HTH 210: Design and Leadership for Deeper Learning
The Parklet Project |
Project Background
Grace Maddox and I collaborated on designing a project in which students will design the playground for the new elementary school in Point Loma, and then design a parklet for an area in the local community that has limited recreational spaces. This is Grace’s first year at HTe, and her first year in a project-based setting. The project handout can be found here, and the project website can be accessed at http://parklet.weebly.com/.
Ron Berger, Chief Program Officer of Expeditionary Learning and long-time progressive educator, advocates for projects in which students can take the time to create truly beautiful work (2003). This means that the school must foster a culture in which students take pride in their work, and let go of the creeping desire to squeeze more and more into the school year. By allowing students to explore deeply, and spend a good deal of time honing a piece of work, they will have a much more profound learning experience. According to Berger,
Ron Berger, Chief Program Officer of Expeditionary Learning and long-time progressive educator, advocates for projects in which students can take the time to create truly beautiful work (2003). This means that the school must foster a culture in which students take pride in their work, and let go of the creeping desire to squeeze more and more into the school year. By allowing students to explore deeply, and spend a good deal of time honing a piece of work, they will have a much more profound learning experience. According to Berger,
Five practices...are essential for creating and sustaining a classroom culture of excellence: (1) assign work that matters; (2) study examples of excellence; (3) build a culture of critique; (4) require multiple revisions; and (5) provide opportunities for public presentation (2003, p. 2).
Grace and I wanted to design a project that would contribute to a classroom culture of excellence, and be a culminating project for the students’ elementary experience that they could be proud of. Because of this, we chose a topic that we believed truly mattered, and decided to dedicate the remainder of the academic year to the project. This will allow students to learn from real-world examples of excellent playgrounds and parklets, help one another improve their designs through critique, revise their own work multiple times and ultimately have an authentic public audience for their work.
Steinberg (1998) argues that in order to capture students’ attention and get them interested in the “right things”, we need to engage them in authentic, meaningful work (2002, p. 6). Specifically, she suggests that successful schools engage students in “substantial projects grounded in real-world issues and concerns, and guided by adults from outside as well as inside the school” (Steinberg, 1998, p. 6). Because the adult-world connection is a strong motivator for students, and significantly increases the authenticity of the project, we thought of as many ways as possible of connecting student work to the adult world. Students will be working with an adult client (Anne Worrall) to build an authentic product, and later in the project will also be presenting to adult officials to convince them of the need to build a parklet. We also have several leads on real-world architects and designers who can give students input on their process and designs throughout the project.
Our goals in developing the authenticity of the work are not only to increase student buy-in, but also to improve the quality of critique and collaboration. Elisabeth Soep (2008) has studied and worked with youth to understand conditions that lead to quality critique, and found that there are four factors. First, students must see the work as high stakes, students must co-develop the standards by which the work is judged, the whole group needs to share accountability for the quality of the work, and the work itself must be of the kind that cannot be completed well by a single person. As Soep explains,
Steinberg (1998) argues that in order to capture students’ attention and get them interested in the “right things”, we need to engage them in authentic, meaningful work (2002, p. 6). Specifically, she suggests that successful schools engage students in “substantial projects grounded in real-world issues and concerns, and guided by adults from outside as well as inside the school” (Steinberg, 1998, p. 6). Because the adult-world connection is a strong motivator for students, and significantly increases the authenticity of the project, we thought of as many ways as possible of connecting student work to the adult world. Students will be working with an adult client (Anne Worrall) to build an authentic product, and later in the project will also be presenting to adult officials to convince them of the need to build a parklet. We also have several leads on real-world architects and designers who can give students input on their process and designs throughout the project.
Our goals in developing the authenticity of the work are not only to increase student buy-in, but also to improve the quality of critique and collaboration. Elisabeth Soep (2008) has studied and worked with youth to understand conditions that lead to quality critique, and found that there are four factors. First, students must see the work as high stakes, students must co-develop the standards by which the work is judged, the whole group needs to share accountability for the quality of the work, and the work itself must be of the kind that cannot be completed well by a single person. As Soep explains,
Those seemed to be moments particularly ripe for critique, where youth realized 'I actually don’t have the solution here and there isn’t an obvious authority figure who can tell me the answer, so I better look around because I’m doing something that’s a little outside my particular area of expertise.’ (2008, p. 2).
Cohen and Lotan (2014) agree that the quality of the task heavily influences the quality of collaboration. Collaboration is richer and smoother if students are working together on a task that cannot be completed in isolation (Cohen & Lotan, 2014). Grace and I are working together on an Improvement Research Team examining how teachers can encourage all students to become active and influential in group work. In our initial interview for the project, Grace noted that she recently realized the impact that the task can have on the quality of collaboration. She recalled that she had been asking students to work together on math tasks that could easily be completed individually by some students, and had been frustrated with the quality of collaboration. The complex challenge of this project will be a ripe opportunity to develop authentic collaborative skills within her class.
In addition to giving students a sense of purpose, an authentic task can ameliorate gender differences in STEM subjects. Real-world application of STEM concepts can be a gateway to increased engagement of girls by demonstrating its relevance in the world. Issacs (2001) explains that the creative problem-solving of real-world problems is more attractive to girls than their mental image of engineering as a similar to math, which “...girls perceive the subject as cold, impersonal, and with little clear application to their lives or to society” (Sadker and Sadker 1994 as quoted in Isaacs 2001). By applying math and engineering to a real-world challenge, students can see the value of the skills they are learning, and develop identities as mathematicians and engineers.
In addition to giving students a sense of purpose, an authentic task can ameliorate gender differences in STEM subjects. Real-world application of STEM concepts can be a gateway to increased engagement of girls by demonstrating its relevance in the world. Issacs (2001) explains that the creative problem-solving of real-world problems is more attractive to girls than their mental image of engineering as a similar to math, which “...girls perceive the subject as cold, impersonal, and with little clear application to their lives or to society” (Sadker and Sadker 1994 as quoted in Isaacs 2001). By applying math and engineering to a real-world challenge, students can see the value of the skills they are learning, and develop identities as mathematicians and engineers.
Project Design Timeline
San Diego Teacher Foundation Grant Application, October 22
Grace and another 5th grade teacher, Christine Sullivan, had started a grant application for a parklet project and requested feedback from me. Through helping them revise their application, I learned about the origins and goals of the project and some ideas about how they planned to execute it.
Pitch to 5th Grade Teachers, October 24, 2014
For my course, HTH 210: Design and Leadership for Deeper Learning, I was tasked with designing a project. I wanted to co-design a project with a teacher so that the work I was doing for the course could actually be used in a classroom. I met with the 5th grade team to tell them about the work I would be doing for the course, and to see if any of them would be interested in committing to a project and collaborating on the planning. Grace was committed to the parklet project, and eager to have a collaborator. The parklet project was a perfect project for my coursework because it had great potential for authenticity and student choice.
Meeting with Grace Maddox, October 29, 2014
Grace and I sat down to discuss our goals and plan for the project. My advisor, Kelly Wilson, observed the meeting in order to give me feedback. She took notes on our conversation, which can be found here. In her feedback, Kelly pointed out that issues of equity are important to Grace and asked how those would be explored in the project. Since then, Grace and I have created greater clarity in our project, including shifting our essential question from “How can we design a beautiful, sustainable parklet for our local community?” to “Why are green spaces important to people and communities? How can we address inequity of access to green spaces in our local community?”
Playground Pitch and Prototype Planning, November 12, 2014
In order to get a better idea of how students might design a playground for the new school in Point Loma, we met with Anne Worrall, the new school’s director, to ask her about her hopes for the playground design. Based on this input, we planned how students might created designs to meet these specifications. Grace and I discussed that authentic value that students could add to the design process, and agreed that student voice would be important to Anne and the architects in creating their design. If our students can persuasively explain their design choices and support their ideas with interview and observational data of other students, then their ideas will be more convincing. We discussed the parameters for the playground design and set a time to create our own prototype.
Project Tunings, November 13, 2014
In his guide to project-based learning, Work That Matters, Alec Patton points out that a project tuning with students not only gives teachers helpful feedback about the project design from a student perspective, but “doing a project tuning also sets the stage for the peer critique that your students will be doing during the project, so it’s good for them to see you modelling how to receive critique graciously and constructively” (2002, p. 58). I had never done a project tuning with an entire class before, and was eager to give it a try. Since we were tuning with a larger group than normal, I modified the standard tuning protocol to allow for all voices to be heard by breaking into small groups for the discussion. The modified protocol can be found here.
Based on the feedback we had received to clarify the equity focus of the project, we made sure to highlight the project’s goal of promoting fair access to recreational spaces. This really resonated with students, and gave them a sense of purpose for their upcoming work. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the project from students, and a few helpful suggestions, too. In particular, we came away with the idea of organizing the class like a small business with divisions responsible for different areas of the parklet creation, such as a finance division, a legal division, an artistic division and an engineering division. More feedback can be found below in Appendix 1: Student Feedback from Project Tuning.
On this day, I also received feedback from colleagues in my graduate course on the project design. The most helpful feedback was from Kyle Linnik, who suggested that instead of having the final product of the playground design be a suggestion to Anne, that we should meet more regularly with Anne and develop that client relationship so that in the end, the design that we produce could really be the final design of the playground. I contacted Anne, and she agreed to regular Friday meetings throughout the duration of the project. This will significantly increase the level of authenticity of the product.
Prototype Creation, November 16, 2014
Grace and I collaborated on the creation of an initial playground design prototype, which can be found here. We discussed that the two most valuable parts of this step in the process will be the freedom for kids to create whatever they want and the practice of supporting ideas with strong rationale.
Meeting with Ben Krueger, November 17, 2014
Ben has done a Parkitecture Project twice in which his students helped inform the designs of the playgrounds on the Chula Vista and North County campuses. Ben shared several resources and we discussed possibilities for collaboration on the upcoming playground design project.
Next steps
One area that we were not able to develop as much as I would have liked is the question of access and challenge. This was largely because the flexibility of the project made it difficult for us to imagine the kind of supports that students would need and how we would structure opportunities for challenge. Once the project begins, I plan to check in with Grace about this and help problem-solve as issues arise.
We will also be working together on the group work Improvement Research Team, so we will be checking in regularly about the quality of collaboration within the project and brainstorming possible interventions to improve the quality.
Works Cited
Berger, R. (2003). Fostering an ethic of excellence. Adapted from An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students. New York: Heinemann.
Cohen, E. & Lotan, R. (2014). Designing Group Work: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Isaacs, B. (2001). Mystery of the missing women engineers: A solution. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education & Practice, 127(2), p. 85-92.
Patton, A. (2012) Work that Matters. London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Soep, E. (2008). Learning as production, critique as assessment. UnBoxed, 2.
Steinberg (1998). Project-based learning: spilling into life. In Real Learning, Real Work: School-to-Work as High School Reform. New York: Routledge.
Appendix 1: Student Feedback from Project Tuning
What part of this project sounds exciting to you?
What was it like to participate in a project tuning?
Grace and another 5th grade teacher, Christine Sullivan, had started a grant application for a parklet project and requested feedback from me. Through helping them revise their application, I learned about the origins and goals of the project and some ideas about how they planned to execute it.
Pitch to 5th Grade Teachers, October 24, 2014
For my course, HTH 210: Design and Leadership for Deeper Learning, I was tasked with designing a project. I wanted to co-design a project with a teacher so that the work I was doing for the course could actually be used in a classroom. I met with the 5th grade team to tell them about the work I would be doing for the course, and to see if any of them would be interested in committing to a project and collaborating on the planning. Grace was committed to the parklet project, and eager to have a collaborator. The parklet project was a perfect project for my coursework because it had great potential for authenticity and student choice.
Meeting with Grace Maddox, October 29, 2014
Grace and I sat down to discuss our goals and plan for the project. My advisor, Kelly Wilson, observed the meeting in order to give me feedback. She took notes on our conversation, which can be found here. In her feedback, Kelly pointed out that issues of equity are important to Grace and asked how those would be explored in the project. Since then, Grace and I have created greater clarity in our project, including shifting our essential question from “How can we design a beautiful, sustainable parklet for our local community?” to “Why are green spaces important to people and communities? How can we address inequity of access to green spaces in our local community?”
Playground Pitch and Prototype Planning, November 12, 2014
In order to get a better idea of how students might design a playground for the new school in Point Loma, we met with Anne Worrall, the new school’s director, to ask her about her hopes for the playground design. Based on this input, we planned how students might created designs to meet these specifications. Grace and I discussed that authentic value that students could add to the design process, and agreed that student voice would be important to Anne and the architects in creating their design. If our students can persuasively explain their design choices and support their ideas with interview and observational data of other students, then their ideas will be more convincing. We discussed the parameters for the playground design and set a time to create our own prototype.
Project Tunings, November 13, 2014
In his guide to project-based learning, Work That Matters, Alec Patton points out that a project tuning with students not only gives teachers helpful feedback about the project design from a student perspective, but “doing a project tuning also sets the stage for the peer critique that your students will be doing during the project, so it’s good for them to see you modelling how to receive critique graciously and constructively” (2002, p. 58). I had never done a project tuning with an entire class before, and was eager to give it a try. Since we were tuning with a larger group than normal, I modified the standard tuning protocol to allow for all voices to be heard by breaking into small groups for the discussion. The modified protocol can be found here.
Based on the feedback we had received to clarify the equity focus of the project, we made sure to highlight the project’s goal of promoting fair access to recreational spaces. This really resonated with students, and gave them a sense of purpose for their upcoming work. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the project from students, and a few helpful suggestions, too. In particular, we came away with the idea of organizing the class like a small business with divisions responsible for different areas of the parklet creation, such as a finance division, a legal division, an artistic division and an engineering division. More feedback can be found below in Appendix 1: Student Feedback from Project Tuning.
On this day, I also received feedback from colleagues in my graduate course on the project design. The most helpful feedback was from Kyle Linnik, who suggested that instead of having the final product of the playground design be a suggestion to Anne, that we should meet more regularly with Anne and develop that client relationship so that in the end, the design that we produce could really be the final design of the playground. I contacted Anne, and she agreed to regular Friday meetings throughout the duration of the project. This will significantly increase the level of authenticity of the product.
Prototype Creation, November 16, 2014
Grace and I collaborated on the creation of an initial playground design prototype, which can be found here. We discussed that the two most valuable parts of this step in the process will be the freedom for kids to create whatever they want and the practice of supporting ideas with strong rationale.
Meeting with Ben Krueger, November 17, 2014
Ben has done a Parkitecture Project twice in which his students helped inform the designs of the playgrounds on the Chula Vista and North County campuses. Ben shared several resources and we discussed possibilities for collaboration on the upcoming playground design project.
Next steps
One area that we were not able to develop as much as I would have liked is the question of access and challenge. This was largely because the flexibility of the project made it difficult for us to imagine the kind of supports that students would need and how we would structure opportunities for challenge. Once the project begins, I plan to check in with Grace about this and help problem-solve as issues arise.
We will also be working together on the group work Improvement Research Team, so we will be checking in regularly about the quality of collaboration within the project and brainstorming possible interventions to improve the quality.
Works Cited
Berger, R. (2003). Fostering an ethic of excellence. Adapted from An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students. New York: Heinemann.
Cohen, E. & Lotan, R. (2014). Designing Group Work: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Isaacs, B. (2001). Mystery of the missing women engineers: A solution. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education & Practice, 127(2), p. 85-92.
Patton, A. (2012) Work that Matters. London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Soep, E. (2008). Learning as production, critique as assessment. UnBoxed, 2.
Steinberg (1998). Project-based learning: spilling into life. In Real Learning, Real Work: School-to-Work as High School Reform. New York: Routledge.
Appendix 1: Student Feedback from Project Tuning
What part of this project sounds exciting to you?
- “What really is exciting to me is that it is hands on. Kids just love getting their hands dirty. It is a really good chance for us to explore.” - Katherine
- “Going to different schools and parks is cool.” - Tony
- “What I think I’m excite for is designing the new HTe par because we can get our own ideas and freely design the playground and the limits are (almost) endless.” - Cesar
- “What this project sounds exciting to me is that for the school Baker does not have a playground so maybe we will make them a little playground. Another part that sounds exciting is that this will be our second project and it will take us this whole year.” - Ethan
- “Maybe when we get into different groups, we can have people of different talents in one group. Like one creative person, one persuasive person, and one person that’s good at building.” - Katherine
- “What I would change is making the parklet more bigger because for my opinion the parklet that we’re going to use is way too small so that’s why we need to make it bigger.” - Nick
- “What would be one thing I would add is trying to make people think 5th grade did this.” - Michael
- “I would like to add a dedication that says the date, a symbol and by HTe.” - Adriel
- “The thing that I would change is that I would make this project shorter because some people might not want to do this project for the rest of the year. And the thing that I would add is a back up plan just in case we don’t get permission to build the parklet.” - Carlos
What was it like to participate in a project tuning?
- “It was cool to kind of take control and take part in our project.” - Talina
- “It was very serious and a lot of talking. I hope we can do it again.” - Katherine
- “I enjoyed letting the students speak out for they have a chance to tell what the want to happen.” - Tony
- “I felt accepted and respected. I think we could do this more often.” - Arthur
- “I am glad that I finally get to contribute to making the project instead of just the teachers doing all of it.” - Luc
- “The project tuning was fun because it felt very professional.” - Carmela
- “I think we were in some kind of conference for like student president or teachers only.” - Cesar
- “It was like participating in a business meeting.” - Carlos
- “The project tuning was helpful because I feel better prepared for the project.” - Aby