HTH 335 - Building positive school culture
how can student voice and choice transform the culture of our schools?
Reflection
Background
em-pa-thy (noun) - the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another (dictionary.com).
Empathy. This was a word that was thrown around a lot during our Design Thinking Workshop this past summer through the Stanford D. School. The idea that whatever we are creating or designing, we should be empathizing with whoever the user is. Whatever they are thinking, feeling, needing, demanding, we should, at the very least, be aware of those thoughts, feelings, and ideas. So what was missing when I looked around the room during our first Project Tune this year? The user.
It’s interesting to observe how much student voice is being incorporated into all of the High Tech High schools (and much of them very successfully) and then to realize that in the one area where student voice may be the most critical, it is lacking. After all, the main reason why students are at our schools is to execute projects and to learn from them. So as someone that thoroughly enjoys the Project Tuning Protocol and the results of Project Tunes themselves, I decided to try incorporating my own students into this very formulaic and very new (at least for the students) process. In addition, as a HTH teacher I always struggled with implementing rich and meaningful Challenge Options as well as attempting to support all of my struggling learners and my IEP/504 students. Hence my Dilemma Question: How can student voice/choice be implemented into the project tuning process in order to meet the needs/demands of learners at all ability levels? As a teacher of a 9th grade classroom and it still being rather early on in the year, I knew this would not be an easy task. “Will they understand the process?” “Are they confident enough to speak out what is truly on their mind?” “How can I ensure that every voice is heard and not just the students that already vocalize a lot of their ideas/opinions?” All of these questions and more made me want to further investigate. In the end, some of my predictions rang true while at other times, as always, my students ended up surprising me with some insightful evidence.
Process
The Intro
The first step in my timeline was to address my biggest and main concern - to expose at least some of my students to a Project Tune so that they may observe how it is run and that they understand what the purpose of a Project Tune is. By asking for dedicated student volunteers, four of my 56 students attended a staff Project Tune during one of our Humanities Content Meetings. Three other juniors were also present - these three students were Student Staff members who regularly attended staff meetings. They had much more HTH experience as well as Project Tuning experience than my freshmen. There were ten staff members participating in the Tuning. Out of the four students that were present, only one spoke during the entire protocol. However, the content of the student’s statements were very insightful and helpful. He stated that “the project looks fun but the Challenge Option looks intimidating” (9/20 Notes). He began to question who Sigmund Freud was and that maybe choosing a book that is more relatable, like Robinson Crusoe, might have been better. I thought he had some very legitimate points regarding the Challenge Option and I appreciated his suggestion.
Data
Once the Tuning was over, I provided every student and staff with an Exit Card. The following questions were asked to the staff:
The following questions were asked to the students:
Intro De-Brief
During our de-brief, the students confirmed several of my suspicions. First off, that the students were much too intimidated by the large group of staff to vocalize their thoughts/opinions. One of the students stated that she might have felt more comfortable had there been more of her peers - which made sense. I think if I had executed this staff/student Project Tune during a Professional Development meeting on an Early Release Wednesday, the student volunteer turn-out might have been higher thus resulting in a more comfortable and welcoming environment for my students where more of their voice would have been heard. However, despite this unfortunate circumstance, this first exposure accomplished the goal of revealing to the students the process and purpose of a Project Tune. Many of them stated that they were very confused when the discussion first began but as people began talking, they quickly understood what the focus of the conversation should be. Another observation I noted during our de-brief was how the students struggled to answer my question of “What is academic rigor? What does it look like in PBL?”. The students either regurgitated things that were already in place that were supposed to challenge students or were only able to verbalize past experiences in which they were challenged. Many of these past experiences boiled down to “I was confused on what the teacher was asking of me,” which isn’t necessarily academic rigor but rather a case of miscommunication or misunderstanding. In the end, I concluded that the student themselves did not necessarily understand what academic rigor should look like, particularly in a project-based learning setting (9/24 Video).
The Tuning - Class A
Initially, my goal for including students into the Project Tune was to ensure that the needs/demands of students at all ability levels were being met. By receiving a preview of the project and understanding the teacher’s thinking behind the idea of a project, students would be able to vocalize whether or not their needs were being met and/or include their ideas for alternative options/products. However as soon as the discussion began I knew that I would witness much more than that. For Class A, I was pleasantly surprised by not only the number of students that participated (about 18 of the 29 students) but the type of students as well. Because none of the students volunteered to be a facilitator, I personally facilitated this particular Tuning. However it may be interesting to note that during the Discussion portion, the student who attended the initial tuning during the staff meeting pretty much became the facilitator. Three of these students I would consider introverted, shy, and participates in class only when necessary. But perhaps it was because they recognized the necessity in the situation and/or the applicability to their own lives, not only did these students participate but they contributed rather interesting information. When addressing the Dilemma Question, one of these students mentioned the amount of time that I predicted was needed for the group’s rehearsal. He mentioned with the current time restraints, the project was much too challenging. Then another student mentions the three different products: maybe a method of differentiation could be to make the other two products an option instead of mandatory? Then the discussion took a quick right turn and the students began a debating over the differentation of “music” versus “sound” - I had to quickly interject and remind the group of the Dilemma Question while there was still time left. Even still, the students had a difficult time addressing my Dilemma Question. The only solutions to further differentiation of this project was to increase/decrease the amount of time to complete the project and/or to increase/decrease the amount of products that were to be created for this project.
Class B
For this class about 16 of the 26 vocalized their thoughts regarding the project and a student volunteered to facilitate. At this point, it is difficult to say whether who facilitated affected the outcome of the discussion. Similar to Class A, Class B also struggled with at least directly responding to the Dilemma Question. This latter class was so excited about the project they immediately jumped to bouncing ideas for variations of the products, other possible options, possible themes, additional content topics that could be discussed and learned, etc. Ideas such as a bike-instrument, an instrument using glasses filled with water, homemade bagpipes, doing the writing piece in a foreign language, etc. were just some of the ideas that were presented.
Data
Once the Tuning concluded, my students responded to the same 5 questions that were asked during the Intro Tuning. This time, however, due to the number of respondants, I had them complete the Exit Cards digitally but still annonymous.
The responses to question 1 (What struck you about this Project Tune?) was overwhelmingly positive. Majority of the students were very psyched about the project but it was also nice to see that several of the students recognized that their teacher was reaching out to them. “I think it’s great that we have a say in what we are going to learn,” says one student. Other students seemed to think a little more critically and recognized that teachers still had a lot of work to do in terms of differentiation: “I like the Project Tune idea but the teachers need to take ALL of the students STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES into consideration and not just the majority of the lot” (sic). And still others seemed apathetic: “Nothing really, it seemed like a boring, unimportant discussion.” Even more interestingly, this particular student, despite the fact that he/she claimed this discussion seemed “unimportant”, he/she clicked “maybe” as his/her response to question 5 (Would you like your future projects to be tuned by yourself/ other students prior to launching them?). In addition, two other students responded “no” to the same question.
Take Away
Based on my de-brief with both classes regarding the Project Tuning process, one main characteristic of the Project Tuning Protocol screamed at me, “This protocol was not designed with students in mind.” This discussion process was developed by and for teachers and other adult staff members. Prior to our de-brief, I had not even considered this aspect of the protocol. I loved the protocol: it was organized, structured, and it provided all of the necessary elements to provide all of the necessary information. But for some reason my students, even the ones that were most active during the discussion, still found flaws within the protocol.
For example, almost all of the students were very confused when we began the tuning. Even one student states in his/her response to question 1, “What got my attention was how it was ran. I was not sure what was about go on (sic) when we first started, and I was impressed with what happened and it really helped me get a better idea of the project.” Like most of the students, it took this student a moment before he/she realized what the purpose of the discussion was. Despite the fact that this protocol works well for most of our teachers, it is lacking something for our students.
One suggestion I heard from my student during our de-brief was to have some sort of “umoderated caucus”, much like in a Model United Nations debate, where students have a set amount of time to roam around and discuss with their peers the topic that is being discussed. The student claimed it would not only give them some time to think but to also bounce ideas with people they are comfortable with in a much more intimate setting. Another suggestion was to have the same exact discussion in small groups instead of with the entire class.
Still others felt like the discussion portion (Step 5 in the Protocol) was somewhat pointless since the teacher was not “present” to respond, which I thought was extremely interesting because I always find this component the most helpful and interactive. I wonder if my students were yet again missing the point of the Project Tuning Protocol. Based on this feedback, I am assuming that some of the students still view this discussion as a platform for me to launch a new project rather than a platform for them to voice what they want through this project. This goes back to my fear of my students being unable to adequately and appropriately voice their needs/demands simply because they have never been asked to voice this before.
Lastly, the way the protocol is currently designed is for a teacher to present a dilemma regarding the project to the teacher’s peers. My dilemma, whether the project in its current state was meeting all the students’ needs/demands, was much too complex (especially considering the students themselves a lot of the times are not aware of what their needs/demands are or should be) for students to ponder much less answer and resolve.
Moving Forward
As I put on my School Leader Cap, I see so much room for growth in terms of including students into the developmental process our projects and our curriculum. My students were so excited about the project I presented to them and even more excited just thinking about the potential possibilities and directions we could take this project. Why should the excitement begin only after I’ve introduced the projec to them? Why not begin their engagement from the get-go? At HTHNC, we already Student Staff members who regularly attend meetings and professinoal development. However I feel like there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to these Student Staff. The quantity could be increased as well as defining their role within these meetings. Often times I observe them sitting in the corner of the room looking bored, wondering how this information being presented might apply to them. By further valuing these Student Staff we can show our school and community that not only do we listen to students but we value their feedback and take action when appropriate.
Since I began this project and class I feel I’ve truly become a student of the Stanford D. School - now more than ever I am putting myself in the shoes of my students and empathizing with the user. And what the user is telling me is that they have a lot of things to say and they simply need a user-friendly method to amplify their voice.
Background
em-pa-thy (noun) - the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another (dictionary.com).
Empathy. This was a word that was thrown around a lot during our Design Thinking Workshop this past summer through the Stanford D. School. The idea that whatever we are creating or designing, we should be empathizing with whoever the user is. Whatever they are thinking, feeling, needing, demanding, we should, at the very least, be aware of those thoughts, feelings, and ideas. So what was missing when I looked around the room during our first Project Tune this year? The user.
It’s interesting to observe how much student voice is being incorporated into all of the High Tech High schools (and much of them very successfully) and then to realize that in the one area where student voice may be the most critical, it is lacking. After all, the main reason why students are at our schools is to execute projects and to learn from them. So as someone that thoroughly enjoys the Project Tuning Protocol and the results of Project Tunes themselves, I decided to try incorporating my own students into this very formulaic and very new (at least for the students) process. In addition, as a HTH teacher I always struggled with implementing rich and meaningful Challenge Options as well as attempting to support all of my struggling learners and my IEP/504 students. Hence my Dilemma Question: How can student voice/choice be implemented into the project tuning process in order to meet the needs/demands of learners at all ability levels? As a teacher of a 9th grade classroom and it still being rather early on in the year, I knew this would not be an easy task. “Will they understand the process?” “Are they confident enough to speak out what is truly on their mind?” “How can I ensure that every voice is heard and not just the students that already vocalize a lot of their ideas/opinions?” All of these questions and more made me want to further investigate. In the end, some of my predictions rang true while at other times, as always, my students ended up surprising me with some insightful evidence.
Process
The Intro
The first step in my timeline was to address my biggest and main concern - to expose at least some of my students to a Project Tune so that they may observe how it is run and that they understand what the purpose of a Project Tune is. By asking for dedicated student volunteers, four of my 56 students attended a staff Project Tune during one of our Humanities Content Meetings. Three other juniors were also present - these three students were Student Staff members who regularly attended staff meetings. They had much more HTH experience as well as Project Tuning experience than my freshmen. There were ten staff members participating in the Tuning. Out of the four students that were present, only one spoke during the entire protocol. However, the content of the student’s statements were very insightful and helpful. He stated that “the project looks fun but the Challenge Option looks intimidating” (9/20 Notes). He began to question who Sigmund Freud was and that maybe choosing a book that is more relatable, like Robinson Crusoe, might have been better. I thought he had some very legitimate points regarding the Challenge Option and I appreciated his suggestion.
Data
Once the Tuning was over, I provided every student and staff with an Exit Card. The following questions were asked to the staff:
- What struck you about having students attend this projec tune?
- On a scale of 1-5, how helpful were the students during the tune?
- Do you feel the needs/demands of all your students are being met through this project? (Is it differentiated?)
- On a scale of 1-5, how much student voice was implemented into this project?
- Would you try to incorporate students into project tunings in the future?
The following questions were asked to the students:
- What struck you about this project tune?
- On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate the level of rigor you would like from your teachers?
- On a scale of 1-5, how much of your learning needs/demands are being met through this project?
- On a scale of 1-5, how much student voice was implemented into this project?
- Would you like your future projects to be tuned by yourself/ other students prior to launching them?
Intro De-Brief
During our de-brief, the students confirmed several of my suspicions. First off, that the students were much too intimidated by the large group of staff to vocalize their thoughts/opinions. One of the students stated that she might have felt more comfortable had there been more of her peers - which made sense. I think if I had executed this staff/student Project Tune during a Professional Development meeting on an Early Release Wednesday, the student volunteer turn-out might have been higher thus resulting in a more comfortable and welcoming environment for my students where more of their voice would have been heard. However, despite this unfortunate circumstance, this first exposure accomplished the goal of revealing to the students the process and purpose of a Project Tune. Many of them stated that they were very confused when the discussion first began but as people began talking, they quickly understood what the focus of the conversation should be. Another observation I noted during our de-brief was how the students struggled to answer my question of “What is academic rigor? What does it look like in PBL?”. The students either regurgitated things that were already in place that were supposed to challenge students or were only able to verbalize past experiences in which they were challenged. Many of these past experiences boiled down to “I was confused on what the teacher was asking of me,” which isn’t necessarily academic rigor but rather a case of miscommunication or misunderstanding. In the end, I concluded that the student themselves did not necessarily understand what academic rigor should look like, particularly in a project-based learning setting (9/24 Video).
The Tuning - Class A
Initially, my goal for including students into the Project Tune was to ensure that the needs/demands of students at all ability levels were being met. By receiving a preview of the project and understanding the teacher’s thinking behind the idea of a project, students would be able to vocalize whether or not their needs were being met and/or include their ideas for alternative options/products. However as soon as the discussion began I knew that I would witness much more than that. For Class A, I was pleasantly surprised by not only the number of students that participated (about 18 of the 29 students) but the type of students as well. Because none of the students volunteered to be a facilitator, I personally facilitated this particular Tuning. However it may be interesting to note that during the Discussion portion, the student who attended the initial tuning during the staff meeting pretty much became the facilitator. Three of these students I would consider introverted, shy, and participates in class only when necessary. But perhaps it was because they recognized the necessity in the situation and/or the applicability to their own lives, not only did these students participate but they contributed rather interesting information. When addressing the Dilemma Question, one of these students mentioned the amount of time that I predicted was needed for the group’s rehearsal. He mentioned with the current time restraints, the project was much too challenging. Then another student mentions the three different products: maybe a method of differentiation could be to make the other two products an option instead of mandatory? Then the discussion took a quick right turn and the students began a debating over the differentation of “music” versus “sound” - I had to quickly interject and remind the group of the Dilemma Question while there was still time left. Even still, the students had a difficult time addressing my Dilemma Question. The only solutions to further differentiation of this project was to increase/decrease the amount of time to complete the project and/or to increase/decrease the amount of products that were to be created for this project.
Class B
For this class about 16 of the 26 vocalized their thoughts regarding the project and a student volunteered to facilitate. At this point, it is difficult to say whether who facilitated affected the outcome of the discussion. Similar to Class A, Class B also struggled with at least directly responding to the Dilemma Question. This latter class was so excited about the project they immediately jumped to bouncing ideas for variations of the products, other possible options, possible themes, additional content topics that could be discussed and learned, etc. Ideas such as a bike-instrument, an instrument using glasses filled with water, homemade bagpipes, doing the writing piece in a foreign language, etc. were just some of the ideas that were presented.
Data
Once the Tuning concluded, my students responded to the same 5 questions that were asked during the Intro Tuning. This time, however, due to the number of respondants, I had them complete the Exit Cards digitally but still annonymous.
The responses to question 1 (What struck you about this Project Tune?) was overwhelmingly positive. Majority of the students were very psyched about the project but it was also nice to see that several of the students recognized that their teacher was reaching out to them. “I think it’s great that we have a say in what we are going to learn,” says one student. Other students seemed to think a little more critically and recognized that teachers still had a lot of work to do in terms of differentiation: “I like the Project Tune idea but the teachers need to take ALL of the students STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES into consideration and not just the majority of the lot” (sic). And still others seemed apathetic: “Nothing really, it seemed like a boring, unimportant discussion.” Even more interestingly, this particular student, despite the fact that he/she claimed this discussion seemed “unimportant”, he/she clicked “maybe” as his/her response to question 5 (Would you like your future projects to be tuned by yourself/ other students prior to launching them?). In addition, two other students responded “no” to the same question.
Take Away
Based on my de-brief with both classes regarding the Project Tuning process, one main characteristic of the Project Tuning Protocol screamed at me, “This protocol was not designed with students in mind.” This discussion process was developed by and for teachers and other adult staff members. Prior to our de-brief, I had not even considered this aspect of the protocol. I loved the protocol: it was organized, structured, and it provided all of the necessary elements to provide all of the necessary information. But for some reason my students, even the ones that were most active during the discussion, still found flaws within the protocol.
For example, almost all of the students were very confused when we began the tuning. Even one student states in his/her response to question 1, “What got my attention was how it was ran. I was not sure what was about go on (sic) when we first started, and I was impressed with what happened and it really helped me get a better idea of the project.” Like most of the students, it took this student a moment before he/she realized what the purpose of the discussion was. Despite the fact that this protocol works well for most of our teachers, it is lacking something for our students.
One suggestion I heard from my student during our de-brief was to have some sort of “umoderated caucus”, much like in a Model United Nations debate, where students have a set amount of time to roam around and discuss with their peers the topic that is being discussed. The student claimed it would not only give them some time to think but to also bounce ideas with people they are comfortable with in a much more intimate setting. Another suggestion was to have the same exact discussion in small groups instead of with the entire class.
Still others felt like the discussion portion (Step 5 in the Protocol) was somewhat pointless since the teacher was not “present” to respond, which I thought was extremely interesting because I always find this component the most helpful and interactive. I wonder if my students were yet again missing the point of the Project Tuning Protocol. Based on this feedback, I am assuming that some of the students still view this discussion as a platform for me to launch a new project rather than a platform for them to voice what they want through this project. This goes back to my fear of my students being unable to adequately and appropriately voice their needs/demands simply because they have never been asked to voice this before.
Lastly, the way the protocol is currently designed is for a teacher to present a dilemma regarding the project to the teacher’s peers. My dilemma, whether the project in its current state was meeting all the students’ needs/demands, was much too complex (especially considering the students themselves a lot of the times are not aware of what their needs/demands are or should be) for students to ponder much less answer and resolve.
Moving Forward
As I put on my School Leader Cap, I see so much room for growth in terms of including students into the developmental process our projects and our curriculum. My students were so excited about the project I presented to them and even more excited just thinking about the potential possibilities and directions we could take this project. Why should the excitement begin only after I’ve introduced the projec to them? Why not begin their engagement from the get-go? At HTHNC, we already Student Staff members who regularly attend meetings and professinoal development. However I feel like there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to these Student Staff. The quantity could be increased as well as defining their role within these meetings. Often times I observe them sitting in the corner of the room looking bored, wondering how this information being presented might apply to them. By further valuing these Student Staff we can show our school and community that not only do we listen to students but we value their feedback and take action when appropriate.
Since I began this project and class I feel I’ve truly become a student of the Stanford D. School - now more than ever I am putting myself in the shoes of my students and empathizing with the user. And what the user is telling me is that they have a lot of things to say and they simply need a user-friendly method to amplify their voice.