Creating a STEMS^2 Curricular Unit (#5)

What is a STEMS^2 Unit, what does it look like, how does it engage the students, what will the outcomes be, and why is all this important?

Questions, questions, questions...

Here's my breakdown...

1.  Start with the ends in mind.  What do I want my students to experience through this unit?  How can this experience fundamentally change them for the better?  How do these experiences support their academic, social, personal, and cultural growth?

A good STEMS^2 unit has several predetermined ends in mind.  Even though careful thought and planning go into determining these ends, one should not assume these will be the only ends or the most meaningful for each student.  I also believe a good curricular unit allows for adaptation, evolution, and adjustments based on student input and feedback.

2.  Create a holistic experience. How can this unit combine and interconnect ideas, materials, and people with meaning and purpose?  How will this unit develop further exploration and expansion in the individuals involved?  How will this experience support and respect those involved and inspire others to become involved?

 An effective STEMS^2 unit weaves and melds together multiple academic concepts with cultural experiences.  It connects individuals with themselves while supporting a group dynamic.  This unit should blend multiple learning spaces, materials, people, and resources.  While the concepts can be content-specific, the overarching connections should be evident and planned.  Integration and collaboration are keys when developing and experiencing STEMS^2.  These integrated experiences and collaborative efforts don't need to be specific to any one area (academics, social interactions, cultural components, ethics, civics, etc.).  

3.  A'o is a foundation.  How will this unit allow for every individual involved to teach and learn?  Why is this belief vital to supporting a STEMS^2 unit?

One of the tenants of our STEMS experiences has been our personal involvement in teaching each other.  This crucial concept lends itself to any meaningful, group-oriented, perspective-changing learning experience for students of any age.  I feel this has been a concept I have stressed to my students (K-2) since day one of this year.  It is a term I often refer to, remind them of, and challenge them to live up to in each class.

4.  Respect our Hawaiian (host) culture and all other cultures present.  How can we demonstrate respect to the Hawaiian culture through our actions and words?  How do we integrate any culture into our learning experiences with respect and dignity?    

A STEMS^2 unit strives to share and celebrate the many positive aspects of the Hawaiian culture through meaningful actions and thought-out words.  I will never be, nor do I want to be a Hawaiian.  I most certainly want to continue my learning and evolution in how to respect and share in Hawaiian cultural experiences.  I want to share my understandings and continue asking people of the Hawaiian culture how I can best spread the aloha (in the truest meaning of the word).  I want to provide spaces and places within my curriculum so any culture can be celebrated, learned, and respected.  I want to celebrate difference while recognizing similarities across all cultures.

5.  A STEMS^2 unit is based in sound academic practices, research-based strategies, and uses meaningful data to drive the instructional adjustments.  How can I use meaningful data (observational notes, student feedback, etc.) to drive and adjust my instruction to support greater meaning through this unit?  Why are best practices vital to the student experience?

Teaching is not just a "throw it on the wall and see what sticks" venture.  Teaching is an art, a craft which needs continuous monitoring and adjustment.  Teachers need to KNOW how important the power of change is if it is based in meaningful and effective reasoning.  Change for the sake of change can be fruitless.  Change because we know there is a better way can bear a lifetime of fruit.  Evolving and adapting should be required in a profession of ever-evolving and adaptable students who live in a constantly-evolving environment.

Through these 5 elements, there are many more components and ideas.  Through everything we do in STEMS, there is Love.  There is Compassion.  There is the Individual and the Collective.

Mahalo!
 

STEMS^2 Free...What Do I Do Now?

So, this is a "free" write and will be a reflection of what I'm doing, how I'm doing, and where I think I need to be...

Our STEMS^2 experiences thus far have taken us on some truly transformational paths.  I can feel the weight of our experiences and interactions through polar-opposite forces.

 First, I feel support through our STEMS^2 community foundations.  I know we are all in this together and all bring our own perspectives, places, strengths, and needs.  We are a strong collective unit of A'o; sharing a multitude of voices in many safe and supportive spaces.  We have encountered challenging ideas and situations which intentionally placed us in places of discomfort.  We have overcome and worked through these obstacles together... We have each other's backs!



On the other hand, I'm feeling a tad overwhelmed with the constant bombardment of important and influential information, learning reflections, and revolutionary teaching and learning ideals.  It's a constantly HEAVY feeling in my chest.  I'm being smashed by these Huge concepts and systemically-altering ideas!  Not to mention the work we are doing in our class... It's very meaningful and influential to our work as teachers; I guess that's why it feels so immense when I try and wrap my brain around all of it...


But here's the thing.. I think, this is completely my rationalization, this is supposed to not be all good or all bad... It's like life!  If life was all good with no challenges or life-altering experiences, it would be pretty boring!  If life felt all bad with it's constant barrage of crap then we can't see the beauty and potential in these kinds of situations...

To connect this to our learning so far, I think we're dealing with Gruenewald's 5 components of place through all of our experiences.  It's been political through what I'm reading, ecological through my space I choose to work, sociological through the content of the information, perceptual based on what I 'get' out of what is presented through the readings, and ideological through my interpretations and understandings of the work.

 I've just spent the past 4 hours doing some 'light' research for my Lit Review... I've learned and read some Amazing stuff; I've also gone cross-eyed about 17 times reading through so much information.  My intention is to use the Lit Review assignment as a rough draft of my Lit Review section for my Plan B.  Which leads me to another issue... What will my Plan B be?  I'm constantly trying to wrestle the ideas from my brain to articulate how I can connect all the dots in my teaching and learning experiences to develop my curriculum and Plan B.

Here's my attempt as narrowing down my ideas so far.  I want to incorporate my work with my Garden Club students and our school's garden.  I want to also connect to the Hawaiian cultural elements I've been trying to actively engage in (and have my students engage in) through my new classroom rituals, routines, and vocabulary.  I also want to incorporate elements of how I continue to try (this is constantly being re-worked, revised, and re-thought) engaging our school staff in this culture and sense of place through our school garden.  I realize I can not force my sense of place on anyone, nor should this be my intent.

There are certain keys to my madness so far: ideas like spaces and places to learn (meaning all areas of our life), collaboration (with our community), learning from the past to influence the future (connection to Hawaiian culture and values), and evolving our potential for learning and teaching through place-based activities.  

Some possible ideas for my Plan B are: The Importance of a Multi-Layered approach to evolving a Sense of Place through student-engaged, culturally-relevant, and place-based curriculum.... OR
Sense, Scents, and Cents of Place: How to connect a multi-layered, evolving, student-engaged, culturally-relevant, place-based education in an elementary school setting....

Both seem like a rambling, nonsensical, jumble of words right now... But I am trying to make sense of it all....

Well, It's back to the 33 articles I've found.. Time to categorize, narrow my focus, and put this all together somehow....

Thanks for listening to my musings.  As always, it's a joy and a pain to do this work; a perfect blend of what it means to learn and grow.

Aloha All!

Reflective Reale: My Place at this Moment AKA BlogPost#3

The Goal of this Blog is to share…

A reflective space of how I am thinking about Sense of Place and the importance of Sense of Place at this moment. I will attempt to use the experiences, information, readings and other resource to help articulate my thoughts. 

Focus Question:

Why does Sense of Place matter and what does it mean to the practice of teaching for there to be multiple senses of place in any one moment and in any one place (i.e. a classroom)?  

There is so much information, so many thoughts, too many ideas, and a plethora of content racing through my mind at this moment… With any new endeavor, I feel the overwhelming excitement of getting wrapped-up in the moment balanced with my family and work responsibilities.  All of these elements are in a constant tug-of-war with my energies; I want to dedicate my life and my work to meaning.  I want to capture and relish in the opportunities all around me.  I Need to honor my obligations through applying what I know now to every aspect of my life.  This co-mingling of ideas, ideals, lessons, experiences, and insights corresponds to my current Sense of Place.  To be honest, I’m in a place where I don’t have the answers nor do I feel I need to have them.  Questions rule my thoughts; an amazing quagmire of my ever-evolving spaces and places. 

My current Place is in full acknowledgement of the need to continue cultivating a true Sense of Place.  My current Place is opening my eyes to fostering each of my students’ senses of Place in my classroom so they can carry this sense throughout their lives.  I want my students to KILO their world and fortify their experiences in conscientious thought and questioning.   I also feel the immense gravity of instilling a true sense of Place in my young son; connecting our understandings into my home.  So, sense of place not only matters, it encompasses every fiber of my being and extends to every second of my life and the lives of all who I know.  Heavy… right?  For the purposes of not writing another novella, I will try to keep the remainder of this blog to focus on the question above.  I will attempt to dive into my teaching practices at my school with my students.   

As I’ve shared before, I am evolving my teaching practices to support a constant understanding of Places in my learning spaces.  I am trying to integrate O’lelo Hawaii through my STEM classroom (during school) and Garden Club (after school).  I attempt an honest, humble approach to demonstrate I am NOT an expert on any one thing; especially Hawaiian culture or language.  I want my students to FEEL my excitement and the gravity of my actions/words when engaging their hearts and minds.  I fail at least 10 times a day in this.  I get caught-up in the routine and ritual of working in a DOE system which says it honors our host culture, but fails to do so with meaning through its structure and practices. 

Through our readings and research, Gruenewald provides his 5-point framework to help communicate and articulate a sense of place.  It has been pointed out Gruenewald is supported and rooted on the education field through peer-reviewed documents and provided a multi-layered approach.  I feel this outlook to be essential in how I choose to support my thoughts.  I will use these 5 elements (Perceptual, Sociological, Ideological, Political, and Ecological) to frame my conversation.  Like we know, these elements are not individualistic.  They blend, overlap, and exist all at the same time through an interconnected experience.  It would be illogical to discuss these ideas in segregation to each other, but I will use them as an organizational tool to help articulate my current sense of place in my school. 

Perceptual: Places are ALIVE!  We connect through tangible, emotional experiences with others in any one place at any one time, across all places and all times… Jeez, again… deep!

My classroom and the land we have access to on campus for our Gardens are very much ALIVE!  I try to demonstrate this through some Hawaiian cultural practices we’ve learned, research-based educational practices to engage students’ sense of inquiry, and other personal passions.  In the front of my classroom I have a small aquaponics area representing a living and symbiotic cycle.  This comes from my personal passion for aquaponics and how I want my students to engage in thought about life, food, our island resource to reshape perceptions of what is important.  It also connects to other Hawaiian cultural practices of ahupua’a, resource management, and the respect for working with living and non-living resources.  

My 2^nd grade students will encounter a whole unit on aquaponics in the 2^nd semester where they will engage in discovery, inquiry, collaboration, and communication about this process.  It culminates with an activity where they will develop a plan to design and create their own aquaponics system or design an upgrade to our classroom system.  I am working on trying to also engage in bigger perceptions of the need for these systems in our environment based on many external and global factors (water use, land use, food resources on our islands, changing global environment, and bioregionalism). 

My classroom is festooned with cultural, educational, historical, and personal messages and information.  Questions are posted all over the room.  I am trying to appeal to a visual learner and offer constant resources which support my continued practices and level of engagement with my students.  For example, on the back wall of my room I have two posters next to each other (because I feel these ideas are interconnected) sharing what Kilo and Maka’ala/Maka’ala mean.  I introduced these concepts in week one and constantly refer to them during each class.  It’s my way of attempting to integrate o’lelo Hawaii into my current teaching vocabulary with a purpose.  I want to show how we can integrate culture, the past, and our present places through demonstrating their worth.  I also have a wall of scientists, engineers, and inventors where the kids can see some individuals I feel have made immense impacts on how we live today.  I continuously refer to this area when discussing and sharing our engineering design practices through our Project Lead The Way (PLTW) curriculum.  What is lacking is a stronger Hawaiian cultural presence in this area; I want to continue to integrate more Hawaiian inventors, scientists, and engineers and feel I am beginning to have the resources to do so (through our SYEMS^2 cohort). 

Sociological: Our Collective Social Beliefs; Our Places are Socially Constructed…

Through the visual elements and day-to-day practices of my class and my Garden Club, I try to create a sociological environment within the spaces I provide for my students.  I want to engage my students in ideas and questions which target the societies we come from, the societies we live near, the place we live, and all the differing and connected social beliefs.  I try to purposely engage in conflicting societal beliefs with an objective view.  This is difficult and a constant point of personal emphasis; I tend to be less objective when, in my view, an alternate view does not fit within my personal insight.  

For example, through our PLTW lessons we offer ways for the kids to be engineers in tackling some ‘issues’ they may face today.  Our 1^st Grade class engages in learning about light, sound, waves, energy, and how these concepts can be used or harnessed to solve a problem.  One activity in the 2^nd semester will have them observe the sun, moon, and stars in connection to light waves.  I will attempt to integrate more Hawaiian culture into this learning space through the use of the Hawaiian Lunar calendar.  I want my students to start their own “Lunar Journal” to record their Kilo; then share out and compare/contrast with what the Hawaiians did during certain times of the lunar cycles.  

I connect this cultural component because I see the value in learning about our host culture because it’s where we live.  I believe we can honor the past and the Hawaiian culture through incorporating it into our present classrooms.  This is may seem, to some, a superficial exercise in connecting culture, but it is my attempt in delving deeper into the questions of Why.    

Ideological: A set of Ideas or Beliefs groups form to create actions within a Place…

All of the above classroom activities connect and integrate with an Ideological view of our learning spaces and places.  I believe if I present and offer meaningful experiences through culturally relevant activities, I can help establish an ideological framework my students will carry with them.  I work with K-2 students.  These young minds and hearts are so open and willing to deeply engage with concepts and content some feel is way beyond their capacity.  This is also based on current educational research and best practices for young learners.  Basically, set the bar high with the appropriate supports and engagement and students will rise to the occasion!  A better man would have a specific citation for this idea… I’m working on it…

 I found this Ideological section of Grunewald’s “Foundations of Place” article most engaging and thought-provoking.  It seemed my highlighter and notes were rampant throughout because I felt this ‘Place” in our current educational system lacks support for any cultural ideology to foster an understanding of people and places.  I feel there are huge globally-connected, financially-supported systems in place which (in my view) purposely disconnect us (people) from our places in order for a select few to maintain power, money, land, resources, and influence.  Like Gruenewald, I feel we need to recognize that places are what people make them and what is ‘established’ as a ‘norm’ can be changed.  It also suggests how schools can play a revolutionary role in changing shifting our ‘norms’ to ones where we connect more thoughtfully with our environment, resources, land, and people through alternate views.  Specifically, we can establish learning and teaching norms which use multiple cultures and histories to engage in questions about power, land use, resource management, and the influence of money.  If we can actively and purposefully engage in “reflecting on how a diversity of places, and our ideas about them, became what they are”  (Gruenewald, 2015). 

Political: Constantly Affected by the Distribution of Capital – How can we influence actions inside a governing body?

I see my classroom as a potential catalyst to engage in political perceptions and norms.  Politics can be as basic as how we enter and engage in a learning space or as broad as how money and power influences the global distribution of wealth and resources.  Everything, in my view, is political.  I do not want to reduce the term politics to any form of state or federal governing entities, rather it is how we can engage in our places as a collective people.  This area is also deeply connected and integrated in the other 4 components of Place and I am starting to see how I can engage in political discussions with my students while attempting to offer objective perspectives.  Again, this is very difficult for me because I have deep feelings and opinions about equity, ecology, human rights, and personal responsibility.

 Our Garden Club is attempting to establish a political foothold in our school’s political culture.  We want to engage in conversations about the uses for, reasons for, and ideas about what gardens are and how they connect to learning on a public school campus.  We do have our school administrator’s backing and support to engage and explore these potential opportunities, but we are continuously evolving our positions on how we can effect change.  For example, through kilo, collaborative discussion, and reflection, this year’s Garden Club mentioned a way for us to gain some political capital in our school and community.  Our students came up with the idea of offering plants to each teacher and staff member as a gesture and token of what we value.  We wanted to use this as an opening to invite more school personnel to the Garden and try and demonstrate a sense of community sharing.  We also wanted to extend these gestures or gifts to our surrounding community as a way to bridge the information gap between our club’s actions and our families.  Other ways to extend this political influence may manifest through a link to our own Garden Website/Blog through our school’s homepage.  

We are also trying to coordinate more community-based activities to reach-out to our surrounding population.  We will be working with KUPU (MAHALO HAYDEN!!!!!), the Malama Learning Center (MLC) at Kapolei High School, and other community partners through work-sharing outreach activities.  One such activity is a collaborative effort with KUPU, MLC, our Garden Club, the “Go Green” club at Kapolei High School, and the parents/families of our Garden Clubbers to do a Koa Out-planting activity this year.

Ecological: Multiple Interactions Constantly Working Together at all Times in Places and Spaces

I really enjoyed and engaged in the article by Shawn Malia Kana’iaupuni, “Ka’akalai Ku Kanaka: A Call for Strengths-Based Approaches from a Native Hawaiian Perspective,” for many reasons.  I believe the author offered honest critiques of our current histories and systems which perpetuate our histories embedded within our educational and social systems.  To me, his approach and perspective was ecological and helped me to think about what I’ve learned and accepted as scientific fact.  He speaks of drawing on the strengths of groups or individuals as an impactful and meaningful way to support individuals, families, and cultures.  I feel this is what I am trying to establish in my classroom and through our Garden Club. 

 I do have specific political, ideological, sociological, and perceptual agendas in mind.  I am working to merge my personality and beliefs with my students in a way which gives each individual a voice to express their personality and beliefs.  This is a constant work-in-progress as I continue to learn more about my ever-changing and growing students.  It is also a temporal challenge because of the limited exposure I have with my students.  At best, I can engage with them from kindergarten through 2^nd grade in my STEM class, them possibly work with them in a different way through their 3^rd-5^th grade years with the Garden Club.  This may seem like a huge chunk of their lives!  It is, but each moment I engage with them becomes a precious place with immense internal and external pressures. 

Wrap it up already… 

My Place at this time includes many interconnected and vitally important elements.  My place with my students is constantly evolving and growing.  My place offers challenges, opportunities, and continued reflection.  My place has limits; my place can be limitless.  This is what I think we all feel through this process of self-discovery and educational evolution.  We want to lead or support a revolution while respecting and supporting what we believe to be just.  We are all going through this journey together while working in isolation in our own bubbles.  I take solace in our connection and our causes.  I applaud and appreciate how we can all see something different in the words we read, the concepts we share, and the meanings we form.  Thank you ALL for engaging in my current Place… It will continue to change because of who you are and how you support and challenge me.  My sense of Place matters because it is my way to give my students their own voice.  It matters because I have the privilege to work with such amazing students and teachers.  A’o is alive and well and will continue to thrive…