Another in an on-going series of “Things from 5,000 Year Ago,” the creation of our Class Agreement:<\/p>\n
A few years back, while enrolled at a field school in Haida Gwaii, I attended an environmental education\/place-based learning conference at the Haida Heritage Centre at K<\/u>ay Llnagaay <\/a><\/strong>and had the opportunity of learning from Susan Chung, who, along with its founder, Stanley King, has developed the co-design process<\/a><\/strong> (aka The Social Art of Architecture<\/a><\/strong>), in which architects, educators, and students work together to visualize, design, and implement the building of school gardens and other multi-use school work spaces.<\/p>\n As someone who lives (and, if I’m not careful, will most likely die) by Oscar Wilde’s adage, “Talent borrows, genius steals,” I have experimented with incorporating their work into the building of class agreements – the basic “rules” which govern a classroom community. (Full disclosure: I’m now even stealing from myself with recycling of texts from old blogs posts… MACC-sters from years past, get over it; you<\/em> try doing this job) I didn’t have the wherewithal to take a “before” picture, but the process began with a simple drawing of a bucolic setting on the whiteboard: a river, some grasslands and mountains, and a person in a canoe. As a class, we imagined that we had come across this beautiful place and decided we wanted to stay. Taking suggestions from students as to what we would need in order to live here, I drew additions – a cabin, sources of food and fresh water, a bow and arrow to shoot a poor defenceless bunny… – and then passed the pen off to them, to continue to add whatever they desired.<\/p>\n
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