How To Self Engineer A Learning Community?

Learning is a human-centered approach that is filled with rich authentic opportunities for both educators and students who co-learn and explore learning together. It involves a community, a culture, and an environment that is based on trust, empathizing and valuing each other. It is learning how to learn together by collecting data to set goals for the community's next steps.  

I am starting with the students' end of year reflections focusing on what worked for us this year. The students and I became mentors together, by focusing on feedback for growth for our learning community. My learning is motivated and inspired throughout the year from the students' feedback.  

Learning is a human-centered approach because it is filled with emotions. Our environment is a community of active listeners valuing all perspectives and thinking. We spent lots of time learning how our brain develops and how our emotions affect the learning process and our community. Deep learning is a complex process since it is more than just meaningful real-world connections, it is about building a community. Our community focused on self-regulation and self-management of the learning through thinking strategies, agency for learning, developing competencies, connecting and reflecting on all discomforts along the way. The students differ from year to year and our classroom experiences are enriched by dealing with the unexpected uncertainties towards learning. All the complexities and tensions that occur during the year are the best learning opportunities for us. The complexities of emotions from the students and I are stepping stones to unravel the tensions toward inclusivity at becoming flexible thinkers. Through individual and team consolidations of collected data about real experiences of setbacks were pruned and strategies were developed for responsible and equitable practices. Self-management and self-regulation are important and most effective when students interpret and analyze together the data for accountability to move forward. Team members reflected and reconciled with each other to ensure individual development for self-regulation. It is self-engineering the classroom and school experiences that deal with emotions and finding strategies to assure learning contributions are valued and achieved. 

On my last blog post, I share some of the processes of documentation using the Ladder of Inference Changing The Narrative Together!. In that post, I share how students identified their learning abilities and how they progressed by self-managing their learning through their abilities to progress individually and as team members. As we progressed the students continued to focus on their learning abilities, how to deal with emotions during teamwork through team roles that they have created to self-regulate and took ownership.  

The students took roles during teamwork on improving their abilities to think and learn together. They chose their own roles based on the problematic biases that they were encountering to self-regulate and self-manage as a team and a community. We reflected on the following problematic tensions: 

  A short screencastify video of students celebration

                                   

The students connected their learning to the school community by reflecting on how the school improvement plan aligns with our classroom practices. 

After a staff meeting, Mr. Sean Kelly the principal of All Saints high school added teachers reflections on the wall displaying the SIPSAW (School Improvement Plan Students Achievement and Wellbeing) based on the board strategic commitments.                  From the school board Strategic Commitments

                                        https://www.ocsb.ca/commitments/

  

Teachers reflections about classroom practices in relation to the SIPSAW

The students aligned the classroom practices with the SIPSAW

This was such an important practice for the students, as it valued their community connection to the learning skills that are being achieved by them. This has impacted how their learning experiences mattered as part of the large learning community where all leaders and teachers from the school to the board had the same vision for learning. 

The visions and the commitment of "Be Community, Be Well and Be Creative"  An example of the classroom alignment to the school plan 

  

I can only share an image of a student's reflection due to privacy. 

For the students to engineer their learning it is more than just ownership it is a shared responsibility and accountability. It is a journey from academic to assessment, project-based learning, thinking strategies to competencies and of course emotions that affect the intrapersonal and interpersonal relations within the classroom community. 

Learning is a human process that connects our actions to our emotions impacting everyone. Focusing on accountability and creating culturally diverse perspectives where students with all abilities co-design, co-create and collect data to become their own researchers and engineer their next steps to be collaborators and negotiators for learning. 

I finished reading Clarity by Lyn Sharratt on how teachers and students are researchers and authorship of their choices for classroom collaborative practices. 

 More of the end of year Reflections 

What steps will you take to engineer the learning with your students?

Is community building an aspect of inclusivity and equity for learning? 

How courageous are we to deal with the unexpected? Courage by Dr.Brene Brown "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart."

When Students Shine!

Giving students the time to create is an important learning experience. Creativity is not limited to just building or making, creativity is a process when students:

•  Iterate and ideate to problem solve in any subject
• Collaborate to communicate for problem-solving 
• Develop character for leadership, perseverance by valuing all perspectives, ideas, and feedback
• Developing self-compassion, team compassion by being active listeners, inquiring, accepting suggestions for ideation and iteration
• Always referring to empathy, understanding the purpose with empathy to why care and how to care for learning either by designing or getting feedback and taking action 
• An interdisciplinary process that is inclusive of all thinking skills to problem solve (language arts, math, science, arts, engineering). Religion for us too as we focused on the Ontario Catholic Graduate Expectations
• Connecting learning to real-world problem-solving in all disciplines

For the Science inquiry on ecosystems, the students walked to Kanata Beaver Pond to collect data about the effect of housing developments on the interdependence of the marshes, water, and forest ecosystems. The students spotted a dead bird on the road and wondered how the bird was injured and how to care for injured wild birds.

I knew about the Ottawa Valley Wild Bird Care Centre @WildBirdOttawa . The students checked the Twitter feed and Facebook page to learn more about the centre. After connecting with Patty McLaughlin who works at the centre, she presented the students with the problem of injured birds and easy accessibility for food and water. The problem for Food and Water Dishes Patty became the partner for feedback throughout the process for designing to solve the problem.

The Design Thinking process began by defining the problem that was presented by the centre.  We followed the design process by Mary Cantwell   https://www.deepdesignthinking.com/

The students took ownership and agency of their learning in developing the process. Below there are two projects. The link to the Google Photo album also shares all students' projects and learning with Patty's visit to the classroom.

Link to the project 

The link of the project 

The design thinking process was empowered by students' inquiry about injured birds. This was the first design thinking process with a partnership for this year's group of Grade 7 students. I am looking forward to their own lead design process as they plan for many community connections and problem-solving for action taking.

Of course, many thinking strategies and community development have taken into effect in order for students to build their confidence to take risks and value each others thinking. Building this community takes time, this blog post refers to the process of self-regulation and social-emotional learning developments.

The students personalized the design process by:

• Defining the problem
• Developing the empathy map
• Ideation by valuing all perspectives individually to finalize a team design
• Team design meets all problems for feeding injured birds
• An initial meeting with Patty for the first feedback after ideation and 1st prototype
• Back to ideation and iteration for most teams
• More ideation and iteration after designs were 3D printed
• Students decompose the designs using Tinkercad involving team discussions on math, science and engineering
• Presenting the design face to face with the end user

Initial online meeting for Iteration

This was an exciting and amazing process full of agency, inquiry and problem-solving. The students were dedicated to persevere and decompose algorithms.

This post is highlighting the importance of having students explore the core of creativity. Creativity is not a task! It is the core of giving the students agency, providing them the opportunity to design their thinking, learning, risk-taking, collaboration, communication, empathy and making a difference in their community.

When students lead they learn more in any situation using creative processes from writing to designing. It is about spreading uniqueness of thinking and decision making for every step during the process and for students to continue seeking growth and be emotionally engaging for learning.

No matter how complex the knowledge is, it is not to for us to regulate, it is to allow students to connect with it to make a difference with their learning.

The students solve problems that they perceive as meaningful. We need to support thinking and not to disconnect them from knowledge building, developing ideas, prototyping their learning and making connections among each others' thinking.

Learning and students' thinking has to be revisable, iterated and reflected upon to our students to be successful. So many layers that intervene with all of the learning stages that focus on thinking skills models, social-emotional reaction to learning. Learning is prototyping, thinking is prototyping by allowing students to connect, reflect, reconnect and reflect again.

When students are experiencing designing and creativity they are also experiencing the equity of learning. We continue to transfer the empathy building from the designing experiences to our daily active learning at the school and outside the school. The design process involves social-emotional development and dealing with many situations during the process.

Some reflections about iteration, leadership, and creativity.

All reflections are in French. The students indicated in their reflections that the design thinking process has encouraged them to persevere in their learning and accept risk-taking. Also building empathy and compassion when collaborating and learning.

Let's make time for creativity on a daily basis by focusing on learning as prototyping and co-creating than just consuming.

How are we giving time for wondering than telling!  How do we foster creativity in the classroom? How are we allowing students to drive interest in learning?  How are students exercising or applying their agency?

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” 

Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)

“Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.” 

Thomas Sowell (1930 – )

Changing The Narrative Together!

Every academic year is different as students lead their learning and use their emotional journey through everyday learning experiences. Each year, I have to shift my pedagogical practice to build a respectful, collaborative, risk-taking, caring, compassionate and empathetic community. In my previous years, I have blogged about unpacking of the Unlearning to create a community that values perspectives for knowledge building and action taking.

This is my second year in Grade 7. I continue to explore the adolescent social-emotional learning of autonomy and agency of their learning. Their learning is being impacted by using creative tasks, focusing on why learning matters and what is next. The narrative of pedagogical practices shifts as I learn from the student’s needs, their reflections and how they learn.

We began exploring what thinking errors and biases we bring during collaboration. The team's collaboration requires trusting to share intrapersonal ideas, valuing all others interpersonal ideas to build knowledge, inquire, analyze, research and build connections for next steps.  Through the metacognitive process, we built a community of trust, risk-taking, valuing all perspectives, persevering with curiosity to guide students interest and care for their learning.

The year unfolded as students reflected about their thinking errors and biases that prevented them from collaborating and valuing each others thinking. We focused on perspectives and trusting themselves to share without worrying about being judged. We also focused on contributing with respect as well as respecting others.

We needed to:

• Be active listeners
• Be collaborators with a growth mindset
• Develop communication skills
• Have positive attitudes
• Be reflective learners
• Be receptive to feedback
• Understand how we learn
• Determine learning strategies
• Believe in making a difference

On a daily basis, we collected thinking errors on sticky notes focusing on how their emotional learning to collaborate and accept feedback from others was affected. Through the ladder of inference (Rotman I-Think), the students were able to interpret their data and come up to a conclusion for their next steps.

From September to November we had many documentations and reflections. The students also had the first conversation with me that was recorded and shared with parents about their process of learning skills and how they have improved and their next steps.

Throughout the process, we began focusing on self-regulation and self-management of learning. The focus was on finding strategies about the learning process and environmental strategies to guide autonomy and agency on self-regulation and self-management.  During a professional development day, our principal Mr. Sean Kelly shared the Understanding Learning Disabilities From York Region District School Board. The flow chart became an essential guide for my students to reflect on their learning and their next steps on individual perspectives about their learning process. The students developed their individual plans by collecting data, reflecting on self-regulation and the self-management of learning success.

More reflections about individual learning strategies:

It has been an amazing journey of reflecting and learning about competencies, learning strategies and building a respective and compassionate community towards learning and caring about each other. I will share more reflections about students' transformation of learning:

The process of a compassionate interdependent classroom takes time to have students collect data and reflect on how and why they are learning. With my scheduling, I am fortunate to be able to make time for reflections with the students to determine the next steps. We already had three documented individual meetings about success and how they have been achieved and their next steps. We continue to develop on, who am I and how I learn? The students will be learning about the brain and its functions and how the prefrontal cortex continues to develop especially with peer pressure.

I have so much more to explore and learn with my students on social-emotional development. We have success by using thinking models that embrace risk-taking and competencies as well as design thinking tasks that focus on problem-solving and empathy.

Pedagogical practices are always shifting and meeting students needs with the focus on emotional and intellectual practices. It is important to take time and have students take the responsibility to collect data and reflect on their learning process and how it is affecting their actions towards intellectual and social growth.

How are we building capacity for learning? How are we changing our narrative of pedagogical practices with our students?

• Reflecting on biases and assumptions
• Are students aware of their emotional learning?
• Are they reflecting on self-regulation?
• Are they finding tools to guide their learning strategies?
• Are students being active communicators and listeners?