A School Visit

            Do you know those days where your brain feels all foggy and you just can’t seem to concentrate on anything, and no amount of coffee or caffeine or sugar or food seems to help! I had a wonderful weekend, and it was such fun on Sunday to play tourist around Copenhagen (although I got a little sunburnt and my feet were very, very sore this morning!). However, this morning I just didn’t feel like I could focus as much as I would normally be able to.

            We had a really interesting day planned, going out to a school on Ejbyvej in Ballerup of approximately 920 students (most of whom were absent because of the lockout) from grade 1-9 (where students are about 15 years old and take their final exams to graduate). The principal, Martin, was kind enough to take some time out of his day to talk to us about his dreams for the school and give us a problem that we can discuss in groups throughout the week. Martin is new to the school (having been there since January), and is very much inspired by Sir Ken Robinson’s innovations on how we can revolutionize the educational system to better suit the needs of a new century. I think that Martin is also feeling pressure from the local government, who has a new aim to maximize student’s learning by 2020. This all combined for Martin to emphasize five goals or ideas that he would like his school to achieve and embody:

1.     Natural motivation is fundamental for learning

2.     Acknowledge children’s differences

3.     Build a bridge between leisure and school (meaningful learning)

4.     Focus on collaboration

5.     Focus on the development of creativity

Martin would like his school to motivate the students to learn intrinsically and be responsible for their own learning. He would also like what they learn to be practical in their real lives, bridging the gap from the community to the school. In our pre-determined groups we are to ideate and try to come up with a practical, realisable solution for Martin’s questions.

            We are going to spend the next couple days working on ideas. What I really enjoy about this process is the idea that being radical is a good thing, and that no idea should be thrown out immediately. At the end of the day we watched a short video on Ideo, which I found really inspiring. I particularly enjoyed the eclectic group of people that the company brought together, and how they interacted with every idea, every drawing, putting it on the board and actively using them rather than letting them lie on the table, ignored. I am looking forward to tomorrow, and what innovative ideas my group and I can find!

Innovation

            The fundamental underpinning today was innovation. This can be applied to all aspects of our lives, but today we chiefly applied it to solving problems in education. Today felt like a completely different program, and I loved the new feeling just as much as I enjoyed the old. Today was much faster paced, with ideas and language thrown at us pretty much continually, challenging us to stretch and adapt to new thoughts while trying to grasp the concept introduced mere minutes later, a kind of challenge that is one of my favourite parts of university. This was combined with extended time to create something new and use non-alphanumeric systems to brainstorm and innovate, both of which stretched me creatively as well. So it was an interesting day!

The method we learned was designed at the Stanford d-school and was predicated on the idea that if we put enough pressure and have very little expectations, people will create something. It may not necessarily be good but it will be something! We were led through a five-step process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. I thought this process was really interesting, as it is taught as a linear process, but it does not necessarily need to be used as such. One of my favourite parts of the process was how it encouraged students to prototype their ideas and literally create a model. This model can be physically manipulated and improved, which many students need in order to discover the flaws. In partners we each prototyped our own improvement on the gift giving experience. The range and creativity of these inventions is incredible to see!

All of our prototypes!

Another benefit of this system is that the timing can be very flexible. You could give students days to discover an idea, or they could be timed and limited. By giving students a strict deadline (four or eight minutes), it could help keep the students on track and eliminate the urge to procrastinate, indeed some students also find that they do their best work under pressure (I know I do!). This also encourages students to lower their expectations – they have not had a month to think about the problem and its solutions using endless research, but they have only had four minutes.

What stuck with me at the end of the day was a video Lillian showed in preparation for our school visit on Monday. The video was narrated by Sir Ken Robinson, an educational innovator I greatly admire (check out his video on how school can kill creativity here). He spoke about how our education system is fundamentally broken, and how it needs to be radically re-thought and changed. I can not wait until Monday to see how a Danish educator has interpreted these ideas and is applying them to his school!

Problem Based Learning

I think I am getting the hang of this! Today we discussed problem-based learning, than applied the methodology to a series of practical school issues. It was a very interesting exercise, especially since I had previously studied PBL learning. In my classes we invented our own PBL packages for students in elementary school (my package involved an imaginary situation where the Earth had flooded and students had to decide how humanity would survive). These PBL packages that we created were also designed to have students take charge of their learning and engage directly with the material, but I had never considered using it for university students.

The exercise we completed had us back in our groups to analyze and discuss different scenarios that had happened in schools. I was fortunate that my group is made up of one representative from each country, so we had a very balanced look at the scenarios from many different perspectives. The first scenario we started with would be a nightmare for any teacher – an eight-year-old boy with a knife at school. There were just so many unknowns about the situation that it was hard to determine what questions we should ask without knowing something more substantial about the student. My group in particular became interested in questions of power within families in our respective cultures (as in, who makes the decisions, mom or dad?). What I found really curious is that despite the fact that Denmark is physically far closer to Turkey than Canada, we found that Denmark and Canada had many more cultural similarities, and many more differences with Turkey and even to a smaller degree, Hungary. What was lovely about the group is that we were able to discuss this (more sensitive) topic without feeling judged, just open acceptance from the whole group.

The next situations I found much more applicable to my every day practice, as it dealt with a huge problem in Canada – cyber bullying. We talked about two situations in total, one where a boy was bullied on an online forum he managed, and another where a teenage girl was probably bullied online, but never confided in anyone. This seems to be all too common a story in Canada; in fact Irene read a statistic that 1 in 4 children are now cyber bullied. This was also an interesting issue to discuss because it brought up questions of free speech, the right to privacy and the limits of a schools authority (especially since the cyber bullying will affect the child at school, and may involve students from the same classroom, but what can a teacher do if the bullying does not occur on school property or on school computers?).

I think that there is not a single solution to any of these problems. The best we can do is spread awareness and compassion in our students by making role playing a part of our classroom, reading books from many different perspectives and building an atmosphere of trust and empathy for everyone. And using PBL to encourage students to dig deeper into an issue and consider all angles and aspects of it before making a decision!

The Six Hats

          And today we returned to creativity and how to inspire creative thinking. It seemed that our teachers were trying very hard not to rehash territory already covered by Burak on Monday, but it was still difficult. I really enjoyed the morning exercise where we all sat together and identified ourselves as an animal by explaining the characteristics that we found common between us and the animal. I decided that I would be an owl because they are fierce, symbols of wisdom, independent, far-seeing and quite protective of their young.

 My favourite Snowy Owl

I believe what could have made the exercise more effective was familiarizing all of the students with the different animals and their characteristics before we began. It is easy just to make a physical comparison, but the behavioural and metaphorical similarities require students to have prior knowledge of the animals, which some of the students present today did not have (for instance, one of the students I was talking to had no idea what an owl was).

            I think it is easy to incorporate many of these practices into my classroom, particularly the Six Hats of Edward de Bono. The hats really explicate the process for examining problems and help students examine problems from many different perspectives, some of which they may have never used otherwise. Another use for the hats in my classroom would be to eliminate classroom conflict by using it as a behavior management strategy. I would ask a whole class, not merely the students who are struggling to regulate their emotions or who are teasing and bullying each other, to examine a given situation and write down what they would do from each perspective. When followed by a class discussion I think that it could really useful for students to use their common experiences and prior knowledge, combined with new perspectives, to creatively problem solve real life situations. 

Drama!

            The arts in education and how to use drama in the classroom has always been one of my greatest areas of interest. I believe that if we can build a classroom community that is centered on trust and openness, even with the teacher, and encourage students to express themselves freely in the classroom, it can go a long way to preventing interpersonal problems.

            The focus today was on drama in education. I really loved the opening warm-up, and particularly how Karen and Ann organized us into groups. I have always considered myself a little quieter, and my choices certainly reflected that. The guided meditation was really invigorating, and helped me feel calm and centered. However, I do wish that I had had the chance to experience the active warm-up as well, because it would have been nice to have several options for my future classroom (where, I guarantee, I will not have students that just want to sit and meditate!). I thoroughly enjoyed making the song in the afternoon. The experience helped me bridge language barriers with some of the other students, and sharing a laugh and frustration over the correct word choice was a bonding experience that helped us grow closer. I am so grateful for this opportunity that it just seemed like a bonus we made a good song!

The hardest part of the day’s activities for me was definitely the morning role-playing activity on bullying. As a child I was bullied (as I think every child is these days), so being the victim was hard, but being the bully was such a valuable experience as it allowed me to engage with and feel sympathy for the choices that bullies make. My group finished the activity quite quickly and then engaged in a valuable discussion about why we think that bullies act the way they do, and what we can do as teachers in the classroom to prevent this. One person made the point that it can be the teacher that causes the problem, because we sometimes forget the influence we have on our students and if we are disdainful or treat a student poorly, the other students will follow suit. This is something I have seen in my schools and classrooms, and is something that I never want to knowingly do to a student.