Thinking about a group

Is it me?
Is it adolescence?
Is it the culture in the room?
Is it the culture of the school?
Is it the culture of the neighborhood/city?
Is it me?

What can I do?
What do I need to remember about adolescence?
What work have I done in the room? What work have we done as a class?
What work have I done in the school? What work have we done in the school?
What work have I done for the city? What work have we done for the city?
What can I do?

I get this song stuck in my head. A lot.

We continued our conversation about how to get projects to the outside world. I tried to build on yesterday’s deep thoughts about the difficulty of moving projects from idea to completion, particularly school projects that are aimed at the real world.

We drew mountains. We put complete, outward-facing projects on the top of the mountain. We talked about all the steps it takes to get to the top of the mountain.

I wanted to spend today thinking about the obstacles that prevent students from connecting their projects to the outside world. But I have spent too much time around Simon Hauger so I had to try and phrase the prompt in a positive way first: how do you, your school, and your life help you connect projects? And what in those areas slows you down or gets in the way?

My favorite moment and a great conversation point was from the first document: “You have to be careful about yourself and how you get out there?” Combine this with a great point raised by another student — “I’d be afraid to take on an outside project because of what could happen if something went wrong.”

One of the best parts of our program has to be the ways in which we try and connect students and their work with the outside world. We do our best to break down the barriers between school and the outside world — no easy task — and hope that the work can be measured against real world standards and that the successes and failures of trying to do something authentic can provide important experiences.

Today we’ll begin by asking the why connecting to the outside world matters. I know I’ve asked this a thousand or more times before but I want to make sure that we discuss why this matters. Tomorrow, I think I’ll look at what’s get in the way, mostly because I want the eleventh graders to consider their role in these partnerships, i.e., how can I stop being the gatekeeper or the conduit to the outside world and become a coach instead?

Later in the day:
We had a good conversation. What’s striking to me is how closely they’ve internalized this notion of an outward facing education. While we do not explicitly criticize how other schools operate, the students definitely have an understanding of what this means, to focus on outside connections.

Here are some of their thoughts, which I’m going to build around tomorrow as a way of seeing whether it’s happening or not:

Our projects should connect because our projects solve real world problems. TJC
So that we understand the work we do and how we learn from them. TJC
To inspire others. ES
…our projects need to connect to the outside world because we need to be able to understand …how it will be once we actually are on our own. JF
To see who likes our stuff. AB
Projects are more important than a grade. AB
The only reason I can think of is because we have real standards for our work. QG
We learn about what’s out there in the world but also how to change it. TC
Maybe our projects can touch people in a way that they can help themselves. DL
It is important for projects to connect to the real world because you can make a change somewhere, you can better a community. JH
Sometimes when you do projects, you break barriers, you do things people don’t believe you can do, and you can prove people wrong. JH
Projects connected to the outside world have more meaning. KB

After reading and discussing various things this week, we wrote our own grit scale. These are the questions we can ask ourselves to see if we’re being resilient, resourceful, or gritty. A great exercise and terrific conversation.