Guerilla Educators

"Dream. Design. Build."; PBL at 1st Philly High

"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...

 

Best Practices; "Imagine" Student Voices

The students at Obama Green High School share their thoughts about participating in the "Imagine" Design Project.  Take a look..

Best Practices; Imagine Design Project; Educator Reflections

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...

Sustainably Designed Gingerbread Houses in 4 Parts; 6th Grade Science

Students at East Norriton Middle School design/built models of sustainable gingerbread houses. This kickoff event features a presentation to the 6th grade science class by the Architect, David Mazzocco.  Architect Dave gives an overview of sustainability, its rationale, the 5 LEED categories, and then presents real-time examples of sustainability in the built and natural environments.  Next up, the students will brainstorm design ideas and materials prior to the actual construction of the models, here.  This is Best Practices at its best.  Take a look...

Part 2:

Part 2... 6th Grade Design Groups; "Green" Gingerbread Houses

After Architect Dave's presentation, (click here)  about the elements of susatainability and LEED, the students broke out into small working groups to begin brainstorming their gingerbread house designs.  This video documents their first design session.

Part 3...

Design Session #3; Sustainable Design in 6th Grade

In this video, the 6th graders at East Norriton Middle School have begun constructing their sustainable, edible gingerbread houses. Their design process has included a presentation from a sustainable architect, brainstorming about materials and design, marking up images of their model concepts, and online research about sustainability and LEED. They plan to present and defend their finished models in a couple of days to their peers, their teachers, architects, and the press. Take a look...

ENMS Final Model Presentations; LEED "Certified" Gingerbread Houses

In Part 4 of the Sustainable Gingerbread House Project, Mr. Taylor's 6th grade students presented/defended their finished gingerbread house models. Each design included the LEED elements of Site, Energy, Materials, Water, and Indoor Air Quality. After their presentations, the student designs were evaluated according to a judging rubric that was collaboratively made up by the participating teachers and that included the LEED frameworks.

6th Grade Design Groups; "Green" Gingerbread Houses

After Architect Dave's presentation, (click here)  about the elements of susatainability and LEED, the students broke out into small working groups to begin brainstorming their gingerbread house designs.  This video documents their first design session.

Best Practices in Middle School; the Wooden Boat Factory

In this video, 6th and 7th grade students from a public charter school in Philadelphia, working with world-class Community Partner, the Wooden Boat Factory designed and built 4 boats.  They began with 4 flat squares of boat wood and working in small groups, spent 1/2 day a week building their boats.  Along the way, these students covered many of their curricular requirements in math, reading, social studies, technology, and science.  This is a powerful demonstration of hands on learning at its finest.  Take a look...

Guerilla Educators: Over the years, more then a thousand students have built boats under your guidance at the Wooden Boat Factory.  How did you develop such a unique program that has had such a powerful influence on primarily inner city students?

Geoff McKonly:  Several experiences in my life led me to question educational perspectives and approaches.  As a student in high school I was largely bored.  The world of the classroom seemed removed from the real world.  During this time I fooled around with researching and doing whatever I had an interest in.  For instance I got very into bicycle racing and opened a repair shop with a friend of mine because I was looking for a platform to learn more about something I was interested in.  I had no idea at that point what I was doing and that a lot of what I was teaching myself in pursuing my interest was the same things I was barely passing or flunking in school.  During this time I was learning physics, math, business practices, supply and demand, communication skills, work ethic, and traveling all over the place racing bicycles.  I was at one point waking up at 5am to train and working in the shop after school.  During this time one of my teachers told me that a lot of my teachers thought I was strung out on drugs  because I didn’t seem to care one bit about school work.  I had created a world that allowed me to do all kinds of cool stuff and when I found out that my teachers thought I had a problem yet never had bothered to find out what I was doing it really made me stop and think.  I lost a lot of respect for many of my high school teachers at this point.  One of the subjects I flunked was geometry in 10th grade.  I repeated it in 11th grade and spent my time during my second round in geometry class reading Catcher and the Rye.  This had a profound effect on my perspective on authority and gave me courage to follow my own path.
Besides bicycle racing I was spending four days a week teaching skiing in the winter, the summers sailing with my father, cousin and on my own and a time on wood working projects.  My parents were very upset with me about my school work but they gave me tremendous freedom and support to pursue my interests in the other areas.  These activities comprised my formative education.  Bicycle racing taught me determination, teaching skiing empathy and communication, wood working problem solving and sailing persistence and self-reliance.
When I went onto college and worked various jobs this varied background of recreational pursuits was relevant to working towards success.  I found myself relating things to one or another experience in my time out of school.  The practical nature of my background experiences served as a distant link to a solution I didn’t fully understand the nature of the related problem. The key to my interest in the problem was the connection between my disinterest in my formal education and my innate understanding that I was not stupid.  I was lucky in the tremendous amount of confidence I had in knowing this.
I had a sense of what it was that was useful to me in navigating life and that it had come through doing, trial and error, experimentation and hard work.  It came from the opportunity that my parents had provided me to create and make mistakes.  Not from my time in school within a world disconnected to reality. 
All of our programs at Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory focus on opportunities that are real and challenging.  My experiences have been what has driven me to begin Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory and which continues to drive our programming.  For example, our most popular class consists of boys and girls building 15’ wooden canoes.  The canoes are a basic boat building project but involve skills that are a challenge to the beginner.  We are teaching basic tool use, hand eye coordination, individual responsibility and critical thinking.  Regardless of age, the project is a difficult project for a beginner to undertake.  Teachers often get frustrated with their students as they watch them struggle, until they try it themselves and see that the work is hard.  The end project is a usable boat that is donated to camps reinforcing the fact that the quality needs to be sufficient to have hundreds of other kids use the end product. 

LBJ NetZero Middle School

On November, 11-12, a select group of educational facilities planners from CEFPI had the opportunity to visit and participate in a NetZero Symposium at the Lady Bird Johnson Middle School, located in Irving, Texas.  In this video, tech expert Glenn Meeks and I were given a tour of the school by Alejandro, a student there.  The school is virtually paperless and produces more energy than it uses which is then sold back to the local utility company.  Under the awesome direction of Principal Angie Gaylord, every aspect of the facility is used as a Project Based teaching and learning tool.  Take a look... Special thanks for Scott Layne, Assitant Superintendent for the Irving School District and all of the wonderful students and staff who made this a very special event.

To view the video in full screen visit our YouTube page.

 

Cape May Dolphins

We observed Atlantic Bottle Nose Dolphins off the coast of Cape May, New Jersey.

Take a look...

Project Based Learning; Best Practices; Building a Bridge in 4th Grade

This video captures an activity conducted with my students as part of a bridge building project conducted in cooperation with the American Institute of Architecture's, Architecture in Education program.   It was also my first video.  My students were to measure the height of the Henry Avenue Bridge using a plumb bob.  Take a look...

This is a very powerful project that incorporates historical aspects of the American Revolution, geometry, public speaking, working cooperatively, ratio and proportion and a whole menu of grade appropriate curricular objectives and state mandated standards.  It also demonstrates many of the 10 Hallmarks of 21st Century Teachng and Learning.

Project Based Service Learning; The Children's Water Monitoring Network

This video demonstrates a wide range of positive academic and civic benefits for students who participate in water monitoring Service Learning projects.   The video is a compilation of Service Learning projects in 3rd and 4th grades at Harrity Elementary an inner city school in Philadelphia and at GreenWoods a Philly public charter school.  Take a look...

The charter school students conducted macrobiotic studies on a nearby stream and the inner city school students did chemical testing. In both cases, test results were sent electronically to the Philadelphia Water Department as part of their ongoing efforts to maintain water quality. It is clear that these students are engaged, doing important work as citizens, and are achieving mastery of curricular requirements in a very powerful, effective way.