GUERILLA EDUCATORS IS DEDICATED TO REALTIME EDUCATIONAL BEST PRACTICES IN ACTION. WE ARE A GLOBAL LEADER IN THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EFFECTIVE PROJECT BASED LEARNING ON THE FRONTLINES IN AND OUT OF CLASSROOMS. WE ALSO CONNECT EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES PLANNERS WITH THE TEACHERS/LEARNERS WHO USE THOSE SPACES.
The Barack Obama Green Charter High School located in Plainfield, NJ, opened its doors in September, 2009. In that time, the school has been in 3 different locations including their present site, a converted office building in the Downtown area.
Today, the Student Design Team from Obama Green met with the owners of Treelawn, a 2+ acre estate in Plainfield that will be their new permanent home. The Student Design Team has worked closely with the SSP architectural group and others to qualitatively contribute their design ideas for the new teaching and learning spaces.
The students shared their ideas for the outdoor classrooms and the student commons areas with the owners, who have been married for 59 years and have lived at Treelawn since 1987. The legacy of good that will continue at Treelawn with the high school made a deep impression on both the students and the owners.
In early November, 2006, the Guerilla Educators blog went live. This year, we celebrate our 8th year (and counting!). Here one of our first posts about a Project at a client school that included a visit between students from a 4th grade at Blankenburg Elementary School and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Wangari Maathai...
"Dream. Design. Build.", a Project assisted by Guerrilla Educators with 10th graders from 1st Philadelphia Charter High School demonstrates the critical intersections between Project Based Learning, Community Partnerships, and STEM. "Dream" was developed as a multi-disciplinary, student-centered way to connect the actual design and construction of their new high school to teachers, students, and curriculum. Over the first month of this school year, the Project took place in Geometry, Chemistry, and Social Studies classes and helped students achieve academic and civic proficiencies in each of those subject areas. Starting with the student visit to the actual construction site, the videos experientially document the actual processes that took place with "Dream" in, and out of, the classrooms. This is the very best of best practices in action. Take a look...
Under the auspices of the International Education Services Corporation (IESC), high schoolstudents from China were hosted by students from the Barack Obama Green Charter High School for what Obama Green called International STEM Day. The activity shown in the video builds off of the "Imagine"design/build Project where the US students spent a semester renovating an abandoned industrial building in Downtown Plainfield, NJ as the next iteration of Obama Green. The collaboration with the Chinese students is projected to become part of a semester long international collaboration between the US and their Chinese peers. We're privileged that Guerilla Educators played a part in bringing this together. Take a look...
As the "Imagine" student design renovation Project winds down, we hear from the educators at Obama Green High School about their impressions of the Project. Take a look...
The "Imagine" design Project continues at the Barack Obama Green Charter High School, in Plainfoeld, New Jersey. In this video, the students are thinking critically, hypothesizing, and problem solving around getting the scale determined so all of their interior renovation design will properly fit within the site boundaries. Take a look...
See this Project activity within the context of "Imagine" that has been going on since January, 2014, here...
With one pronounced, impactful exception, 21st century teaching and learning best practices are largely timeless and, as you will see, transcend grade level and other demographics. Sound educational best practices in the 21st century share certain strategic characteristics that have been effective through the ages. To that end, we have identified ten experience based Hallmarks of 21st Century Teaching and Learning that can be used as touchstones in the educator's pedagogical approach to teaching and learning.
The overarching caveat, of course, is that technology in the 21st century has permeated most aspects of education and culture and has changed everything. How we, as educators, use technology with our students is now the key to unlocking those 21st century global skillsets so that our students can lead and compete in a world where geography has become, in many ways, superfluous.
The Hallmarks:
Project Based Learning/STEM
Student Ownership/Engagement
Collaborative Teaching/Cooperative Learning
Citizenship/Leadership/Personal Responsibility
Community Partnerships
Mastery of Curriculum/Development of Higher Order Thinking Skills
Technology/21st Century Skills
The Teachable Moment/Agility
Reporting Out/Celebration
Fun
The Hallmarks:
Hallmark 1: Project Based Learning/STEM - Project Based Learning is the primary gateway through which the Hallmarks are realized. There are consistent characteristics that make a Project viable. Some of these characteristics include that Projects are:
Hands-On
Collaborative
Multi-Disciplinary
Student Centered
Technology infused
Real-Time
Real-World
Flexible
Just as any discussion about the design of 21st century teaching/learning spaces includes, by nature, flexibility of those spaces, so too the design of 21st century teaching and learning must also be flexible. With technology an integral aspect of our lives, more than ever our students have individual learning styles that must be taken into account. PBL provides a plethora of opportunities for students and teachers to be engaged in ways that are best suited to their optimum learning styles.
This short video demonstrates a real world boat building Project featuring middle grade students at a Philadelphia charter school that authentically models these characteristics:
Hallmark 2: OWNERSHIP/ENGAGEMENT - When students are interested and invested in the completion of a school-based project, they begin to own their educational processes. With ownership, all aspects of their school career, including mastery of curriculum become important to them. With ownership also comes:
Personal responsibility.
Employment of strategies like critical thinking, generating hypotheses, and extension of learning becomes commonplace.
Motivation to succeed.
Ownership starts with you, the teacher! Get invested in the processes of PBL. Initiate projects with your students that interest you, so you can authentically model ownership.
ENGAGEMENT - Ownership and engagement are essentially 2 sides of the same coin. When students take ownership and personal responsibility for the successful outcome of their Project, it follows that they are engaged and interested. Any good Service Learning project will present students with many opportunities to think critically, make hypotheses, and extend what they have learned. Engagement is the door to performing these important skills, which in turn, engenders academic and civic success.
This high school Project activity using the built environment is a great example of student engagement: https://youtu.be/Mu5vODUKTeg
Hallmark 3: COLLABORATIVE TEACHING/COOPERATIVE LEARNING - Teacher collaborations present powerful opportunities for educators to learn from each other, which can increase the strategies available to them in their pedagogical toolboxes. With technology, it is now just as possible to collaborate virtually with the teacher across the globe as it is across the hall.
Students working cooperatively in small groups to achieve project-based goals is a powerful strategy to achieve curricular and standards based objectives. Moreover, when students are focused on the goals of a project, they are more inclined to negotiate with their peers which clarifies their understandings and solidifies their learning. The cooperative nature of small groups working together for successful completion of the project also has an extremely positive effect on the classroom climate and behavior issues are significantly mitigated.
This Project with post graduate design students demonstrates collaboration and cooperation experientially: https://youtu.be/mr04qE46fXg
Hallmark 4: CITIZENSHIP/LEADERSHIP/PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY - Development of good citizenship skills as part of the fabric of teaching and learning is critical to the long term, real-life success of our students.
Civic skills give greater depth, context and meaning to student mastery of curriculum and standards. Integral to a Project is the inclusion of Community Partnerships. Professionals who freely give their time and expertise to benefit students are models of good citizenship.
LEADERSHIP - Project Based Learning requires administrative and teacher leadership while developing those qualities in our students. One of the key components of effective leadership is having the humility to know what you don't know and having the ability to listen and learn from those who do. So, for teachers and administrators:
Leadership involves having the inner strength to make decisions and to take personal responsibility for the consequences of those decisions.
Leadership is enabling those whom you lead to be innovative problem solvers without feeling threatened by their success.
Leadership is being able to buffer and protect those you lead from distractions and impediments so they may carry out their responsibilities unimpeded by those distractions.
Leadership is the ability to turn mistakes into "teachable moments" rather than "blamable moments".
Leadership is knowing when to step back to give opportunities for those in your charge to take the lead, while understanding that ultimate responsibility rests with you.
Leaders understand that leadership is a way of life and therefore unbound by the time constraints of the school or business day/week.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY - It is incumbent upon us as educators to instill in our students that, as much as the teachers have a responsibility to present information in interesting, informative, and innovative ways, students also have the personal responsibility to make sure that they have mastered the requisite information to satisfy the goals and objectives of the Project. Student engagement, ownership, and interest in the successful completion of the Project engenders personal responsibility. Ultimately, one of our most critical functions as educators is to inculcate this sense of personal responsibility in our students.
Hallmark 5: COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS - Community Partners are the heart of Project Based and 21st century teaching and learning. Having real-world professionals and others in the community work with our students to help address real-world problems present powerful opportunities for students to get involved and engaged as citizens and leaders while achieving and retaining, curricular and standards-based proficiencies. Community Partners also model good citizenship/leadership and provide opportunities for taking class trips that are fun and demonstrate real-world learning skills.
This video demonstrates how Community Partnerships both in, and out of, classrooms can have a transformational effect on students: https://youtu.be/PPrfbiVZmxo
Hallmark 6: MASTERY OF CURRICULUM/HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS - The primary rationale to employ Project Based Learning is, in fact, as a tool for student achievement, both academically and socially. A project's success is ultimately determined by whether the project-based activities are connected to grade appropriate curriculum and state standards and more importantly, whether these connections enable students to achieve mastery across a range of academic disciplines. We have seen that when students work within the Project Based methodology they own their educational processes, are engaged in a project's activities, work cooperatively to achieve success, and see citizenship modeled by the Community Partners, then mastery of curriculum becomes more likely.
This video shows second graders making and testing hypotheses: https://youtu.be/b133AGFclCY
HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS - Universal access to the internet by our students has changed the equation of how they learn, whether we, as educators, are ready for this change or not. Unlike the traditional teaching and learning experience, with the Project Based methodology students are gaining knowledge experientially. Rather than feeding the students disconnected facts to be regurgitated on a test, Project Teachers coach the students to apply that knowledge to real world situations which engenders Higher Order Thinking Skills like evaluation, synthesis, and analysis. Many of the videos on the Guerilla Educators blog authentically demonstrate HOTS in Action.
Hallmark 7: TECHNOLOGY/21ST CENTURY SKILLS - Technology is the #2 pencil of the 21st century. As such, any good Service Learning project will be embedded with a wide array of real-world technology-based applications. We still, by and large, teach interminably about how to use tech applications with our students. Well, that ship has sailed given the fact that the younger we are, the greater our ability to use technology in an agile way. So now, more than ever we need an educational paradigm shift away from learning how to use technology and towards using it.
This high school Project activity using the built environment is a great example of students using technology: https://youtu.be/Mu5vODUKTeg
Hallmark 8: THE TEACHABLE MOMENT/Agility - Agility is one of the foundational tenets of 21st century education. Agile educators nimbly take advantage of those "off the curriculum grid" spontaneous learning opportunities when they occur. These teachable moments are powerful opportunities for effective, authentic teaching and learning to take place. Being able to identify and use real-time teachable moments is one of those transcendent qualities that good educators possess. Click here to see two examples of teachable moments in real-time.
Hallmark 9: REPORTING OUT/CELEBRATION - Students will report out to peers, school staff, and the larger community:
What they learned.
How they addressed the problems or issues.
Their final products. ...and
They will be celebrated for their important, authentic, real-time work.
Hallmark 1O: FUN - As a 4th grader concisely put it some years ago, "Teacher John, if it ain't fun, why would we do it?" School and Fun? While the terms are usually perceived to be in diametric opposition to each other, students having FUN within the framework of their school-based activities is an integral aspect of Effective Teaching and Learning and is one of the overarching links that facilitate academic and civic success.
This short video is a compilation from 2 elementary schools conducting on-site water monitoring and having FUN!:
To see powerful, authentic demonstrations of the Hallmarks in action, take a look at this "Seeds to Trees" horticulture project... <
and click on our Service Learning Video Compilation, as well:
Let us show you how to incorporate the Hallmarks into your teaching/learning program. Our Professional Development Workshops demonstrate in a practical, hands-on way how educators, using the Hallmarks as touchstones, can be more effective. Contact John Sole at: [email protected] for more info.
The "Imagine" Design Project continues with students from the Barack Obama Green Charter High School making a class visit to the SSP Architectural Group's offices. The students were given a tour of the work areas and were able to interact with the educational facilities planners there. After the tour, they presented their work thus far to the architects on their re-design ideas for the next iteration of the Obama Green physical teaching and learning spaces. Take a look...
Special thanks to Jeanne and Jay Perantoni and all the folks at SSP Architectural Group for allowing us to invade their spaces and learn by their example. ...and for the pizza!
Click here to view other video examples of the "Imagine" design process.
The "Imagine" Project documents the design processes between students at the Barack Obama Green Charter High School located in Plainfield New Jersey and their expert Community Partners, both real-time and virtual. Students participating in the "Imagine" Project are re-designing an actual unused industrial space in Plainfield that very well may become the actual physical facility of the school in 2015 and beyond. "Imagine" is also a powerful catalyst for students to achieve academic and civic proficiencies. Take a look...
Best Practices; "Imagine" Design Project Student Voices
"Imagine" Design Project; Teacher Reflections
A remarkable session took place between students at the Barack Obama Green Charter High School, in Plainfield, NJ and David Schrader, from the offices of SchraderGroup Architecture, located in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia. David livestreamed from Philly to Plainfield to work with the students there about programming of physical school spaces, zoning, and design. This virtual session with the Obama Green students is the second in a series of web-based "live" sessions between Community Partners like SchraderGroup and the students. With the critical support of Community Partners, students at Obama Green are imagining their school, currently located in a storefront at Downtown Plainfield, as they would like it to be. Take a look...
This video is a mash up of 2 design sessions that took place on February 26 and 27, 2014 under the guidance of architect Jay Perantoni at The Barack Obama Green Charter High School, in Plainfield, New Jersey. The video demonstrates authentic student involvement at the very beginning of an actual design process that is engaging, curriculum based, and fun and that addresses real world, community related issues that are important to them. This is Service Learning at a very high degree of effectiveness. Take a look...
Students at the Barack Obama Green Charter High School continue their "Imagine" design Project. They are re-imagining their school spaces as they would like them to be. In this video, they have their first SketchUp session with Marcus and Bianca from SSP Architects. "Imagine" is part of the actual design renovation process of an abandoned urban structure which is projected to become the new charter high school. Take a look...
This following is a 5 minute audio from Ewan McIntosh, one of the world's most creative thinkers about education and educational facilities design, to the students at Obama Green High School about their design processes. Thanks, Ewan!
The "Imagine" Design Project continues with students from the Barack Obama Green Charter High School making a class visit to the SSP Architectural Group's offices. The students were given a tour of the work areas and were able to interact with the educational facilities planners there. After the tour, they presented their work thus far to the architects on their re-design ideas for the next iteration of the Obama Green physical teaching and learning spaces. Take a look...
Special thanks to Jeanne and Jay Perantoni and all the folks at SSP Architectural Group for allowing us to invade their spaces and learn by their example. ...and for the pizza!
The "Imagine" design Project continues at the Barack Obama Green Charter High School, in Plainfield, New Jersey. In this video, the students are thinking critically, hypothesizing, and problem solving around getting the scale determined so all of their interior renovation design will properly fit within the site boundaries.
Click here to view other video examples of the "Imagine" design process.
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