We marvel every year as we wander through the third grade classrooms.We are floored by the masks of the terra cotta soldiers and by the accompanying prints, by the three dimensional models of the Great Wall of China and the Chinese Scholars Gardens.We delight in the delicate landscape paintings, the weavings, the paper making, and the crafts.And we are pleased with the well spoken, well written, and clever shadow puppet plays. We especially enjoy watching the third graders teaching calligraphy or how to use a chopstick to a younger child.But perhaps most of all, if we stop and listen to the children, if we ask them to tell us about the terra cotta soldiers, the Great Wall, the Chinese Scholars Garden, landscape painting, weaving, and more, we are blown away by what they know and how much they have learned these past few months.
The China Museum doesn’t just happen.In fact, it comes about because of the efforts of so many: first and foremost, the children and the teachers, but also because of the parents who volunteer hours in the classroom and the BCS high school students who come down to help, and it happens because of the adult BNS graduates who come back as they have not forgotten their museum experiences fifteen years ago.It is due to this collaborative effort that a museum is born.
Fourth grade will be hosting another museum, this one on the Lenni Lenape, two weeks from today.Two days ago, students in Dolores’ fourth grade class were meeting with their teacher as they discussed their first few attempts at project time. They looked at their group work and reflected on their successes or failures at collaborating.They talked about the need to gather materials, the choosing of roles within the group, and what to do when you get stuck.Project time isn’t easy and the process of producing models, plays, and other art forms can be just as challenging as the process of reading a book or writing a paper.
At BCS, students are also involved in this approach to learning. In learning expeditions and investigations, students spend months doing research, interacting with experts, writing (drafting, revising, editing, rewriting), planning and building, hypothesizing, testing and experimenting, interviewing and transcribing, and ultimately creating products and presentations that they share with audiences appropriate to their work. Last month, when our 8th graders confidently shared with prospective teachers and DOE officials, all they knew about the history of school desegregation - and the state of NYC schools, that confidence and knowledge was built on weeks of intense classroom and field work. The same was true for our 6th graders, who in the same week, competed to see the effectiveness of their mousetrap car designs. In the upcoming months, you will hear more about unfolding BCS expeditions: a HS Physics expedition in which students work with Columbia engineering students, kindergarteners, teachers, and the School Construction Authority, to design playground equipment for our yard; 7th graders determining whether Superfund status fits the Gowanus Canal, and 6th graders researching the ecosystems of Prospect Park.
As adults, we too are often engaged in project time.For some of us, this takes a form not too different from the ones we observed in the third grade museum: the creation of art, of buildings, of plays.For others, the work is more related to reading and writing.While still others are deeply involved in the work of communicating with people, whether in a hospital, on the streets, or in offices. As teachers, we continue to learn as we become experts in the subjects we teach by working with those who know more than we do. For example, last summer, eighth grade teachers visited Little Rock, Arkansas, in preparation for their unit on school desegregation. Our day-to-day work is our adult version of project time.
Each year, we support our youngsters as they develop ways to explore their learning and each year, we get excited as we recognize their remarkable ability to think, to wonder, to imagine, and to produce.If only all of the adults in their lives had as much energy as these children.
It begins in the early years with forest museums like the ones in Amy and Mary Ann’s room, complete with books on animals, bird feeders, and the opportunity to have parents find the various animals in the wonderful three dimensional forests created by these first graders.And isn’t it fun when the forest can be realistic or fantasy based?
It continues through the years, right up into high school when suddenly, students are defending their thoughts as they present their ideas in the performance-based assessments (PBATS) of math, science, social studies, and literacy. A PBAT is an extensive original paper, which the student must present and defend in front of a panel. PBATs and the work that leads up to them prepare students for the tasks they will need to do in college: research, information gathering, application and analysis, presentation, and defense of individual thinking.
And that is the work: the presenting of ideas, the showing to others what you know and the being able to explain and share so that others can make meaning.We start with a forest or a museum of a hundred and we end, well, who knows where?
