This literacy project here at Pearson Road Elementary is in its fourth year of its
journey. It's been a chance to work together between the University and the
school district, we've been able to say where are we going together, what is it
that we want for kids, what are the kinds of practices that are going to make that happen,
and even how can we change schools in from the inside out, based on our passions
and our beliefs and try to align philosophy and research with the things
we actually do with our children. School District 23 in Kelowna has a
partnership with UBCO, the University in Kelowna, and we have a field study center
where the ETEP, or the Elementary Teacher Education Program Students, from the
university, come once a week
and they learn in this building, but we're attached to an elementary school where
the ETEP students can then go into the school and see their learning in
practice. We began working at Pearson Road Elementary because it's a more
vulnerable school, and with vulnerable communities comes diversity, and
diversity is something that we embrace as a huge topic within our classes, and
we want our teacher candidates to be exposed to diversity, diversity and
culture diversity, and language diversity, and socioeconomic backgrounds diversity,
and children's funds of knowledge. And we feel that that's a much richer
experience. Literacy is really more about who we are as people, and how we
negotiate our way through life, and how every child brings their own version of
understandings of literacy from their own homes, we call those "funds of
knowledge" and how can we really tap into those funds of knowledge so that
children can have agency in who they are as people, as they learn to become
learners and navigate their way through the world. So in doing that we take up
critical literacy, and we take up culturally responsive literacy which are
both areas where we can really drawn in what children bring with them, as who
they are as people and we can really build on that and help them to
understand their own identity, but also to understand their role in the world. I
think it's really great how Donna and Layton set up this course for us because they
give us these pre-readings, which are really useful really practical, help us
develop all this theory and just help us understand development of children. Then
we come to class and we get to kind of engage with the material, process it,
personalize it, and then we go into classrooms and we practice it. Then we
come back and we reflect on it, so it's nice because they are facilitating our
learning in the same way that they expect us to do that with children.
We wanted to make sure that we allowed the ETEP students to see these great
practices that are talked about in theory, actually in place in classrooms
with kids, so we invited mentor teachers from the district. And so we've
moved from being in one site, to being connected to other schools and other
sites, it really has a butterfly effect. What we're doing here is having impacts
that ripple now throughout the district, in ways that come from the questions
of the teacher cants, and the teachers. No one's telling anyone how to do something,
or even teaching anyone how to do something. We're creating our practice through
inquiry, and drawing, and research, and practice and ideas as resources into all of our
professional development.
The first thing that I'm thinking of, is just the fact that we had multiple role
models that come at it from different perspectives, so Donna and Layton
collaborate well, they have the same mindset, but they also have their
strengths and then also the mentor teachers that we worked with, was a whole
different perspective altogether. So I was able to take the things that
resonated for me, from each of the teachers, and it was nice because we
got to work with new and novice teachers, and then we got to work with seasoned teachers. And
these mentor teachers join us in in our classes, and then they have a time to
plan with our teacher candidates, and the teacher candidates they're typically
six per mentor teacher, will go out into their classrooms the following week
and actually build on what they learned together and actually enact what it is
that they've planned. And they spend that day teaching together, co-teaching what
they've co-planned, pushing the boundaries of everyone's practice in
ways that embrace diversity and recognize that all kids cannot just be
thinkers, but they can be change-makers.
A teacher kinda helped me on my writing. He told me that it needs to be a
little bit more interesting, and that it has to have a little more details. It helped me to, uh,
describe things better. She taught us how to, like, think more and expand our brains.
Thank you for coming to school because you are super fun. I get to go into Kristi Fortuin's class and see how she's
setting up those programs, brand new, right from the start. And so she's
building this really great class community, which is helping to implement
these wonderful practices that we learned about. I was a student teacher
not that long ago and just knowing that the most beneficial experiences for me
were the ones that were in the classroom, so having more experience being able to
be in classrooms talking with teachers, working with kids, i think is going to be
really beneficial to the student teachers for myself as well working with
them,
collaborating with them, they have new fresh ideas, they're just coming out of
school now, so all of the best practice that they're learning they can also
teach me and work together with my students, and for my students as well
they get one-on-one teaching with these other two service teachers and they get
more attention. She helped me with lots of things in writing. First, I just did quantity
writing, but now I do quality writing. She brings new stuff every week and it's
really nice of her, and she always listens to us. It's not like another teacher
thats like oh wait wait wait.
It's more like a kind, thoughtful teacher. The teacher candidates benefited, but I
benefited, and it pushed me to do things or rethink things that maybe I would have
just said "Oh, I think it's ok, I can leave it for now," where is this just
caused me to be more reflective about my practice, and to accept a new challenge.
It's been really great for me professionally as a learner, I think it's
really pushed me to try some new and different things in my classroom that I
was always interested in doing, but coming here and spending time with the
teacher candidates just really kinda gave me that push that I needed. Because
as professionals, having been a teacher for many years, we fall into habits that
become comfortable and reflect the culture of the school that we're in. And
of course bringing in new ideal young teacher candidates, who are excited, they
bring a sense of urgency, a sense of interest, a sense of curiosity that
otherwise wouldn't happen.
Getting people into your room who are you new to the teaching scene, is so important I
find because it just allows you to recognize that you're not alone, you're not
isolated, you don't have to do it on your own. Teaching is so about being able to
take risks, you know, and not being afraid to fail.
As well as our students get to see that it's okay to be learner at any age, at any
stage, and we're all learning all the time, and I think that's something they
really took to heart, was "wow they're learning to be teachers. I didn't know you
learned to be a teacher." It's fun because the teacher candidates became our friends and
they're just like the same as us. Well at first I didn't know that we were
teaching them, I thought they were teaching us, and then I found out at the
end that we were teaching them. When we went into a classroom we got to see
these strategies that we're learning being adapted, for who the teachers are, and who their
class are, and it was really nice to be able to go in there and see how they
interacted differently based on context. And going into the classroom we can see
firsthand what's going on in schools now, so we're not just thinking back on our own
elementary school days, when we all had to read the same book, and we all had the
same list of spelling words and we're all doing the same thing. Now we're
looking at, I have this room full of 30 kids how to differentiate this so everyone's
learning from where they're at, and where they need to go. We just talked a lot
about respecting the knowledge that your students are bringing to the classroom,
so if it's something very important to your class, and something that the kids
cannot let go of, then that's what you should be talking about and that's what you should be
engaging with them because that's what interests them, and that deep meaningful
learning that's what's going to stick with them, and that's how they're going
to learn these competencies that will make them successful in the future. If they're
passionate about something, they'll get into it and they'll go deep and you'll
get that greater understanding, so this new curriculum it's more real and it's
more true to who your students are. Using strategies like inquiry, or project-
based learning you can just linger with the concept, you can spend some time with it,
and go deep, which is a huge gift.
Where you go with the new curriculum you take from where your kids are at. The new
curriculum is so much more than giving kids information. It's teaching kids
about themselves, it's really guiding them on this path that they're gonna go
throughout life and to help them develop this love of learning that's going to
carry them through for the rest of their life. So basically it's shifting from the
transmission of knowledge, what is what we all went to school with, to transformative
knowledge. So allowing for critical thinking and the big idea in every lesson. It
encourages students to think critically about their learning and be involved in
their learning and it creates problem-solvers. So I can cover a lot of
what my students interests are and a lot of what we have to discuss during the school year,
but I can do it in a cohesive mosaic as opposed to just individual chunks. And
not just the teacher having all of the knowledge and giving you the answers and
that it's the kids coming up with their own idea of what can we do to solve this
problem. Layton calls it the "Renewed Curriculum" because it's not a total
reboot, just shift the perspective and gives us the ability to go deeper in the learning. So it
gives me permission to step away from a huge list of prescribed outcomes, and look first at my
class, at my students and what they need, and then I can go deep into the renewed
curriculum competencies, through that. Renewed curriculum takes up a transformational stance. We're
really looking at the idea that it's not just academic learning that we're
engaging in, but we're looking at social/emotional learning. We're looking at developing
kids as self-regulating learners, that we want every kid to flourish from where they are,
versus suggesting that there's a standard that everyone gets to. We want every kid to
close their gap, versus for suggesting they we're trying to close some gap between all
kids to make them the same. And one of the things that we're really excited about
with this work, and that we've been taking up together. It's this idea of place conscious
learning, that you're part of the place that you're in, the land that you're on,
the people who were here before you, the people who are here now, and that we're
constructing learning not just for ourselves, but with others. We're trying to
create socially aware, and personally aware, and responsible individuals, and so
part of this working with the new curricula is saying how was literacy part of a bigger
project, and that project is contributing to the world. I just feel it's so
important and beneficial, especially as a teacher candidate to be able to
integrate and experience the day-to-day in a classroom. I just think the more
exposure they have to different teachers and different styles and
learning opportunities I, I just think that's so advantageous. This opportunity
affords our teacher candidates many chances to really explore who they are
becoming as teachers, they really have to tackle and they have to grapple with, with who
they are as individuals and we try to help them to explore that in a deeper
way, through reflection, through a lot of collaborative opportunities where they
talk to each other. So they're not just becoming teachers, they're becoming people
who learn to collaborate in professional ways with each other. It's been a really
deeply fulfilling for myself, and the teacher candidates to be in schools every week,
with our colleagues in with their students taking up ideas in ways that
are focused on deep learning,
respectful, and drawing from diversity in ways where we see that kids have funds of
knowledge that we often don't recognize and in seeing how together working
across concepts, across ideas,
drawing in diverse perspectives, all the kids are learning more deeply, and
developing the capacity for not just communication, but for social and personal
awareness in ways that are authentically rich and respect all children in ways
that say you have ideas, you have literacies. Let's grow from where you are and
see where we can take it.