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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“Students can learn to think, speak, calculate and write more easily through close contact with reality than through confinement and abstract ideas.”
John Taylor Gatto, 1999

As the demand for improved standardized test scores looms over our nation’s education system we, children and teachers, are becoming more isolated from society. Typically students and teachers spend more and more time in a classroom leaning over a textbook or worksheet “learning” about the world. This is followed by hours of homework each week and sometimes each day. When do children ever get a chance to explore and experience the world around them and beyond? When do teachers open the doors of their classrooms to invite people in or to take children outside to seek answers and direct understanding of the community that surrounds them?

At our very first staff meeting this year we began to identify our intention to expand our sense of community. We determined that community is not only those in our immediate school circle but also those near and far who affect our thinking, support our inquisitive nature and potentially add something to our life experience. There are many knowledgeable and interesting people whom we can tap to enrich our lives no matter what the subject might be. We decided to make a concerted effort to include more people in our circle either by visiting them or by inviting them into our space. We are taking our students off school grounds as often as possible and inviting experts and others in so we can learn at least as much if not more than our peers through direct experience. Over the last ten weeks groups of children have taken 10 field trips and welcomed at least 12 guests into our school. We are thrilled with the effect as both the children and teachers have been given the opportunity to expand our viewpoint and our skills.

Mushrooms

During a recent visit to A Child’s Place School Voyagers’ teachers learned that the students there were studying mushrooms they found in their environment just as the Voyagers’ students had been doing. We immediately saw the opportunity for collaboration. Students from each school began writing back and forth, sharing wonderings, drawings and information about our new found knowledge of mushrooms and fungus. Recently, the mushroom study group from A Child’s Place visited our school. Our students were able to show their guests our collection of dried mushrooms, guidebooks, drawings and a slide show of our photographs. All of the teachers hovered around with cameras poised to take video and stills of everything the children did and said. It was partly humorous but also validating to see another Reggio-inspired teacher doing the same work as us.

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Each year we face different challenges as current students return from summer break, new students enter the mix and school routines are established. This year was no exception. After the newness and excitement wore off many students found they were struggling to get along and to see eye-to-eye. Others, students and teachers, found themselves in the position of peacekeeper or referee, both stressful rolls when called upon time and time again. By the end of October or early November it was clear that we were a community under stress.

We have many approaches and methods in place for peacekeeping. The first and most often used is the Peace Conference. Students who are upset with one another are expected to call a mediated peace meeting and talk out their differences before resentments build. During this meeting the mediator, typically another student, facilitates the conversation. He enables each student to share her side of the story, tries to help each see the others perspective and continues the conversation until a solution is found. The mediator must stay neutral, restate what he has heard, ask questions and give each person the opportunity to speak to the other. This process empowers the children to take responsibility for handling their own conflicts. We find this to be a very effective method but not fail proof. Occasionally, a mediator will conclude that he cannot help the parties involved. On these occasions students agree to disagree, agree to revisit the issue at another time or with a different mediator or call a teacher to the table.

Our second approach to peacekeeping is the all-school meeting. This is typically called when a problem is obvious to all, affecting a large majority if not all the members and/or seems unsolvable. These begin with a reminder of who we are and what foundations we are built upon.

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“Documentation is an act of love. By making their learning visible the
children truly become citizens”
-Carlina Rinaldi

In prior Quick Notes the image of the child as strong, resourceful and competent has been linked to democratic community in education. We have also presented the value of intention as a pedagogical (teaching and learning) tool. Now we intertwine these philosophical theories and practices with the theory of reflection, and documentation as a means of reflection. Recently Voyagers Community School teaching staff and a parent attended a roundtable discussion with Reggio-inspired teachers from around New Jersey. In preparation for this meeting we read and analyzed a chapter addressing documentation and the role it plays in our environment in the book Authentic Childhood: Experiencing Reggio Emilia in the Classroom, (2001). Along with colleagues we considered the theory of documentation as a means of reflection and its value in teaching and learning within an academic community.

When documenting learning there is intense focus on children’s experience, memories, thoughts, and ideas during the course of their work. This practice or method emphasizes the importance of displaying children’s work with great care and attention to both content and aesthetic qualities. This documentation stimulates and grows from reflection. Reflection is the practice of considering the work in progress, talking about the experiences, sharing possibilities, challenging thinking and visiting the work again. This occurs between teachers and children, children and children, and teachers and teachers in the form of dialogue. Awareness grows from this exchange and gives the teacher/researcher a flow of hypotheses and curriculum direction. The documentation, the reflection and the dialogue that ensues between all members of the community strengthen their bond to each other and to learning.

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