Presentation Outline:
photos of other thinking cafés
NABC for the Nueva School Innovation Lab
NEED
School learning is traditionally conceived as transmission of knowledge from teachers to students. However this is only one strand of learning in a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) where teachers are also learners: sharing curriculum design ideas with their faculty peers; learning curriculum practice with their students.
The Nueva School is a private school in Hillsborough, CA, with a history of innovative teachers, unconstrained by top-down standards. As an independent school, there are no district curriculum guidelines to follow, and few state regulations. As a progressive school, there are no textbooks, and curriculum often evolves in response to student interest. On the other hand, one concern about the school is that this approach often leads to inconsistent student experiences across grades and subjects. Because teachers are not mandated to follow the same path, they don't. Another contributing factor to the lack of coordination is the sheer workload of being a teacher constantly inventing curriculum.
Our observations and interviews at Nueva School support the notion that Nueva teachers are in need of spaces and tools to support collaboration, knowledge sharing and peer learning. In addition, it is apparent that the new Innovation Lab ("iLab", currently under construction) will be in high demand from faculty in every grade and subject. Therefore spaces that enable faculty collaboration are needed for both instructional and logistical reasons: teachers will need to co-design shared curricula that bridge classes if the iLab is going to fulfill its mission of being an interdisciplinary center that serves all students.
Specific needs we have identified include:
* space that allows display & performance of projects and works-in-progress
* casual place where natural social interactions will happen to promote informal sharing among faculty and start conversations
APPROACH
We are proposing a number of prototypes for the iLab space that should foster rich collaboration between students in a class, among students in different classes, and among the talented and diverse teachers at the Nueva School.
Collaboration within classes will be driven by the innovation curriculum in each class. How can we get teachers to talk to each other about their goals and plans and the meat of their curriculum? It may be hard to mandate conformity or even force conversations while maintaining teacher's sense of professionalism. What does seem to work are shared spaces for teachers. In some countries, like Japan and Korea, teachers have a large shared office where each teacher can work and plan. Taking this as inspiration, our approach sees the iLab transforming into a teacher space before and after school.
One likely ingredient in this space include a teacher cafe and workspace, to foster this teacher to teacher dialog and resource sharing. The cafe portion may actually close up during the school day, so it won't be a distraction to the students working in their classes. After 3:30, the cafe could become the nexus for the faculty community to gather around, both for professional and more general sharing of ideas. The fact that this would happen in the iLab would mean that faculty would always be looking at the living work of curriculum design and production, and student work in progress. It is important to note that this space can not be used for faculty-parent conferences, nor for parent meetings, nor for after-school clubs. Any other uses might destroy the sense of professional trust among the faculty built by a sense of having a space of their own. Of course, it could also be a place to hold faculty meetings, and team meetings (lower school faculty, or middle school faculty, or science teachers, etc).
Two other aspects of collaboration are worth noting. First, the iLab space is big enough to hold more than one class at a time. Its flexible plan would allow temporary installations of several classes, and there is no question that the several classes taking out "leases" on the space would be exposed to each other's work. More than that, there would be opportunities to have projects that actually foster the cooperation across grade or subject divisions, while maintaining their own unique character.
Second, it seems that teachers who know each other well and know each other's curriculum are most likely to find ways to collaborate professionally. Having the cafe and workroom in a corner of the iLab will foster both the needed relationships and the brainstorming about concrete ways to collaborate in that space.
BENEFITS
As a space that various classes will employ, the iLab will be a place for various student projects to be displayed. Howard Gardner's description of a framework to faciliate learning is another positive outcome of our proposed use of the iLab. He states, "students ought to be exposed from the start to examples of understanding, and shoudl be given ample opportunities to practice and perform their own understandings...only if they have multiple opportunities to apply their knowledge in new ways are they likely to advance toward enhanced understandings in their schoolword and in their lives beyond the schoolhouse walls" (Gardner, 1999). Because it will be a multiple grade levels, there is an increased number of chances for tudent exposure to the numerous projects. The iLab as a shared space is proposed to have a display area for teachers and students alike to view such on-going and completed projects. This will provide to be a valuable learning opportunity for both populations, particularly for the younger grades. They are exposed to the curricula of the upper grades, given them a sense of what to expect as they get older; this provides them opportunities to explore whatever interests that may be triggered from these experiences and "practice" their knowledge and understanding. It also present opportunities for teachers to question and learn from other teachers who they would not necessarily talk to on a daily basis.
Therefore, we believe that the direct benefactors of such a space will be the teachers themselves. Jerome Bruner wrote when knowledge is presented at an early age, learning will be easier and more fluid as children get older (1960, p. 47). Building on this idea, the proposed iLab space for teacher-to-teacher interactions will provide a space where teachers will be able to talk, collaborate, learn, and build on their previous knoweldge to create curricula to best meet their students' needs and curiosities. Teachers can utilize this space to freely share ideas and thoughts without the fear of having parents and students overhearing them. Such opportunities for collaboration will help better align the varying curricula across grades and therefore, provide a better flow of knowledge as students progress from one grade to the next. In turn, as student achievement increases as well as stronger relationships among faculty members develop, the outcomes allow these teachers to feel more valued as professionals.
Such a space also gives them opportunities to mingle more, getting to know each other better as professionals and as human beings. Teaching can be an extremely taxing career. Breaks from the daily tasks are much needed and yet not often utilized by teachers. Because the independent school system frees teachers from strictly following district or state mandates, they are often given more liberty to use prep times as times to take a short breather. When the teacher is refreshed, like well-rested students, they can perform better. Students and their families are then indirect benefactors of this teacher collaboration space.
Benefits References:
Bruner, J. (1960). The Process of Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gardner, H. (1999). The Disciplined Mind. New York: Penguin Books. Bereiter, C and Scardamalia, M. (1993). Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the Nature and Implications of Expertise.
COMPETITION
Currently the school has a social place which is the Middle school faculty lounge. However, the lower school teachers do not have similar places for teachers to come together and socialize which should provide atmosphere to exchange ideas and provide opportunities to collaborate. So far from the interviews with the teachers, some have a natural setting in which they communicate with each other on a regular basis the most effective one being the car pool situation. We realize these natural settings for teachers to interact and communicate ideas are important yet are not available on scale. We woul like to provide a rich and natural setting for a larger community of teachers to communicate and exchange ideas for future collaboration.