Started by writing about two things: when does your understanding of outstanding come from INSIDE you and when does your understanding of outstanding come from OUTSIDE of you. I tried to have students identify concrete situations where they formed each. MB nailed me right away by asking near the beginning “wait…aren’t some things both?” That’s what I was after: the idea that as you advance through various forms of project work your own internal standards start to match up with external standards. I also was trying in a subtle (or not so subtle) way to suggest that simply declaring the work outstanding because you did your best won’t work. If I wanted to go to Northwestern and my essay, transcript, and scores did not meet their standards, then it wouldn’t matter how good I felt about my own work or whether I did my best.

A few kids also appreciated the idea that we all have hobbies and things we do for fun whether the standards we set for ourselves don’t really matter. I’m not trying to be a singer in a rock and roll band; I’m just trying to relax and make a little quiet art in my living room each night. I won’t ever be a professional carpenter but I like making boxes.

Some quotes from the conversation and from the sheets:

Ideas of outstanding work come from inside “all the time as long you are being truthful to yourself.” –MT
Ideas of outstanding work come from outside when “others are counting on you, like a group.” –MT

“It’s important to have outside help when you’re doing something that’s going to affect the people around you, your peers.” –DW

This also led to a great conversation about why I’d ask this question now. DW pointed out that sometimes it’s about the bald man and sometimes it’s about your own “work ethic.” When I have helped kids do the hard work of identifying and working towards outstanding work and when is it a great mystery.

Quotes from conversation
“You gotta have the outside when the whole community is depending on you.” –DW
“It comes from inside when it doesn’t affect other people.” –VG
“Inside when it’s on your own (house) vs outside when it’s at school”
“Grades! ”
“Are we reaching for those standards; for those outside standards?” –MH
“We’re talking about this to get on the same page.”

It’s near the end of a quarter and I’m having this conversation in circle. Again. This ought to be a constant conversation in any classroom but it’s particularly important in a project based classroom. What are the ways in which different academic standards have been met? What are the ways different academic skills have been developed? And, now, with kids who’ve been in our program for a couple of years, shouldn’t they have deeper conceptions of outstanding? In other words, a ninth grader might advance an argument about growth and effort by saying things like “if I did my best, it’s outstanding” or “I tried my hardest.” But I’m worried if an eleventh or twelfth grader is.

I want them to be able to identify outstanding and then explain why their work is or is not outstanding. I want them to be able to explain the factors that made the work not outstanding. While I’m thrilled at the ability of my students to explain why they couldn’t do the work or what broke down in their work process, that’s not enough: I want them to be able to look at the standards and explain why their work is or is not outstanding.

So today’s activity was the question of where outstanding comes from (three graphic organizers below, last one is mine).

The first one has a few ideas that are concerned with the process but focuses primarily on how the work fits into the outside world, i.e., “when other people think it’s outstanding” or “when it solves a real problem.”

The second, though, is totally different. The understanding of where outstanding comes from is rooted entirely in his/her personal process. “When it’s turned in on-time” and “When you receive your grade.”

As proud as I am about getting to an understanding of the process, I want students to be able to situate their work in the world. If you’re sitting in a college class and claim that your work is outstanding because it was turned in on time or because you revised it, you’re in for a world of hurt. I don’t want to bruise anyone’s self-esteem but until you’re at the top of a field, you don’t get to set the standards for what makes outstanding work.

Dear Mr. Tico, Mr. Bonilla, and all of the amazing actors and writers from El Centro,

My name is Michael Clapper and I am a teacher/cofounder at the Workshop School. We’re a project based school, much like El Centro, and a group of us came down to see your performance yesterday. What follows are my notes from the performance – yeah, I’m one of those guys who takes notes at a play – and these notes, along with two dollars, gets you a cup of coffee. At the end of this document, you’ll see some thoughts from my students, which are probably more valuable.

First of all, I want to thank you for the invitation and applaud your willingness to do this work in public. I know plenty of folks who write poetry in coffee shops or who record songs in their basement but whose work never sees the light of day. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a power in doing creative work wherever you are, but the power of that work when it goes public cannot be underestimated. You took your writing, your acting, your improvising, your verbal jousts, your senses of humor, and put them on stage in West Philadelphia. That’s amazing and I hope it’s only the first time. I hope you appreciate the power of this step. You should all be immensely proud of yourselves and the community you made together.

Second, I want to ask you the question that I would have asked if we’d had more time: how does creating things change things? You can think of this question as a personal question: in writing SMOOTH, in writing CANDY, in thinking about the CRAZY PERSON ON THE BUS, how did your own view of the world shift as a result of that creative process? How does pausing, thinking, and then trying to capture what you’ve seen, smelt, and heard help you think about who you are? Similarly, how does capturing a snippet of domestic life – WHERE’S MY BACON – or a conversation between two women on the phone help CHANGE the way people think about things? How does capturing these voices and performing them make the world better?

Third, I want to ask about how you want to get better. Mr. Tico said this was the first performance like this. There were some stunning moments. The kind of theatre that makes you stop everything. The kind of theatre that makes you pause and reconsider how you see the world. Then there were some not so great moments. How would you do this differently? How would you measure up to professional standards? How do you even figure out what those standards are?

These are all questions that I, as a teacher and a human being, struggle with all the time. Whose work do I want to compare my work to? As a writer, whose work do I aspire to be as good as? With the projects we do in my class, what level do I want the work to be? Do I ask students to make Oscar worthy films or do I set my bar lower? Is it fair to demand that level of work from expert amateurs? How far should I push? How do I teach the students to push themselves?

Congratulations, again, and I hope we can all continue this partnership in the future. We’ll be writing plays as a group this spring and maybe we could arrange to visit or you could come and see us?

Lastly, my students did the same thing and here are some of their thoughts:

• I think they did a good job for their first time. One I think I liked was every scene was real life scenarios. I also like that they wrote and directed the play. I say this because it was more power behind the acting.
• You guys did a great job. I loved Candy and the homeless person the best. I think it would have been better if there were more parts to the play because we would have had a better understanding of social justice and what social justice is.
• It was a great experience to see students take what they were going through and what their community is going through and come up with possible solutions.
• I think you guys did a very good job on the social justice stories. The fact that you guys wrote it out, with personal feelings, makes it better.
• That play was cool. I think each scene itself was good but the transitions were a little distracting. I think you shouldn’t be afraid to have silence or pauses to let the scenes sit. I think the process must have involved lots of brainstorming and collaboration on a day to day basis.
• I really liked the video in between the different parts of the play. I also like how the video was explaining what the class was about.

Congratulations to all of you!

Advisory 101_201 The Workshop School

I’ve said it before, and most teachers feel it, that the side comments made by students are often among the most telling. We’re gearing up for the end of third quarter and I’ve got five groups preparing submissions for the FPAC compost competition. Students have their self-selected projects as well. We were talking about next quarter where I hope to engage in researching an event from Philadelphia’s past and writing a feature article of some sort on it followed by the writing of a play based on that event for submission to the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Contest.

The usual moaning, wailing, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments occurred when I mentioned this plan. And one student in particular was incensed that we were involved in another contest. (We did studentcam during second quarter and sadly none of our films were among the top 150.) I asked why and here’s what he said:

“Because we have to work off of their timetable.”

Exactly.

Bundled into that comment is also the fact that we have to work off of someone else’s criteria and standards of excellence. As the teacher, that’s what I want — an understanding that life doesn’t revolve around what the teacher says but that there are real standards for all sorts of work. These are standards that you need to have internalized if you want to do real work in the world. And while there are grades (we are a school after all), I do everything I can to underscore how the work we’re doing for grades actually supports the projects going out into the world. It also makes me wonder what would happen if I simply set up a contest and let the students back plan the process. For some, they’d have careful timetables and would set their own deliverables. For others, we’d have a last minute rush. (Wait, that’s what we have now and I structure this project block. Hmmmm.)

Several students also mounted the “life isn’t a competition” argument. I wish this was true and twenty years ago I would have agreed with the students. There are problems with seeing work as a competition, particularly when it erodes the culture of the community. If we had students wrecking each other’s projects to ensure their own success, then I’d be worried. If competition fostered individualism as opposed to deeper community, then I’d be worried. I’ve only seen the opposite, where kids have supported each other as they get close to the finish line, and where kids have helped to raise each other up. Where I need to do more work is once we’ve finished is circling back one final time to the external standards and grade again. In other words, I loved elements of many of our CSpan films, but we as a group have to know why we did not crack the top 150.

Fairmount Recycling Center Compost Sifter in action:

Reflection:
In some ways, the money here is the last question from the sheet they completed as partners. I memorized these formulas many years ago but they’re irrelevant when you’re trying to figure out the connection between a pile of green waste — let’s say rotty greens from the kitchen — which weighs two pounds and a composter that holds six cubic feet of material. How do you know? How do you account for the fact that a mass of greens will weigh less than a mass of shredded carrots? And if you’re trying to plan a composter, what do you do?

Student responses:
In plain English, write down 3-5 ways you can explain the volume of an object.
DW: How much it can hold The space inside an object!
VG: The space an object takes up.

In math teacher language, write down the best definition you can think of to explain the volume of an object.
IP: The space within an object which matter consumes.
JH: It can be measured in ml or liters.
VG: The measurement of a three dimensional geometric space.

In borderline inappropriate language, write down the definition of volume.
MC: What in it.
AR: The bottom times the side times the middle equals the inside.

Basically, how does one calculate the volume of an object?
TC: Length x Width x Depth
AH: There are different equations for different types of shapes
VG: Cut an object into slices and then add up all those slices.
BC: Multiply all the sides!

Why is it easier to calculate the volume of a rectangular object like a box as opposed to something round like a cylinder?
DW: With a cylinder you have to know the area of a circle.
VG: You have to know the area of the base for any object but it’s easier when it’s a rectangle.

Write down the formula for calculating the volume of a round object.
V=r2hPiXr2Xdepth where V is the volume of the object, r is the radius of the circular base, and h is the height of the object.

How would you calculate the volume of two different size objects attached to each other?
Break into two parts and then add ‘em up!

How does one write the volume of an object in cubic feet?
Eight cubic feet cu ft ft3

The “footprint” of your composter is measured in square feet. The composter’s capacity is measured in cubic feet. Why?
The footprint is the space it takes up looking down (2D)
The composter is measured in how much it holds (3D)

On the back, write down three strategies for converting weight into volume. We have to do this for our composter. How should we do it?

Opening reflection:

“There’s no difference between small decisions and big decisions when it comes to morality.” True or false? Defend your position.

Circle is a struggle these mornings. I’m gaining some traction by calling/texting every child who is late and/or absent. I’m gaining more traction by grading the short writing reflections that we use to start our conversations. It’s a tough balance, though, trying to get engagement because it’s worth thinking about these questions while simultaneously managing what has evolved into a disciplinary matter.

Either way, we got where I hoped we’d get pretty quickly: one brilliant person arguing that there are just decisions and small decisions all pave the road for big decisions and another brilliant person arguing that we cannot compare things like murder and what you eat for breakfast. Can we draw a moral equivalence between all actions? Or is it enough to drive towards an awareness about how all of your small decisions flow into your larger decisions?

Old school activity today, where you take the deliverable, have the students remind each other what the deliverable is, and then have them write down one idea about what would make it outstanding work. Then you pass the paper every forty-five seconds or so and have them fill up the sheet with ideas. You finish by having everyone read out their favorite answers and collate them into your rubric.

Old teacher trick: Figure out where to sit so you can monitor who is writing what.

Old teacher trick two: Write down what you want on the rubric as the pieces go by so kids can see your expectations and build on them.

Examples of student work for this:

Final Rubric Pieces:

Outstanding Script:

Outstanding Schematic: If a newcomer can build your composter based on your design! Looking at it, someone has an obvious idea about what you will be making; easy to understand and “see” the design. Dimensions are accurate and to scale; the materials and building process are obvious and clearly explained in the sketch/schematic; Multiple drafts; Changes/revisions have been made and with each sketch there is obvious and documentable progress; the method of composting is clear and ensures that compost will be produced within time limit.

Outstanding Proposal:

Circle: Describe a story where you felt like you learned right from wrong.

Cool conversation.

Questions for later: do you believe in Karma?
How does helping and/or watching other people create understandings of right and wrong?