessment. From gymnastics badges to music grades; the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award to driving tests, learners and teachers work together to agree the best moment to assess progress. By assessing all learners at the same time, schools ignore everything we know about how learning happens, specifically that different learners learn different things at a different pace and that the right moment for assessment – the moment that is optimal for learning – will therefore be different too.

What if… individual learners and their teachers could decide together when to begin a formal assessment, at a time when each learner feels ready and confident to “take the test”?

2. Schools only assess what’s taught in school and/or by teachers

“I can make a video game using languages that the curriculum doesn’t even know exist, but none of them get recognition. I can do all this stuff and it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t what I was told I had to do. I didn’t fit that specific guideline and therefore it’s not good enough.” Joshua

Curriculum so dominates in schools that not only does it dictate the pace of learning, it can also constrain the scope of learning too. This may be an unintended (but not unnoticed) consequence, amplified by assessment, which concentrates on learning that is delivered in school and by teachers and ignores learning that happens at home, in sports clubs, dance or music schools, or anywhere where it is unseen by teachers.

What if… schools could recognise learning that takes place in these other settings and celebrate the full range of knowledge and skills that learners have acquired?

3. Schools assess everything that is taught in schools and/or by teachers

In the interests of leaving as many doors open as possible for learners’ futures, schools crowd their timetables with curriculum and assessments, some of which are, for the vast majority, irrelevant to where learners want to go next. This squeezes out other learning opportunities that might actually engage and inspire learners to choose and follow a path they can feel passionate about. Schools waste so much time deciding what learners should care about and what help they might need to get there when, with a little more trust, curiosity and empathy, they could simply ask them. And many learners are exhausted by cramming for tests across a much wider range of subjects than they could ever possibly need.

What if… individual learners could choose to be assessed in specific areas of their learning only where a standardised recognition or qualification is helpful?

4. Schools (mostly) assess learning when learning is ‘finished’

There is no question that many teachers skillfully incorporate formative assessment into their practice, for example, in how they ask questions in class and the assignments that they set. However, it is also the case that most formal assessment of the kind that makes it onto report cards and transcripts happens at the end of modules or units of learning when they are summative and final, often pass or fail, and always too late to act upon.

What if… learners could practise assessments numerous times and get the feedback they need to achieve mastery, before deciding to “take the test”?

5. School prioritises assessments that schools and teachers are judged on, not assessments of most value for learners

In our highly regulated education system, it is unsurprising that the people who lead schools are anxious to demonstrate that their school and their staff can deliver the results that the system demands. Reputations and livelihoods depend on it. Unfortunately, the system, comprising around 24,000 schools serving just under nine million learners in England, also requires those results to be demonstrated with a high degree of standardisation to facilitate judgments about quality, consistency, value for public money and so on. Standardisation also helps keep costs down and makes moderation possible (although not inevitable, as is demonstrated by the removal of several education ministers shortly after results day).

This is all very understandable and has really very little to do with learners and their individual or personal needs, now and for their futures. Worse, it produces assessments and a related culture which, as we have seen, are arguably not in any learner’s best interests and, for some learners, can be horribly damaging.

“Assessments led me into a very unhealthy revision cycle. Assessment as it is now is not actually really a test of knowledge, but more a test of memory, so you end up sitting in a Costa drinking more coffee in one hour than I would in a week normally, just to stay awake, then sleeping three hours a night, cramming knowledge just to end up being tired on the day and messing up the exam.” Joshua

What if… schools were empowered to assess and celebrate learning that was of the highest value to the learners and communities they serve?

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • Which two of these five “What if…” statements most resonate with you?  What would you need to do to introduce practices that were consistent with them?

  • How might you assess and recognise young people’s achievements outside the classroom and at home?

  • How might the agency of young people feature more strongly in the assessment approaches at your school?

Why Gesher is Now an All-Through School

12th June 2023Website Admin

Why Gesher is Now an All-Through School

Sarah Sultman and Sam Dexter

In early 2018, when Gesher was a newly opened primary school, we were focused on primary education and growing the pupil population at the school. Having recently opened in 2017 with just seven pupils, whose parents bravely took a leap of faith in sending their children to a brand new, untried and untested school with no track record, we had not thought about what might happen to our students when they reached 11 and would need to leave to find appropriate secondary schools.

In a meeting with a donor, he suggested that we consider becoming “an all-through school”, a term we weren’t familiar with. It felt like too big a leap, too big a dream to entertain; we were too busy navigating Ofsted and determining our primary curriculum to even imagine that this might be a consideration. But the seed was planted nonetheless.

In the early stages of the creation of Gesher, we had been inspired by the advice and counsel of James Wetz, author of Urban Village Schools (see The Bridge 1). His research was strongly influenced by the small-school movement in the US which provides a fertile environment for authentic peer-to-peer and student-teacher relationships, safety, learner-centred empowerment, and community involvement.

It was not, though, until early 2020, during Covid, that the plans for Gesher to become an all-through school really developed with speed. By then we were fast approaching 40 pupils and were growing out of our space on the temporary site that we were renting. We became increasingly mindful that our oldest learners were approaching year six and that we would have to signpost them to their next school. Yet, the choices were few and the demand for good secondary provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) far exceeded the supply in our area and in our community. Our learners were thriving with us, too. And so, the next stage of the Gesher story began in earnest.

All-through schools are not a new idea. There are many of them, particularly in the private and SEND sectors. Private schools often have primary, middle, and upper schools that share a campus, or a private secondary will have affiliated and well-known feeder schools. What this provides, for pupils and their families, crucially is continuity; providing stability and creating a community with long-lasting relationships. The independent SEND sector mirrors this. Over the years we have visited over 50 schools around the country to learn from others, to seek out best practice, to establish which models work and why, and to harness what we have gleaned so that we can implement and incorporate those things that work uniquely well at Gesher.

There is little research on the comparisons between all-through schools versus the standard model of a separate primary, secondary, and sixth form. It is interesting, though, that the private and independent SEND education sector has developed this model as a way to recognise the value of growing and developing their students all the way through. The state sector, conversely, has been driven instead to create huge economies of scale in large secondary schools. The overriding impression we gained from all our visits was that, for children with SEND, all-through schools provide a long-term stable environment where the pupils are well known to all the staff – and where they understand and respect each other, too. Peer relationships are celebrated at Gesher and benefit all of the pupils. Our older students mentor the younger ones; they become role models, giving them a sense of responsibility. As one parent said:

“It’s great for my child to be around older kids who are also neurodiverse. It creates a real community.”

When we sought to expand the school, the views and perspectives of the parents were important to us. We know that transitions are a particularly challenging time for autistic young people and for their parents. In addition, we were aware that for our young people, new environments and their spiky profiles mean that it takes time for staff to know and understand their needs. As two parents at Gesher articulated so well:

“Especially for neurodivergent children who prefer familiarity and routine, having primary and secondary school in the same place makes it a safe space and one they can rely on. Additionally, they won’t ‘lose’ time getting to know a new environment and people and likewise a new set of teachers and peers getting to know them.”

“(We value) knowing all the good work that has been put in during the primary years can be built on and not having to worry about the transition to secondary”.

Thus far, all the families that have attended Gesher primary have chosen to remain at the school, where they feel supported and understood, into the secondary phase. Another parent, whose child is now in the secondary phase at Gesher, felt the continuation of the same curriculum ideas was really important for their son:

“Now Gesher’s an all-through school it is wonderful, especially with the new Life Skills provision that the school now offers. It means that our son will be able to continue to thrive and be happy in an environment that can support his needs.”

Gesher is a learning community, one which puts relationships at the heart of its organisation and design. Attachments and relationships are key to our pupils being stable and happy learners, comfortable in their environment, with their self-esteem enhanced, and confident in their sense of place and space. For our parents, too, it provides security and stability:

“One of the big reasons we chose Gesher is that it is currently a through school. We need a school that will teach kids the skills they need as they become adults, and there’s not really any school like that, especially a Jewish faith one, apart from Gesher.”

__________________________________________________________________________

In designing their secondary provision, the Gesher team has cast their net wide for examples of schools that make being small in size part of their success story.

Since 1991, the New American Schools Initiative has opened 2,600 new small high schools in 45 states across the USA. Two of the most globally influential school models have arisen as a result:

  1. Big Picture schools, founded by Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor (now 65+ Big Picture high schools in 18 states and more around the world). These small, personalised schools, started for drop-out learners and graduate 92% of their students on time, compared to a national average of 84%.

  2. High Tech High (HTH) is a community of 16 elementary and high schools in the San Diego area creating an all-through local school system. Some 98% of HTH’s graduates have been admitted to college or university. About 35% of HTH graduates are first-generation college students and 85% of their free-school-meals students complete degrees.

With their focus on the centrality of relationships and the personalisation of learning that arises from knowing students well, young people in these schools thrive and consistently outperform teenagers in conventionally sized, conventionally structured high schools with comparable demographics.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

All-through schooling is not an easily available option for most schools.

However, some of the features that professionals and parents value in all-through schools – relationships, deep knowledge of learners, security, and personalisation of approaches – can be adapted for more familiar models of schooling.

The professional prompts that follow respond to the question: “How could we help different phases of schooling to incorporate some of the virtues of all-through provision?”

  • Is knowledge transfer about students primarily documented or also face-to-face? How is the more subtle knowledge of children and families communicated?
  • When there are concerns about a student in their first year after transfer, is the relevant feeder school teacher consulted and involved?
  • Does your school have any teacher exchanges with your feeder school to build empathy and to forge relationships?
  • Are feeder school staff invited to events and productions and activities involving their former learners?
  • When achievements are celebrated, is the contribution of the feeder school recognised?
  • On graduation from your school are feeder schools notified of results and destinations – can they share in the successes?

Reimagining Schools By Design: Assessment, Pedagogy and Curriculum

12th June 2023Website Admin

Reimagining Schools By Design: Assessment, Pedagogy and Curriculum

David Jackson

Teaching: the design and facilitation of great learning through relationships

This short article is about the second phase of the process Gesher School undertook to design the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment they knew they would need to do a brilliant job for children who learn differently, as they moved from primary into their secondary education; from childhood into adolescence, from primary to all-through.

The ‘school design lab’ process – eight workshops involving about 100 stakeholders, completed in March 2021 – resulted in a blueprint for this new school ambition. You can see the final version of the Gesher School Blueprint here: https://gesherschool.com/about-us/blueprint/.

It is worth looking at – for its comprehensiveness, its ambition, its philosophical coherence and the obvious seriousness of intent. Beyond that, there is much to recommend in the evident way it unites a school community (internal and external) around a shared mission and sets out the practical requirements needed to achieve this.

The process to develop the blueprint began by asking “What outcomes do we want all our learners to achieve?” We started with a pie chart (six slices), one of which already had “good exam results” filled in, as a given. The task then is to populate the other five slices. (It could be six slices saying “good exam results” if that’s the only outcome that matters – but in a decade of doing this activity, exams have never featured more than once.) The result? Agreement about the purpose of the school and the outcomes for all learners that matter to the school community.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Having agreed purpose and outcomes, the next stage in the process was the development of a set of design principles to achieve these, which form the values and practice architecture – the “laws with leeway” – for the school. In that process the Gesher team engaged with the designs of highly successful schools around the world, in a process known as horizon scanning, to find inspiration and ideas that would help them to learn from the very best that exists and has evidence of success.

You will find more on the Gesher school design process in The Bridge Issue 2.

Having the purpose, outcomes and design principles agreed upon, the next couple of workshops focused on assessment, pedagogy and curriculum.

Assessment

The Gesher Blueprint, then, sets out the school’s desired outcomes. They include: skilled for the future workplace; confident in their sense of self; builders of meaningful relationships; and ethical and responsible citizens. Finding meaningful ways to assess, recognise, accredit and value these – to validate them – is the next stage in the design challenge.

Another desired outcome is qualified for the next stage, and while existing accreditation pathways can obviously fit that bill to an extent, they don’t get close to assessing “meaningful relationships” or “confidence in sense of self”.

Fortunately, there is a different audience for some of these outcomes – the students themselves, their parents, peers, community members, etc – and there are known ways of doing it. There are exhibitions, digital badges, portfolios (real or digital), records of achievement, transcripts or even a unique, composite and personalised School Diploma owned and endorsed by all stakeholders, incorporating a range of such validation methods.

Professionals generally agree that schools should be free to assess what they value, rather than driven to value what is assessed. Gesher’s Blueprint states that it will generate unique profiles… affirm talents… recognise unconventionally expressed achievements… and work of relevance to the community and the world. This ambition is shared by many schools and there are, as we have seen, a range of possible ways of assessing what is valued. However, few schools do. Gesher, in this respect – as in many others – aspires to be a “beautiful exception”.

Pedagogy

Ask secondary teachers about their professional knowledge-base and most will probably talk about subject expertise. This is not their professional knowledge-base: it is what they bring in service of their professional knowledge-base. Lots of geographers or scientists or linguists don’t teach.

Teachers’ professional knowledge-base is the design and facilitation of great learning through relationships. It is the creation of apt pedagogy combined with personalised knowledge and understanding of learners. In other words, teachers are designers. They create great pedagogical designs together.

Only, in most schools, they don’t.

To do this requires scope for interdisciplinary planning; it involves real-world relevant tasks (to make learning matter); it will deploy a repertoire of assessment methods (appropriate to the task, relevant for each person); and it requires time deployment that allows on-site and community learning. This is different from 25 one-hour lessons. It also requires that teachers have time together (to design together).

For Gesher, and for most of the astonishing schools around the world that were studied in the horizon scanning, Project-Based Learning (PBL) provided at least part of the pedagogical solution. Real links have been made with the professional PBL knowledge-base from High Tech High and Expeditionary Learning Schools as international examples and with XP and School 21 as domestic ones. Additionally, Gesher commissioned the support of Imagine If to help facilitate its journey.

Gesher, together with a number of other schools of course, deploys time and space flexibly (the subject of a future article); combines a core of subject teaching with flexible interdisciplinary learning opportunities (PBL); deploys a range of assessment approaches relevant to the task; and, because it is a SEND school (although all schools are SEND schools), integrates into learning designs therapeutic approaches and support.

And these rich approaches, whilst great for students, are also fulfilling for the professional lives of teachers.

Curriculum

If pedagogy is how we teach stuff and how learners learn it, and assessment, broadly speaking, is the range of ways we let students and other stakeholders know how well they are doing, then curriculum is simply the range of material – the content – we want students to learn.

For most secondary schools the curriculum is pretty straightforward: divide what we teach into “subjects” and have specialist subject teachers deliver it in lessons lasting about an hour. The learning week, for learners, is therefore a jigsaw puzzle of disconnected hour-long subject lessons (French, then PE, then English, then Science, then Maths….) and fragmented relationships.

There is another way.

Gesher’s curriculum statement emphasises “the application of knowledge through real-world assignments and projects… rooted in Jewish values… highly personalised and responsive to individual interests, aptitudes and needs”. Much is packed into those 24 words:

  • Application
  • Real-world uses
  • Projects and assignments
  • Overt values components
  • Highly personalised

What all this means practically at Gesher is that the curriculum contains all the subject knowledge required, some of it taught as it has always been taught, but much of it designed into projects, with real-world relevance (perhaps real-world need) within which students express agency, personalise their contributions and also integrate or enact the values from relevant parts of their culture. They might be assessed in a range of ways, singly or in combination – tests, exhibitions, vivas, presentations, peer evaluation, portfolios, or whatever.

Endnote

The Blueprint design shows graphically that desired outcomes (purposes) frame everything and lead to school design principles facilitative of those outcomes. In other words, “Here are the things we want all learners to achieve and to do and so we need our school to be designed with features like this.”

The heart, the driver, the energy source to achieve this is the integrated and interrelated core of assessment, pedagogy and curriculum. Beyond that, there is a range of further features related to technology, time and space; culture, leadership and professional development; parental partnerships and community relationships.

More of that next time, perhaps.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • If your school was to do the pie chart activity – the six outcome areas that really matter to you – what would be included? (You could try it as a staff workshop activity.)
  • What scope is there in your school for teachers from different subject disciplines to plan learning together? What could there be?
  • Do you agree with the definition of teaching at the start of this piece? If so, what implications might that have for your teaching or your school?

Creating Better Schools by Design

15th December 2022Website Admin

Creating Better Schools by Design

David Jackson

 

Ask most people to draw a house and nine times out of ten the house they imagine will be a square box, with four square windows, a pitched roof with a chimney, and often some smoke curling into the sky.

We share a mental model — a blueprint — for what a house is and should look like. We don’t stop to wonder:

  • Does our house have to be square or could it be a different shape?
  • Should it be one storey high, or two, or three?
  • How many windows of what size should there be, really?
  • What purpose does the chimney serve?

Our shared ideas about schools are fixed in much the same way.

There are variations, but our mental model for school tends to include classrooms, corridors, rows of desks, students grouped according to age, one-hour lessons, subject teaching, tests, and so on. This model is based on schools designed in the past. We don’t stop to question whether the school, which we are after all drawing in the C21, should be — needs to be — very different from the blueprint created decades ago. We might ask:

  • What ideas about learning are informing the layout of our school? What might classrooms look like if we thought of them as places where great learning can happen?
  • Does all learning need to be packaged into ‘subjects’?
  • Are one-hour lessons the best unit of learning?
  • Is one teacher with 25 students better than two teachers with 50 students?
  • Why are all students assessed at the same time when they mature differently?
  • Do we have to assess by written exams emphasising memory?

… and so on.

Designing a new school for real is a chance to ask questions like these, and to ensure that the new school is more than just an improvement on the existing model.

“Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.”

At Gesher School, staff, students and parents know how badly a change to the model is needed because most of Gesher’s learners have struggled in schools like the one most of us would draw. So, Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.

Gesher was transitioning from a highly successful primary school to becoming an all-through learning community and needed to find a new school building and facilities, recruit staff, create a secondary school curriculum and reframe its mission and identity.

The leaders of Gesher School knew they needed to go way beyond improvements on the existing model, to design a whole new way of thinking about and doing school, in ways that learned from and built on their experience with primary-age children. They asked:

How might we design an all-through school that will offer success, enhanced self-esteem, personal efficacy, and progression opportunities for all our young people? 

Secondly, in doing so, how can we involve multiple stakeholders in our design process?

Thirdly, how might we stand on the shoulders of existing practices around the world?

The design process that Gesher School entered into comprised eight workshops, each involving different stakeholders, which resulted in a school blueprint for:

  • A bold vision and purpose; and
  • A set of values-based design principles; which were
  • Brought to life in plans for a range of innovative features that add up to a very different kind of school.

Upwards of 100 school staff, parents, students, community members, and other local stakeholders contributed to this seriously intentional and inclusive school design process.

Each issue of The Bridge will address an aspect of Gesher’s school redesign process. This issue focuses on the first two of the eight school design workshops that Gesher School undertook, which concerned (i) purpose and (ii) design principles.

(i) Purpose

Gesher’s discussions about purpose started with identifying their ‘non-negotiables’. Non-negotiables tell everyone what is and is not on the table; what is and is not within the scope of the school design team to change. Examples might be ‘no selection by ability’ or ‘the school will be co-education’ or, in Gesher’s case:

  • We are a school for a specific cohort of children with SEND, including language, communication and social pragmatic issues.
  • We are a Jewish faith school.
  • We utilise real-world learning and projects to foster curiosity and connect our young people to authentic issues and problems.

These clear non-negotiables influenced design features relating to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, to faith observance and understanding, and to the design of curriculum and pedagogy.

A further key defining issue for Gesher to articulate was purpose – the vision and outcomes to which the school community would aspire. Being clear about what the school had to achieve with and for students; about the purpose of learning; about what matters for the community of the school — staff, students and parents – was an essential bedrock of the design process.

Within the current system, aiming for good examination outcomes is a given, and if that was all that mattered, then job done. However, during the workshop, through extensive discussion – and many post-its – it became clear that exam success on its own was not nearly enough. In brief, the outcomes Gesher agreed are that young people should become:

  • Skilled for the future workplace
  • Qualified for the next stage (exam results plus)
  • Independent learners
  • Confident in their sense of self
  • Builders of meaningful relationships
  • Ethical and responsible citizens.

These, one might hope, could be purposes shared by most if not all schools, but two things qualify them as exceptional in Gesher’s context.  The first is the inclusiveness of the intent. They are purposes for all students, regardless of their prior educational history or unique needs.  The second is to remember that Gesher is a school for children with identified SEND needs, most of whom have been unable to thrive in mainstream schools.

“Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them.”

(ii) Design Principles

Workshop two was exclusively concerned with design principles and involved staff at the school considering  the question: What would be the design principles or features of a school that can confidently achieve these outcomes for all its learners?

Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them. They used this as a basis to shape their own, then tested the resulting principles they created together using personas of children at Gesher, asking: Would this work and how would it work for Amy or Peter?

Next Time — Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment

Agreement on these three components — the non-negotiables, purposes and design principles — precedes work on designing the more practical features of a school. Clear purposes provide a constant reminder of exactly what we aspire to achieve with and for learners and their families. Design principles provide the guiding architecture that relates to these purposes. They are ‘laws with leeway’ that frame what we do and how we do it. They are also the features that unify and inspire those who work in a school, and they guide and discipline decision-making.

With these three in place, the design process moves to consideration of the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices that will be informed by and consistent with the design principles and which will enable every student to achieve the outcome ambitions. That is for next time.

Designing New Schools in the USA

In America, there is a long tradition of creating new school designs. Some of the most successful schools in the world have been created in this way – Expeditionary Learning schools; High Tech High (some of whose resources we share later); Big Picture Learning schools; New Tech Network are all examples. The Gates Foundation alone funded more than 2,500 ‘small school models’ across the United States, and New York alone has 200.

Not all of these new school models have been equally successful, of course. However, their students consistently outperform their peers in conventionally sized and structured high schools with comparable demographics. There are some common design features across the majority of these models — and they are very different from the conventional UK school — they all:

  • Focus on the centrality of relationships and personalising learning — have ‘advisory’, where advisory is the soul of the school, symbolising relational support for students
  • Include project-based learning, an engaging and empowering pedagogical model, which also requires teachers to collaborate as designers of learning
  • Have a pervasive cultural identity and school-level ownership of what matters, including what is assessed and how and by whom it is assessed
  • Facilitate powerful and sustained adult learning.

The Cost of Not Having New Models in the UK…

Not to foster innovation in school design means that we constantly focus on striving to improve the existing school model – a model more than 100 years old and out of date.

It is a model with multiple features crying out for redesign. For example, it has failed to achieve equitable outcomes, or to address socio-economic challenges, or to engage disengaged learners — or to fully engage most learners, for that matter. Nor has it provided teachers with an intellectually challenging profession, or excited and involved parents around the experience of their children.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • The design process described above is effective applied to existing schools as well as new ones — revisiting purposes and design features together as a prelude to reviewing wider practices.  Might this have value for your school?

  • The review detailed above distilled six clear outcomes that Gesher is committed to evidencing for all learners. Does your school have similar clarity about its purposes?

Redesigning Education: What Can and Should Philanthropic Organisations Do?

15th December 2022Website Admin

Redesigning Education: What Can and Should Philanthropic Organisations Do?

Ali Durban & Paul Ramsbottom OBE, The Wolfson Foundation

Paul Ramsbottom OBE is Chief Executive of The Wolfson Foundation, an independent grant-making charity, funding programmes and activities throughout the UK. The Foundation’s fundamental aim is to improve the civic health of society, mainly through education and research. He is also the Chief Executive of a linked charity, the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust.

Gesher School was delighted to receive a grant from the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust in 2021 to adapt and equip a Maker Space in our building. We value enormously our relationship with Paul and with the Wolfson charities because our values and mission are closely aligned and we recognise the important role that philanthropic organisations like The Wolfson Foundation can play in helping schools who want to do things differently to realise their ambitions.

We asked Paul to share with us his thinking about the role of philanthropy in education in the 21st century. Here’s what he told us…

Discussions about the role of philanthropy in the English education system have tended to polarise around two extreme positions.

At one extreme is the view that education in modern society is the preserve of Government alone, and that there is therefore little or no role for philanthropy. This is a view frequently expressed on social media, often by people who are knowledgeable about or involved in education.

At the other extreme is an articulation of a role for philanthropy that in some ways lets the Government off the hook, by plugging gaps that probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.

In between these two extremes, and in reality, there are at least three important roles that philanthropy plays:

The first is to support innovation in education; to fund schools, colleges and universities to trial new ideas. By being the provider and underwriter of risk capital in the education system, philanthropists enable educators to do things that the Government can’t or won’t do or support.

The second is to fund capital infrastructure projects necessary for ambitious organisations to fulfil elements of their strategic vision, which would otherwise be unachievable. Buildings and equipment are difficult to fund from statutory sources and can rarely be afforded from core funding. Philanthropy can provide the additional funding that organisations need to really allow them to fly.

The third role for philanthropy, beyond funding for innovation or infrastructure, is as part of a wider ecosystem of organisations, including Government, professional educators and civil society, who are stakeholders in education and who work, together and separately, to bring about system change that will benefit children and young people.

Some philanthropists take a campaigning and lobbying approach, which can be extremely effective. The Sutton Trust, for instance, with its focus on education for social mobility,   consistently campaigns for better support in our education system for our most disadvantaged children and young people.

The Wolfson Foundation is not a campaigning organisation; on occasion, however, the Foundation funds research that grows system capacity and capability and contributes significantly to the body of knowledge necessary to support system change.

Recently the Foundation has invested heavily in children and young people’s mental health, with significant funding going to school and community-based initiatives which aim to help children struggling with anxiety and depression.

Already a growing problem, the pandemic exacerbated challenges facing children and young people, who are presenting in higher numbers than ever before with poor mental health. It’s a huge problem facing many Western societies, including our own. However, it is also a problem that is poorly understood. Whilst we might all share some intuition about why this generation of young people seems to be more troubled than previous generations — the prevalence and role of social media, for instance — the reality is that we don’t actually know. Even if our hunch is right, we need evidence to be able to take on social media companies and persuade them to make the necessary changes.

The Wolfson Foundation is funding research into a range of practice approaches that aim to build young people’s resilience to deal with the challenges that life unfortunately throws at us all, as well as improving access to high-quality therapy and clinical support.

An example of this is the new Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health in Cardiff.  Waiting times in the current system are lamentable and the answer can’t simply be to try and provide more counsellors than ever. In the meantime, children and young people continue to struggle without the help they need.

Philanthropic funding should be a resource for everyone.

We need complete systemic change and there is a role for philanthropy in achieving that, both in terms of the research we can fund and providing support for innovators who are trying different ways of working.

Making Philanthropy Accessible to Everyone

If we truly believe that philanthropy can and should have a role in a modern education system, then it becomes really important that access to philanthropic funding shouldn’t simply be the preserve of schools that happen to have an affluent parent community or have professional or fundraising skills in their governing body. Philanthropic funding should be a resource for everyone.

Over the last couple of years, The Wolfson Foundation has been working with a number of partners to create a completely free framework and toolkit for every school in the country. It’s a kind of A to Z  or ‘How To…’ of fundraising for schools hoping to look, perhaps for the first time, beyond their parents and local communities for financial support for their plans.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • Is there a project in your community that needs transformation, perhaps a physical learning space or a bold idea?

  • Can you capture why it is so critical to your students, and how it will change their outcomes? Will you be able to evidence this?

  • Have you researched the costs to fund the project and produced a budget to support it?

  • Are you aware of opportunities for philanthropic support in your area?  Is your organisation and proposal eligible for funding? Are there other funding opportunities beyond your local community?

  • Could the framework and toolkit mentioned above be of value to your school?

Where Do Projects Come From?

15th December 2022Website Admin

Where Do Projects Come From?

HTH Unboxed

We would like to thank High Tech High for their generosity in allowing us to share in The Bridge project cards and the occasional article from their Unboxed journal.   

High Tech High in San Diego, now some 16 small schools serving over 6,000 young people K-12 across four campuses, is one of the most feted and influential school designs in the world. It is known for its commitment to a project-based curriculum, to relationships, to deep learning and to the development of students through the development of staff. More relevantly for The Bridge, HTH is also committed to sharing practices and learning in multiple ways. They have a graduate school supporting Masters degrees for their own staff and others; they host literally thousands of visitors to their campus each year; they facilitate a MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) available internationally and, for the last 14 years they have published their own adult learning journal, making it available both in hard copy form and via the Unboxed website, which is a rich treasure trove of resources.

Where Do Projects Come From?

by Angela Guerrero

On a cold October morning, my colleague Breawna and I carpooled to school together as we often do. I piled my bags into the back seat, hopped in the passenger side, handed over a cup of coffee, and settled in for a drive full of teacher talk. The topic of discussion, as it so often is, was how to make projects meaningful and still hit the content needed in the history standards. This is an odd question for us to ponder, since we teach at a school that alleviates some of that “standards” stress by asking teachers to teach what they are passionate about through projects. But there we were, without the pressure of a frustrated principal or a zealous department chair, agonising over our fear of not giving the kids enough content. This may be because we both started our teaching careers at traditional high schools, attended traditional universities, and attended traditional high schools where school looked very much the same; teachers lectured, students feverishly took notes, a test was given, an essay written and a grade awarded that measured proficiency on some standard. Breawna and I are both struggling to define what education is all about, and building the curriculum around projects requires a break from the past that is often difficult. But on that morning when Bre asked me, “Where do good projects come from?” I felt I finally had something to say.

Eleanor Antin, “The Tourists” from Helen’s Odyssey. Copyright Eleanor Antin. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, www.feldmangallery.com

This question, and the struggle to meet standards, plagued my first year teaching at High Tech High Chula Vista. So much of my work in the first year was simply writing and reading a pretty standard English class by most accounts. As I entered my final grades and completed my first year of teaching, I made a promise to myself to create engaging projects that would also comfort me by hitting standards. But what were the projects going to look like? Where would I get the ideas? Where did projects like that come from? Thirty journal entries, ten morning walks, hours of reviewing the state standards and countless conversations with friends left me no better off with my query as the summer days slipped by. I decided to simply enjoy summer for a while and return to the burning question in August. But then something happened that answered my questions. And it happened while I was enjoying myself, no less.

My sister invited me to a local museum to see an exhibition called “Historical Takes”, by Eleanor Antin. I sauntered into the swanky evening exhibition expecting to be impressed by the art. Indeed I was, but it turned out to be a lesson planning adventure like no other. Antin had created a collection of photographic portraits depicting historical tales from ancient Greece and Rome with feminist spins on the events. Helen of Troy was a devious vixen slinging a rifle on her hip. Ancient Grecians strolled casually by the dying veterans of the Trojan War with shopping totes and sunglasses. Wealthy Romans dined in elaborate clothing while servants died in the wings unbeknownst to their masters. And next to each scene was an explanation of the artist’s “take” on it. I was fascinated and found myself wondering how the artist came up with her interpretations. Then I wondered how I would create scenes from different time periods from different perspectives, say, a nihilist’s perspective, or a child’s perspective on the French Revolution. As I gazed at more images, and wondered more about how to create my own, I felt my legs tremble with delight. I had reached a new understanding. “This is perfect!” I exclaimed, to the surprise of the museum docent. History, photography, costume design, set and scene design, research, literature — all these things were present in the work. And they could all be studied in a project modelled after this exhibition. It almost felt like cheating since the idea came to me, not when I was agonising over the state standards or feverishly writing up drafts at my desk, but rather while I was out looking at art and doing something I enjoyed. From this outing, my 35mm Revolution project was conceived. In this project, students choose a revolution to research and write about and then choose one scene to re-enact in a photographic portrait. We plan to unveil the students’ artwork at High Tech High Chula Vista’s 2009 Festival Del Sol.

After the “art aha moment” as I now refer to it, I started thinking about projects while doing all sorts of things I love to do. Checking out music at local venues, I thought about starting a local artist Rolling Stone magazine to teach writing, photojournalism, editing and advertising. Running through the city, I thought about “walking a mile” in the shoes of someone who was homeless. Hiking up in the Sierras, I thought about nature reflections, the history of natural parks and the preservation efforts in California. It seemed that every time I was doing something I truly enjoyed, a new idea for a potential project sprang into my head. Some of the project ideas had been done before, but somehow, this new revelation made them feel fresh, pristine.

Do what you love and let the project drive the curriculum. These are the mantras of my wise teaching partner, Rod Buenviaje. Rod would listen patiently as I voiced my concerns about my inability to come up with what felt like meaningful projects. At the end of each conversation, he would repeat these mantras. I would nod in agreement and stare blankly out the window. I could never fully comprehend what he meant. After viewing Antin’s exhibition, however, the mantras made sense. I was doing something I loved. I was passionate about it. I wanted the kids to see it. I wanted to teach it. It turned into a project that would guide the curriculum.

So, where do projects come from? My answer is this: they are born in the places we love to visit, the things we love to see, the tasks we love to lose ourselves in. They are the things we find exciting. They are the things we deem worthy of writing essays and graphing charts about. They come from teachers who fall in love with something and decide to share that something with their students.

To read this article online, and to see High Tech High’s full collection of project cards, visit:

https://hthunboxed.org/blog/unboxed_posts/where-do-projects-come-from/