Child as Communicator

Part of our focus as Teacher/Researchers in our learning environment is to empower children to better communicate their needs, feelings and wonderings. In order to develop this ability, the child must first feel relaxed in his surroundings and be able to hear his own desires and curiosities. A child under tension will close down and be unable or unwilling to communicate. In our school great attention is given to the design and feel of the environment: aesthetic is a high priority. A teacher is required to consider the placement of tools, supplies and ongoing works. She must constantly ask herself if the space she has created and is maintaining is most likely to bring out the best in her students. She frequently assesses her surroundings and questions whether they respond to her students’ learning processes and allow them to flourish.

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From our 1st annual conference, Creativity, Community and Conscience, Progressive Education in the 21st Century, hosted on January 22 and 23, 2009 we offer you the keynote address delivered by Nel Noddings.

1st Annual Education Conference: Nel Noddings

Nel Noddings, is a well known author and professor of Education at Stanford University. She spent seventeen years as an elementary and high school mathematics teacher and school administrator, before earning her PhD and beginning work as an academic in the fields of philosophy of education, theory of education and ethics, specifically moral education and ethics of care. She became a member of the Stanford faculty in 1977, and was the Jacks Professor of Child Education from 1992 until 1998. While at Stanford University she received awards for teaching excellence in 1981, 1982 and 1997, and was the associate dean or acting dean of the School of Education for four years. After leaving Stanford University, she held positions at Columbia University and Colgate University. She is past president of the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society. In 2002-2003 she held the John W. Porter Chair in Urban Education at Eastern Michigan University. She has been Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University since she retired in 1998.

Nel Noddings has 10 children and in 2004 had been married for 54 years. She has described her early educational experiences and her close relationships as key in her development of her philosophical position.

Contributions to philosophy

Noddings’ first sole-authored book Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education(1984) followed close on the 1982 publication of Carol Gilligan’s ground-breaking work in the ethics of care In a Different Voice. While her work on ethics continued, with the publication of Women and Evil (1989), and later works on moral education, most of her later publications have been on the philosophy of education and educational theory. Her most significant works in these areas have been Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief (1993) and Philosophy of Education (1995).

Purchase a copy of this presentation by contacting us 732-841-1660 or staff@voyagerskids.com

Over the past five years staff at Voyagers’ Community School have grappled with the approach and methods relied upon when building a report about a students progress and process in our educational environment. This document, often hefty and compelling, stands on its own merit without ranking, grading or marginalizing a child’s work. This is a student’s Process Folio.

Often times a child arrives home with a report card filled with admirable grades; the parent is proud. In earnest a lot rides on this child’s grades but what do these grades mean; is there anyway to know for sure? In truth an “A” or a check on a scale is very subjective. We certainly found this to be true in years past when we hovered around reviews comparing and puzzling over rankings given by each mentor to his or her mentees. Some of these ranks were quite high while others were just average. One mentor argued, “I give average scores to every child unless he or she shows something extra. After all when did average become less than?” Another stated, “I begin with the assumption that every student is excellent and I only give a lesser grade if they appear not to be trying.” When both mentors were asked if they thought their mentee was outstanding compared to the other they quickly said, “No.” In fact they thought they were performing equally and were surprised to learn that each child’s rubric was quite different.

It seems impossible to fairly grade each student in a class, at a grade level, in a school or in a nation. There are too many variables. We feel one of the best representations of a child’s learning lies in an extensive, detailed, narrative generated by a child’s mentor and thoroughly reviewed and discussed by all teacher/researchers. And so… We commit, on average, 10 hours to this process for every child. We recently calculated the time dedicated to producing our last round of reviews. Over the course of about 4 weeks three teachers and our Director collectively invest 280 hours in this project. After a full day of work we each sat at our kitchen tables, in our beds, at the light table, at our desks, in cars, on trains and where every else possible to work another 17 plus hours each week.

The Beginning of the Process

Long before a mentor sits down at his or her computers to type the first draft of a student review the staff has met numerous time. During these meetings they consider each child thoroughly. They also consider class content, ways to improve over previous evaluations and organizational matters.

One of the first things we discuss is prior experience considering what has and has not worked in the past and what we would like to see changed. This year the staff talked over several meetings about the rubrics used for many years. We considered what we liked and disliked about them and came to the conclusion that these served little purpose, as they did not provide a good picture of the child as a whole person. After much discussion we decided that a written, descriptive evaluation alone would best satisfy our desire to provide a comprehensive, heartfelt review and would give parents a better understanding of how their child functioned in our school setting. Having made this decision we moved on, brainstorming a list of everything we should think about and evaluate regarding a child’s social, emotional and academic progress. Once these ideas are gathered we review the list, categorizing each point according to the headings we plan to utilize when organizing our thoughts and writing. Often an item we list fits under more than one category. This triggers lively debate, should we limited this to one category or is it important to be mentioned under several, each time in a different context.
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Physics is the branch of science that deals with matter, energy and the interaction between them. It covers subjects such as forces and motion as well as electricity and electronics. If it moves or has energy it is covered in Physics class.

Like many of our classes, the students’ interests determined the course of study for the recently completed third session of Physics This class for the older students culminated with the students photographing a high speed object (the BB from an air rifle) with a camera. Yes, you read that right- guns in school. More about the air rifle later.

The Idea
It all started when students expressed interest in the high speed video they see on television, specifically seeing things break or blow up in super slow motion. They expressed a strong desire to learn to make a video like this. Of course the school can’t afford $50,000 video cameras; the teacher had to find a compromise. Some research yielded methods to take high speed photographs using an ordinary flash unit in a darkened room. The teacher thought this would be a good goal for the six week class since it covered setting up repeatable experiments, velocity of objects, electrical circuits, properties of sound waves and kinetic energy. The students were excited and worked to learn this technique and its nuances in order to achieve their goals.

Capturing a photograph of a high speed event requires very little equipment and a lot of preparation. To record sharp photos of a fast moving object required that they capture an image over a very short amount of time, about 1/30,000th of a second. Since a fast camera can open and close their shutter in 1/8000th of a second a different approach was required. If you open the shutter of a camera in a dark room and then set off a flash unit to light up the room for 1/30,000th of a second you can freeze fast moving objects, like when a strobe light flashes on a darkened dance floor. The trick is to initiate the flash unit at the right time, since only one flash is required to capture the image on the camera.

The Preparations
The first concept the students had to understand was velocity and conversion of units. They started small, by timing ourselves in a 100 meter dash and using the times to determine their scalar velocities. They also practiced their ability to quickly convert SI (metric) units to English units and back again.

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