So: weeks three and four.  (It seems inconceivable that we have been together for almost a month – I’m still just trying to remember when the end of lunch bell rings…)

During these weeks, we have taken our first steps in exploring the kind of mind set that might be helpful for approaching our work and each other.

First, we learned about what is called the most important image ever taken: the Hubble Deep Space Field.

By looking at one tiny, unremarkable spot in the sky for eleven days, the Hubble Telescope was able to see galaxies – ten-thousand galaxies – in nothing:  True-seeing as a result of not looking for quick answers but taking your time, looking in depth, and being still and focused.

Then, we found out what astrophysicist Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson considers the most astounding fact about the universe, and we attempted to tie true-seeing to interconnectivity:

Next, we watched a short video about Bruce Lee and talked about his theories regarding martial arts and pliable awareness:

Although originally trained in Wing Chung (see below), Bruce Lee later developed a “formless form” of martial arts called Jeet Kune Do.  Lee believed that it wasn’t enough to be a great fighter in one form or style.  If you are specialized in kung fu or judo, and your opponent knows it, she or he will be able to anticipate your moves and therefore counter them and defeat you; but if you know kung fu and judo – and tae kwon do and karate and aikido and boxing and wrestling and fencing and ballet – you can adapt to whatever comes at you and stay calm and focused.

“Pliable awareness” is one of the basic tenets of jeet kune do.  As the words suggest, this means being totally aware of everything that is going on around you, while at the same time resisting tension or rigidity, and instead remaining relaxed and flexible.

We did a little brainstorming about how to apply this in our work and interactions:

 

Finally, we learned about Wu Mei, the founder of the Wing Chun form of martial arts.

A member of the “Venerable Five,” the survivors of the massacre of the Shaolin temples by the Kangxi Emperor in late-17th and early-18th century China, Wu Mei was the holder of knowledge regarding the White Crane form of kung fu.  While in hiding, she met a young girl, Wing Chun, who was being forced into marriage to a local gangster-type character.  Wing Chun pled with Wu Mei to teach her kung fu, so that she could defeat her would-be betrothed, but Wu Mei felt that Wing Chun was too small to fully master the form and use it effectively.  Instead, Wu Mei distilled the form into its most essential elements and taught these to Wing Chun, who – after A LOT OF PRACTICE – successfully took out her fiancé/stalker (not that I am advocating violence as a form of problem-solving…).

After watching the above clip from Kung Fu Wing Chun (2010), students studied and annotated the script, and we held our first Socratic Circle!

This form of engaging with a text was introduced to me by the incredible Mrs. Harris at Maywood Community School, who gave me the book Socratic Circles: Fostering critical and creative thinking in middle and high school, by Matt Copeland (Stenhouse Publishers: 2005).

A Socratic Circle can be seen as the opposite of a debate.  In a Socratic Circle, students are involved in helping each other gain a thorough and nuanced understanding of a text, song, video, image, or concept.  After carefully examining the chosen material and making note of unknown vocabulary, big ideas, and other criteria set by the teacher, the class arranges their desks in a circle and divides into two groups.  Group One sits on the floor in the middle of the circle and engages in a dialogue about the chosen material.  The goal is to build off each others’ ideas and create a communal understanding of the text.  Group Two sits in the outer edge of the circle, at the desks, and watches and listens to the discussion, taking notes on the behaviours that they observe.  After the discussion is over, Group Two gives Group One feedback on what they saw and heard.  Then, the two groups switch places and repeat the process.

Even in just our first attempt, the Socratic Circle was a huge success.  Students listened closely to each other, spoke respectfully and clearly, using evidence from the text to support their opinions. There were many connections made between the Wu Mei text and our previous learning about the Hubble Telescope, Bruce Lee, Neil Degrasse Tyson, our Brain Project, and even Gabrielle Hamilton’s “get close to your opponent and dig the feeling”(!).  Students also made connections to group work and to their own lives and their involvement in activities ranging from dance to soccer to piano.  It was a great synthesis of a lot of ideas.  Thank you, Mrs. Harris!

One of our other big pieces of work was establishing our class agreement.

In an exercise adapted from the Co-Design process, developed by Stanley King and taught by Mr. King and Susan Chung, the students walked in to find a simple shoreline drawn on the whiteboard, with a background of mountains and a stand of trees.  We imagined that we had come across this idyllic piece of land and made the decision to stay.  One student said we needed a house, so I drew a house.  This being MACC, other students noted that we needed a water supply and a quarry, so those were added to the drawing.  As other students came up with other ideas, I passed the pen(s) off to them, and this happened:

 

Division Two Town: a fun place to visit but I wouldn’t want to stay there.

 

After this lesson in the nature of urban sprawl – what happens when people do whatever they want, wherever they want to do it – we went back to the drawing board to try to define what we wanted our classroom to feel like.

After voting on which of the ideas from “The Mind of a Chef” would be the most important to shaping our room, we create a list of “rules” that might be helpful.

From there, students broke off into small groups to generate a list of their top five guidelines for a successful classroom, and then we voted to select the most popular
ideas.

And we ended up with this:

We may miss the art studio overlooking the graveyard, the duck factory, and our TWO nuclear power plants, but I have a feeling (or at least I hope!) these sensible, democratically produced guidelines will prove more effective in the long run.

Other highlights:

• Played Squirrels vs. Mountain Lions

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• Worked on name plate art

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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• Watched two short videos (here and here) about the brain and practiced note-taking with webs

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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• Got in the Popcorn Maker

  

  

  

  

• Had our third assembly in four weeks

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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• Began watching the U.S. presidential debate but realized we needed to do some research before we could fully understand what was going on

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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• During lunch, the kids have been teaching me how to play Munchkin

  

  

  Which led to perhaps my favourite addition to our list of unexpected things overheard: “I ANNIHILATE your Tuba of Charm!!!”

• We cooperatively juggled

  

  
• Oh, and this happened:

  

  

So, week two down.

This was the opening day welcome message – my guesses based purely on last names; I had a pretty poor batting average (and my Korean needs a little fine-tuning…)

Our first enigma to unravel…

…which, oddly, no one has ventured a guess for, yet – get to work, people!

Our first interactions, being forced to extract information from each other:

Our first Buddies activity (stolen from the amazing Mr. Bhargava at 2nd Street Community School), in which teams were involved in a paper airplane/paper clip challenge.  3 points per meter flown; 1 point for each paper clip that remained attached to the plane on its landing (we had uneven numbers with our Buddy Class, so some Division 2 students doubled up).

Sorry about the last minute explosion, Fu.  Amazing flight, Henry.  Congratulations, Jayee! So close, Kevin!

I must say, it was great to see everyone dive into this activity with such enthusiasm and creativity, and to be so vigilant about keeping their little buddies involved.

During the first week, Suncrest had a school-wide door decorating challenge with the following criteria:

• a theme of “What I Did This Summer”
• incorporate a variety of materials and textures
• bright and colorful
• representative of the whole class
• thoughtful (planned, not rushed)
• neatness in presentation

Division 2 quickly generated a host of outside-the-box ideas, and then each student was given three stickers to place next to their favourites:

(I’m a little sad the doors within doors idea will never see the light of day, but time management was important here…)

Once the grid of individual doors idea was settled upon, and certain perimeters were established by student suggestion – personal choice for inside image, hinges, and doorknob; outside of door to look realistic – everyone quickly got to work.

 

Yoshin did some quick and mind-bending math to determine the dimensions for each door…

…and David provided a valuable assist by reminding us all how big a piece of paper actually is.  A humbling reminder to not overlook the obvious…

It was, frankly, exhilarating to get a first glimpse of the individuality and extreme focus our class is capable of demonstrating (you played your hand too soon, MACCsters – now that I know what you’re capable of, I’ll be holding you to it!).  It was very moving to see such creative thinking and thoughtfulness of intention in progress.

 

The winner remains unannounced, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that we learned that the process is more important than the outcome (even when the outcome is pretty spectacular).

At the end of our short first week, students left a note on the board about what their favourite activity had been and how it made them feel:

 

Suffice to say that you don’t need to be an advanced learner to pick up on the trends…

Week two has been action packed – if by “action packed” you mean many hours of math diagnostics, with everyone insisting that they also try at least one grade above their own.  That being said, it has been heartening to see how honest people have been about reaching their “I’m out” level, and to do so with good humor.

In between extending patterns on T-tables and solving for x, we have also:

•  Begun practice of our observational skills by learning how to spot a liar and, by default, how to tell a successful lie (watch out, parents of Emilie and Anika: they showed particular talents in this area!)

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• Listened to a Quicks and Quarks podcast and paid attention to how scientists communicate their ideas

• Looked at a possible way of taking notes in order to use the least words possible and find connections between ideas

• Worked in our first groups to try to convince others which of the  scientific advancements described in the podcast was the most important for human civilization

  

  

  

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(everyone made good first steps in group work and communication, and Vlad and Karen gave us all a good lesson in the value of research and practice)

• Learned how to play the card game “Golf” as an intro to our first writing assignment (extra homework: teach your family how to play the game!)

• Started work in our comp books, using Lynda Barry’s pedagogy as a guideline

(from Syllabus – Notes from an Accidental Professor; Drawn & Quarterly: 2014)

Most students have been on fire with this form of reflection!  Already, these comp books are exquisite glimpses into the heart and minds of Division 2, and again reflect a beautiful diversity of ways of viewing and experiencing the world.  The comp books will be the fuel that helps build our year-old self-inquiry project.  More on that to come.

One aspect of the comp books is keeping an on-going list of things seen and heard that are unexpected, unusual, odd, or surprising.  The first try at this produced some hilarious results:

• Watched an episode of The Mind of a Chef to learn about the very gifted chef, writer, and human being, Gabrielle Hamilton.  After, everyone shared observations about how she communicated her ideas, and then we came up with suggestions as to how we might apply what we saw of the inner workings of her restaurant to our life together in the classroom.

• Building off of Ms. Hamilton’s espousal of the All-Important Second and Third Follow-up Questions when talking to people, as a signifier of real interest and not just  a marking of time before launching into your own monologue, we practiced extending conversations by being put into random pairs and going for a walk.  Partner One could only ask questions, preferably questions that probed for a deeper understanding of a given topic, while Partner Two strove for greater clarity in her or his explanations.

• And finally, everyone was given their alter ego for the term (thanks again, Lynda Barry!).  Good-bye, Adrian; hello, Basal Ganglia!

It’s been a good start.  Lots of great conversations, lots of creative and strategic thinking, lots of keen observations, lots of resoundingly silent-yet-active reading – and lots of, of course, dodgeball.