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Volume VIII, Issue
No.2
In This Issue: Expeditionary Learning All Day
Still
Confused, After all These Years This was the first attempt I remember to define an expedition. More descriptive qualifiers followed this intriguing opener, the main features of which described a "long term intellectual investigation built around significant projects and performances." In the process of trying to help teachers design expeditions, we have tried to clarify just what they are and how they can be distinguished from projects, interdisciplinary units, or thematic studies. Many of the features do overlap. Elements we thought might separate expeditions from their cousins were the emphasis on fieldwork, the focus on service, and the multiple revisions encouraged to produce quality work. We developed benchmarks that further delineated the elements of learning expeditions and checklists to evaluate their implementation and assess quality. But as precisely as we have tried to define them, there remains an element of expeditions that refuses to be tied down, that escapes every benchmark and rubric. Maybe they are a journey into the unknown after all. All of us engaged in some form of experiential learning comprehend that language alone is not sufficient to communicate an understanding of an expedition. Language can lead us to the edge of the water, but we have to jump in and experience it before we can know the power of its current, the subtleties of its shifting bottom, the measure of its defining banks. We have to let it carry us along for awhile to appreciate its changing landscapes, its variety of hidden life, its dead ends and destinations. Every teacher creates a personal understanding of an expedition by making connections to his/her own experiences and constructing concepts to define it. We try to distill the key components by comparing and analyzing our personal understanding. Every new teacher adds something to the collective vision. Because of the essential role experience plays in understanding and creating expeditions, there will never be a recipe, maybe never even a road map, that shows how it is done and prescribes the steps to get there. We have guides for planning expeditions before we go and for reflecting on them when we are finished, but not for actually doing them. That is frustrating to many teachers. Perhaps the best definition of an expedition is the one that entices you to jump in. FIFTH PERIOD: EXPEDITIONARY LEARNING Over the years and across the states, many brave teachers have made that plunge. The essential question we immediately face is how to integrate the expedition with the content and skills that we have always taught and which still need to be taught. A common practice is to teach all the academic classes in one part of the day, and then save an hour in the afternoon to do the expedition. That can be a good first step, but whatever an expedition may be, we know that confining it to a period or two is not its ultimate expression. Many teachers have heard, "You are supposed to teach the expedition all day, every day. Everything you do should be part of the expedition." We know that is the goal, but I don't know if we have been able to articulate how to do it. We can show examples of how content and skills can be taught in the context of hands-on experiences. Outstanding teachers can demonstrate expeditions that seem to build significant knowledge and skills. (I remember what it was like when I was trying to learn to Swing Dance. The experts were inspiring and demonstrated that it was possible to do, but gave me no hope I would ever be able to do it myself!) But even when we see the big picture, the grand scope of a complex learning expedition, we don't often zoom in on the every-day, every-lesson teaching of the skills and concepts that the student work seems to demonstrate was mastered. Does the teaching of specific skills and content, even when part of an expedition, look significantly different from the way they are taught by other non-expeditionary learning teachers? Are lectures, demonstrations, textbooks, and worksheets still the best way to teach discrete concepts and skills? Or is there a way to apply the principles of the expedition to a single class? Does the same learning theory apply to one concept in a single lesson and multiple standards in a year-long expedition? Can I use the planning guide to design a single lesson as well as a six-week expedition? EXPEDITIONARY LEARNING ALL DAY LONG I believe that when we dig down through the layers of design principles, core practices, benchmarks, and planning guides, we get to the integrating principle at the heart of Expeditionary Learning. We discover the seed meant to bear fruit all day, every day, in every subject and every lesson. It seems too simple and obvious to promise much, but then, think of the seeds you know. They don't look like all that much, but they know the amazing secret of orchestrating the elements: earth, water, air, fire in a way that brings forth growth and fruit. Here's the seed: The experience comes first, then the concept. The experience creates a "vessel" that the concept "fills." If we pour in concepts without having created vessels to receive them, they will run off the sides of understanding and be forgotten-if not before the test, then surely after. The guiding principle that can permeate everything we teach is that if we want our students to understand something well, they need to experience it first, and then find or construct the concept that defines the experience. This is true of a single spelling lesson or a year-long investigation of complex guiding questions. Creating these experiences for our students, and then "growing" the concept from the experience is a defining feature of Expeditionary Learning. It applies to understanding the letter "B", the Periodic Table, or scale drawings as well as to exploring the purpose of government, the scientific method, or the meaning of life. WHAT IS EXPERIENCE, ANYWAY? Two problems immediately complicate this simple principle. The first is that understanding and skill require much practice and repetition in order to be mastered, even if you see it once with a great "AHA!" I can create moving experiences to introduce an idea or challenging products to address a standard, but understanding won't last without repeated practice and opportunities for application. I haven't figured that one out yet. The second has to do with figuring out what "experience" really is. We often use the word, but what are we really talking about? Is it more than just doing stuff? I think about four aspects of experience: sensual, emotional, imaginative, and mental. It is direct, immediate, and the first three types accessible without language. The way the world enters us through our senses is experience. The emotion we feel when the world enters us is experience. The imagination, the seeing of pictures in our mind's eye is experience. Finally, we can experience ideas, concepts, themselves. The power of thinking can be an experience. Understanding can bring me joy. A paradox or puzzle can perplex me. So when I talk about preceding conceptual understanding with experience, I am talking about rich sense impressions, emotional involvement, imagination, or "felt" ideas. I am not talking about engaging hearing with lectures and sight with accompanying notes or charts on the board. THE CRYSTALLIZING EXPERIENCE Howard Gardner writes,"The most important moment in a child's education is the crystallizing experience: when the child connects to something that engages curiosity and stimulates further exploration." How do we create these experiences for our students? I often use the following questions as I plan individual lessons or complex expeditions: • What is amazing about the concept or the topic? What important consequences does it have in our lives? How would life be different without it? Until I recognize the significance of the concept-the genius of the topic, what makes it unique, what makes it important-I won't be able to communicate to my students that it matters. Can you imagine a number system without zero? What an incredible invention! I have to appreciate how amazing it is. I have to feel it. • How have children experienced the topic in their own lives? More often than not, students already have the experience, but may not have formulated the concept to define it. The kindergarten child experiences subtraction when she loses a mitten. The eighth grader experiences the greenhouse effect when she gets into a car on a sunny summer day after being in the mall for three hours. The high school kicker on the football team has experienced parabola as he judges a kick for height and distance. If I can't imagine where they have experienced the concept already, then I have to create an opportunity for them to experience it before I introduce the concept. • What connection does this topic have to others? Is there a principle or concept at the root that leads to something universal? Sometimes the crystallizing experience happens in making connections to other concepts. For example, my students really got excited ("felt" idea) about 'inference' when they discovered it in a science experiment and then again in reading a novel. Or after studying Galileo, Joan of Arc, and Oliver Cromwell, they got very excited about a spirit they noticed all three figures had in common: they had to do it themselves, not rely on some established authority. Or I remember a first grade student becoming engaged with the letter 'M' when she saw it emerge in a picture of the mountains. • How can I lead students to discover the topic for themselves rather than tell them what they are going to study? Students want to feel like they are creating the curriculum rather than us telling them what they are going to do. I try to create situations where they feel they are authentically exploring something relevant to their lives. I have to teach rocks and minerals. If I have them dig in the ground to prepare for planting something, they will find rocks. I'll get one of them to think they found something special (if it doesn't happen naturally, which would, of course, be better). This will lead to learning about how scientists identify rocks and minerals, but students will never suspect the reason we are doing it is because the state said so. • Is there a great question, issue, or challenge that could introduce the topic? Here is where guiding questions can be used as a crystallizing experience to engage students. They can be used for single lessons and expeditions. Reading an article together about how a television transformed an Eskimo village created great debate in my class and engaged students to explore the relationship between technological progress and the quality of human life. CLOSING THOUGHTS Remember the seed that underlies all of our tools and principles: that experience precedes conceptual understanding. Much of our work is to craft these experiences for our students, or mine them from their own lives. Our students have a better chance to develop real understanding if we start with the experience and then construct the concepts through guided inquiry. If we apply this principle to every lesson we teach, I think we will be on the way to figuring out what it means to do expeditionary learning all day long. Steven Levy is a school designer with Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound and a teacher in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Essential
Structures for Learning Expeditions: Building Blocks to High Quality
Work CREATING GOOD HABITS "It motivated them because it showed them that not only did we expect them to be invested in their work, but that we are invested in them," LeGage said. "We were out there doing the activities with them and we were getting excited about what they did." This program laid the foundation for their expeditions for the rest of the year because it helped the students learn to take risks, Michaud said. "By the end of T.E.A.M. they knew they wouldn't get laughed at if they failed at something. We need that going into our expeditions because we ask kids to take a lot of risks in presenting things." For example, during an expedition on immigration Michaud asked students to produce television commercials on the constitutional freedoms available to immigrants. This required students to practice videotaping themselves performing. "Many of the kids wouldn't have done that if it weren't for the fact that they succeeded at T.E.A.M. and knew that no one was going to laugh at them," he said. GIVING STUDENTS A
FRAMEWORK Each expedition at King also begins with a substantive and authentic kickoff activity. "Rock the House" started with a double kickoff: an interactive presentation by the Maine state geologist and a field experience at a geologically-rich area in Southern Maine. Once the expedition begins, the students receive expedition folders or portfolios. The portfolios are prepared with the expedition's guiding questions and expected final drafts. As the expedition unfolds, students keep in their portfolios all work related to the expedition, including an expedition timeline and product descriptors for each minor project and the final project. "They know exactly what they will be assessed on from day one," LeGage said. Hiram Sibley, the technology teacher, also designed a web site for "Rock the House" (http://www.angelfire.com/me2/Sibley/). The web site includes a monthly schedule, guiding questions, and learning goals that give students ready access to the thinking behind the expedition plan. Carefully selected links to the Maine Geological Survey, the U.S. Geological Survey site, and a site on the geology of Acadia National Park also give students ready access to primary research resources. SETTING HIGH EXPECTATIONS Students know they will have to present their work to a "meaningful" audience, and that raises the quality of work as well. For instance, the children's books written for the immigration expedition were shared with elementary children and community organizations, and the geology game boards were marketed to companies that produce game boards. "Students don't want to put something up that's not their best work because this is for a meaningful audience," LeGage said. TEACHERS DOCUMENT
Many King teachers repeat their expeditions several years in a row. LeGage and Michaud point out that a portfolio of an expedition helps them figure out ways to improve the expedition if it will be repeated. It also serves as a resource for other teams planning to do the expedition, and finally as an example of a portfolio for students creating their own portfolios. Amy Mednick is the
former editor of The Web One Hundred Percent Every Day: A Whole-School Buffalo Hunt By Sharon Leean and Dave Friedli On an afternoon in late fall, middle and high school students from the Umonhon Nation Public School in Macy, Nebraska gathered around a buffalo calf in a pasture in Kansas. They had traveled hundreds of miles to this spot, following the trail their Umonhon ancestors had taken on the tribe's last successful buffalo hunt in 1876. When their ancestors made the journey, they had struggled to find buffalo-the physical and spiritual lifeblood of the tribe-because the animal was on the verge of extinction. Now, standing on the site where the hunters had finally found buffalo 123 years before, these students gazed down on a young calf, a symbol of the birth of a new generation of buffalo. To honor the moment, all ten tribal clans stepped forward to announce their presence. "Wezhinshite is here!" "Inkesabe is here!" Seeing all the students at this historical spot was still a thrilling surprise. There were many times during the planning of this ambitious trek to Kansas that it seemed it would never come to pass. But now, standing on the plains, we saw that the school had overcome the roadblocks of doubt, fear, heavy workloads, and tight schedules, to make this whole-school expedition possible. A Wonderful Idea
For the Umonhon (also known as the Omaha) in northeastern Nebraska, this was not a time of celebration. The buffalo was scarce. The fencing of the prairie and the rabid desire for buffalo hides caused the buffalo to plummet from millions in the 1860's to less than 6,000 by the early 1880's. Since the buffalo played a central role in the tribe's religious and cultural life, their loss was devastating. It was in the midst of these dramatic changes that 500 Umonhon tribal members left for a winter hunt. It was the last time they found buffalo. In the summer of 1998, Mark Awakuni-Swetland and John Mangan, a teacher at the Umonhon Nation Public School, retraced the trip following the article's references. After finding what was surely the exact location of the final kill site from 122 years earlier, John had an idea for an expedition that would bring students "down the trail." "Are You Out
of Your Mind?" Less dramatic but equally skeptical, others pointed out the likelihood of bad weather, the fact that proposed trip dates conflicted with either football or basketball practices, and a myriad of other worries. Teen parents, who number over a dozen in the school, could not be expected to camp out with their babies. Teachers wanted additional compensation pay for the nights away from home. At the same time the objections were voiced, many teachers recognized the power and potential in the idea. By choosing this piece of Umonhon history for the whole school to study, we would send a message about the importance of the culture. Perhaps it would inspire students to see their heritage in a new light and find reasons for pride. Since we'd be studying the last successful buffalo hunt, the link to questions of current success and what it takes to achieve success would be immediate. Equally exciting was the prospect of having students experience the trip first-hand. While it would be useful to study Umonhon culture in school, here was an opportunity for students to not just read about their history but actually retrace an historic trip. We knew that students would be deeply impacted by the hands-on experience, and that their research and reading would take on new meaning. It was the superintendent Todd Chessmore, however, who created the environment for the staff to finally buy in to the expedition. He sold the idea as a whole-school extravaganza. "We need to take everyone. It will be great!" he enthused. He was unerringly optimistic and confident that this big trip could be planned and carried out by students and staff. Without his leadership and strong support, we would never have proceeded with such ambitious plans. The idea began to take shape slowly. We decided to make the trip in November as a culmination to fall expeditions. First-quarter classes became learning expeditions on various aspects of the buffalo hunt. The Math/Science expedition studied plants, natural habitats, and the process of extinction. The History/Industrial Arts expedition studied various traditional dwellings and designed models of the Umonhon tipi. The Physical Education/English expedition learned archery and shinny (a traditional game similar to field hockey) and created poetry about buffalo. The Art expedition made moccasins and studied beading, while the Business/Home Economics expedition made trail foods and trade goods (buffalo jerky and beaded key chains). All expeditions studied the Umonhon clan structure and practiced their presentation skills. Fear of Failure
Once school year and the real work started, our ambitious plans began to look preposterous. Since we had promoted the idea and already received interest from the Nebraska press and television, teachers felt we were setting ourselves up for a very public flop. By late September, very little was organized for the trip. Some expeditions were trying to do their logistical jobs but not meeting with success. Others weren't trying at all. Students were poorly informed and lacked enthusiasm. Staff buy-in was very low. Several teachers said "Its not going to happen." One said, "I won't go, and you can call me insubordinate, but I will not go." After numerous conversations and observations, it became clear that the task was too big. We were losing staff commitment because teachers couldn't see any possibility of success. Their fears were warranted. We were headed for failure; we decided to scale back. Making It Possible
With the extra support, the trip began to take shape. Conversations about the trip began to sound optimistic. Finally things were falling into place. In an almost disbelieving tone Jo would report another logistical breakthrough. Staff members would report that another group of students had decided to participate. E-mails began to be signed "Catch the spirit!" and "Catch the excitement!" Our perseverance had paid off. On the Road On the fourth morning of the trip, we entered the area where Umonhon hunters had finally sighted buffalo years ago. Richard Duff, the owner of a contemporary herd, had arranged a visit to his farm. Walking out through his back pasture, the group discovered a buffalo skull and held an impromptu ceremony. Kennedy Ray Morris, an Umonhon student, later wrote about that moment: "Mr. Mangan asked me if I wanted to carry the buffalo skull. It was like he was joking, so I didn't believe him, but he wasn't. I picked up the skull; a weird feeling came with it, like I didn't deserve this job, like I was unworthy, someone else should be doing this, anybody, but not me, someone who sings Native American music, someone who goes to pow wows, and dances, someone who grew up on the reservation, anyone with more Native pride." From that spot, the group began moving along a ridge, when suddenly, students sighted buffalo in the distance. The vision of the herd spread out below came over the group with a concentrated hush; for a while no sound was heard but the wind. Kennedy, who was still carrying the buffalo skull, lifted the skull high in the sky and held it there above his head. Later that same day, as the group gathered around the buffalo calf at the kill site, students and teachers reflected on the trip."I think we all learned with this trip how important the buffalo were to our people, and everything the buffalo provided to our people," said Denine Parker, the art teacher. "Today, it is not like that anymore. What you, as students, have to understand is that today, our buffalo is education. Education is going to provide everything that you need. It will provide for your little ones when you have them one day. Education is your buffalo today. You need to prepare yourselves. Go to school. Your tools are the books. Your tools are the pencils. Learn it well so you can hunt that education and get it. Because that is what we are going to need to survive as a people." After the speeches, the group gathered for a feast of buffalo stew and Indian frybread. Then, like the clans over a hundred years ago, the return trip was made in small groups, each finding its own way back to the Blackbird Hills, the home of the Umonhon. As it was so many years before, the travelers had found what they were searching for. On Monday morning after the trip, all the students gathered in the cafeteria to write about their experience. The tone of these reflections is nearly universal. The trip made students think about their ancestors and how hard they must have struggled to make the trip. They noticed and connected to the natural world: the eagles that flew over us the first day of travel and the rise and fall of the wind. They liked how everyone listened attentively in the circles and how spiritual they felt at campsites along the way. Students felt connected to their ancestors, saddened by their struggles, and angry over the demise of the buffalo and the loss of their traditional ways. Many appreciated what they learned about their tribal clan structure, language, and cultural history and pledged to continue that learning. Bringing the Buffalo
Home There is also evidence that this school expedition had positive effect in the larger Macy community. The community diabetes project has taken on the slogan "Education is Our Buffalo." As a result of the Buffalo Hunt expedition, the tribe is raising funds to purchase its first buffalo. They plan to name it Umonhon Nation. When other Plains tribes have purchased buffalo herds, they have seen a dramatic increase in the number of traditional ceremonies performed. Simply having the sacred animal among them brings back a sense of cultural identity, spirituality, and tribal unity. We hope that this buffalo will do the same for the Umonhon Nation and become the first in a whole herd. Sharon Leean is a school designer with Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound in Dubuque, Iowa. Dave Friedli is the Principal of the Umonhon Nation Public School in Macy, Nebraska.
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