This is the text of the letter I sent to students and their parents at the end of first quarter. It’s an attempt to offer broad feedback across the entire range of projects so I don’t have to write the same thing over and over. At the end, I add a page for comment specific to students.

November 4, 2016

Dear family and friends,

What a great first quarter! Students: I hope you’ve enjoyed your time in 101/201 as much as I have. Parents: I hope your students have relayed some of the exciting work we’ve done together as well as the work they’re planning on doing second quarter. This letter is both a summary of the work we’ve done as well as some general recommendations for all students about how they can improve their final products and their work processes.

Our first project — the What’s Out There project — asked students to identify a community organization that they might work with in the future or a group that has served their area of Philadelphia. The best of these written projects can be found on the website, as I’ve slowly started posting the ones edited enough to be public. I want this website to become a resource for other students and staff in the coming years.

Some of the lessons I hope that students took from this project: one, writing for project work is something that ought to occur with a public purpose in mind. In this case, you were trying to share your work with other students and community members. As such, having clean, clear prose that’s accessible is very important. Second, while you are writing, you want to constantly be thinking about the intention of your final piece. Much of school is taken up with writing for no real purpose (think book reports that no one EVER reads again). Similarly, your research should be guided this way: why am I reading this piece? How will it help me? Many of you still go to a website (usually the first google result) and assume that because it popped up, the information it contains is worthwhile to your project. The more you critically read things, the better your project. I hope that these lessons from the project continue throughout the year.

Our second project — the Pallet Project/How we work piece — was designed to get you working in small groups and doing some building. The best of these projects were pretty stunning, particularly the nightstand/charging piece and the fish tank/plant stand. For those of you whose projects were not finished or partially finished, I hope you can ask yourself what happened. And as you answer, I hope you think about what your own role is and move past simple ideas like “I need to be more focused” or “our group had problems”. I’d also ask you think about how the three components might relate to each other — the eventual piece, the design portfolio, and the instructable — and what you can learn from this process. Some groups had group issues that appear to be ongoing. The lessons there seem obvious to me: is it possible to split the work up and then not talk to each other again?

Our third project represents something all of you earned from doing the Gateway project: the opportunity to design your own project for second quarter. We’ve been battling to get this done — no thanks to SEPTA — and I hope that each of you are proud of your work. The major thing to think about when you are designing your own piece is to make sure that you have a project you love and care deeply about. The work on these projects is going to get difficult! For example, you might love thinking about how body language reflects human intentions, but are you really ready to read a psychology textbook, study how scholars have addressed this question, and then formulate your own experiment? Or are you going to shut down the moment that the text and the project gets difficult? As each of you have designed these pieces yourselves, I’ve wondered about those of you who appear to be stuck already. What are the strategies you use? Remember that conceiving your own project is very, very hard work and so is also incredibly rewarding. For these projects to truly grow wings, you need to own them through and through: there’s only one teacher, but there are twenty other students and a city of 1.5 million souls who can help you move the work along. Use as many of them as you can.

Finally, in all of our spare time, we’ve taken on a series of hands-on projects. From safety videos to kitchen caddies to a cabinet for a local gardening center, you’ve all done some cool things. I know that this project has been an in-between project, one that we’ve not been able to focus big blocks of time on, but I still appreciate the effort being made by all of you. I look forward to seeing how these finish!

We’ve also read and written about a terrific book, The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind. Your short essays on whether you would recommend this book and how we as a school can use this book are reasonably well-done. As always, when you write about a text, spend less time explicitly summarizing (this happened and then this happened and then he did it) and more time explaining why the book matters. All of these essays, when ready, will be published on-line. For second quarter, we will have a book we will read, the curious incident of the dog in the night time, which is the Free Library’s One Book text. You will also have an individual book that you’ve selected, either with my help (what a terrific afternoon we had in the used bookstore) or on your own.

Remember that the point of book group is to do two things: one, build up stamina for reading; to succeed in college you will have to be able to read for extended periods of time without distraction. I hope that the various reading strategies we’ve talked about have helped with this, but try and carve 30, 60, 90 minutes a day when you are reading quietly, with no phone, and as few distractions as you can manage.

During the afternoons, all of you have attended CCP and Penn. Some of you have attended Drexel too! So far, we’ve been working as a large cohort but we will soon split to individual courses. Several thoughts: I want to applaud the majority of you who have understood and worked hard when presented with a lecture format, where the teacher or guest lecturer does most of the talking. This is a hard skill to develop but a critical one. You’re lucky — you attend a school where little of the time is taken up with a teacher upfront doing pretty much all of the talking. Much of college works differently and it’s important to realize that developing active listening skills will serve you very well. Second, remember that you are lucky to have a teacher, a principal, a counselor, and all sorts of adults who are constantly asking you how you are doing. All that will remain of us when you get to college is the echoes of our (annoying) voices and it will be up to you to figure out what to do. The more practice you get at maximizing these opportunities and tracking your own work, the better off you will be.

Several concluding ideas for you to think about. One, I hope all of you stay proud of the work you’ve done to create our advisory community. Every visitor who comes through remarks upon it. My favorite moment was when Daniel and Angeline were leading a tour and our group explained in such vivid detail what our school was about. To a serious muckety-muck from 440 who was absolutely blown away.

Two, I hope all of you think about how the work we’re doing this year connects to your future. This sort of project work helps you figure out how to keep yourself moving forward, even when it gets hard. More to the point, it helps you realize that life isn’t a series of on-off switches that you can throw when you feel like it. Consistent hard work ALWAYS pays off.

Three, I want all of you to think about the ways in which you seize control over your own work. What are the things you do to ensure that progress is being made? Some of this has to occur in school. It’s actually something I worry about: should I give less work time in school and spend more time creating activities that you can bring towards your own work? In other words, should I decrease the amount of time spent in whole group activities so that you can get work individually? What will be gained and what will be lost?

On a personal note, this quarter has been one of my favorite quarters in a long, long time. You are a fun yet serious group, a cohort committed to each other, and just fun to be around. Keep up the good work!

Affectionately and respectfully yours,

Clapper

I don’t begrudge my union brothers and sisters the right to strike. I envy them the leverage of the election and that the legislature did not strip them of the right to strike. While SEPTA drivers have bumped my bike three times, cursed at me in front of my children for having the temerity to ride in a bike lane, and cursed at me for asking that an elderly woman be allowed onto the 52 in subzero weather, they still deserve more than their current contract. (If you live in Philly, you have at least a dozen stories of crappy SEPTA drivers, and at least one or two of a driver doing something unbelievably generous and kind).

What’s happened to my class this week, though, is distressing. We spent so much time building community. Community is based on presence. With 22 individuals, we have our highs and lows, our recurring patterns (“no, I don’t know what you’re saying”, “why do you all have to care so much?”) and a rhythm that moves us through the days and weeks. I wish I’d taken a group dynamics course so I had a cleaner sense of how this works and potential strategies to address what happens when multiple individuals come out of the group. I’ve felt it at every level of education, as a student and a teacher, where a change in the group undermines everybody’s commitment to move forward. It almost feels like a new group each day, where we have to restart and re-make the culture, which is tough because that’s hard work anyway and doing it from scratch feels like a let down.

As a professional, I can keep moving the group forward, but it’s hard.

Friends:

SEPTA is on strike! You better get up, get showered (for those of you who do that), and get busy walking, biking, or running to get here! We have proposals to finish and all sorts of shop work to get done. And that exhibition won’t write itself!

Most of all, don’t forget about the major presentation/GRADE at Penn. I talked to Mr. A. and we will leave for Penn after lunch. It’s a glorious fall day and we could all use the walk!

MC

Spent our last day thinking about the difference between how we view and use time at school and at home (see attached high-tech hand-written worksheet.)

Several things happened that I was excited about. One, the conversation about how “it’s all too much” came up with a thoughtful visitor in the room who could put that notion to rest. Two project blocks, a bio course, a class at Penn with four helpful professors, and a CCP course with a prof who is nothing if not supportive. It’s the most help they’ll ever have but that’s something that can only be discovered, not something that can be told.

Two, the question of how we make a workspace where everyone can work came up. Again. Making it possible for all students to work in our classroom is all of our jobs; I know that it’s hard to work in school but there are things we can all do to make this possible. Some folks have great quiet spaces to work in at home while others do not; some folks need total quiet while others do well with some music. How do we make sure that the time we have is being used as efficiently and joyfully as possible?

Three, most kids noted that they get more work done when they are comfortable. I have to figure out a way to go out this — sometimes I appreciated working where I was not comfortable, where the only thing I could do was work. With some tasks, comfort actually worked against me. There’s some middle ground here, where students can feel comfortable enough to work, but not so comfortable that they relax too much.