The Most Audacious 'Class' I've Ever Seen
Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 11:50AM Email Article And I've seen some audacious classes in my time.
Lookk, before you do anything, just watch this footage. Then, optionally, read my waffle. But watch this footage. As jaw-dropping to me as any TED talk. Try to spot the teacher. OHHHH there aren't any. Yet the kids are working in synchronicity. WHY? HOW? Answer this, and you've cracked the paradigm-change nut we're smack-bang in the middle of:
We're talking DAY 3 of the year 2012, with 90 Year 6 students being joined by 90 Year 5 students. The Year 6s have been used to radical self-direction for 12 months, the Year 5s are more or less the newbies.
So this is establishment phase, okay? The most crucial time in any community. It's when the DNA, the starting-culture, is settled on. Happens everywhere: workplace, school, church, sport. In 2012, Week 1 of the year for many classes in Australia must have consisted of the teacher 'framing' the class; establishing a narrative for who they all are and where they're going. Heck, I just did this with my Year 8 French class.
Yeah, person up the front framing the context for the many, the crowd, the younglings. Classic one-to-many relationship that so often characterises schooling. If you spot rows of desks, you'll know immediately that's the frame. "Look to ME for your reality."
Before I introduce the Most Audacious Class I've Ever Seen, can I quickly clarify this is NOT a Montessori school. This is NBCS, where I've worked for 10 years, a traditional High School that decided to throw away the map and start again. We have no notions of the noble savage and we don't put kids in a vaccuum. (I'm not saying the Montessori schools do). We use a 'landscape/frame/gateway' approach that overlays freedom and agency onto a sophisticated curated learning landscape that takes 100s of hours to set up.
I salute this team: Lou Deibe, Chantelle Morrison, Katesha Allis, Daniel Wearne, Chez Robbins, Clare Froggatt and Skender Cameron. (Skender spent over 30 years in a 1 to many configuration. O boy does he have a transition-tale to tell!)
I am in awe of these teachers.
So, day 3 of the year. 180 kids, 90 new, 90 veterans. Establishment phase.
Here's the premise: you have crashlanded on a desert island. There are no teachers.
How on earth, logistically, did they manage this? Well you should ask them on Twitter. From what I gather and observed (I spent about 30 minutes of the day in attendance in person): the 6 teachers hid outside the open space, observing the kids via video links and open windows. They tweeted clues in via a large twitter screen that acted as a well of knowledge. They used a P.A. system to phone-in further clues. They had established rules: students must remain within 2 metres of their team. Students must ignore 'spies' (adults who entered the space, dressed in costumes). It was pretty much pure game-based-learning. Simulation. Here's the environment we've curated, now prove yourselves. And LO AND BEHOLD, they did!
Audacious. 180 kids, 1 space, NO TEACHERS. They put precautionary measures in place. No gap in duty-of-care. But: one huge risk. An audacious risk. Step back. Create space. Allow agency.
Truth is, for the rest of the year it will be: 180 kids, 6 to 8 teachers, 1 space, and a virtual learning platform to rival the Khan Academy.
This sort of thing stands and falls on several ingredients, as far as I can tell:
1. A physical space that encodes agency.
2. A highly developed and painstakingly curated virtual learning environment. (We use Moodle).
3. A hyper-activated team of teachers. Ohhh do not for a moment suspect that teachers get a break in this environment. They end up working harder than ever before, moving from interaction to interaction, on the shoulder, just where they are needed, like Superman, swooping in to trouble-shoot, diagnose, stimulate, guide, mentor.
4. A culture of entrepeneurial self-starting self-direction.
It is around #4 that this day was based.
The DNA of industrial-era schooling basically positions students as obeyers-of-instruction. Turn to page 54. Copy down questions 1 to 10. Okay now be creative and write a story.
Look to the authority figure to be prompted. Great if you aspire to work for Foxconn.
So, we raise a generation of robots. I have no beef with this, historically. It has provided us with roads, dental care, superannuation, insurance, and miraculous foods.
But, if you haven't noticed, we're currently undergoing a second industrial revolution. The top-down hierarchy is shifting to a bottom-up system. It's hippies, all over again, but this time it's savvy-hippies. Why? Because education has sky-rocketed, and the internet has accelerated collective intelligence in an exponential fashion. Blink, and the game has changed. Lucky that the brain is soft-coded or we wouldn't have gotten this far!
We're shifting to a mode of emergent-agency. I mean: every individual acts according to their own local insights and value-driven ambitions. Times a million. Something wonderful bubbles up.
Watch the video. Notice the interactions. Notice, bizarrely, how several students, independently, make 'Lord of the Flies'-type noises at the camera when they notice it. But this ain't chaos, and it ain't anarchy (despite this website). This is organic, community, hopeful. Culturally-embedded hopefulness.
You have crashed on a deserted island with no teachers.
The ease of collaboration.
Hive-minds in action.
No authority figures.
Make it happen.
Beautiful!
Audacious.
Reader Comments (15)
Grat post Steve! Great snapshot of what's happening in THE ZONE. They are great teachers and I must make time in my busy day to visit them also.
Very cool stuff. I love the way you guys push the envelope and take this thinking to it's logical extreme.
Can I ask what the kids were actually working on? What was the big question or problem or task that had them all so focused? Or did they come up with that themselves? What was the premise for this day? What were they working on.
I love seeing this sort of active, loud, chaotic ;learning environment, although I'm trying to get me head around what lies at the heart of it all. Clearly the kids are having a ball, and I can see plenty of learning taking place... I'm just trying to work out how it was focused or directed or scaffolded (if at all).
If it was game-based, how did one "win"? How was success measured?
So many questions...
love.
absolute.
love.
grazie man.
love the anarchy site as well. is that all you?
Monika, yes that is a time-lapse video of students in Years 5 and 6, and then Year 8. I use the phrase 'anarchy' to be provocative. It's not anarchy at all, it's community, it's organic, and it relies on a very carefully curated digital learning landscape.
Chris, thanks for your comment. You've given me an excuse to waffle for ages again! Oh well here we go:
The day was indeed extreme. The premise 'no teachers', was there to speedily induct the new Year 5 students into the learning culture in our 'Zone' (Year 5 & 6 collapsed into the one learning space). So it was a special day, and you might say a 'gimmicky' day. The goal was to draw explicit attention to the meta-skills that we encourage in the space.
When I was in there filming a lot of the students were completing individual challenges that relied on teamwork. Meanwhile they also had to hunt for the next clue. It was very much about self-direction, group coordination and collaboration, and taking initiative to fix one's own problems wherever possible.
It stands as a direct antidote to a culture where students are in the habit of looking to the teacher for direction, clarification, etc.
Now, I must emphasise that we are not against direct instruction. If you observe a normal day in 'the Zone' you'll see plenty of direct instruction. It is a matter of context.
For instance:
- after a flipped-learning component completed at home, followed by a diagnostic process at school. The direct instruction takes place after we've filtered out the students who simply don't need it.
- out of every 7 or 8 students, 1 functions as a surrogate teacher some of the time. The students sort them selves out, and seek teacher assistance only if necessary. What I'm saying is that it is often the 'stronger' students in any given area that provide the direct instruction to their peers. In one sense, that is more direct instruction than in a traditionally configured classroom, but it is on a 'pull' model rather than a 'push' model.
- we run heaps and heaps of "opt-in" direct instruction sessions. It's quite amazing to watch: a teacher yells out that they're running a session on such and such a topic, and out of 180 kids, 30 or 40 spontaneously stand up and group up in the designated location. Often such workshops are repeated (easy to do with a team of 6 to 8 teachers on deck).
- there is heaps of 'on the shoulder' support. All the teacher time that's not spent orchestrating from the front is now spent in 1 on 1 conversations, or with small groups. This fits with our model of students 'pulling' the instruction and managing their own learning rather than teachers 'pushing' it out.
- all of this is utterly predicated on a sophisticated online learning environment, which contains a veritable zoo of resources and activities, from explanatory videos, to oldschool worksheets, to open-ended challenges and project-base learning, all sequenced and curated in deliberate progression. Students often have multiple pathways through this landscape. I'm running a workshop on this approach which we're calling the Moodle Visual Metaphor method (although it will work with other LMSs as well). We're using gamification more and more, not really as a 'reward' so much as a tracking system. (e.g. students level-up, then specialise as chemist OR physicist - the gamification structure is more about choice and tracking rather than extrinsic reward system).
Workshops here, out of interest: http://scil.com.au/pd They include a decent amount of time in the learning space with the students observing how this works in practice.
The example in my blog post is not 'business as normal' but an induction day. I feel I have to emphasise that 'business-as-normal' is extremely rigorous, not 'fluffy', including core literacy and numeracy skills as well as extending through to high-end creativity and collaboration.
On the 'how do you win?' question, I don't believe there were exclusive winners on the 'desert island' day, i.e. I think every group could reasonably expect to be able to 'complete the game'. I have a feeling that completion was mandatory, like a kind of 'driver's license' that they had to pass to kick off the year.
You should come back on site Chris! Bring a team of colleagues. We do specialised days and can line up the key players to debrief with you too!
Warmly,
Steve
They don't believe in silence or sitting still do they - I couldn't bear to watch it - I certainly couldn't ahve stayed in the room with that racket
Yes, the noise level is not normally so high.
I was wondering were there any ADD / ASD /dyspraxc children in the group? If, so how did they cope ? / How would you include them /cater for their needs? At first glance, this looks like this would be a challenge for them - not necessarily a bad thing, but they may need more support than others to avoid this situation turning into a crisis
The beauty of this approach is that teacher time is liberated to give support where it is most needed. Contrast this to a situation where a teacher's time is being sapped by trying to 'manage' what everyone is doing.
Therefore this approach activates personalised teacher assistance to where it is most needed.
I've worked quite closely with a large Year 8 group (140 students) plus 6 teachers in collapsed space, and this is what I've seen there. I've also observed that it makes a huge difference that a student is free to go for a walk during the lesson, and does not have a sense that their physical movement is being confined or controlled.
The other thing to say is that the virtual space sitting behind the physical space is extremely carefully crafted and curated. Behind the organic chaos there is a strong structure,. Sometimes this takes the form of sophisticated gamification structures. Students have a strong sense of 'what next' and know that direct teacher assistance is hyper-available.
@ASD Mom:
I spoke to a young autistic boy when I visited NBCS (I have no connection with the school, so this is an unbiased reflection). He seemed to really enjoy the environment, although he spoke of the need sometimes to be able to go off in a corner and work quietly. The most impressive part is that the other student were aware of his condition and took responsibility themselves for making him feel comfortable, not simply seeing it as 'the teacher's job'.
Every self-directed learner environment I've seen (and you should check out Sugata Mitra for some other radical models) improves learner behavious and learner responsibility. I blogged about some of the reasons why here: http://davidpriceblog.posterous.com/the-open-learning-revolution . I also shared my reflection of NBCS here:
http://davidpriceblog.posterous.com/great-ideas-dont-cost-anything
Thanks Steve for this really insightful, provocative post. I would really like to talk more about the behaviours and characteristics of the environment that make it so powerful. Just watching these kids work is moving indeed.
Hey Steve
Have you tried this with a big group made up of more than one class in a modern language (eg French)? It sort of reminds me of the "scavenger hunt" activity you created which you showcased at the NAFT day in 2011. Would love to know how we could try this in our new M-space at my school!
Hi Bron,
For the life of me I can't remember the scavenger hunt activity! (Oh unless it was 'Quest' which isn't French but could be transposed easily enough).
We collapse French classes quite frequently, and spontaneously, mish-mashing groups of students, setting up 'stations' (I guess that's a bit scavenger-ish) and running break-out groups / theatre sports etc. e.g. 20 kids will be self-selecting into activities, another 10 will be doing pair-work speaking practice, another 20 will be doing directed speaking work with one of the two teachers (the other roaming). The reason why we can decide to collapse classes at the last minute has a lot to do with the curated virtual space that the kids can all access.
Hey I'd love to offer what I can to Ravo with your M-space! I saw it in action the other week. I'll flick you an email now and if you like you can reply and let me know how I can help.
Cheers!
Steve
David,
I spend a lot of time reflecting on the elements that come together in that space.
One interesting dynamic: there is a feedback loop between the culture and the space. The one shapes the other, both directions. The teachers shape both and are shaped by both, as are the students. When visitors come and see the space in action they are struck by what they see, but perhaps equally by what's invisible yet very present, even if this is not identified explicitly in the debriefing conversations we have with them.
Above any other organising principle, for me, nowadays, I put 'culture'. Everything feeds into it and flows back from it.
Would love to explore further with you.
Cheers,
Steve
This classroom interaction is working so well due to the effort put in by teachers, but also due to the strength of the peer mentoring. It is much easier to learn a game when other people can already play and show you how! Teachers who don't have already-inducted students would confront more barriers at the start of creating a (high agency) culture like this, but it's important to see what the pay-off is down the track to stay motivated an persist.
There is a lot to be taken away from this, thanks for sharing the inspiring footage :)
Kelli - that's spot on!