Aesthetics and Design

This past year, Louise worked with Maplewood Richmond Heights School District, (MRH), and former superintendent, Linda Henke in St. Louis to research, organize and write a book, School as Museum: A Constructivist Approach to Learning.  The book is on its way to becoming a published iBook and will soon be available for the public.

One of the chapters that Louise wrote draws on the work of Daniel Pink from his book,  A Whole New Mind: How Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.  Daniel Pink describes the six primarily left-brain functions that his research shows will help to lead us toward a hopeful, healthy future: Design; Story; Symphony; Empathy; Play; and Meaning.  Daniel Pink calls these functions the Six Senses.  At MRH, we named these same brain functions 21st Century Learning Processes.  This blog post is excerpted from the writing on the Learning Process called Design...

In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson calls aesthetics “the pattern that connects.”  In Reggio Emilia, Italy, this philosophy of Bateson is primary to the educators in their municipal early childhood system.  The teachers there understand that engaging experiences and provocative questions, high quality materials in a well-stocked, beautiful environment lead children to discover and create “patterns that connect,” and whole, beautiful responses to the world around them.  It is a radical thing to say that aesthetics is not so much about making something pretty as it is about holding things together in a way that makes sense and that we would not see or understand otherwise.  That is what they mean by aesthetics in Reggio Emilia and that is what they practice.

Connecting patterns to create meaning within a pleasing, understandable whole is one of the central qualities and powers of good design.  This is what children learn through the grades at MRH Elementary School when they design exhibits that synthesize and communicate what they have learned for a real audience.

An educator who has inspired us at MRH is Ron Berger, author of An Ethic of Excellence, Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students.  (Ron is now writing the foreword to our book.)  Ron believes that students experience lasting, meaningful and high performance results when they create work for a public audience, work through drafts until work is publishable, master the skills of peer critique and learn from models of exemplary student work from the past to inspire and guide them.  Ron writes, “If you’re going to do something, I believe that you should do it well.  You should sweat over it and make sure that it is strong and accurate and beautiful and you should be proud of it.”

Each year, students at MRH learn more about design principles that will make their exhibits strong and engaging. The key elements that each MRH student learns in order to design and exhibit include how to:

• Choose appropriate and complementary fonts and font sizes

• Create titles, subtitles, captions and quotes

• Align text and other media

• Balance text and other media

• Select harmonious working colors

• Maintain consistency of quality and elements

• Work with proximity, white space and overall spacing of elements

• Collaborate with a design team

Another aspect of design is framed in Design Thinking, "a structured, approach to generating and developing ideas." We have used the resources of Design Thinking for Educators.

In Design Thinking, there are five phases of the design process.

1. Discovery.  I have a challenge. How do I approach it?
2. Interpretation. I learned something. How do I interpret it?
3. Ideation. I see an opportunity. What do I create?
4. Experimentation. I have an idea. How do I build it?
5. Evolution. I learned something.  How do I evolve it?

To hold ideas together in a way that makes sense, to think creatively in disciplined yet open ways, to create beautiful work that inspires others, to communicate what we have learned and what is most important effectively and in artful ways…all of this is what encompasses Design and how we think about it and practice it at MRH Elementary School.

Thinking about Play...

This is one of those periods when time passes too quickly!  Travel for work, travel for pleasure, travel in spring, moving, changing, Louise still healing, time passing. Yesterday we realized that we had not written a blog post since mid March! And now, it is the end of April.  So, here we are, checking in, showing up again with plans to keep it up. These two weeks, we are back on our home turf, in St. Louis, Ashley working with The St. Michael School (SMS), and Louise working with Maplewood Richmond Heights (MRH) elementary school.  Ashley continues to work with the SMS faculty on composing student work into books in an iBook format.  Louise is working on composing a book that is a guide to the work at MRH elementary entitled, School as Museum: A Contructivist Approach to Learning, with the MRH faculty and administration and former superintendent, Linda Henke.  This book is a guide to the practice at MRH elementary for the staff, but also for interested educators.  We hope that it too, will be published in iBook form.

One of the chapters is entitled, "Twenty First Century Learning Processes: A Whole New Mind in Action."  It draws on the work of Daniel Pink and shows how what he calls the six senses, (we decided to refer to them as learning processes), are an integral part of learning at MRH elementary school.  We realized that when it comes to play, which is one of the six senses or learning processes, Opal School is a great resource.  In the last blog post, that was co-written by Louise and Ena Shelley, Dean of the College of Education at Butler Univeristy, Louise wrote that she would continue to reflect and write about the week at Opal when Dean Shelley and Louise co-taught a course with the Opal staff.  Play is a good place to pick up that promise.  A year ago or so, Susan MacKay, Director of the Museum Center for Learning, authored a book that comes with a CD entitled, What About Play?  You can order it from The Portland Children's Museum.  We highly recommend it.

The following is an excerpt from the section on play in the guide that we are working on for MRH elementary school.

Over the last years, we have been inspired by the work of the Opal School of the Portland Children’s Museum in Portland, Oregon. Opal School is a charter school that works in collaboration with the Portland Children’s Museum and is housed in the museum.  The relationship between these institutions provides one model for a close link between school and museum that intrigues us.  We are influenced in many ways by Opal and one of the most helpful is their extensive work on what they call “playful inquiry.” This way of learning is palpable throughout the school and the museum and invites visitors to see that “play is an attitude and stance toward learning and toward life that leaves one open, curious, joyful and determined.”  Many of the resources that we have learned from and that we reference here are collected from the writings of Susan MacKay, Director of the Museum Center for Learning.  

Susan MacKay writes,

“In playful inquiry, adults offer provocations such as open-ended questions, intriguing dilemmas, inspiring environments, engaging materials and loose parts for children to explore.  Adults give support through observing, listening, encouraging, reflecting and dialogue. 

Playful inquiry is an open-ended and joyful exploration and a flexible process that welcomes elements of surprise.  The learner’s mind is open and eager to learn. In play, our brain develops agility and fluid mental processing.  In play, the brain works in a state of relaxed alertness—comfortable, engaged, and curious. Through playful inquiry, children develop relationships with their world and find a meaningful place for themselves within it.” 

“Play is like fertilizer for brain growth. It’s crazy not to use it.” writes Stuart Brown, author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.  Brown is founder of the National Institute for Play, whose purpose is to translate the growing body or research on the critical place of play in learning, health and emotional intelligence.

"The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression. (Pink, 2005).”

A Week at Opal School, with Guest Blog Post Author, Ena Shelley

We, Ena Shelley and Louise Cadwell, just returned from an amazing and wonderful educational week at Opal School of the Portland Children's Museum, a public charter school now 11 years old.  This is the second year that Butler University has offered an intensive week-long seminar entitled: Creativity, Imagination and Learning: A Field Study in Early and Elementary Education based at Opal School in Portland, OR.  Ena Shelley (Dean of the College of Education at Butler University) and Louise co-teach the course along with Susan MacKay and the staff at Opal.  Perhaps because we had laid the groundwork last year, this year, we were able to journey even deeper into the work, the philosophy and practice at Opal.  This year, we were also ready to make more and stronger connections between our experience during the week and our contexts and schools back home.

Last week, participants were struck over and over again by the language used by all the teachers at Opal that invites children's best selves and best thinking into the classroom in every discipline and during every social occasion.  For example, "James, would you share your thinking about this idea?"  "Could we make room for Cindy's voice?" "Jane, who would be a good thinking partner for you?" "What does it mean to be wild?" "Who lives underground?" "What can your hands do with clay?" "Where do stories come from?"

This practice of language choice and framing open questions, has grown over the years, influenced greatly by the practice in Reggio Emilia, Italy and also many authors and educators here in the United States, among others, Ellin Keene and Karen Gallas in literacy,  Catherine Fosnot and Maarten Dolk in mathematics, and David Orr and Fritjof Capra in systems thinking and sustainability.  A book that they are reading at Opal right now is Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives by Peter Johnston.  Louise read it before she arrived in Oregon and it is worth ordering right now to read right away.  So applicable immediately to your classroom and school, it is filled with examples and stories about what kind of language and stance supports a flexible learning mindset and what closes learning down to a fixed mindset.  Johnston cites Carol Dweck's research and takes it further.

Every time we go, we come home from Opal thinking something like this, "This is it. If you want to see complex theories in action, learning for the future taking place right now, rich, inspiring places and spaces and the real-life, hard work of collaboration that is paying off for children and their community, go to Opal."  And, we are always re-inspired to do the work that we do with renewed insight and clarity, purpose and passion.

You can gain a peek into the life and experience of Opal by reading their blog.  Every week there are posts, stories of learning, links to books and other worthwhile events and opportunities.  Louise will write her next few posts for the Cadwell Collaborative blog on aspects of last week because there is so much more to reflect on and to share.  In the meantime, we suggest that you follow the Opal blog and take advantage of all that they have to offer in professional development even if you can not go there.  There is an on-line course that you can sign up for now that was very successful the first time it was offered.  There is also a free webinar on Sunday the 24th offered by NCTE and Susan MacKay.

In a world where we are all looking for mentors, leaders, and paradigm shifters, Opal is one place where you will find them.  Thank you, thank you, Opal School.

Design Your School Beginning with the Faculty's Ideas??!!

To just about any faculty member I know, the following idea will come as a giant “DUH:”  when a school undertakes the design of a new facility, it should include the faculty in the design process.  Sadly, most boards and administrations do not.  These institutions miss a GIANT opportunity to stimulate design ideas AND, ironically, faculty development. I have worked with four schools in the last two years that have begun the design process with a series of meetings with the faculty and administration, together.  In each case, everyone has been excited by the prospect of a new building, and honored to be included in the critical programmatic phase of design.  However, in each case, the rubber met the road, not so much on building design issues, as on educational program design.

The hard questions that the faculty tackled had to do with reflections on past and current successes and problems.  In all cases this led to projections that built on current success, solved problems, and created room for evolution.  The answers and discoveries in these discussions have become essential to the schematic design of the buildings.

My most recent experience was (and is) with Oregon Episcopal School.  OES has begun the process of designing a new Lower School (early childhood through grade 5).  They started with three guided discussions with the faculty in large and small groups.

Their first meeting, involving the whole lower school faculty, was guided by a parent who has considerable professional experience (Nike) with Design Thinking.  Using the decorum and process of Design Thinking, in one 90 minute session, the faculty generated 20 poster boards covered with sticky note ideas.  The poster boards wall papered their meeting room.

The following week, I met with the faculty over two days, in four small groups, in 90 -120 minute sessions each day, to develop the ideas on the walls.  First of all, we revisited and elaborated on the most compelling ideas, in their individual opinions, that had come up through the Design Thinking.  Then, each faculty member chose one idea that he/she found “most concerning.”

The next day, each session focused on teaching: tell us something about your teaching that has changed significantly...what was it that you learned that caused the change?  Then we asked, tell us one thing that you hope will never change.  Finally, we wondered together, considering both the change you have known and the stability you hope for, what do you imagine teaching at OES will look like 5 or 10 or 20 years from now?

From these meetings we discerned a “map” of ideas, or significant “drivers” for the schematic design.

• Ten Essential Ideas about Students, Teachers & Pedagogy
• Seven Essential Ideas about Program
• Ten Essential Ideas about Spaces
• Nine Essential Ideas about Design
• Nine Essential Concerns

Further reflection on the meetings distilled three compelling needs to be met in the design of the building, compelling for the Lower School, for the whole school and in the Portland community.

Somewhere along the way, a metaphor appeared: OES as a RIVERBOAT.  Throughout the sessions we had a lot of fun as we elaborated on the image.  By the end we had constructed quite a story, one that could become the unifying image for the educational program, the building design, and communication with parents and fund raising.

Hmmmm, all this...just by including the faculty!

Up Coming Green Schools Conference and Our Presentation

At 8:30 a.m. on February 24th, Cadwell Collaborative and two schools that we work with will collaborate on a presentation at the Green Schools Conference in West Palm Beach, FL.  Two Reggio inspired schools, La Scuola in Miami and The St. Michael School of Clayton in St. Louis, will share highlights of their year-long, whole school investigation: What is food? 

The presentation will offer participants a structure for this kind of investigation.  Those who attend will understand how to:

• design a year-long inquiry around one compelling question

• build curriculum maps to plan, reflect on and communicate learning goals

• use daily journals and blogs to track student work and project development

• create documentation that assesses students' skills and understanding

• guide student work in ways that engage students in the community

This is a story of how two very different schools followed similar paths with their students.  The story of their learning journeys and their collaboration make a compelling case that the 21st century skills of ecoliteracy, systems thinking, collaboration, creative problem solving, and youth engagement are critical and unifying themes of our time.  What comes through most clearly in the stories that these two schools tell is that students of all ages, when guided into meaningful, relevant explorations are excited and motivated to discover and learn more.  And, they are inspired to share what they've learned and to advocate for change.

If you are not aware of the Green Schools National Network, we recommend that you check it out.

If you are interested in designing curriculum based on critical themes of our time and 21st century skills, let us know.  We'd love to work with you.