Monograph
Empowering Learning Connections, Building Positive Community
A vibrant independent school is one where children build their identity, where families build their community, and where communities explore and express their values. As schools evolve to become a hub rather than a home for learning, school leaders will be required to marry personalized learning experiences with a deep sense of community and purpose. Skillful school leaders foster a learning environment that is anchored in the core values of their community while empowering self-expression, exploration, challenge, and collaboration for all learners. Building connections and shared experiences serve as the foundation in fostering these learning communities.
Compelling Community by Building Identity
Since I started teaching 1st Grade, my week has begun with the same student writing activity called The Slice. Initially, students would write and draw about something they did over the weekend. Over the course of the year, students learned to write an opening sentence, sequential detail sentences and end with a “feeling sentence” as the conclusion. Each week, I would share a digital publication of the class’s writing with families, faculty and staff, caregivers, and community members. Grandparents would respond with appreciation for the window into their grandchild’s life. Parents would see the development of students in the class, and more than anything, readers would respond with joy for the weekly showcase of the class.
While The Slice has become a first grade favorite, it took on a new life last year in response to my graduate research about embedding equity and belonging into culture and curriculum. Research on race and identity argues that students need to develop, “a solid sense of self that is based on their interests, connections to people, and contributions to the community” (Derman-Sparks and Ramsey, p. 50). Employing this core learning theme, The Slice shifted away from a weekend narrative, and became a tool for identity exploration that families considered together at home and students shared through their writing at school. Families would talk about food that is important to them, a song they like to sing together, their favorite book, favorite color, etc. Then, at the start of the week, students would draw and write about this meaningful “slice” of themselves and their family, creating rich conversations and connections in the classroom.
This year, my teaching partner and I expanded this work further by integrating Pollyanna’s Racial Literacy Guide for Grade 1, weaving identity work into each writing prompt. As stated in Pollyanna’s curriculum guide, the goal is to “build a positive sense of self and expand students’ social awareness in an effort to create a more open-minded, inclusive community” (p. 1). Partnered with these lessons, with read-alouds, and with classroom conversations, students and families are now engaging in dialogue about values of kindness, family history, and the strength of community. By shifting the focus of The Slice to a collaborative exploration of identity, students are able to build a strong foundation that celebrates individual strengths and compels the power of community.
Learning Through
Human Connection
It’s the Thursday before Vetern’s Day, and we’ve just finished a read-aloud about what it means to be a Veteran. As the 1st Graders sit with their 60-, 70-, and 80-year-old Grandfriend partner contemplating writing a letter to a veteran, one of the Grandfriends reaches into his wife’s purse. When he asks to share something, the classroom’s center of gravity shifts to his hands, revealing his dad’s WWII dog tag that he carries on his key chain. In his steady, sagely voice, he unfolds stories from his childhood and his dad’s service in the military. His dad came back from WWII proudly wearing those dog tags, and this wonderful Grandfriend passed his dad’s legacy on to the students through those jingling tags.
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Bouncing in line with a book in hand, the 1st Grade class makes their weekly trip across campus to the administrative offices. Awaiting them are eager school staff members who have taken a break from spreadsheets, photo editing, and meetings, carving out this precious time when the Roving Readers have come to call. Each child eagerly greets their listener, beaming as they show the cover of the book they will share that week. The children sink into the oversized chairs in their administrator’s office and begin to read the book they’ve been practicing. For the students, this time offers a cherished opportunity to demonstrate their growth and joy as a reader, and for the adults, it's a coveted reminder of the impact their work has on the community.
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The 1st Graders are wide-eyed and attentive as the 6th graders share the story they’ve created in their coding class, a digital version of a beloved fairy tale. Slowly, as the 6th graders finish sharing, their 1st grade audience members begin to ask questions, touching the screen of the 6th grader’s iPad to consider how the story was built. One-by-one, the 6th graders relinquish control of their iPads, inviting the 1st graders to explore the program and showing them how to animate a dragon or build a castle. This paired instruction was not an expected part of the visit, but watching the patient mentorship of the 6th graders and the careful focus of the 1st graders inspired a joint coding class for the 6th and 1st graders.
A hub rather than a home for learning
My career in education was ignited at The Logan School for Creative Learning, a place where students choose their own units of study each fall and spring. For example, a group of students wish to study geology, so after completing research in their classrooms, they meet with a geologist at Red Rocks National Park. Together, they survey the rock formations, relating what they observe to a detailed geological map. Back at school, the students construct a rock formation out of clay and explain the geological story behind their creation. The Logan School is also a place where kindergarteners sell greeting cards made by women at a day shelter: visiting the women to choose cards to sell, alphabetizing the cards by the artist’s last name, counting by twos to figure out how much money their customers owe, and making eye contact while saying, “Thanks for shopping!”
This is what learning looks like at its best because, “Children actively construct knowledge based on their experiences, relationships, and social contexts. The brain develops and learning occurs through connections among neurons that create connections among thoughts and ideas.” (Learning Policy Institute & Turnaround for Children, p. 59). This experience and understanding has launched me, with my colleagues, to reshape curriculum to be collaborative, interest-based, and experiential.
As one example, the 1st Grade team has taken a place-based approach to Social Studies. For our study of Beverly, Boston and Beyond, we committed to taking one field trip a month so that students can actually experience the communities of which they are a part. Rather than reading books about community helpers, students visited Beverly and learned from a local librarian about all of the resources the library offers its community, and as a result, many students were proud to apply for their first library card. In Salem, students saw old ships and customs houses and learned about the importance of ports in New England. They met with representatives in Congressman Moulton’s office to learn about civics and the role of some elected officials. The culminating field trip to Boston included a visit to the State House where they saw, first hand, the power and history of the government. Standing in the House chamber, seeing where votes are cast for new laws, and visiting Governor Baker's office, seeing the table where decisions like masking were debated, sent a powerful message to students about being an agent of change.
Ethic of Care
Approaching education with an Ethic of Care allows us to harness the humanity and lived experience of the collective and promotes the importance of our interdependence (Held, p. 9-13). Only by addressing education through this lens can we begin to repair some of the critical issues our young people are facing like mental well-being, social justice and climate stability.
In regard to mental health, employing an Ethic of Care repositions schools to promote both individual and systemic well-being because we are attending to “areas of social emotional development, moral growth and character formation” (Ilten-Gee, p. 82). When we take the time to honor and address lived experience in the curriculum, when students work collaboratively on assignments, and when learning is directly relevant to the wider world, we are “compelling moral salience of attending to and meeting the needs of the particular others” (Held, p. 10). Revitalizing education through the lens of the Ethic of Care means that we recenter social well-being as a guiding principle in our schools.
The Ethic of Care also requires that we examine systems of power within our schools, and therefore, address issues of equity and justice. Frameworks like Responsive Classroom and Restorative Justice are critical for allowing space for students to be known and honored as people. Furthermore, these frameworks are most effective when the entire system promotes an anti-racist, anti-bias culture (Kleinrock, p. 76). Therefore, the board and administration hold the keys to establishing an ethos of belonging and support. When the support of the system is felt, classrooms and students can begin to freely discuss, explore, and advocate for critical issues like racial and gender equity.
In the area of climate change, the Ethic of Care also elevates the interdependence of all people (Held, p. 8-10). We know that, “people living in poorer neighborhoods in the country experience the greatest exposure to both pollution and property damage due to extreme weather events” (Gonen, xiv-xv). By strengthening the interconnection of our shared human experience and compelling students’ strong sense of fairness, climate change can provide a meaningful context to explain the role we each play in supporting one another.
Our education system needs to centralize care ethics in order to empower Audacious Hope, hope that “demands that we reconnect to the collective by struggling along-side one another, sharing in the victories and the pain” (Duncan-Andrade, p. 190). Only then will we be able to effect lasting cultural change.
My Drive for Leadership
I believe that independent schools are uniquely positioned to shape the future of education, and because of my experience prototyping that future, I am highly motivated to begin pioneering that vision right now. My pursuit of school leadership is fueled by my desire to maximize my own capacities. As JFK said when he spoke of going to the moon, “Why choose this as our goal? … Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” From curriculum design and student growth to building relationships and fundraising, my strengths are perfectly suited to drive the growth and programming of an independent school. Without hesitation, I know that school leadership will optimize my strengths, and in turn, optimize the learning experience for future students.
Resources
Derman-Sparks, Louise, and Patricia G. Ramsey. What If All the Kids Are White?: Anti-Bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families. Teachers College Press, 2011.
Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey. “Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 79, no. 2, 2009, pp. 181–194., doi:10.17763/haer.79.2.nu3436017730384w.
Gonen, Ron. The Waste-Free World: How the Circular Economy Will Take Less, Make More, and Save the Planet. Portfolio / Penguin, an Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021.
Kleinrock, Liz. Start Here Start Now a Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your Community. Heinemann, 2021.
Learning Policy Institute & Turnaround for Children. (2021). Design principles for schools: Putting the science of learning and development into action.
Nucci, Larry P., and Royn Ilten-Gee. Moral Education for Social Justice. Teachers College Press, 2021.
Virginia Held, “The Ethics of Care as Moral Theory,” The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 9-29.
Vogelsang, Monique. “K-8 Racial Literacy Curriculum.” Pollyanna Inc., 2019, pollyannainc.org/k-8-curriculum/.