Exhibitions

Finally had time to update! A certain friend of mine from college has been daily checking my blog ;) Hopefully this can be her fix for the next few weeks.

I've had several things I wanted to blog about, but I think that I would like to turn this post back to the classroom. Things have been getting so much better. Getting back into the swing of things after break (and an engagement) was hard, and with snow days and sickness our school schedule has been inconsistent to say the least. But things are getting better.

The last two weeks have been dedicated to their end of quarter assessments: Exhibitions.

At Big Picture we do “testing” a bit differently. Our school’s philosophy is centered on the idea of “real-world experience.” Internships, interdisciplinary studies, mentor relationships, all these things are found in adult life. You don’t wake up and do math for the first 40 minutes of your day followed by history. Life is a mixture of learning that is applicable to your own individual life. That is the way we try to do things at Ironbound Academy.

This model also has an interesting take on assessments. Most schools take midterms or finals or have quizzes and tests. Multiple choice and fill in the blanks are how the United States likes to see if the youth are on track with their education. But what about that student who freezes up and has test-taking anxiety? What about the kid who can’t seem to do multiple-choice correctly. Where in life (other than in the school system) are we ever forced to answer True and False to a series of statements (unless you’re being interrogated, but that’s another matter).

Instead of tests and grades, we do something called exhibitions. It’s basically an oral defense where each student has to present in front of an audience of teachers, parents, mentors, and peers once a quarter to prove their learning. Now, in my opinion, having a high school student stand and teach an audience what they learned for 45 minutes is a whole heck of a lot more challenging and accurately assessing exactly where they are than just a written final. Then they get drilled for 15 minutes with questions that force them to push not only their academic learning, but their personal growth as well.

I love it.

So exhibitions just ended. It is always a great time in the year because the students come face to face with the reality that they’ve either grown and learned a whole lot, or they’ve slacked off and done nothing for 3 months.

It is also a time that I like to sit and reflect on where our school has been and where it’s going. Any of you who have read this blog or know me know how incredibly challenging these 2 years have been. But we’re getting somewhere. Growth is happening. I saw many examples of that this last week.

When a new freshman presented very little information in a very unenthusiastic way, two of my students confronted and encouraged her at the end of her exhibition. The conversation went something like this (only sounded a bit more like it was coming out the mouth of an inner city teenager), “You need to start opening up to people here. It’s not just like any other school. The classes are small enough so the teachers really care about you and are involved in your life. I talk to my advisor all the time and tell her everything. She’s always there to answer my texts and I know I can be honest with her. You should talk to your advisor, once you start you won’t stop. This school is hard and it’s not like anything else, but if you try you’ll probably like it here. You just gotta get to know all of us, cause we’re all real cool.”

At another exhibition, one of my students who had gone down a bad path but who has started to get his life back together spent a good 5 minutes giving detailed constructive criticism on the things the presenter could have studied and done to give a better presentation.

Another student of mine asked really great, driving questions at every presentation she sat in on.

Seeing and hearing these things warmed my heart. We aren’t where we want to be. But we’re getting there.

There are many times when I’m unsure of what I think about education. As the district won’t accept our exhibition scores as midterms and are forcing our students to take the traditional content area tests that just discourage and frustrate the kids, I feel like just giving in. The traditional way must be right.

As students get frustrated because they don’t know what a sustainable biome is off the top of their heads and I feel like a bit of a failure as a teacher, I am reminded of exhibitions. No, our students might not know the whole scope of the curriculum. No, they aren’t forced to memorize the mathematical equations that I honestly probably have forgotten and would need to look up again. But yes, they learn HOW to learn. Yes, different students are starting to get the hang of going deep with their learning. Yes, I learned some things as my students gave exhibitions about the path to become a law enforcement officer, the different types of muscle and how to work them out if you’re a physical trainer, the depravity of poverty found by examining photography from Africa, and the different layers of the rainforest and how animals have adapted to their surroundings.

Some days I am discouraged and unconvinced that our school is going anywhere. But when exhibitions roll around, I am reminded that we are not only teaching our students how to learn and defend their learning, we are not only allowing them to explore their interests in very cool ways, but we are instilling life lessons and teaching them how to be grown ups in this crazy mixed up world.