I was asked by my curriculum director to give a brief recap of summer school during our district-wide professional development today. What I initially wrote was a bit long for the occasion, so I only shared a portion of what is published below, but I thought I would share my response in its entirety as a reminder to myself (and others) of what really mattered in education this summer and as we move forward – and not what just really matters for the kids, but what teachers need, too – FUN.
I taught summer school here in Paw Paw for many years, in fact, I worked as a paraprofessional for the summer program before I was even hired as a teacher here. I stopped a few years ago for several reasons, some personal but also because I professionally felt like we were missing the mark with our summer agenda. While I’m being honest, I felt like we were missing the mark in our educational agenda year-round. In fact, when Corey’s email soliciting summer school attendees and staff arrived in my inbox, I had been tweaking a cover letter for a job posting outside the classroom, outside our district, outside of education entirely.
Coming on the heels of the most challenging year both personally and professionally for me, Corey’s email would have been completely disregarded and deleted without me even reading it had it not been for two things that caught my attention. First, the words “outdoor programming” and second (only because I read it second), was the amount of the compensation package for teaching 22 half days. I may have read the email more carefully because the notion of “outdoor education” is near and dear to me, but when else in my teaching career might I ever make $50 an hour?! It was a hard offer not to consider seriously.
As it turns out, the “outdoor educational programming” wasn’t just a ‘notion’, it was a deeply felt philosophy and better yet, instructional practice that Corey had been a part of in Fennville. Over the course of all those half days, I found my own philosophies about teaching being played out in front of me in meaningful and very tangible ways.
The pandemic has been a professional (and personal) challenge to each and every one of us. We have seen instructional practices that we know are essential to learning take a backseat to safety measures and precautions. We have tried, these past 18 months, and many times in vain, to intervene with students we could see and feel slipping away, becoming more disillusioned with not just the concept of school, but of the empty promises within it. We have tried, many times again, in vain, to convince even ourselves that we will “get back to normal” at some point and we will once again put those instructional practices back to use.
Or maybe we won’t.
For 21 instructional days, I spent time, significant time, outside every single one of those days. And the best part was that I spent that time outside with kids who were as eager as I was to be out there. We weren’t just outside on a playground playing tag or swinging or otherwise socializing, but we were all engaged in meaningful outdoor experiences. We were in streams, literally knee-deep in streams; we were in fields with binoculars, we were in the woods building shelters, identifying plants and learning how to start and cook over a fire. We personally saw, listened to and identified birds; we got to be up close and very personal with four different birds of prey; we hiked, we plodded, we smelled like a highly under-marketed combination of bug spray and sun lotion. We fished, we explored, we categorized, we drew, we reflectively wrote and we read stories and books that not only connected us to the learning we were doing outside, but connected us to the community we were building together inside.
And while the kids were learning all these amazing things about the natural world around them (and about themselves and each other!) I was learning an awful lot about the kids in my classroom. Like the fact that many (many!) of them didn’t know what dew was on the grass. Many struggled significantly with following explicit directions. Many have never been camping, never been fishing, never spent time exploring in the woods, never even been to Lake Michigan.
At the onset of the program, Corey reiterated to the staff that only one question and one answer really mattered this year with regard to the success of summer school. At the end of each day, he encouraged us to ask ourselves, “Did we have fun learning today?” and if the answer was “yes”, then it was a successful day at summer school. Without a second’s hesitation, the answer each and every single day was a resounding YES. But as Corey thought it might, knew it might, the success did not just end with providing the students with a positive school experience after a tumultuous year. For those who have used F&P texts for benchmark assessments, you can all easily recognize how the experiences in these 21 days provided key background knowledge and context that will greatly increase the comprehension of texts such as “Animal Instincts”, “Super Senses” and “Animal Adaptations.” Not once during those days did I have a student respond with the all too-familiar “I don’t know what to write about” when we reflected on our day of learning. They wrote about trees, animals, teamwork and recycling. During the amazing lunches (thanks, Korrie and staff – those meals were top notch!) I overheard discussions about the ethics of keeping zoos, of climate change and of how we can help diminish pollution in our environments. And these were third graders.
So the challenge is now before us. How can we all, not just those of us fortunate enough to participate in the summer learning program, but all of us continue this work? How can we all continue to find ways to not “bring the world into our classroom” but to take our students out into the world? How can we build bridges connecting our essential standards to our students in meaningful, tangible, hands-on ways, ways that go far beyond just academic success. How can we create learning opportunities that start and end with “fun” but secretly hold a tremendous amount of learning? How can we not only use the video games and technologies these students hold so dear, but also introduce them to the natural world around them in equally engaging ways? I got some great ideas this summer, but I know I have a long way to go as an educator to make this true in my classroom. For now, I will simply ask myself, whether behind a mask or not, whether three or six feet apart or not, to welcome a new “normal” to my classroom. One that starts and ends with “Did we have fun learning today?” And, at least for now, I will give my cover letter a rest and make this year the best year both personally and professionally that I can. Thanks, Corey, for the opportunity, the experience and the vision for a new “normal”.
Teaching at 3am 