From pizzas flying in the air to frustrated fits when trying out unfamiliar equations on sites like Khan Academy, the days are blending from one to the next! One element that remains constant, which is a must in the educator’s world, is the ability to do SOMETHING with the learning that students are completing, and I am not talking about grading and responding to the student work completed. Without this (doing of SOMETHING) key maneuver in teaching, learning can and most certainly will be lost to mere memorization and route (“busy”) practice work. What I am talking about, with reference to making the learning come to life, is not always inherently covered in the learning process when providing authentic transitional contexts from teacher-to-learner that I addressed in the last blog. Rather, there exists another part of the teaching equation that needs some attention, especially for parents who are now serving as the “front-line” team in delivering educational needs to their children of varying ages.
In the first weeks, most educators and parents alike established a routine. Structuring the day with a clear beginning and ending time for their children to focus on learning. This allowed for parents to attempt working from home in shifts, at least that was the goal. Suddenly homes, across our Nation, were transformed this spring: building make-shift Makerspace learning stations in garages or basements for kids to create and build things; assigning a book shelf or cabinet for a substitute cubby/locker space in the main hallways or our mudrooms (my son even decorated his space with a name card and number); using objects for association linked to the school day- like placing a water bottle after the “recess” on the learning station table (the kitchen counter) to signal to both the parent and child or teen’s brain that a transition back to the concentrated learning had actually taken place- that it just wasn’t a rest, from play outside, at home on a leisurely Saturday afternoon.
Midway through this month, many began making stronger connections to authenticity in our relationships with our children and each other; trying to grapple with their realistic expectations of themselves and ourselves as well, connecting with their social-emotional selves- all the while we all were trying to build moments for free-flow learning and working to take place, that was more authentic and connected to the learner's as well as our newly transformed worlds. I turned a gym-activity video into a Twister game for interactive play for only-children syndrome. Our “recess” times looked more like treasure hunts finding sticks to turn into forts in the back yard and raking leaves to ease the stress and to pass time constructively. Lunch time even became the favored activity in our home; instead of being served at a cafeteria table among friends, my son and I were creating one meal together from the goods in our home, and he was looking forward to this time; hence, the flying pizzas!
It all really can be fun (in some sense) with a bit of imagination. We even set the tone during our dough-making pizza-style lunch to 1950’s Italian dinner music. Suddenly, my son was—leaping off of his bar stool—asking me to dance. It was hilarious. He was inspired by the moment and remembered as a little guy how much fun it was on Saturday mornings when he would play “Superfly” and run and jump into my arms as we flipped pancakes. It was all coming back to him in that moment. He now wished to take advantage of this precious time together, which meant for him, a twirling session with his mom, while we waited for the pizza to cook on an ordinary Tuesday. These are the unexpected moments, in this new temporary "school" setting called home with different rules, that still require finding the rhythm inherent in any successful classroom.
The rhythm must always be built with the learner first and with the uncanny ability to practice flexibility, in the moment, to uncover the true sense of fun that will build positive memories for our families during this strange, anxiety-filled experience. The lunch period has emerged into a regular game each day of the “school” day and signifies a break in our day of learning and working. I responded to this rhythm by adding twenty more minutes for full effect and adapting to the new feel of this new “school” (at least for the remainder of the year) called home.
Though, this rhythm—I speak of—goes beyond twirling in circles to Godfather-inspired music in the backdrop while a hand-crafted pizza bakes (truly, all that was missing were the drippy candles and red-checkered tablecloths). How does one transform the learning into something with continuity and purpose? After all, authentic learning doesn’t necessarily lead to purpose. Certainly it can but is more often full of whimsy and is quite magical for memory-making. Purpose is another piece (altogether) of the educational construct. That key element, excellent educators recognize, for turning learning into SOMETHING is to construct a sense of complex continuity over a designated span of time and practice within the learning that students are seeing and attempting to form within their own processes.
Complex continuity looks like this in practical form:
My son made some clay creatures last week and crafted a story with these clay creatures serving as the main characters. Now, instead of leaving the creatures on a windowsill and moving onward to another resource on another resource page of artistic activities, I began working “behind-the-scenes” to create more complex continuity with this one activity that seemed to appeal to him.
Why?
I listened to my son’s interest in the clay creatures, and I knew he needed to expand on his learning in a constructive, purposeful process. So, the challenge was (in this new-found role of acting as elementary grade school teacher but veteran educator) to look over the learning assessment provided by teachers from my son’s school, and to begin building continuity with the clay creatures he seemed so fond of when making and drafting a story the week before this one. This week, I added some space travels from his science resources and found a crossword puzzle (in an old crossword puzzle book we had last summer with that page untouched) with the Planet Mars as the topic. To provide vocabulary practice and application (doing SOMETHING with the learning), I invited my son for the additional language period of the day to draft a comic strip (he enjoys reading Charlie Brown and Garfield) starring the clay creatures landing on Mars. His vocabulary challenge was to weave in at least three terms from the Mars crossword puzzle. They even have plans to meet and save the main characters on his current novel study in school, Island of the Blue Dolphins. However, the complex continuity cannot stop there. I have since crafted a Humanities’ project that purposefully will revisit his ability to apply vocabulary acquisition in a similar manner, so the learner is familiar and can then move out of the comfort zone of clay creatures to new material when ready. This carefully designed project offers comic strip web applications for trying out, a place to insert his familiarity when working on scenes for his for clay creatures, as the learner has already come to a full understanding for constructing a story in scenes from scratch and now can play with new material in a new tech world, applying the same skill, scene-building with dialogue and increased vocabulary practice, in a new medium.
The complex continuity achieves two essential goals for effective teaching/learning:
1) The learning is constructed from the learner’s familiar context (the clay creatures he created over a week ago) and branched outward to achieve other curriculum standards, vocabulary and sentence structure, story-framing, outlining, main idea, dialogue creation, etc. I could have just had him complete some crossword puzzles as brain game openers, but that does not have the same outcome as constructing and linking learning pieces from the puzzles together (complex continuity) for the learner to integrate and apply (do something) their understanding in another context to new material in new circumstances.
2) The learning, by purposeful design, moved from the clay creatures to the actual strategies employed/skills learned and pushed further with new content. Now the learner is able to leave the clay creatures behind if he/she chooses. Where once comic strips were drawn out, by hand, and crosswords with vocabulary were introduced and connected to the clay creatures adding the element of Mars to the mix, the learner can now take this experience and those formed concrete skills to a new subject for play in a new area for learning.
An exchange happens automatically (even naturally if practiced well) when building complex continuity within teaching. The multi-age Humanities’ project built for my son provides three of the concrete skills practiced for more play and refining under new content material. This is what it means, in a practical sense, to teach with complex continuity and a raised awareness of what students (your children) are responding to in their worlds each week.
I would love to respond to the kinds of continuity educators and parents are building in their new temporary “schools” called home. Feel free to post a reply, so we may get a dialogue started on how to do this SOMETHING with learning that so many experienced educators know how to implement well but cannot achieve as easily in distant learning experiences. With a little Q&A, parents can move in the same direction. Have a great week, and I hope your teaching rhythm finds you, inspires you, and turns this tragic time period into something to be valued and remembered, the good and bad days.
~ Ms. Porcupine and her son
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