Welcome to the blog of Zaq Roberts, Associate Head of School at The Berkeley School in Berkeley, CA. I blog about a wide variety of topics, from classroom moments I witness, to administrative events and conversations, to the educational blogs, videos, and books I am reading and watching, and how they are influencing my thinking. I hope this eclectic approach will give you insight into the many ways that I am engaging in advancing the school and strengthening our program, and I welcome your thoughts and comments!
This blog takes its name from a quotation by Archimedes that reads "Give me a lever long enough, and I can move the world." The TBS mission speaks directly to the need to engage a changing world, while many of the experiences in our program focus on the development of students' agency and authority. TBS is the lever by which we all - administration, faculty, students, and parents - can together move the world to be more humane, compassionate, and responsive. To borrow an important Montessori phrase, it is our way to remake the world.
Sweet Briar Creek is the name of the new stand-alone Kindergarten classroom.
In Blackberry Creek (one of the mixed 1st/2nd grade classrooms), students created their own placemats for lunch, which were then laminated.
In Laurel Creek (the other mixed 1st/2nd grade classroom), students got busy with stretching their writing muscles and thinking about the stages of the writing process.
In Temescal Creek, the new stand-alone 3rd grade classroom, students jumped right into their science curriculum with their first experiment: creating compasses out of magnetized needles floating in bowls of water.
Cerrito Creek students (one of the mixed 4th/5th grade classrooms) were given time to explore the room and then asked to draw conclusions about what they'd be studying based on what they found.
Strawberry Creek students spent some time decorating the name tags that were then attached to their cubbies.
I love playing games. Rhythm and drama games, games of chance and luck, team and individual sports, board games and card games, strategy games and logic problems, even jigsaw puzzles: I haven't met a game I didn't enjoy. One of my earliest memories -- and a favorite family story about my childhood -- is beating my father and brother in two consecutive games of Uno at the tender age of three while on a houseboat in Florida (both times I ended with two wilds in my hand).
Games are one of several powerful forms of play (along with imaginative play, rough-and-tumble play, object play, etc), and as Dr. Stuart Brown taught us, play is an essential life skill that has a direct impact on brain development, physiological and emotional health, social skills, professional success, and learning and memory. Which is why I enjoyed reading a recent CNN article about the Quest to Learn school in New York, which uses games as the primary instructional technique in the classroom.
At TBS, we also believe in the effectiveness of play as a basis for educative experience, and though it isn't the central pedagogical tool used in our classroom, it is deeply integrated into our practices. I wrote about the use of games in a K/1 Reading Workshop class this spring in Mission Moments #5, while the Investigations in Numbers, Data and Space math curriculum contains an extraordinarily rich variety of games including student favorites Roll and Record, Close to 100, Factor Bingo, and many more. Games are also a part of the Montessori approach, including the Stamp Game, which is used for teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and the Imaginary Island Project, which teaches a variety of concepts about physical and cultural geography.
Going beyond playing games for the educative experience of knowledge construction and skill building that can result, I also see great value in teaching children to think critically about how games work, as it teaches them to identify context, frames, and principles. As a middle school teacher, I offered a course in game theory and design, in which we analyze the construction, rules, and guiding principles of games beginning with Tic Tac Toe and Rock Paper Scissors, moving on to Connect Four, checkers, and chess, and finishing with board games such as Monopoly and Risk. For a final project, students designed and built prototypes of their own games (which we then played in order to assess the design and underlying principles).
Connecting game-playing to the TBS mission to engage a changing world, check out Jane McGonigal's TED talk about games, and the possibility that games can actually be agents of social and societal change. She points to a real-life example of gamers finding a solution for how to fold certain proteins in certain ways that scientists had been unable solve as the potential for games to lead to a better world.
Problem solving is a type of game, so here's a problem that I'm also forwarding to our 4th-8th grade math teachers. It's the classic "Monty Hall" problem, and it's great for teaching concepts in probability, and for the ability to replicate and simulate variations to test answers within the classroom:
Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
You can check your solution here (warning, it's a link to Wikipedia).
Blackberry Creek (K/1) & Cerrito Creek (4/5) - During buddy time, students were doing collaborative drawings; each piece of paper was divided into quadrants, and each buddy needed to contribute some drawing to each quadrant. This helps students practice skills of interdependency and creativity.
Laurel Creek (K/1) - Water Day, with a variety of water-related games such as Sponge Dodgeball and Water Balloon Toss. This was a student-selected "holiday", a tradition in our K/1 program that replaces simple birthday celebrations with activities and events that help children learn about each other's interests.
Sweet Briar Creek (2/3) - During math workshop, students used Hundreds Boards to see the patterns created by doing "Multiples of" work, puzzled through logic problems, compared fractions using Montessori fraction tiles, and watched a Kahn Academy video showing what's actually happening during the standard algorithm for subtraction.
Temescal Creek (2/3) - During a writing workshop, students worked on taking notes for the Informational Texts they are creating. They consulted research sources and wrote their notes into graphic organizers preloaded with questions around topics including diet, interactions, lifespan, anatomy, and habitat.
Strawberry Creek (4/5) - Student worked on painting props, backdrops and staging for their end-of-year performance of understanding about California history, coming up next Wednesday.
Bonus: Video of Sweet Briar Creek practicing If I Had A Hammer
I have an iPad, and I have learned to love it. When I first was given the iPad by TBS, I had many complaints - the digital keyboard chief among them - and I didn't see how it would be a useful or relevant tool in support of my work to improve student learning. It was more like a toy, with a few useful features to my work as an administrator, including the Camera app (which allows me to easily shoot video in class) and the Notepad app (which allow my notes to instantly become digital, instead of having to retype them later).
I still have many questions about the iPad's effectiveness as a teaching tool for students. There are several good apps that help develop early literacy skills for PreK-1st grade students, and there are several good apps that develop problem solving skills, such as TinkerBox (choice quote from this app's homepage: "TinkerBox is more than just educational!"). However, the majority of the "educational games" apps I have come across targeting 2nd-6th grade students seem more geared towards rote memorization; an example is Math Ninja, which is basically for practicing operations and math facts.
That's why I was extremely excited to stumble upon Toontastic this week. In this app, players build stories one scene at a time, following the classic pattern of Setup, Conflict, Challenge, Climax, and Resolution. They add in characters, settings and actions to create the narrative arc, record original narration and/or dialogue to move the story forward, and select from the type and intensity of background music to reinforce the emotional force of the plot. The program is pre-loaded with many character and background options (with more available for purchase), and a drawing program that allows students to create their own as well. It also comes with a Parent Guide, which is basically a teaching guide that includes questions to pose to children as they work on their stories.
I was intrigued enough by this app to go online and check out the website, which did not disappoint. There is a page on the site called "Learning Goals", which has perfect resonance to the idea of understanding goals in the Teaching for Understanding framework for unit creation we have learned about from Project Zero. What made me especially excited was the combination of ideas that the developers of this app are drawing upon; play, constructionism, social development, and story structure. I am excited to see developers looking for ways to leverage the iPad technology in service of learning, rather than simply trying to come up with more palatable ways for children to learn math facts than flash cards and pencil-and-paper repetition.
Do you/your child have a favorite educational app that fits our goal of providing a constructivist approach to teaching and learning? If so, please tell me about it in the comments field.
Federal attention to the need for early childhood education waxes and wanes. The Washington Post's recent article illustrates the complexities of addressing the topic; I find it problematic that someone would define a good ECE program as one that develops "skills and knowledge in language and literacy, math, science, social studies and the arts, while also addressing social, emotional and physical development." That sounds like a good approach to elementary school, but not to early childhood, where students are 3 and 4 years old. How about nurturing a love of learning, developing a sense of inquiry, providing opportunities for creative self-expression, and giving children the chance to play?
Public education in this country is under attack from all sides, and there's no easy answers to how to fund all the necessary programs. The Governor taketh and the Governor taketh again; he's cut $3 billion in funding (on top of about $18 billion cut by Arnold in the previous three years), and he lets schools charge fees for after-school sports - fees that function as an equity barrier for many students who find not only community connection and self-esteem, but also a reason to continue to pursue their academic studies, in the context of those sports teams. For an in-depth look at the value of non-academic programs on student learning, check out this article by June Kronholz on EducationNext.
Stateimpact from NPR offers a critique of flipped classrooms. I heard Salman Kahn of Kahn Academy speak last year at the NAIS Annual Conference, and I blogged about it then. Using videos of instruction that students can watch repeatedly is wonderful; for those who struggle to absorb all the necessary information the first time through a lesson, this is an enormous help. Likewise, having a benchmark standard to determine mastery of a concept, and an infinite number of problems to with which to practice that concept, is useful. And, the data analysis tools that Kahn Academy provides to teachers allow a detailed level of insight into the child's approach to tackling problems and returning to the instructional video for review. In fact, I was so excited when I returned home that one of our 4th grade teachers began experimenting with integrating Kahn Academy into the classroom for teaching math, and I watched several videos with my 8-year-old daughter. But there are deep issues with the flipped classroom as well, starting with the fact that all lessons are delivered as didactic lectures. There's no room for inquiry and discovery in this model.
Ah, the first day of school. The excitement, the anxiety, the surprise, the wonderment, the exhilaration....and, the learning! Today I was able to walk through the K-5 classrooms and observe each for a few moments. Here's what I saw:
In both Blackberry and Laurel (the K/1 classrooms), choice time followed the cool-down "siesta" period that comes after lunch. Students had opportunities to engage in group play such as dress up, board games and blocks, or more solitary activities such as art making, working in the sand table, and reading in the library.
In Temescal (2nd/3rd grade), students were working
on collaborative posters titled "All About Us". Using words and pictures, they worked to answer seven questions about each member of the group: What is your name? When is your birthday, and how old are you? What is your favorite animal? What do you look like? What is something you really like to do? And, what question would you like to have the answer to? What are some things you would like todo in your life? Similarly, but different, in Sweet Briar (2nd/3rd grade), students created "Get to Know You" Glyphs based on this handout.
In Strawberry (4th/5th grade), I walked in during a short 15 minute period between a class conversation with Kate Klaire, our Recess Facilitator, and the start of the recess/lunch hour. Students used the time to finish previous work - some continued or finished decorating name tags that will go on their indoor cubbies, others "shopped" for in, or read books pulled from the classroom library, and others talked with the teachers about the relative merits of using online sites such as www.coolmathgames.com for teaching or homework purposes.
And in Cerrito, the students gathered in the back room - the library - to discuss their experiences as readers this summer, and get oriented to the reading that they'll be asked and encouraged to do this year. This was exciting to see because I know that Mike worked hard this summer on rethinking his approach to teaching reading, and that the passion for reading that he discovered in himself was truly
driving his instruction.
Some patterns emerging already: reading, play, structure, choice, group work, and self-knowledge.
Alison Gopnik, co-author of the must-read book The Scientist in The Crib, has a recent article on Slate.com reporting on two studies coming out soon that show direct instruction can limit children's learning, because children come to depend on the teacher to show them what is worth knowing or exploring about a given topic. As Gopnik write, "These assumptions [that what a teacher explains is only what is worth learning] lead children to narrow in, and to consider just the specific information a teacher provides. Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options." This makes inherent sense to me, and has important implications about the transference of cultural values and biases between generations, but because I also believe that there is a role for direct instruction in a classroom, I look forward to looking at the actual research itself to understand the design of the experiments.
On a related note, here's an article on play from the NY Times that I was just forwarded.
We'll be hosting a dozen early childhood directors and teachers at this week's Preschool Director Luncheon, In an earlier post I wrote about the book "Play" that we've been reading in preparation for this month's topic. Here's another recent piece on the same topic, this one from some folks from Harvard. EDIT: And here's another, this time on CNN.
Right now I'm also reading White Like Me, a provocative book by Tim Wise that breaks down white privilege into seven component pieces: belonging, privilege, denial, resistance, collaboration, loss, and redemption. He doesn't do himself any favors (in my view) with an overly casual style embedded with sarcasm, but he does hit all the important parts of how to recognize the ways in which white privilege has defined society, and our responsibility to continue working on the problem without being overly academic. This of course has me thinking about TBS; how can we become an anti-racist institution? The TBS middle school has done some important work around "othering" in the last few years - by race, gender, language, and a number of other ways people create "others" - and we've even had teachers publish about this work, and we provide financial aid to a number of students via the A Better Chance program, but are we educating our students to become anti-racist activists? This does remind me of a story told to me by one alum, now a junior at a local Catholic high school; when he complained to the head coach of his football team about an assistant coach's use of homophobic language during drills, the coach refused to address the issue, and so the student quit the team. I admire his stance and his willingness to take direct action, but that action was also limited to himself, rather than societal change. And, the TBS mission specifically charges us "to engage a changing world." So, where are we doing it intentionally, and where are we not, and can we make this one of the defining aspects of the TBS program?
On a tangent but related, just in case you've never seen it, please watch A Class Divided.
Mitch, Andrea, Paula and I are reading a wonderful book about play right now by Dr. Stuart Brown called Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, as part of our preparation for the second preschool director luncheon we will be hosting this year, in January. The book is based on a huge body of original research by the author, including over 6000 "play histories", as well as research by zoologists, neurobiologists, pediatricians, and scientists in a range of other fields. He begins by defining play, why it occurs, and its role in human development. He then examines how play differs for children, adolescents, and adults; the relationship of play and work; how play fosters social relationships and connections; if there is a "dark side" to play; and concludes with a chapter of advice for living a play-full life. A few of my favorite quotations so far - either for their strikingness, or for the implications for our work.
"I don't think it is too much to say that play can save your life."
"...active play selectively stimulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (which stimulates nerve growth) in the amygdala (where emotions get processed) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (where executive decisions are processed)."
"As children, the reward for play is strong because we need it to generate a rapidly developing brain."
"The work that we find most fulfilling is almost always a recreation and extension of youthful play."
"...during play, the brain is making sense of itself through simulation and testing. Play activity is actually helping sculpt the brain."
"Sometimes running is play, and sometimes it is not. What is the difference between the two? It really depends on the emotions experienced by the runner. Play is a state of mind, rather than an activity."
"When we stop playing, we start dying."
If this has caught your fancy, you might also be interested in this video, and this website.
ibrary - to discuss their experiences as readers this summer, and get oriented to the reading that they'll be asked and encouraged to do this year. This was exciting to see because I know that Mike worked hard this summer on rethinking his approach to teaching reading, and that the passion for reading that he discovered in himself was truly 
