Educators often ask, “How do you prevent summer learning loss for yourself and your students?” ABPC consultant and Tarrant educator Beth Sanders joined a team of teachers in “The Brain Forest” this summer to discover not only how to avoid a learning slide but also how to accelerate academic and social-emotional learning through engaging projects and student voice & choice. What’s more, as Beth relates here, the teachers did a lot of learning too.
By Beth Sanders
There is an ever constant joke in education circles that we’ve all heard. It goes something like “Well, I definitely didn’t get into it for the money.” I would argue that those who are dedicated to our craft and lifelong learning didn’t get into it for the summer vacation either.
I’ve never looked at my summer as a break from teaching. Like most committed educators, I see it instead as an opportunity — a chance to reflect, an open space in which to grow and pursue new possibilities.
Two summers ago I got the chance of a lifetime to co-facilitate a “21st century summer camp,” but I never took the time afterward to specifically reflect and share the power of that summer or the impact it had on me and so many others. This summer, when I said yes to the Brain Forest, I promised myself I wouldn’t make the same mistake. So I have handcuffed myself to this table, with my Macbook before me, until I finish this post.
Hiking through the Brain Forest
Regardless of when the opportunity to grow comes to you, summer or not, if you get the chance to say yes — you should almost always say yes. After my fourth year of teaching social studies at Tarrant High School in Birmingham, AL, I was feeling the strain of the daily grind like I never had before. So much so, in fact, that I was genuinely considering taking my first summer “off.” I had just about decided not to apply for any summer jobs and use the time instead to get a little R&R and prepare for the upcoming school year.
No sooner did I get comfortable with that decision than I received an email from my ever-supportive and door-opening mentor Cathy Gassenheimer, introducing me to Ann Sikes and Meridith Hoover of the Montgomery Education Foundation (MEF) and their summer learning program The Brain Forest.
MEF was looking for an instructional director for the program, which serves rising 5th and 6th graders. The program would be five weeks long, and was focused on ensuring that the 100 young adolescents involved not only caught up on learning they’d missed during the school year, but also finished the program confident and ready to enter the next grade.
MEF was excited to do things differently. They weren’t afraid to break out of predictable patterns of teaching and learning, and they emphasized that it should be a summer where the adults learned and grew as much as the students. From my point of view, it was an experience too full of possibilities to possibly pass up. So while the strain of the school year was still weighing on me, the excitement and potential of The Brain Forest largely outweighed the leftover school stress. I had to say yes. So I did!
Out of My Mind with Wonder
The learning was designed around the novels Wonder for rising 5th graders and Out of My Mind for rising 6th graders. Both novels are centered around two universal themes: choosing kindness and celebrating differences. These themes allowed our two grade-alike teaching teams (including Michelle Brewster, Rita Doyle, Jeff Wood, Brandi Douglas, Stan Reese, and Hunter Wolfe) to design projects and learning deeply rooted in character development and social-emotional learning. In the process, students mastered multiple skills and created real world projects to help the learning stick.
We chose to expand beyond the standards and the skills to encompass the whole child. The results at the end of five weeks speak for themselves. Based on Global Scholar data, 71% of rising 5th graders made gains in reading and 68% in math; and 63% of rising 6th graders making gains in reading and 68% in math. Our students also mastered multiple real world “soft” skills as they produced, created and presented their final Public Service Announcement project.
To help students strengthen the sense that they are the “owners” of their learning, we also had them complete weekly learning reflections aligned to learning targets and gave them voice in where they were going to go next and choice about how they were going to get there.
I’ll never forget one afternoon when rising 6th grade teacher Brandi Douglas came running into my office to share a student reflection on the impact of the summer:
“I’m excited about all the new ways we think and learn in the Brain Forest and how we learn skills to use inside but also outside of the classroom. It’s so cool.” – Zakiah, age 11.
Celebrating our Learning
On our last day together, our students participated in a Celebration of Learning event where teachers and students presented their PSAs and learning experiences with their parents and communities during a student led gallery walk where attendees got to learn from the students what we learned all summer during the Brain Forest.
PSA: Stand Up!
PSA: We Choose Kindness
PSA: Wonder of Wonder
One of the most powerful elements of our learning framework were the field trips every Friday. In the real world, nothing much happens if we stay in one fixed place (especially learning and personal growth), and so every single week we left for other spaces to be curious and find out more about ourselves.
The impact was immense and lasting. Imagine if every student in your building got to go on a field trip and “leave school to learn” once a week — for the entire school year? Then imagine those students were given an opportunity to talk about what they liked, disliked, wanted to know more about, wanted to do something about, and then given the means to act on their reflections?
By combining inquiry learning, student ownership, and project-based instruction, we created a recipe for a summer full of real academic and personal growth, both inside and outside of the classroom. While we were only able to offer this opportunity for five weeks this summer, the adventures these kids experienced had positive (and I believe enduring) effects on their attitudes about “education” in general. (Video – making Wonder masks)
Imagine the lasting impact on every student if they were given similar opportunities to learn, grow, discover, question and deeply experience real life learning in their community for the entire year.
We had time to think about learning
If you want people (students, teachers, anybody) to do great things, they need the time, resources, space, and support to do so. Brain Forest educators had 1.5 hours daily to collaborate, reflect and co-create project plans and learning experiences for the week. More than that: they had the space and support to try new things, do familiar things differently, make mistakes, reflect and try again.
Students had the same space and support from their teachers and the balance created a powerful example of what learning could look like all year round, not just in the summer. Both teachers and students had access to iPads and exciting new tools such as a MakeyMakey kit (video) and a hands-on coordinate grid floormat (video) to encourage real-life and student-led learning.
As the instructional director I was readily available and accessible through our daily community learning time and also through our 24/7 collaborative online learning space for our teaching team. The teachers helped design our professional learning and co-led multiple sessions to deepen their own relationships and support their own professional growth.
Each Brain Forest student was given multiple chances to learn far beyond the four walls of the traditional classroom — and as students poured into the hallways, outdoors, and in various other locations (off and online) we truly began to occupy the entire learning space.
Click to see: Highlights of The Brain Forest 2014 Summer Program
Resources and insights
The framework we co-created to drive our learning during the five weeks was deeply rooted in the idea that we are all teachers and learners and that summer learning can be awesome, impactful and fun!
Our team used the text Leaders of Their Own Learning by Ron Berger and his colleagues at Expeditionary Learning, as well as Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner, Dispositions by Art Costa and Bena Kallick, and High Impact Instruction by Jim Knight. All this expertise helped us build our vision of a personalized learning model intended to empower every student to take charge of their own learning.
We used protocols that gave students voice in co-creating learning targets and emphasized the importance of learning reflections to further support student independence. We agreed on embracing every mistake as a learning opportunity and accepted the truth that a lot of our vision would be built as we worked and that genuine collaboration and critical-friend dialogue would be essential to our success.
As I take the time now to reflect on the summer and prepare for a new role in my district as the Technology Integration Specialist – one that will require me to move out of my classroom comfort zone – I am bringing with me three valuable insights I discovered while hiking in the Brain Forest:
1. Relationships matter a lot.
2. Reflection is critical for everyone.
3. We are the masters of our own change. We have to be.
As I move into my new role – and other members of our teaching team return to their home schools – and our students begin a new grade – I know that each of us is taking back something special from our summer adventures together, and we will continue to grow and evolve as teachers, students, and most important, as learners.
So what did you do with your summer “break” and how is it going to impact what you do the rest of the year? Did you take some much deserved time to rest, re-cooperate and re-energize yourself for what’s to come as students return to school in the next couple of weeks? That’s good. I also hope you spent some time challenging yourself, learning something new, and maybe even changing the world for the better and empowering others to do so too.
