“Yes,” we said. “The
hundred is there!”
Valdine Ciwko, Deanne Lawder and Gary Thompson
Vancouver, British Columbia
No
Way. The hundred is there.
The child has
a
hundred languages
(and
a hundred hundred hundred more)
but
they steal ninety-nine...
—Loris Malaguzzi
(Edwards, Gandini & Forman,
1998: 3)
Children
enter school as proven learners who are intensely
curious about the world around them. They have developed
learning strategies which have allowed them to acquire,
and, in some cases, master, complex bodies of knowledge
and activities such as speech and language, social
structures and behaviours, right and wrong. This
knowledge has mostly been acquired by informal experimentation
and discussion; hypothesis making and testing; questioning
which arises naturally in the play; and meaning-making
of their home and surrounding environment. Very little
if any of this knowledge is acquired in settings,
or via processes which bear a resemblance to what
we see in typical school classrooms.
It
seems to us, three primary teachers with varying
years of experience about to embark upon our research
of Exploratory Time, that as young learners move
through the school system, their curiosity wanes
and their freedom to learn in the style which they
have innately developed becomes more restricted.
We believe that teachers in general fail to trust
children’s instincts to learn things, and how and
when they need to learn them. They are then measured
on their ability to retain what we think they should
know and graded like commodities in the market place.
“What
would it look like if we gave one hour of
every school day to students to let them learn
what
they want to learn?”
Steven
Wolk asked this simple question in an article entitled “The
Benefits of Exploratory Time” from Educational
Leadership Vol. 59, No. 2, Oct,
2001 and it has become our question too.
Encompassed
in it are many questions of curriculum delivery.
Who makes the decisions in the classroom about what
is learned or not learned? What is the actual role
of the teacher and how do we carry that out? What
is the actual role of the student and how does they
carry that out? How do different teaching styles
(i.e. direct instruction, cooperative learning) affect
learning? What does time on task and engaged learning
look like? If children are learning what they really
want to learn, is discipline an issue? What matters
more, product or process? What is considered successful
learning? How can we be accountable for students
learning what they need to learn?
Giving
students Exploratory Time each day to learn about
what they want to learn may strike some educators
as a waste of valuable school time. On one hand,
it may seem to be setting up an unstructured free-for-all
approach with little actual learning going on and
with the implication of little responsibility on
the part of the teacher. On the other hand, maybe
an undertaking like this actually requires even more
planning, preparation and structure on the teacher’s
part.
All
three of us work with young learners between the
ages of five to eight years of age. At these early
ages, children do not have much choice or control
in their daily school lives. They rely on parents,
babysitters or older siblings to get to school. Most
of what they do in a day is directed by someone else,
either their parents at home, or their teachers at
school. Yet the driving force for us to try Exploratory
Time with our young students is their unending curiosity
about the world they live in, a curiosity that has
manifested itself daily in our classrooms since the
beginning of the school year. Their interests are
myriad. But would they be able to sustain a self-directed
study of one of these interests?
How
much will we need to direct? How many will be able
to formulate questions that they can seek the answers
to? Will we, as teachers and as classes, be able
to survive the anticipated chaos of so many people
doing so many individual activities at once? How
will our special-needs students fare? How will an
autistic child, or the children who are at earlier
stages of English language development cope? What
kinds of questions will come up? How will we set
up the project? How will other teachers view what
we are doing? Will our administrators see the value
in our research? What will the reaction of parents
be?
What
would a classroom look like if we gave one hour of
every school day to students to let them learn what
they want to learn? Would this way of teaching address
some of the questions we have carried with us since
the start of our teaching careers? Where might this
research lead to? Will our teaching be changed as
a result? We looked forward to exploring the possibilities.
The
Write Stuff
Steven
Wolk’s challenge “Let’s give one hour of every
school day to students to let them learn what they
want to learn.” (Wolk, 2001: 56) became
the catalyst for our research question. Many educators,
such philosopher and educator such as John Dewey
in the early 1900s, Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the
Reggio-Emilia Approach in Italy in the 1940s, and
free school thinkers such as John Holt of the 1960s,
plus Steven Wolk, Lilian Katz and Sylvia Chard today,
have grappled with the quest to find the individual
in the learning process and how education occurs
in an institutional setting.
Our
question is clearly situated in the debate concerning
the basics in education, as curriculum theorist Madeleine
Grumet discusses it. She says, “...education is about
a human being making sense of her life in the world,
and when we confuse her movement with the stops on
her itinerary, or worse with someone else’s travel
memoirs, we obstruct it” (Grumet, 1996: 17). Our
question, seen in this light, is an attempt to allow
our students to move on their own journey, without
predetermined stops imposed by curriculum or us.
Philip
Jackson’s “The Daily Grind” (1997) is a haunting document which forces
us to stop and think about what our students are
really learning when we think we are teaching them
something else.
As he learns to
live in school our student learns to subjugate his
own desires to the will of the teacher and to subdue
his own actions in the interest of the common good.
He learns to be passive and to acquiesce to the network
of rules, regulations, and routines in which he is
embedded. He learns to tolerate petty frustrations
and accept the plans and policies of higher authorities,
even when their rationale is unexplained and their
meaning unclear. (Jackson, 1997: 99)
Jackson
goes on to say, “Curiosity, as an instance, that
most fundamental of all scholarly traits, is of little
value in responding to the demands of conformity” (Jackson,
1997: 99-100). No teacher would come right out and
say that we teach conformity over curiosity but just
what are we teaching when we redirect a student who
has strayed from a lesson, or is not doing what we
want them to do? Yet the nature of the educational
institution dictates that we must teach conformity
in order to survive in that very institution!
Faced
with a return to an increasingly conservative approach
in education, it does not completely surprise us then
that to date we have been unable to find any recent
research addressing the issue of student choice and
freedom, specifically in the Kindergarten to Grade
Two classrooms. We did find educators whose work inspired
and encouraged us to forge forward in our research.
Perhaps our findings will begin to fill in the huge
gaping hole of research around this issue. We do believe
it will mark the beginning of life-long personal action-research
and the continual quest to see what it looks like
when we give children time each day to learn about
what they want to learn.
Valuable
historical views and insights have been gained from
reading John Dewey. He believed that learning was
fundamentally a social process and that in order
for students to attain their natural potential they
needed to interact with a rich environment rather
than endure a process akin to filling empty minds
in static bodies with information. In summing up
his pedagogic creed regarding education Dewey wrote:
…I believe that the individual who is to be educated
is a social individual, and that society is an organic
union of individuals. If we eliminate the social
factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction;
if we eliminate the individual factor from society,
we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass.
Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological
insight into the child’s capacities, interests, and
habits.
It
naturally follows that he would see the school in
a similar light. He states:
…the school is
primarily a social institution. Education being a
social process, the school is simply that form of
community life in which all those agencies are concentrated
that will be most effective in bringing the child
to share in the inherited resources of the race,
and to use his own powers for social ends. (Dewey,
1940: 6).
As
our students engage in the process of investigation
of their own interests during this project, we hope
we will witness their enthusiasm and imagination.
Dewey felt imagination had a fundamental role in
education.
The imagination
is the medium in which the child lives. To him there
is everywhere and in everything which occupies his
mind and activity at all a surplusage of value and
significance. The question of the relation of the
school to the child’s life is at bottom simply this:
Shall we ignore this native setting and tendency,
dealing, not with the living child at all, but with
the dead image we have erected, or shall we give
it play and satisfaction? (Dewey, 1990: 61).
It
could be argued that Dewey’s views of education were
developed in an unrealistic setting, which makes
his theories difficult if not impossible to implement
in regular public school systems. If Dewey is an
ideal, what sort of guidance do we take from him?
We certainly feel a closeness to his pedagogy and
feel we are striving to move in a similar direction
to him in many ways. Yet we must not feel discouraged
by his advantages nor bound by his direction. If
we are to benefit from him, we must find ways to
use his ideals in whatever way we can in our own
crowded and challenging situations. Fundamentally,
we feel his beliefs and comments about education
apply as much today as they did when they were written.
It is perhaps a sad reflection on the progress of
education during the past century, that debate still
rages over his progressive views, and that we have
not been able to move more quickly to embrace his
pedagogy.
That
ideals similar to Dewey’s can indeed be the inspiration
behind progressive, project oriented education in
a practical setting is nowhere more evident than
it is in the northern Italian town of Reggio-Emilia.
Not unlike many places in Europe, the immediacy of
rebuilding the town after the devastation it incurred
during the Second World War included the rebuilding
of schools. That a radical vision of a different
approach to education would be born in this small
town is no real accident. In an interview with Loris
Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio-Emilia Approach
schools, he said of the parents "They asked
for nothing less than this school, which they had
built with their own hands, be a different kind of
school, a school that could educate their children
in a different way than before" (Edwards, Gandini & Forman,
1998: 58).
This
is a region of Italy which is known as the “red belt” and
where the Communist Party has been very strong. With
the establishment of fascism in 1922 when Mussolini
came to power, these parents knew what it was like
to grow up in an educational system with repressive,
fascist, authoritarian values. Participation in the
resistance to fascism had been strong here. These
parents were determined their children would not
live in the same oppressive, authoritarian world
that they had grown up in. They had a radical vision
of a different world for their children and a different
way of learning.
Thus
a project-based approach to teaching was established
in 1946 and has had a significant impact on education
in many places around the world since. From the start,
the integration of the entire community was first
and foremost a priority. And in a small Italian city
with a central square onto which the school was built,
this is immensely easier to achieve than in a sprawling
North American urban centre. But it is here, in this
small northern Italian town that people from all
over the world come to see and learn about project-based
learning. The implications of this approach are serious
ones for our research topic. These educators believe
that:
when the topic
of a project is very familiar to the children, they
can contribute to the project from their own knowledge,
and suggest questions to ask and lines of investigations
to pursue; the children themselves can take leadership
in planning, and can assume responsibilities for
specific observations and information and artifacts
to be collected and closely examined. Such projects
that involve young children in investigating real
phenomena offer them an opportunity to be the natural
scientists or anthropologists they seem born to be.
(Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1998: 33).
The
entire approach to education seems to be one of continuous
research and reflection and a belief that if we stand
back and study children seriously we will end up "discovering
not so much the limits and weaknesses of children
but rather their surprising and extraordinary strengths
and capabilities linked with an inexhaustible need
for expression and realization" (Edwards, Gandini & Forman,
1998: 78). They are firmly committed to a teacher
always being a researcher.
What
encouraged us as we prepared to embark on Exploratory
Time in our classes was the uncertainty the Reggio-Emilia
approach acknowledges.
It is true that
we do not have planning and curricula. It is not
true that we rely on improvisation, which is an enviable
skill. We do not rely on chance either, because we
are convinced that what we do not yet know can to
some extent be anticipated. What we do know is that
to be with children is to work one third with certainty
and two thirds with uncertainty and the new. The
one third that is certain makes us understand and
try to understand. We want to study whether learning
has its own flux, time and place; how learning can
be organized and encouraged; how situations favourable
to learning can be prepared; which skills and cognitive
schemes are worth bolstering; how to advance words,
graphics, logical thought, body language; symbolic
languages, fantasy, narrative, and argumentation;
how to play; how to pretend; how friendships form
and dissipate; how individual and group identities
develop; and how differences and similarities emerge.
(Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1998: 89).
What
we set out to do over a two-week time-period is something
they have been working on for nearly fifty years!
Yet something in the three of us made us willing
to take the risk of the uncertainty in exchange for
the possible. And it is the work of places such as
the Reggio-Emilia schools which encourages us even
in the difficult times in which we teach.
There
are those who wish that the Reggio-Emilia approach
could simply be packed into a manual and sent off
to set up in schools all over North America but it
is not merely an educational philosophy, it is integrally
tied to a culture and way of life unique to Italy.
But
there is much that can transferred from one culture
to another. The impact of those who have gone to
observe in Italy is significant. Lilian Katz and
Sylvia Chard are two such influential people who
have spent a lot of time learning from their Reggio-Emilia
colleagues. In their work, Engaging Children’s
Minds: The Project Approach, they acknowledge what they learned there and
explore what this means to learning and teaching
in a North American context.
Katz
and Chard see the teacher’s role as an advisor more
than instructor. Project work begins with discussion
and then moves from fieldwork or finding information
sources to a clarification of what the child wants
to find out. This is followed by the actual investigation
or research component and concludes with the display
or sharing of what has been learned (Katz & Chard,
2000: 73). Most importantly they remind us that a
commitment to project work means a teacher’s
willingness to accept all the children in a class,
at whatever
level they may be. They believe that project
work:
takes into account
all four kinds of learning goals: the acquisition
and construction of knowledge, the mastery of social
and basic skills, and the strengthening of important
intellectual and social dispositions, as well as
the development of desirable feelings...Project work
can provide activities in which children of different
ability levels can contribute to the ongoing life
and work of the group. (Katz & Chard, 2000: 97).
Steven
Wolk’s vision of the ideal classroom is one that
would be seen as celebrating the ninety-nine or hundred
more languages of children by nurturing meaningful
literacy and democracy. Like John Dewey, Wolk believes
that democracy is a way of life that embraces the
ideals of community, empathy, the common good, responsibility,
freedom, equality, thoughtfulness, and critical consciousness.
However, Wolk has taken Dewey’s ideals and transformed
them into a workable reality in today’s classroom.
Wolk
reflects on memories of his own schooling and details
how he strives to empower the children in his classroom
to think for themselves. “I was determined to make
my students’ experiences in school purposeful and
meaningful, because I realized how meaningless and
purposeless—how regressive—my own had been” (Wolk, 1998:
viii). Wolk has been able to step beyond what he
was taught in his teacher education and engage in
a process that would, on one hand, benefit the students
in his classroom and, on the other, be viewed by
many as controversial especially with the current
push for schools to teach children the basics.
Although
teaching the basics provides a delivery system that
seems to fit the need of today’s school system, Wolk
reminds us that most adults, including teachers,
passed through just such a system and he asks us
to
Think about all
those years and all of that stuff you were made to
study and read about and write about and take tests
on. Now ask yourself this: How much of all that content
is an important part of who you are today? Let’s
make the question even easier: How much of all of
that stuff, the lectures and textbooks and worksheets
and essays full of the history, the science, the
math, the reading and writing, do you know right
now? (Wolk, 1998: 35).
A
question like this begs us to examine why we continue
to teach the way that we were taught and gives us
the inspiration to try something that seems so radical
yet simple at the same time. In giving children time
each day to learn about what matters to them we must
open our own minds as well as the minds of the children
in our classes to learning in a new way. We will
become facilitators in their learning process, suggesting
new directions as needed and guiding them in their
search for, and understanding of, information. Just
as Wolk did, we will step back from our role as teachers
and join our students as learners.
Steven Wolk believes that children from Kindergarten to Grade Twelve
would benefit from learning through Exploratory Time
even though all his experiences have been with students
from Grade Four through Eight. When we contacted
him, he was unaware of other teachers engaging in
Exploratory Time with students as young as ours.
This seemed to be confirmed by our inability to find
supporting research through libraries and online
databases. Why is there such a gap in the research?
In summing
up this review, it is important to note that, what is, simply is. In terms
of our project, we are faced with the ‘what is’ of
twenty-first century education in British Columbia.
We are teaching in a system which in many respects,
bears little resemblance to Dewey’s ideals, and which
is loath to give the time to independent investigations
as proposed by Wolk. We were however, intrigued by
the concepts evolving from our research and eager
to test them out in a field setting and evaluate
the results.
Where
Did We Do It and Who Did We Do It With?
We all teach in a large metropolitan
area in British Columbia. The schools we work in
are quite different.
What
Did We Do?
Our
methodology of choice was participant/observer. From
our readings, and our interpretation of what Exploratory
Time might be, we felt that a methodology that recognised
we would be active players in the research and not
merely observers would be crucial. And while we set
out with the same approach to the research, we each
agreed that we would make modifications to suit our
own situations and teaching styles as we found it
necessary.
Exploratory
Time was introduced through discussions with all
our students. Students were asked to think of a topic
they would like to learn more about. They were told
they would have an opportunity to research the topic
of their choice and present their learning to the
class in any manner they chose. In Deanne’s and Gary’s
class, a set of easy to read picture books covering
various topics was used to stimulate interest and
ideas. Valdine enlisted the assistance of the librarian
and did a similar book walk with the students to
help in their topic selection. We each sent a letter
home prior to the actual start of Exploratory Time
informing families of the topics and suggesting possible
ways they might aid in their children’s learning.
Our
classroom expectations for Exploratory Time were
established with the children right at the start.
These rules included: 1) Serious work time; 2) 8cm
voices; 3) Ask a friend for help; 4) Wait patiently
to talk to your teacher if someone else is talking
to her/him; 5) Share things; and 6) Tidy up neatly
and carefully.
We
had talked about using some sort of dress code to
signal when Exploratory Time was underway. Deanne
and Gary chose a clipboard as their signal. Valdine
donned a white lab coat to inform her class that
they were involved in an experiment for the University.
We all told the children when Exploratory Time was
commencing. We each had specific notebooks to record
observations and notes as well as a checklist we
had designed. However, from the start of Exploratory
Time, it became obvious that it was going to be heavy
on the participatory end and very difficult on the
observer end. Most of our recording of notes and
observations happened at the end of the day.
Deanne
and Gary both visited the school’s library and took
out books on each of the children’s selected topics.
Gary supplemented this with a visit to the public
library. They also enlisted the help of older students
in the school. Deanne’s students’ “big buddies” came
on the first two days to act as readers and scribes,
assisting only when a Kindergarten specifically asked
for help. Gary’s buddy class found information related
to their little buddies’ topics and then they spent
an hour with their little buddies, sharing what they
had found. The week preceding Exploratory Time, all
of Valdine’s students went in small groups for forty-minute
sessions with the librarian to learn how to research
and gather material on their topics. As the week
progressed we found ourselves bringing in other items
related to the children’s topics—rocks, fossils,
information from the internet, books from our own
homes. Each of us used a system of plastic tubs labelled
with each student’s name and topic title to store
and organise research materials. The children quickly
learned to find their own research tub and set to
work. Any additional material they brought was added
to their tub.
Time
was set aside in the teaching schedule so that
the students could engage in their Exploratory
Time for
up to an hour per day. Deanne’s morning and afternoon
Kindergarten students, who attend school for two
and a half hours daily, worked for thirty-five to
forty-five minutes each session. Gary and Valdine’s
students worked at least one hour per day. These
sessions were scheduled at various times each
day, depending on other time commitments in their
daily
schedule. Gary chose the first part of each day
for Exploratory Time, as it seemed to have the
fewest
interruptions associated with it. Valdine had
to schedule the one-hour blocks at various times
throughout
the week with sessions in the morning the first
two days and afternoons for the rest of the week.
Deanne
asked her students to find one fact per day and used
a small booklet for them to record their observations.
This took the form of a picture. The Kindergarten
students would then ask Deanne to help them write
words to describe their learning and copy the words
into their booklet. Students often chose to complete
more than one page each day. Gary asked his students
to find one thing that they wondered about their
topic and one thing they had learned. They wrote
these, and other bits of information they discovered,
on a large 11x17 paper. Gary encouraged his students
to report in a variety of ways such as making a poster,
a play or a picture. Valdine started off by giving
her students an 11 x 17 paper folded into four pages
labelled My Question, I Know, I
Wonder and I Need. She purposely kept
the directions vague and open-ended and did not specify
in what way learning needed to be shared.
As
Exploratory Time progressed, Deanne and Valdine both
enriched the process by bringing in videos on various
topics where they were available. Deanne invited
a Grade Seven student to bring her dwarf hamster
to visit a group of four girls who had selected hamsters
as their topic. This same group visited a classroom
of deaf students who had a Teddy Bear hamster as
a class pet. This was a wonderful learning experience
for both groups of students. (Deaf students as teachers
and Kindergartens learning in a new way!) She also
provided a real world focus for the gardeners by
bringing in seeds and inviting the gardening group
to bring a pot of dirt to plant them in. Gary was
able to locate a collection of rock samples which
supported two of the projects in his room. Valdine
brought her fossils from the Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.
Deanne’s
students engaged in their first Exploratory Time
topics for five days and then immediately embarked
on a second topic using the same methodology. Exploratory
Time, including the reporting process, lasted for
six school days in Gary’s room. While the actual
identified Exploratory Time lasted for only five
days, including research time in the library and
sharing what they learned the following week, it
took a total of fourteen days in Valdine’s class.
If
You Build It They Will Come.
What
did we actually see in our classrooms during the
course of Exploratory Time? In reporting our results,
we again take our lead from Steven Wolk by organizing
what we saw according to the principles which he
believes underlie the exploratory process.
It nurtures a love
for learning.
Wolk says “Our schools don’t really value living a curious life and
pursuing their own learning: if they did, there would
be nothing controversial about Exploratory Time” (Wolk,
2001: 57). Even before embarking on Exploratory Time,
all three of us have been committed to encouraging “living
a curious life.” Throughout the year we continued
to bring in things and put them out to explore. Some
were related to what we were studying, others are
just neat things we stumbled upon and thought the
children would like to see and feel. Primary students
are curious, and with good reason. There really is
so much that is new. Our students were enthusiastic
to partake in our research with us. From the very
point of introducing the idea and just looking at
books to see what they might choose to learn about,
there was a palpable buzz in each room. All of our
students were able to identify something they wished
to learn about. And, while several students changed
topics a few times before we officially began, once
Exploratory Time was underway everyone stayed focussed
on the same topic for the week. One interesting observation
was that in the Grade Two class, it was the children
who usually do the best in daily work who had the
most difficult time settling into the week. Yet they
all remained committed to, and excited about, the
idea of Exploratory Time. All the students wanted
to do it again and identified what they would like
to learn about next. In fact, Steven, a Kindergarten
student exclaimed, “I want to keep doing this
until I’m an old man and even then I still want to
keep doing it!!” Steven got his wish, and the Kindergarten students continued with
Exploratory Time for the rest of the year!
It encourages meaningful
learning through intrinsic motivation.
Wolk
argues that if the learning comes from within us,
it is deeply purposeful. We witnessed this in our
classrooms. In Kindergarten, Jason researched Volcanoes
on the Internet and made a poster with his Mom. Pierre
researched his family and did a report on his grandfather
who was a policeman in his native country. Kris went
home and built seven different kinds of boat models
the weekend before we were to begin because, once
he had chosen his topic, he just couldn’t wait to
start! Jasmina, who changed her original topic the
Friday before we were to begin, went to the public
library that weekend and made pages of notes about
bugs since she wanted to assure her teacher she was
serious about her topic and not just changing to
work with her friends. Later in the week she also
stayed up till eleven-thirty one night thinking and
planning her group’s presentation. Arlan became completely
fascinated by the names of the places fossils come
from and the whole notion that humans evolved! Manji,
a Grade Two student who on a daily basis is scattered
and very disorganized, revealed an entirely different
side during Exploratory Time. Midway through the
week her teacher discovered Manji’s notebook from
home. In it was a list of all the things her group
still needed to do, carefully and methodically thought
out. This side of Manji had not appeared in daily
classroom activities, either before or after Exploratory
Time yet here was proof that when something truly
mattered to her, she could be quite focussed on a
task!
During
Exploratory Time most children did not come up with
the usual “I don’t get it!” or “Do
we have to do this?” Instead they came up to say things like “Is
there a video on my topic?” “Can we please have more
red paint?” More importantly,
we were not having to redirect children to their
work and not one of us heard the dreaded words “I’m
finished!” Some students even traded
choosing time or asked for additional time to continue
working on their Exploratory Time topics.
It creates true
communities of learners.
Wolk
talks about “a social classroom environment that
helps them become active and responsible community
members. Exploratory Time reflects learning as a
social act.” We each liked the way our classrooms
looked and felt during Exploratory Time. They were
very busy places but interestingly enough the noise
level was not nearly as loud as we had expected.
We think this was because everyone was so committed
to their tasks that the talk was indeed purposeful.
A typical scenario of that hour-long time would look
a little like this. Depending on the classroom, children
would group themselves around tables, on the floor
or at other centres where space permitted. Some worked
at their own desks. A particular topic on video could
garner anywhere from one to six keen observers. A
real-live scientist working with two students could
become the focus of a whole class for that day.
While
a video was playing there might also be another student
sprawled out on the floor in front of the video reading
facts from a book or working on a picture or poster.
Some students even spilled out into the hallway,
using cardboard and paint to construct a doghouse.
There was cross-pollination from topic to topic.
Velma took a break from studying penguins for an
afternoon to help Frida with a tricky aspect on the
bird feeder she was constructing. Harold would let
people know that the next movie up was about their
topic. Students would see something that caught their
interest in a video that was playing and leave their
work to watch for a while. We did not once hear “STOP
IT! You are bothering us.” or “Go
away.” People
were mostly mindful of other’s things and, with so
many things spread out around the room and particularly
on the floor, there were no disasters. When someone
spilled something they quickly began to clean up
and, on many occasions, others came to help.
While
many students were doing independent topics, those
working in groups worked extremely well together.
They helped one another and shared ideas and tasks.
Ours were very social rooms, in a very pleasant and
friendly way. People were genuinely curious about
what one another were doing and helpful if someone
needed assistance. In the week before Spring Break,
while other students and teachers anxiously awaited
their week off, we were all happily and enthusiastically
engaged in our explorations.
It develops self-esteem
and celebrates uniqueness.
Because
the only real expectation we set for the students
was to pick a topic they wanted to learn about, and
decide how to share what they learned with the rest
of the class, the possibilities were endless. Although
we each had different expectations for the children
in our classes, we were all less concerned with product
and much more concerned with process. It mattered
that they learned, not if they had a book made or
a poster completed, or a play to present. Kris, a
Grade Two student, struggled with reading and writing.
Yet he set the bar high for his class in terms of
sharing what he had learned when he brought in his
boat models. Did he learn something? You bet! Did
the other students appreciate what he shared? Absolutely.
In
each of our classes there were examples of children
with special needs actively engaging in their topics
and with their peers. Cynthia, an ESL Kindergarten
student with Down’s Syndrome, thoroughly enjoyed
each session. The improvement in her drawing and
social interactions exceeded what had been seen prior
to Exploratory Time. The other students were thrilled
when she would approach them and show what she had
learned about cats or bears. Veronica, a Grade Two
student with Down’s Syndrome produced a video on
her topic of dogs with the help of her EA. The other
children all gathered around to watch the video and
to celebrate Veronica’s achievement. Bob, a Grade
Two child with autism, who is also learning English
as a Second Language, did his first oral class presentation
on birds during Exploratory Time, which was exciting
for everyone in the class.
Once
the students began sharing what they learned, the
questions and comments reflected a genuine interest
in individual topics. What is also interesting is
that when asked about what they would study next
if they had another Exploratory Time, many chose
topics others had presented.
It uses real-world
resources.
We
used both school and public library books as the
primary source of information. In addition some children
used the Internet, and we tried to get in as many
videos on topics for students as we could find in
our school libraries. Jasmina visited a museum where
her father had to make a video to bring and share
with the class! Many more real things began to appear
in our classrooms—fossils, rock samples, and seeds.
A Grade Seven student brought her pet hamster to
the Kindergarten class, which provided a very live,
hands-on experience for their hamster study. Barry
and Steven, who were studying scientists, were thrilled
to have a visit from a real live biologist, who also
happens to be the father of a student in the class.
That day every Kindergartener wanted to be a scientist!
(See Appendix A)
It brings more content
into the classroom.
Over
that week, Deanne’s two Kindergarten classes were
studying fifteen topics, Gary’s Grade Ones and Twos,
seventeen topics, and Valdine’s Grade Twos, thirteen
topics (See Appendix B). Even if we filled our rooms
with lots of interesting items to stimulate the students’ curiosity,
we could not have covered such a myriad of topics.
What’s interesting about the actual topic selections
is that they fit within the primary curriculum but,
as teachers, we would never think to expose our learners
to them all at once. It makes us ponder this in relationship
to a word wall. A noted Californian literacy consultant,
Donna Gordon, points out that you should put your
entire word wall up all at one time since you never
know which words a child will be seeking at a particular
moment. Maybe this holds true for possible learning
topics too?
It teaches skills.
First
the students had to decide on a topic to learn about.
They had the opportunity to look through many books
to encourage a broader view of what was possible
but in the end the selection was theirs alone. Some
may have caved in to peer pressure but those that
did stayed true to the eventual topic and did great
work.
In
the first session of Exploratory Time, the Kindergarteners
needed a lot of support to learn how to use books
as research tools, however as the week progressed
their newly learned strategies allowed them to become
much more independent. Gary and Valdine were purposely
vague in their directions and instructions. They
wanted to see what it would look like without telling
their students what they should do and how to do
it.
Valdine
enlisted the aid of the librarian who agreed to take
small groups to go over research techniques and find
topic-related books in the library. A sneak peak
during one of these sessions was a delight. Jemma
and Teri, two tiny Grade Two girls, were almost buried
behind the butterfly books they had spread out before
them. Head to head, they were reading facts and pouring
through the material.
The
five students exploring bugs were having a hard time
coming to any decisions about what bug or bugs to
study, but then this is a group for which the social
aspect was as important as the chosen topic! This
group, the only mixed gender group, included Darren,
the student who had been identified with FAS. Throughout
Exploratory Time he bothered no one. His final comment
stated how much he liked cooperating with his group.
That in the end they worked together and created
a puppet show is testimony to how they coalesced
as a group.
Mervin
was carefully flipping through spider books at
his table. The librarian noticed something unusual.
After
finding the non-fiction section on spiders, Mervin
chose very few from the shelf. A closer look
revealed that he had picked only books with photographs.
She asked why he had so few and he responded that
he
wanted “real” information. He thought drawings
meant they were fiction. She cleared this up
for him and
he chose many more books. If his mother asked
him “What
did you learn today?” he
would likely have said “Nothing” or perhaps shared some fact about a spider he liked, but he would
not have said “I learned non-fiction books can
have drawings just like made-up stories.” But
this is knowledge he will have for life!
Our
students didn’t just rely on paper and pencil but
instead learned how to use a variety of mediums to
represent their learning. These ranged from building
models to surveying class members’ opinions.
It nurtures creativity
and imagination.
Our
learners have not been in school long enough to know
what a project really is and we didn’t want to influence
the students with our thoughts of what a project
should be. Our emphasis was on the learning process
more than a finished product. Whether we gave them
a book to record their learning in or asked them
to give us a list of materials they thought they
would need, their creativity and critical thinking
was evident every day in their exploratory work.
While
some students in the end chose to just tell what
they learned, we also had models, painted posters
(Maria’s humorous slogan on her gardening poster
read “Peas rule the Earth”), craft
items, games, books with illustrations, a large mural
painting, a puppet show complete with both puppets
and stage created for the production, a cardboard
doghouse, and a video. Not bad for a week’s worth
of Exploratory Time and open-ended expectations of
product on our part.
“Yes,” we
said. “The hundred is there!”
The
declaration of the parents in Reggio-Emilia in the
1940s “against the betrayal of children’s potential,
and a warning that children first of all had to be
taken seriously and believed in,” (Edwards, Gandini & Forman,
1998: 58) rings so true. How many times leading up
to the actual project did we each doubt our students’ abilities
to rise up to the challenge? Along with this, how
many times did we doubt ourselves?
Yet
in the end we were rewarded with “discovering not
so much the limits and weaknesses of children but
their surprising and extraordinary strengths and
capabilities linked with an inexhaustible need for
expression and realisation” (Edwards, Gandini & Forman,
1998: 78). Our willingness to risk the uncertainty
was well worth the experience and has changed how
we look at what we can do in our classrooms. Just
like Steven in Deanne’s class said, we too want to
keep doing this until we are old and even then we
want to keep learning and teaching like this!
Our
students were eager and well behaved. And we, as
instructors, in spite of the pressures of doing this
for research, enjoyed a certain freedom as well to
be encouraging, enthusiastic, supportive and, yes,
even finding we had a little bit more time with individuals
than we often have. Our worries about the parents’ reactions
actually turned into an increase in parental interest
and involvement both at home and at school. Our classrooms
were filled with students and teachers who were happy
and productive.
Wolk
argues that school should be a place where children
and adults work together as a community of learners
(Wolk, 1998: 35) and perhaps this is why our roles
as observers became so impossible to maintain. We
were too busy being part of that community of learners
to remain unconnected. And it was a very exciting
place to be!
Chard
and Katz had reminded us that project work meant
a willingness to accept all the children in a class
(Katz & Chard, 1998: 97) and what we witnessed
during Exploratory Time reinforced this. Troubled
children worked happily alongside others with no
words of reprimand from the teacher; unfocused children
stayed on task for the whole period of Exploratory
Time; children who could not read or write were not
denied the chance to learn something new and share
what they learned in whatever fashion they determined,
not a prescribed assignment by the teacher. And there
was respect and an acceptance of these different
learning and sharing styles among the students themselves.
Was
Exploratory Time a resounding success for all the
students who participated? We can answer yes, but
it comes with a qualifier. While all of our students
enjoyed Exploratory Time, not all of them were so
able to embrace the openness and freedom awarded
them. It seems that even as early as Grade Two, some
of the students who traditionally do well in our
classes are already entrenched in checking to be
sure that what they are learning is what the teacher
thinks is important. They seemed to have not fully
allowed themselves to step outside of the box and
break from the need of teacher approval. Happily,
this did not seem to be the case in the Kindergarten
classes. Yet in the end, it was a resounding “yes!” from
all of our students when asked if they would like
to learn this way again.
“Yes,” we said. “The
hundred is there!” We watched, we listened and we heard them. Some
of their voices are deafening in their strength.
Some of their voices are subdued, hidden a little
from us so we can’t steal them away, but growing
stronger as they see no resistance. Sadly, a few
could barely whisper, having already lost most
of the hundred other ways to look and see and speak.
They have learned too well “to think without hands,
to do without head and to listen and not to speak,
to understand without joy and to love and to marvel
only at Easter and Christmas” (Edwards, Gandini & Forman
1998: 3). They think that they do not know and
it is their teachers and adults who are the ones
that know. But they are young enough to try again
and maybe, just maybe, the hundred are still there
after all.
Reflections one year later...
Resources
Dewey, John. (1990). The School and Society and
The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, John. (1940). Education Today. New York :Van Rees.
Edwards, Carolyn,Gandini, Lella, & Forman, George.
(1998). The Hundred Languages of Children—The
Reggio Emilia Approach—Advanced Reflections (Second
Edition). Greenwich, Connecticut: Ablex.
Grumet, Madeleine R. (1996). The Curriculum: What are
the basics and are we teaching them? In Thirteen
questions. Reframing education’s conversation (2nd ed.) Kincheloe and Steinberg
(Eds.) New York: Peter Lang. 15-22.
Jackson, P.W. (1997). The Daily Grind. In D.J. Flanders
and S.J. Thornton eds. The Curriculum Studies
Reader New York: Routledge.
Katz, Lilian G. & Chard, Sylvia C. (2000). Engaging
Children’s Minds: The Project Approach (Second
Edition) Stamford, Connecticut:
Ablex.
Wolk, Steven. (1998). A Democratic Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Wolk, Steven. (2001). The Benefits of Exploratory Time. Educational
Leadership. 59, (2) 56-59.
