Learning gets personal

At their January 2019 meeting, Dock’s Board of Trustees received an unusual curriculum proposal for a Spanish Immersion experience at the Early Childhood to Grade 8 Campus. The proposal wasn’t unusual because of the content; the board has great interest in offering such a program. It was unusual because it didn’t come from a teacher or administrator—but from two 8 th grade girls, Celeste Derstine and Emma Celenza.

“It was impressive that they wanted to present this to the board in the first place, but even more so the confidence they had in what they were presenting. They made a good case,” said Dock Superintendent Dr. Conrad Swartzentruber. “They had a well-organized Powerpoint, but what impressed me more were their answers to some of the questions board members asked. For example, they were able to cite statistics about the percentages of Americans speaking various languages. It was clear they had learned a lot more than what they presented.”

The desire for deeper learning about Spanish language and culture exhibited by these two middle school students represents some of the firstfruits of a wave of hands-on, experiential learning opportunities across both Dock campuses. Traditional classroom teaching, centered on lecture, discussion and testing, is quickly giving way to curriculum that revolves around student curiosity and passions while teaching life skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-posing/solving.

Lessons from the Tiny House project

The education “buzzword” for this is Project-Based Learning, and it has been the focus of a new Innovation Class for Middle School students at the EC-Grade 8 Campus. The class began with a few small-scale projects to get students’ creativity flowing. For example, one class had to create a marketable product using some basic supplies— paper clips, rubber bands, paper and a few straws. Students came up with everything from wind chimes, to clothes hangers, to a belt purse. In another exercise, students selected one of 10 random items and had to describe a new, alternative use for that item.

Students soon graduated to more robust and involved projects, such as researching, designing, and building prototypes of a tiny house.

8th grade students collaborate on their tiny house model.

Jeff Fusco

“It was interesting to see students focus on different things,” said Mrs. Cheryl Ryder, one of the Innovation Class teachers. “Some were all about the space-saving aspects of the design, while others wanted to create an environmentally friendly house, and some focused on factors related to aesthetics and beauty.”

“Our job was to help them realize that, in a project like this, all of those pieces are connected,” said Mr. Nathaniel Freed, also part of the Innovation Class teaching team. “You need to answer the question, ‘Why would anyone want to live in this tiny house?’”

Along the way, students presented their ideas to a pair of professional architects, learning design insights and receiving feedback on their own prototypes. In project-based learning, these architects constitute an “authentic audience” and are an important part of the learning process. “An authentic audience means you’re presenting an idea to someone who might actually want the product, or someone who plans to use it,” said Mrs. Jayne Longacre, who also helped teach the Innovation Class. “It’s not just a presentation to your classmates, or your teacher.”

Presenting their tiny house model to an authentic audience—a real architect—gave the students new insights that they were able to incorporate into their projects.

Kathy Gordon

Students almost always worked in groups, and Mrs. Ryder said it was interesting to see different leaders emerge, and for others to learn how to respond to the leader when they didn’t agree. “These are great life skills that students are learning— skills that will help them in virtually every area of their lives later on,” she said.

“These students are going to be doing jobs and creating products that haven’t even been thought of yet,” added Mrs. Longacre. “You need to be able to convince someone to invest in your idea, and that requires research and presentation skills. Also, in the classroom, once a research paper is done, it’s done. But in the real world there is often more work necessary to fine-tune a product or project. We’re trying to help students build the stamina for sustained thinking and problem-solving.”

21st century skills

Collaboration, communication, creative problem-solving, public speaking—these are 21st century skills, and they are at the heart of project-based learning and the curriculum changes under way across the Dock school system.

At the Grades 9-12 Campus, many of these skills came into play recently when students in Mr. Zach Bower’s Personal Finance class assumed the role of financial advisors. Students contacted people from outside the school and arranged to meet with them—the most authentic audience you could possibly have. In the first meeting, subjects shared some of their financial information with students, who then worked in groups to come up with a financial plan to help their client save money. Mr. Bower also invited Steve Schwendy, a local Everence financial advisor, into the class as a guest speaker; students were invited to contact him whenever they had questions during the project. Then, in a second meeting, students shared their proposed financial plan with the "client" and incorporated their feedback.

“There was a clear difference in the level of student motivation and engagement in this project compared to a more traditional case study assignment,” said Mr. Bower. For example, he said, students came up with questions themselves that he normally would ask, and they learned valuable “soft skills,” such as crafting their own emails to clients and scheduling meetings on their own.

What did students take away from the experience? Mr. Bower surveyed them at the end of the assignment, and many said their most important learning was about finances—but quite a few also found great value in the process:

• “The importance of planning financially depending on where you are in life. Your financial plan when you’re 20 will not be the same a couple years later.”

• “To look at all of the options in a situation before making a decision.”

• “How to work with and relate to others. It’s always interesting working with a group, but this group worked well together.”

• “We learned what it feels like to be an actual financial advisor and thinking for someone else.”

• “If I can find these things for a client, I can also compute how much I need to save monthly for myself. I will definitely be using this knowledge in the future.”

Harnessing the knowledge learned in school for future use is exactly the goal of Dock’s new direction in curriculum. Project-based learning will help students across all grades be better prepared for a rapidly changing world.

“Regardless of profession, most of what any of us does in our jobs is project- and problem-oriented, as we work with others to solve problems and move ideas forward,” said Dr. Sharon Fransen, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. “These projects require teamwork, research, creativity, asking questions, taking risks, failing, and trying again. Research shows that well-designed projects motivate students to gain knowledge and remember it in meaningful ways.

“Projects also give students the opportunity to apply the skills they learn in school—thinking critically, solving problems, working in teams, making presentations—to relevant, real-world situations,” she added. “These skills will help students succeed in the future, both in college and in their careers.”