Welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a PYP teacher. I have taken a bit of a hiatus from this podcast due to personal health issues and work schedule. This is my ultimate passion project. When I’m not sharing with you, it means I’m off-balance and need to calibrate again. I’m super pumped to continue our series of creating a PYP classroom success criteria. It’s more than just the walls, but the feeling within the classroom itself. This can be demonstrated in so many ways from choices you provide to the materials being used. The key question for this episodeHow are we celebrating student voice through agency? As in previous episodes, I have been connecting to ideas posed by others on social media to help me craft my message. This episode is definitely no exception. My friend, Nirali Parikh, a transitional kindergarten teacher at the Creation Village World School in Celebration, Florida, posed the first question, “Does the student have a voice? This simple question sparks much debate. As I’m thinking about the learning environment, is there a voice in how the classroom is designed and operated? This really makes me think back to prior episodes of how the learning space is designed. Is it inclusive in nature and are all learners represented there? I’ve had the privilege to visit Nirali’s classroom and there is evidence of learning voice in everything she does. The wall displays are driven by learner thinking. The use of resources is determined by learners. There are materials from within and beyond the classroom that are used as loose parts. Learners are negotiating how, what, and when products are created. It’s truly a magical space. Emmanouil Zerai, PYP homeroom teacher at International School of the Stockholm Region (ISSR), shared about celebrating learning and agency. This made me think about how we celebrate agency within the learning process. Do we ever have learners step back and examine their work through the lens of agency? Oftentimes, we assess based on achievement, which is necessary. But imagine how learning would feel if we celebrated the small moments that learners took risk in their learning by demonstrating agency. These milestone moments could help them overcome doubts and fears about their abilities, as compared to their peers. The next hop in my mind is how are we getting parents involved in-person and virtually to celebrate the complete learning journey? Imagine if learning portfolios were reshaped to define the moments that I demonstrated authentic agency and the skills that were required to make it happen. Now, we are supporting metacognitive thinking. Tonya Gilchrist, an independent educational consultant and #pypchat host extraordinaire, posed: 4 key questions when co-creating an agentic ecology. I am going to do my best to answer each question as part of this episode. How might you act and feel if you spent your days in this place?Imagine if all spaces were designed with this question in mind. Imagine how you would act in the space and how you would feel. It changes the dynamics of “what” I am going to learn to “how” I feel while learning. Everyone has their own ideas of how they act and feel in a space. To some, it’s all about the physical space and how it makes you act and feel. While others, it’s about the classroom culture and how the learner will act and feel within the community. No matter your interpretation, it’s about making a space where all learners are able to feel completely free of judgment and act according to their own ideas, thoughts, and value systems. As a trainer, I regularly begin the workshop with redesigning the learning space that best fits the participants. I think I might begin with this question to allow them to interpret what it means for them. What does this environment tell you the community values?As learners (young and older) engage within the environment, how are they expressing the community values? When I consider this question, I naturally go towards the language that is being used. In a recent encounter, I was reminded that the words we use to show our thinking has a great impact on achievement. When we use language that is not optimal towards growth, we tend to achieve at that rate. For example, instead of saying, “I feel tired after learning math.” change the language to, “I have used a lot of brain space today while learning math.” This simple change tries to exemplify positivity even when tired while doing something. Something that is also telling is how people engage with each other. Is the language of the learner profile attributes a poster on the wall or is it something we use daily to describe our thoughts, ideas, and values? As I have been breaking down the definitions in workshops, it has helped me to see the various ways I can apply the attributes to my thinking and doing. What does your community value? Bright displays of student work or student thinking? What does this environment tell you the community expects from you?This question really made me stop in my tracks. The environment does speak to what the community thinks you are capable of achieving. When we see a lot of authentic learner work, it shares the message that we value learner agency and personal inquiry. Conversely, when we see teacher replicated work samples on a “Good Work” wall, it tells us the community wants learners to follow the guide of the teacher and to not take any risks. Having taught within both communities, it’s all about what the community expects of the educator and learner. What does your community expect from your learning environment? Do you have freedom to create based on your learner needs? Are there baseline requirements, but delivery is up to you? This will greatly impact how you teach and how your students learn. Something to think about. What in this environment helps you focus and be an intentional decision-maker?Everyone has their focus that helps them to be an intentional decision-maker in their environment. For me, it’s all about space design. When environments are designed for learner independence (labeling with pictures, placed at learner height, like-minded materials are together, etc.) it creates a space where learners can take risks and demonstrate their authentic talents, capabilities, and curiosities. They are free to use materials as they like to showcase their thinking at a point in time.
Beyond space design and materials, learners are frequently positioned to make decisions through open-ended tasks where they must use critical and creative thinking skills to present possible solutions. They collaborate with their group to examine possible options and implications. This process sparks personal and shared inquiries. Learners take their ideas and shape them into potential inquiries that they would like to explore further. They investigate possibilities, examine ideas from others, and make conclusions at a point in time, since more learning might alter present-day ideas. This process helps learners to make decisions about certain processes, thinking, and ways of being. Being a decision-maker puts learners into the “doing” of learning, rather than “receiving” it. The environment supports this way of learning by providing space for alternative viewpoints and ways of doing things. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach that we often see in traditional learning environments, yet it meets the same curricular objectives.
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I had the enormous priviledge of being the coach to these amazing humans along their IB workshop leader journey. Each and everyone of them put their passion into process, which was not easy. How did we get the group name? Part of the process is to ask the team to come up with the name. This is what the group presented to me. Someone made the visual and we became Lu's Lucky Sevens. Since this experience, I've had the priviledge of seeing Scott, Sophie, Roberto, and Roxana in-person at various workshops in Lima, Peru, San Jose, Costa Rica, St. Pete Beach, Florida, and Vancouver, Canada. What a blessing to know this dynamic group! ![]() I have been reading one of Robert Holden's books on happiness. It's quite simple, true happiness is so entrenched within that things that occur in the world can have no impact. I want to live this way. It's difficult to be sure, but it's about our longevity of life. |
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