Learning as we grow

by Pipier Smith-Mumford and Joshua Frank (November 2006)

As the school year moves into its second quarter students and their families have received enough feedback to have a good idea of how they are doing academically at Pierce. For younger students this has come formally through parent conferences, as well as in many informal ways. For older students the formal feedback has come in the form of mid-term reports, MCAS scores and now first-term report cards. Now may be a good time to reflect on what this information means, and the ways that , as a learning community, we might consider the intellectual, social, moral and community development of Pierce children beyond teacher assessments, term grades and standardized test scores.

This past summer, some Pierce faculty members attended workshops on Collaborative Inquiry and Making Learning Visible. These experiences gave us the opportunity to think about the qualities that make Pierce a wonderful school. At Pierce, we share a belief that students who are authentically engaged in their learning, and their community, become better learners and will therefore do well on standardized tests and common assessments.

To make this belief more visible to our community, we are introducing grade-level themes, which are designed to model learning as it occurs naturally through engagement in the curriculum, in areas of interest, and by making connections across disciplines. This work also provides the evidence of authentic student engagement as a counterweight to the public emphasis on MCAS scores. We are posting photographs to illustrate these grade level themes at the same time that we analyze our MCAS scores from last spring. In order to improve our performance, consistent with our belief in authentic engagement and community learning, we are looking at all the data available to us to provide a more inclusive understanding of the achievement of our students. We also hope that the grade-level themes demonstrate that Pierce students from kindergarten through 8th grade have a variety of opportunities to be a part of exciting and stimulating group activities that enhance student learning. Finally, these photographic essays provide an opportunity to make public, to each other and the community, just a small percentage of the great teaching and learning that happens here every day. These themes have been decided upon in collaboration with classroom teachers at every grade level. The themes are listed below:

• Kindergarten through 2nd grade— Who We Are, What We Do
• 3rd grade—Working Together
• 4th grade—Changes Over Time
• 5th Grade—Connecting to Ancient Cultures
• 6th grade—Making Connections
• 7th Grade—What is Just?
• 8th grade—Becoming Leaders/Pursuing Justice

The third-grade collection of products for the Shattuck Shelter and seventh grade students’ participation in the Walk for Hunger provide two examples of existing activities that fit into the new grade-level themes and that provide opportunities for community service. These activities demonstrate the power of using learning not only to develop as an individual, but also to help others. This year as part of the eighth grade theme we will add a spring community service project to precede the annual New York City trip.

The first display of captioned photographs that illustrate these grade-level themes has been put up in the hallway outside the Teacher’s Room. We will continue to add to this display throughout the year. To capture many of the ideas described above a banner at the top of the display reads:

PIERCE SCHOOL GRADE-LEVEL THEMES
LEARNING AS WE GROW: HELPING OTHERS AS WE LEARN