Questions Fuel the Fire

FEATURE STORY:

Questions Fuel the Fire How curiosity and creativity propel learning at Langley It’s a bright blue, early autumn morning at Scott’s Run Nature Preserve in Fairfax County. Along the banks of the rushing stream, as yellow, orange, and green leaves filter the sunlight, you may find peaceful dog walkers, energetic hikers, and…enthusiastic Langley students, hard at work on their research. As part of an interdisciplinary unit on hydrology, they’re testing the water quality of the stream, determining levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, dissolved oxygen, pH, and temperature.

Guided and encouraged by their science teacher, the students carefully collect and measure samples, take thorough notes, and excitedly share their discoveries and ideas. They compare the quality of the water here to samples they took aboard the Half Shell research vessel. All the while, they’re asking themselves – and each other – challenging, reflective questions about the larger significance of their findings: How have humans affected the water quality? How am I part of the watershed? What can I do to help clean it up?

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Returning to Langley, they continue imagining, testing, and proposing real-world answers to those questions. In a “build your own watershed” lab, students decide where to locate services in a fictional town where they serve on the zoning and planning commission. They must protect the environmental quality of “Lily Pad Lake” while ensuring the town is socially, politically, and economically viable for residents.

That’s just one example of how classes at Langley look and feel very different from what many of us experienced in our own childhoods. Back then, a unit on water might have meant reading about oceans, lakes, and rivers in a textbook, and perhaps looking at some droplets under a microscope. Instead, Langley students from preschool through eighth grade, across subject areas, ask essential questions about themselves and the world: How does where I live affect how I live? Was the American Revolution inevitable?

Whose stories are worth telling? How is math a language?

Our inquiry-based program is rooted in the belief that true learning means understanding, rather than merely recalling.

Then, with their teachers’ expert guidance, students work together to explore possible answers and forge actual, working solutions. It’s a process that encourages curiosity and builds confidence, as students across all grade levels struggle with complexity and uncertainty, and experience the thrill of discoveries large and small.

So what, exactly, is going on at Langley?

What and how do you want to learn?

You may have heard the phrase “inquiry-based learning,” a term encompassing proven best practices in education – practices Langley has long embraced. As Director of Teaching and Learning Phil Petru explains, “Our program takes advantage of the natural curiosity that kids possess, especially at the ages we have here at Langley. It’s rooted in the belief that true learning means understanding, rather than merely recalling.”

In the age of Google and smart phones, it’s no longer so crucial to memorize a large body of facts and figures since an infinite storehouse of names and dates hovers just a few clicks away. This technological sea-change allows today’s students to learn in more engaging, meaningful, and lasting ways. Instead of passive recipients of information, students become active creators of their own learning experiences. In preschool, Langley encourages children to “think, see, and wonder” – an apt model for learning at any age. As children grow, they continue to discover how to ask productive questions and pursue solutions in inventive, effective ways.

An entry point for every student Assistant Head of School Kathleen Smith points out that the inquiry-based model dovetails beautifully with Langley’s commitment to differentiated learning. “Each student finds a different entry point to a project,” Ms. Smith explains.

“We meet kids where they are, and leverage their individual strengths and interests. The teacher has a set of learning goals in mind, but there are as many ways to reach them as there are students in the classroom.”

One key to making differentiation work is ensuring students understand their own learning processes – not only what they’re learning, but why they’re learning it, and how they, as individuals, learn best. Sometimes called “metacognition,” this self-understanding builds upon itself every day. By the time students graduate from Langley, they possess an unusually powerful intellectual and emotional toolkit that allows them to engage, thoughtfully and confidently, with any new challenge they face.

Taking risks and making strides Langley students also build confidence by making mistakes. As each learning experience unfolds, students face periods of struggle and frustration – and sometimes they fail. In this model, teachers constantly and carefully guide the process, but they don’t rush in to provide “the answer.”

When students power through difficulty to discover a solution for themselves, they experience a more profound and genuine sense of accomplishment. And their learning proves considerably more enduring.

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Just as important, when students know mistakes can teach them more than easy accomplishments can, they stop worrying about getting things wrong and start taking the kinds of risks that prove essential to intellectual breakthroughs.

Through earnest failure and earned achievement, students build the perseverance, flexibility, and enthusiasm to tackle the next, harder obstacle. As our world continues to change, seemingly faster than ever before, such poise and agility prove crucial to lifelong success.

Teachers are learners, too Langley teachers learn and grow through the same methods they practice with their students. They investigate new ways to engage students. They work together to create interdisciplinary projects. They experiment. They reflect.

They share their results with each other, and constantly give and receive feedback.

“In day-to-day meetings, and in professional development workshops, our teachers model what they want to see in the classroom,” says Mr. Petru. “They ask big questions about teaching and learning, and make choices about how to explore them. We encourage teachers to wonder and create in the ways that work best for them individually.

The new ideas and new units that come out of this process have been awesome.”

When such enthusiastic, expert teachers and continuously curious students join together, possibilities abound. The more you learn about Langley’s program, it’s clear: there’s never been a better time to live Langley.

Further reading and watching differentiationcentral.com provides a wealth of information about differentiated learning – why it matters and how the best educators do it.

authenticeducation.org discusses big ideas and essential questions.

TED talks by Diana Laufenberg and Sir Ken Robinson describe the crucial roles of wonder and creativity in learning.

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Inquiry-Based Learning in Action:

The 20% Project Elective

A new elective in the Middle School, offered by Brad Lands, the 20% Project* works like this: BRAINSTORMING: At the beginning of the year, students begin brainstorming ideas for a project proposal. They may work alone, but Mr. Lands encourages them to work in small teams. He also challenges students to make the project “product focused,” meaning that by the end of the year, they have produced an actual artifact of their work. This could be a physical product like a graphic novel or a balloon that takes photos from the stratosphere, a digital project like a short film or video game, or one of a great many other possibilities.

PROPOSAL: Once the team has an idea of what project they want to pursue, they begin writing the proposal. This is how the team will “pitch” the project to Mr. Lands and the rest of the class. In this proposal, students answer the following questions: What is your project and who will work with you on this project?

Who is the audience, user base, and client base for this project?

Why is this project worthwhile and what do you expect to learn?

What product will you have to show at the end of the year?

What sort of expenses will be involved and how will you cover them?

What sort of equipment will you need and where will you get it?

What is your timeline for completing (or launching) your project?

BLOG: Each cycle, every member of every team writes a public blog post discussing their progress, including what happened over the past cycle, what the team learned, what challenges they faced, and what they anticipate in the future.

MENTORS: Each team selects an adult mentor to provide guidance and inspiration.

20% DAYS: Throughout the school year, students have one class period to work on their projects. If they need to go off campus to work on their projects, they can do so on weekends or afternoons and use the scheduled 20% time as a productive in-class work session.

FINAL PRESENTATION: At the end of the year, each team gives a fiveminute presentation to students, teachers, and community members to show off their work. They carefully write, choreograph, and rehearse in order to produce the best presentation they’ve ever given. Students deliver these recorded, TED-style presentations in the auditorium.

BUT WHAT IF MY PROJECT IS A FAILURE? The philosophy behind the 20% Project is simple: The only truly failed project is the one that doesn’t get done. The project challenges students to show off a successful product at the end of the year, but not get bogged down in perfectionism. Students follow the advice plastered on the wall of Facebook’s headquarters: “Done is better than perfect” – a slogan you wouldn’t want to see in your dentist’s office, but which works surprisingly well for this type of creative work.

If students still feel their project is a failure, they talk with each other and their teacher about what they learned and what they would do differently next time. In this way, they leverage failure as an opportunity for intellectual and personal growth. Of course, success, not failure, remains the goal – but at Langley, failure is also nothing to fear.

*This course is modeled after Google’s 20% time. Embedded in Google’s culture is the concept of allowing engineers to take on independent projects, investing 20% of their work time on self-led explorations to solve real problems.

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