Echo Project

For a few years now at D.P. Todd Secondary we've been using a special "Echo Project" for Social Studies 11 to put student identity at the centre of the course.

The idea is fairly simple -- students interview someone to learn more about Canada in the Postwar Era with the goal of making a personal connection to the curriculum. The thing that turns this basic idea into something memorable is the urgency we place on the task.

The SS11 students we teach right now (and over the last few years) are at the tail end of the Echo Generation, the children of the late Baby Boomers or early Gen Xers. In turn, their grandparents were mostly born before or during WWII, and their great-grandparents were around before the Great Depression. What an incredible resource -- we have people beyond the 50-yr gap all around us, many with incredible stories to tell. There is a retirement complex across the street from the school, for example, that has at least five WWII vets in residence.

I believe that societies need robust connections over the 2-generation gap (about 50 years) if the society is to remain whole and progressive.  Breaking the gap, breaking the continuity with grandparents for example, leads to confusion of values, dysfunctional habits, and narcissism.  Maintaining conversations with the elderly among youth is vital; these students truly are the Echo -- the voices of something deep (powerful) and distant (at risk of being lost) that skips past the immediate horizon and comes alive when it is least expected.  In other words, students will learn stuff from the elderly that they can't learn from their parents or other adults (teachers included). Surprisingly, what they learn often involves risk-taking, living large, and being really good at a few important things.

I think the students involved in the Foxfire project knew what this was about -- they knew the urgency of collecting knowledge and perspectives from the elderly. For those students in Georgia of the 1960s and 70s, the rapid disappearance of Appalachian culture compelled them to gather stories, recipes, crafts, wisdom and lore from the locals. It is the same urgency we try to instill in our students -- the pre-war generations (arguably with the best perspective on postwar society) are fewer in number each year (and were fewer to start with). One of our students "found" an interview subject that was 102 -- this is someone with personal memories of every major event from the SS11 curriculum, and an authentic view on our course themes: politics & gov't, autonomy & identity, society & culture, economy & environment. Soon it will be difficult to find anyone with firsthand experience of the Great Depression and eventually WWII. We were studying WWI in class two years ago when Canada's last vet of the Great war died.  Our WWII vets average age is 88 and number less than 125,000.

In SS10, most of our students built Heritage Projects around their own family or cultural backgrounds, exploring themes like traditions, migration, cultural values, subsistence, and lots of cool stories and connections to historical events and motifs. This SS11 Echo Project is a chance to pick up one of the strands and follow-up with how their "heritage" evolved in the postwar era. Most of our students pick a grandparents to interview, but many gravitate towards an elder they know in their community. Like the Heritage Project, the results are amazing -- students making bold connections to ideas and learning outcomes from our course with passion and scholarly insight.

I've just finished marking the various Echo Projects that have come in over the last few weeks from three SS11 classes and I must say I am overwhelmed. They learned so much from their interview subjects, they asked such meaningful and profound questions (even if it was sometimes just about music or fads), and they spoke and write so respectfully about the unique and eccentric knowledge they gained from the process. As one student put it, you just don't learn this kind of thing from Google.

It is no surprise that student learn more, faster, and deeper when their identity is on the line. For example, many students are bored by the details of the Avro Arrow story... not so the student whose grandfather was an actual engineer for the Avro project. His passion in understanding the nuances of the Avro story came alive for the other students and they caught the idea that the story was important (as it once was to many Canadians). Another student walked us through the emotional toll of military service and the question of what Canada's role should be on the world stage, focusing on Cyprus where his dad served as a Canadian Peacekeeper. His presentation coincided with a class activity looking at Canada and the UN and whether Canada should aim to be a middle power or a model power (activity and an 11x17 evidence page which they use as a study buddy for a unit test). I'd wager the class learned more from the authentic student presentation than my complicated middle/model power exercise.

I'm still haunted by one student's family story. Her great-grandmother wrote diaries from the 1920s to the 1960s chronicling her own life and also how she felt about the world around her, including WWII and her family's immigration to Canada. When she passed away in the 1970s, her daughters and son were left with the task of sorting through the boxes and boxes of journals. The daughters wanted to break with the past, to forget about Old World grief and grievances, and so they set fire to the journals.  The son (my student's grandfather) was devastated and had a falling out with his sisters that never really healed. My student interviewed him for her Echo Project and tried to recreate what her great-grandmother must have seen in her life. As you can imagine, the student now feels an urgency to begin a journal of her own, to write about her life and the world around her.

Another student learned about an 92-yr-old man and got the nerve up to interview him. He and his wife were the parents of my student's grandma's best friend... that's how these things work! He was hard of hearing, hard to understand and my student tried to get as much down on paper as she could. It turns out he had served on Lancaster Bombers in the Canadian Airforce in WWII. Then serendipity takes over. My student's great-grandafther had also served as a Lancaster navigator. He was killed in action, but was an important part of the student's documented family history. Interviewing a veteran navigator gave her an insight into what her relative went through in the airspace above Germany before he was shot down, something missing from the family record. Of course, it broadened her understanding of Canada's role on the international stage and was a point of connection in the course that had previously been lacking. I started the course worried about this student's progress but am now so proud at her level of engagement. The cool thing is that she decided how and when to get interested.

I'm teaching 4 for 4 right now and I haven't had the time to archive the projects and blog about the individual results as I had wished, but I wanted to take a few minutes and lay out the excitement I had for the students' work and give a sense of how this project is set up. I'll put some more comments and excerpts from the student projects together as I find time.

Here's generally what I tell the students, in bits and pieces over many weeks, leading up to the actual assignment:

You are the Echo. Generation Y. Born in 1996, most of you. What does that mean? Your parents, for the most part, were the last part of the baby boom generation that followed World War Two and lasted until the mid 1960s. Some of you are the children of Generation X, the ones that followed the boomers in the late 1960s and 1970s. The median year of your parents’ birth was 1967, your grandparents, 1940. 

What this means is that your grandparents grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, when Canada was quite decidedly not a British colony but was in danger of becoming an American colony. When the Soviet Union was the bad guy, the commies were coming, and the world would probably end in thermonuclear war. They know a thing or two about hippies, about cars, about jobs, food, clothes, hobbies and jokes that don't really fit in anymore. 

They observed, or joined in, as minorities, women, and Aborginal Canadians gained more rights. They witnessed the big events of the postwar period and probably harbour opinions you won't find in a textbook. Some came to this country as a new homeland, and were able to test Laurier's theory that "Canada is the star to which all men who love progress and freedom shall come." Some of them were called DPs as kids, and did not like it. They'll have strong thoughts on Trudeau, on the Quebecois, on Americans, on environmentalism. A substantial number of them grew up on a farm, and were adults before they ever boarded a plane.  Medical care was not universal for them, and they sang  "God Save the Queen" in school while looking at a different flag than we have now. 

Many will start a conversation with "you got it easy these days" and many will finish a conversation with a telling look that says "I can't believe we haven't talked about this stuff before." The important thing is that when you reach past a couple of generations, you will learn something important from people that hold memories that will soon be forgotten. If you ask the right questions, you'll find that everything they say will give you an authentic perspective on Canadian Identity and other big ideas from our course.   

The task... 

Structure your Echo Project around what you have learned from an interview with someone who lived through and understood some of the key issues of the postwar period. Your research, work, and presentation could involve documents, photos, artifacts and other primary sources. You may end up talking about some of the research topics from our "Postwar" list, or something completely different. You should also try to address a few of the elements of Critical Inquiry (the circle graph we looked at in class). For an interview subject, three things are desirable (but not always necessary): 50 year gap -- born before 1947, experienced -- they have interesting stories to tell, and important to you -- someone you would really like to talk to. The rest of the project details are explained on the handout, including suggestions for format and sample interview questions.

mistaking networks for communities

A colleague of mine recently asked some questions about why certain topics that come up for staff discussion are relegated to "chat" forums or subcommittees and not looked at by the staff as a whole. She seemed concerned that we've missed an opportunity to take on the challenges of our school as a collective activity. The context for her questions is a year (or more) in which we've seen many teacher-guided processes in the school and district become the responsibility of administration. Some are relieved by the pattern (less work) but others see that they now have to deal with the aftermath of decisions they had no part in (or a reduced role).

I'm glad she asked this because I think she has tapped into three significant trends that are not confined to our school:

1. Mistaking networks and institutional structures for communities -- seen clearly when we try to solve individual and collective problems through email, digital forums, and social media. "Community thinking" is highly desirable as a context for teaching & learning, but runs into problems when it is applied to institutional structures. As teachers we have to be able to move between network and community frequently and it is neither easy nor a good fit with the overall change in society towards indirect communication and less privacy (but more personalized mediums and a much wider audience).

2. The difficulty of collaboration and shared leadership within institutional hierarchies. Although they may share the same general mission (e.g. service to student learning in the case of education), the goals of frontline workers (and their expectation of democracy and inclusion) are often not the same as the goals of management structures (for which democracy is a limitation on decision-making, and inclusion is strategic rather than pervasive), even if both of their goals are necessary to pursue. This basic (and perhaps inescapable) discrepancy is modeled at almost every layer of society from classrooms to the federal government.

3. Confusion of educational models with organizational models. Within education, this problem is partly due to the wholistic approach taken by many modern theorists. Not content to simply suggest better ways to approach teaching and learning, they also look (understandably) at institutional reform as part of their suggestions for transformation. The issues begin when the pedagogical changes are pursued by an organization but the organization is not capable of making the institutional change necessary for the theory to make sense. This confusion is also more prevalent in organizations (like ours) where management and frontline are so close in terms of background, workspace, and focus.

I would argue that these trends share common roots and have their own peculiar manifestations at our school, but I think we are not alone. I also think they share the same basic paradox in that "working together" is crucial for success (think universal health care, American Civil Rights, United Nations, Indian Independence Movement) but "working together" usually means significant compromise when it requires vertical alignment of goals (think waste in our medical system, Stalinism, League of Nations, India's Partition). I know these examples are beyond the scale of school workplace processes/folders/councils, and contain their own internal contradictions of the paradox, but they are all understandings of how rights and responsibilities are distributed across various societies. The issue of incongruent goals also informs this paradox. We've seen what can happen when governments deny rights and are not responsible to their citizens, but we would also not have a Charter of Rights in Canada without "management" cutting corners on democracy and inclusion. If we submit to the necessity of government, we have to expect some forfeiture of freedom. Our public education system is built on the basic notion that students must give up some freedom in order to receive the ministrations of society's decision-makers. The expectations placed on teachers are never completely clear (most, in fact, are self-imposed), and so we dwell in a dynamic spectrum of rights and responsibilities that are often in tension with the system in which we work, including the students. Personally, I don't mind the "spectrum" as it allows for individuation and the alternative seems very limiting and unimaginative.

The paradox takes on new dimensions when it is seen in our local context. Our school district has been affected by many trends in educational theory*, many of which I admire for different reasons on their own, but our schools have attempted a difficult project of combining many elements of these theories within existing hierarchical structures in order to put them into practice. While a "mashup" can be very creative, it can also result in confusion and lack of uptake. I think this flux compounds the three trends noted above and explains why they create added tension (creative or otherwise) in our workplace and are not simply part of the organizational issues that exist everywhere and throughout history. I think it is right, though, that individuals, schools, and districts experiment with educational and organizational theory, but I wish we put more thought and time into finding out the difference and realizing the limits of what teachers and students are able to assimilate given the other challenges of the classroom. I've come across some good professional resources, school organizational models, political paradoxes, and historical examples on these topics that I'll have to come back to as time allows.

* Many have been "tried" (found their way into school and district initiatives as evidenced by pro-d offerings, programs/policy, release funding, and travel expenditure). While they most often gained attention via our Curriculum & Instruction department, some were introduced from "above" (Ministry) or "below" (local educators). Others theories, like Mezirow's Transformative Learning or DeVries Constructivist Education, have simply been influential (e.g. from teacher training programs) but haven't been "sponsored." Of course, individual teachers have put a myriad of theories into practice, only some of which are/were even on the district's radar. Here's some of the theories that our district (and most secondary schools) have tried/are trying over the last 14 years; I'd be curious to know what other significant ones I've missed:

- Dimensions of Learning by David Brown and others (c.1995-2002 ?)
- Data-driven decision making or "D3M" (c.2000-2007 ?)
- Dufours' Professional Learning Communities (c.1998 ? -2009, less so after that)
- Assessment for Learning as put forward by Black and Wiliam (c.2004-2011)
- Inquiry model of the Network of Performance Based Schools (c.2006-2011)
- John Abbott's 21st Century Learning Initiative (c.2010-2011)

Trudeau's Memoirs

I just got around to reading this in the last couple of months... wow. I've got a lot more respect for someone who was already a hero to me, a deeper understanding of the Just Society, and a real sense that Canada would be in big trouble if he wouldn't have come to power. The vision of a caring, creative, resourceful middle power, not American but also not European is in such contrast to our current government's view. Trudeau's ego was a bit stunning at times, but admitted mistakes, too. Not to kind on Bourassa, Levesque, or Mulroney, but it's easy to see why.

Please don't segregate my child

The challenges facing our schools in Prince George are stunning. With demographic change, declining enrollment, transfer of provincial burdens, and spending of money on new school construction and facelifts, we are short $7 million. Sadly, there will be layoffs and cutbacks throughout the district. Shrinking schools, many of which are below 30% capacity, face "right-sizing" (as the superintendent put it). Rural students will face long commutes in exchange for a sustainable school with a range of services and programs. I completely get this; the district, due to past decisions and current economic crunches, has to cut programs that are not sustainable and look for ways to trim the fat off its self-admittedly top-heavy infrastructure (p 41 of the Sustainability Report).

The part that confuses me is why viable and successful programs have to be eliminated at the same time.

We have four successful dual-track French immersion schools in Prince George (English and French classes side-by-side). We've enrolled our daughter in one of these so she could learn French and reflect our vision of what it means to be an inclusive English Canadian in a bilingual nation scarred by separatism and racism. We have to drive her there (10 minutes each way), but it’s a school grounded in and reflective of its neighbourhood, the kind of place where English and French have a legacy of mutual understanding reinforced from kindergarten to Grade 7. We are very proud of our school and want to be involved with the school's success.

The district is proposing the idea of a segregated school where all the French Immersion students in our district would attend, no other options. The intended school needs expensive and extensive renovations to be ready for this, and the timeline is set for September 2010 (allowing two summer months for renos). It will likely require portables to house 650 students (it was designed for 450) or they'll simply have to cap enrollment. Families with one child suited for immersion and another not ready for it will now face the choice of sending siblings to two schools, or withdrawing one from the immersion program. This is segregation and it does not appeal to us on many levels.

Integrated French immersion is something our district does well and should continue to support. It needs tweaking, not dismantling. There are many alternatives to segregation (my wife and I have figured out at least 6!) that would save more money and keep one our district's success stories intact. I really hope the elected school trustees take French segregation off the table and focus on areas of decline, largesse, and mitigating the cutbacks on affected communities.

Eastwood's Gran Torino

I guess this is my movie pick of the year... which says a lot to me. First, It was good -- the redemption factor of Unforgiven and the very direct film-making style of Million Dollar Baby. I like a movie that delivers the forms of "modernity" and leaves the abstraction to the viewer... bizarre stories with no real endings or resolution leave me exasperated. I'll take postmodernism for spirituality, politics, and philosophic discourse, but I'll stick with modernism for art, film, architecture, and food. Second, when I think of what the film does to me, I am reminded of some of my other favourite films like Deliverance, The Mission, Clearcut, Apocalypse Now, and Rupert's Land -- intact stories with round characters, a generous pace, and a complex of values which emerge from the telling. I could see it coming but was still floored by Walt Kowalski laying down his life in an act of nonviolence (yet no less bravely/insanely than a Dirty Harry move). Third, I loved the references to his other film characters... especially the spitting of large wads of chaw-juice. Fourth, I liked the car, even though he never drove it... the nostalgia reminds me of my 1972 Dodge Charger which I got to drive from 1986-1991 ish. Fifth, the racial epithets were handled well... the idea of slandering and denigrating everything "Other" (saving acts of kindness which were given tender treatment) was an interesting way to convey time (i.e. time periods), history, and values. Sixth, it says a not because I don;'t really read much anymore (when will that change?) and I've seen a fest of movies in the last few months so yeah this one rose to the top.

Swaraj

I've been reading The Essential Gandhi (edited by Louis Fischer), and have emerged with both guilt and hope. Guilt because I recognize the truth about my complicity with consumer culture, but hope because of the strength a non-violent, self-sufficient, and power-resistant mindset affords.

I've been trying to think about how the concept of Swaraj (independence, beginning with self) applies to some of the power-structures I interact with: family/social, classroom/school/district, community/society. Also the identities of self, space, and landscapes (natural, human, and imagined). For example. what my classroom look like if I refused to exercise coercion in any form? What would our school's interaction with the district be like if we engaged in passive resistance to the policies and language which are ill-conceived for our context and collective goals? I often think that there are many fights which deserve my involvement, mostly educational crusades of one kind or another, but I'll admit that my motive is often not peace , love, and understanding so much as exposing bizarre thinking and thoughtless action in others with the hope that they'll leave me/us/them alone. Hmm... I'll read some more Gandhi before I pick this up again... the sleeping anarchist in me needs more time.