Guerilla Educators

Books; Evidence-Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools: A Responsive Approach to Creating Learning Environments by Peter Lippman

We are pleased to announce that the publication of good friend and colleague, Peter Lippman's first book, Evidence-Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools: A Responsive Approach to Creating Learning Environments, is now in print by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  This from a review over at Barnes and Noble:

An in-depth, evidence-based design approach to the design of elementary and secondary schools

The contemporary school must be a vibrant, living extension of its community. Evidence-Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools instructs design professionals on how to successfully achieve this goal. With assistance from research-intensive principles grounded in theories, concepts, and research methodologies—and with roots in the behavioral sciences—this book examines and provides strategies for pooling streams of information to establish a holistic design approach that is responsive to the changing needs of educators and their students.

From the Sony ebookstore:

Evidence-Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools analyzes the current shift toward a modern architectural paradigm that balances physical beauty, and social awareness, and building technologies with functionality to create buildings that optimize the educational experience for all learners. Enlightening as well as informative, this forward-thinking guide provides educational facility planners, designers, and architects with the tools they need to confidently approach their next school building project. In addition, this guide provides administrators, educators, and researchers with design options for rethinking and creating innovative learning environments.

PETER C. LIPPMAN is a senior architectural staff member of the Educational Practice Group at JCJ Architecture in New York City. He has worked on a range of educational projects, including elementary and secondary schools, as well as higher education facilities. From 2001 to 2004, Lippman served as chair for the AIANY Chapter Committee on Architecture for Education, where he developed and presented programs that examined and extended ideas about the design of school environments.

 

Pets in the Classroom; Tamara

At a Public Charter School in Philadelphia over the weekend, it was necessary to unplug the filter of a 75 gallon fish tank.  Due to the inevitable and most unfortunate human error, the filter was not re-started as it should have been so this morning, when the teacher arrived, the big beautiful fish that have been a part of the culture of the school for years, except for the algae eater, were gone.  

Tamara is now a smart, happy 3rd grader at this school.  She has been a student there since kindergarten.  When she arrived at the school, Tamara was disruptive, violent, and uncommunicative.  By a series of good fortune, astute observation, and a caring educator, Tamara was given charge of making sure that the fish were well cared for, starting with feeding the first thing every morning.  That simple act of responsibility given to her in kindergarten and continuing to this day, helped transform this young lady from an asocial, belligerent child to, by dint of her consistent responsibilities with the school pets, a position of leadership.  Right about now, Tamara will be at the classroom door where the teacher will let her in and walk with her to the fish tank where there will be no fish to feed.  There will most likely be heartache and tears both on the part of both Tamara and the teacher as they commiserate over their mutual loss.  They will share this bond of sadness and then, if she is true to form, the educator will use this as a powerful "Teachable Moment" for Tamara.  There will be so many opportunities to explore and practically demonstrate how leaders act in situations like this.  There will be opportunities to use Higher Order Thinking Skills, and of course, there will be the necessity of determining next steps to lessen the impact of this tragedy on the student body, the faculty, and the admin team.  

My guess is that, before long the fish tank will be up and running with new fish in the tank and Tamara will get back into her routine of care and feeding, a little older, a good deal wiser, and farther along in her accidental development as a citizen/leader.

The Teachable Moment

Today we add another Hallmark of Effective Teaching and Learning to our list of (now) 12:

THE TEACHABLE MOMENT - Agile educators who nimbly take advantage of those "off the curriculum grid" spontaneous opportunities when they occur present powerful moments for effective, authentic teaching and learning.  Being able to identify and use real-time teachable moments is one of those transcendent qualities that good educators possess.  Below, are two excellent examples of teachable moments that became gateways to a variety of learning across a variety of curricular and civic disciplines:

Teachable Moment #1: Bubba, Richard Nixon, and the Roaches - My 4th grade class contained a menagerie of inherited classroom pets that included Iggy, our 4 foot long iguana, Hoppy, the Rabbit, and Bubba and Richard Nixon, our fish.  For better or worse, there were always little roaches who inhabited the area immediately around the rabbit's cage.  One day a student came to me and asked whether I thought that the fish would like roach to be on their menu.  I told this young lady that if she to catch a roach, that we would see if the fish would eat it.  Lauren captured the roach in a box, put it in the tank and BAM! Bubba had immediately made it a meal.  Needless to say, our roach population became a great asset in our classroom and our fish became fat and happy.  This literal moment in time, when the first roach went into the tank became the catalyst for our class to create a compost area on our school's front lawn.  After all, if our fish liked roaches we figured they'd love worms; and they did!  That compost pile was the teaching and learning gateway to a variety of grade appropriate curricular areas in science, math, social studies and language arts.  And to think, all this from a little roach.

Teachable Moment #2: Andre Raphael Smith - In the mid-1990's, we took my 4th graders to the Philadelphia Orchestra's childrens concert.  When the concert began, up to the podium to conduct the storied Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music stepped Andre Raphael Smith, a young African-American to conduct.  At that moment in time, Mr. Smith was an Associate Conductor with the Orchestra.  When my students saw the young Black man in his tuxedo and tails, they immediately were filled with wonder and began peppering me with questions as to how this could be?  I had no idea about Mr. Smith's trajectory to conduct on of the world's finest symphony orchestras, so I told my students that they must ask him directly.  When we returned to class, every one of my students wrote a letter to Mr. Smith asking him a variety of questions but all respectfully wondering about the seemingly incongruous picture of him conducting the orchestra.  Shortly thereafter, Mr. ndre Raphael Smith visited our classroom and gave a symposium about classical music, the amazing variety of opportunities available to those who grasped them, and his roots going back many generations in North Carolina and all that implied.

By taking advantage of that teachable moment when Mr. Smith stepped up to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra, my students were able to get an incredible learning experience about the world of classical music and learn about leadership and personal responsibility.  We even were able to achieve mastery of geography standards by following the Philadelphia Orchestra on their subsequent world tour.

Click here to see all 12 Hallmarks of Effective Teaching and Learning.

Iggy; an Eerie Coincidence

As previously stated in a prior post, Iggy was released from his mortal coils in the early morning hours of March 17.  Over the years, Iggy had been a fixture at 5 different schools, including in the classroom of a dear friend and colleague at an elementary school in West Philadelphia.  This teacher also had a "Red Devil" fish as part of her classroom menagerie, which she had in her classrooms for more than 10 years.  Iggy actually shared this classroom with the Red a couple of years ago.  In one of those eerie coincidences that life often presents, when the teacher arrived at her classroom on Wednesday morning, she found (cue the "Twilight Zone" music) that her Red Devil had passed away on precisely the same evening as had Iggy.

Iggy

To my former students and all those who knew Iggy, it is with great sorrow to announce that after 17 years of service in classrooms across the City of Philadelphia and beyond, on this morning, March 17, 2010, Iggy breathed his last. Perhaps it's fitting that our beloved Green Iguana, who fascinated a generation of students should pass away on St. Patty's Day.Today, Wearin' o' the Green will take on special significance. Thanks, Iggy, and goodbye. It's fitting that Iggy died right where he belonged; in a classroom.  Right up to the end, he was still an invaluable educational resource. This year, a particularly precocious, and occasionally rambunctious 3rd grader always made Iggy her first stop. She was responsible for his care and feeding. This young lady's interactions with and responsibility for Iggy seemed to ground and focus her in ways which were very beneficial to her ability to function successfully as a student.

Charrette Compilation

This video demonstrates the powerful circular connections between the design process and authentic, real-world, Project Based Service Learning.   Student citizenship/leadership skills and mastery of curriculum across a variety of disciplines is evident in the video.  The positive effects of student participation on the design process are also demonstrated. 

Contact us here at Guerilla Educators for cutting edge Educational Facilities Design Solutions that work. We'll work with you every step of the way.

Pets in the Classroom; Iggy (contd.)

Early one morning, I came into my 4th grade classroom to start the day.  As usual, I checked on the classroom pets, Iggy first.  As I looked inside Iggy's cage, a cold chill enveloped me.  Iggy was gone!  He had somehow gotten out of his cage and was roaming free in the school, a 5 foot green dragon on the loose.  After my panic subsided, I went searching for the iguana.  I knew that if he could be found before school started (and the attendant chaos the iguana would cause roaming the halls crowded with students, like Godzilla in Tokyo) Iggy would be rather easy to return to my classroom.  From years of experience, we knew that when it is dark, Iggy becomes as inert as a piece of wood.  After a good deal of searching, I found Iggy in a dark nook outside of the 3rd grade classroom, oblivious to his surroundings.  I carefully lifted Iggy and brought him back to the classroom, neither of us any the worse for wear.
Iggy is a Mexican green iguana.  Below, is a video of Iggy's wild Caribbean relatives, the black footed blue iguana, in their natural habitat on the beautiful island of Little Cayman...