“…our basic nature is to be curious and self-directed…have you ever seen a six-month-old or a three-year-old who’s not curious and self-directed? That’s how we are out of the box. If, at age fourteen or forty-three we’re passive and inert, that’s not because it’s our nature."
Daniel Pink
Perhaps the greatest challenge any of us as educators face is the challenge of bringing every child in our circle - our classroom students, our children, our grandchildren, any child - excitedly to the table of learning. As Pink acknowledges, children are born curious and somehow we have to find ways to continually pique that natural curiosity and issue invitations to learn. Otherwise we not only fail ourselves as educators but we fail our students and end up with smart kids who do just enough to pass tests to achieve whatever goals they have picked up from parents or peers - perhaps college, perhaps a technical school, perhaps university - not because they are particularly passionate about the field but rather because it is the 'right' thing to do in their social circle.
It becomes our mission, therefore, to invite children to pursue learning with passion and curiosity rather than the goal of just 'finishing school'. How do we do this everyday without turning ourselves inside out with effort? We trust the innate curiosity children are born with to lend us a hand!
In the CBE, we call this work 'personalized learning' (and in many other educational circles as well). At Cranston School personalized learning is the thread that links virtually everything we do with, for and around our students - it drives our practice, causes teachers to constantly seek new ways of thinking and learning, occasionally drives us crazy as we attempt to find an entry point - any entry point - that will capture a particular child's imagination and provoke curiosity, informs our professional development work and brings us together working on projects or ideas we would never have considered at a different point in our career. Personalizing learning for our students ensures we will grow as teachers - sometimes without even recognizing we are growing!
In classrooms - or learning studios as we like to call the places where our children gather and initiate learning opportunities at the beginning of each day - personalized learning might include reading and writing opportunities that are different from other students but exactly what each one needs on a daily basis - often offered through a variety of strategies with different names like 'Daily 5' or 'CAFE' or 'guided reading', 'reader's workshop', writer's workshop' or whatever inventive and purposeful name teachers have devised to identify individual opportunities to grow as readers and writers amongst and with a group of peers.
Frequently, personalized learning reflects an inquiry or project-based approach where students can pose questions within a particular topic or content area and then works in groups with other students who have similar queries to research and present new understandings in various ways. Personalized learning also invites students to make connections with their world - to themselves, the books they have read, films or shows they have seen, experiences they have had had, stories they have heard, etc - and to share those connections with each other to build an even wider circle of connections and understanding. Personalized learning can take on several different forms and occur through the use of many varied strategies, all intended to capture some child's imagination or pique their curiosity enough they will want to know more, dig deeper, try something new or different, approach the problem from a different perspective, ask more questions, represent new understandings in unique ways they might not have tried before. Personalized learning is not about everyone succeeding at the same thing - it is about everyone developing new understandings about personal curiosities and being willing to share them with peers and colleagues.
At Cranston, we employ numerous strategies to catch the attention and pique curiosity with students across the grade levels and age groups. SPARK, the Puppy Paws Reading events, and Discovery Centres bring unique opportunities for using physical energy and social development to promote learning with children who have specific educational challenges that, in the past, might have impeded their learning success in school. Inviting Artists (writers, poets, actors, artists, etc) to be in Residence at our school and offer new perspectives and opportunities to students over extended periods of time ensure all students are able to connect with alternative learning strategies, perspectives and opportunities they might not encounter otherwise in the regular school day. Author visits, visits from artists, museums, etc. all provoke thinking from a hands-on, experiential perspective and offer connections students might not otherwise get. Science nights, Literacy nights, Student Led Learning Walk events - these are all opportunities for students to share experiences with parents as well as their excitement and curiosities. Swimming lessons, gymnastics, inline skating - all these opportunities are planned with the idea students will engage in experiences they may want to include in their own lives as they grow and live in the world.
Recently we re-organized and moved our Learning Commons out from the central location it had always occupied to two satellite locations closer to the learning studios, and genrified our collection (mixing fiction and non-fiction together) to better meet the needs of our learners. We've purchased new shovels, trucks and equipment for the lunchroom outdoor program, enhanced our technology with additional ipad purchases, televisions and Apple TVs to replace aging and dying SmartBoards and keep up with the technological changes our students use in their daily lives. We have purchased a 3D printer so students can both invent and prototype new ideas. We are developing new Maker Spaces in our Link to encourage design thinking and prototyping opportunities that are not necessarily tech-based but could be used with technology - and have purchased some initial mini robots to encourage this thinking. We have classes using Twitter accounts as well as Blogs and web pages to communicate with each other, parents and connect to the world. And we are making progress on our plan to build a natural area that includes both play and natural growth structures and areas that reflect the prairie natural environment in which we are located. All these actions yield new opportunities for students to see the world in different ways, to have their curiosities continually piqued and their imaginations provoked.
At Cranston School, we are not willing to settle for passive and inert, quiet and obedient students - our goal is engaged, passionate, energetic, enthusiastic problem solvers who are equipped to demonstrate, write and illustrate to share their new insights!
Lorraine Kinsman, Principal
