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Author: Pete Reynolds

Collab Lab 64: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs ,

Our November Collab Lab explored placed-based engagement–what it can offer students, and the ways we might engage students around particular places in their neighborhood, their lives, or the broader community.

Discussion

We started the conversation by asking participants to describe for their tablemates a public space that holds meaning for them. We then asked each group to identify the what helped create that sense of meaning. Across our discussion groups, several key themes emerged:

  • The opportunity to experience a place over an extended period of time– within a single visit or across multiple visits
  • The sense of agency/ownership/belonging/feeling of welcome individuals had within those places
  • A feeling of connection to a place’s history, their own experience within it, or with the people of that place

The ability of participants to experience a place through multiple senses, bring their own knowledge or experience to their understanding of a place, physically engage with or within a place, or recognize a feeling of peace (or danger), all add to the ways we find meaning or a sense of magic and wonder in a place.

From there we asked participants to identify what they came to understand about places which hold meaning for them, that a casual observer, or one who had not spent much time in the place would miss.  Here, the temporal experience of places came to the fore– how it changes during the day, with the seasons or over the years; how it evolves or adapts physically, in how it is used, and the meaning it holds for those who inhabit or care for the place.  Participants also recognized that much of the meaning a place has for them is a product of what they bring to the place, that there are multiple ways of experiencing the same place, and often unwritten rules which guide one’s conduct within it.

As a final point of discussion, we asked how students might gain that sense of meaning, or a deeper understanding of places within Milwaukee.  Here, we found clear agreement across the discussion groups– “Get out of the way”. Students need time and the freedom to experience and explore places on their own terms.  The meaning of a place can’t be proscribed for students, it needs to grow organically from their experience, knowledge, and understanding of that place.

We can however help set up the conditions that can allow that to happen:

  • Don’t fill or control every minute of a field trip or field experience, leave time for students to explore and experience the place you’ve brought them to on their own terms.
  • Build a classroom culture that welcomes reflection, understanding of the experience of others, self exploration, and a willingness to share ideas
  • Leverage the fact that each student comes with their own experience of the city and connections to different parts of it
  • Start with places students do know and care about, and let them explore outward from there
  • Allow students to engage with new places in the context of issues they care about

Participants recognize that curriculum, access, proximity, and time all pose constraints as we seek to engage students in building a deeper understanding and connection of places within Milwaukee. But there was also a hopeful thread of thought that looked to kindle a re-enchantment with the world for students and a recognition that one can find wonder and meaning within the most mundane places.  That starts with simply creating the opportunity and getting out of the way.

Thanks

A big thanks to all who were able to join us for the discussion, and especially our Featured Participants:

Lauren Instenes— Project Coordinator for the MKE Roots Project, Marquette University

Joseph Kaltenberg — MKE Parks Manager, City of Milwaukee – Department of Public Works

Arijit Sen — Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies, UW Milwaukee

Angela Vickio — Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Thanks also to MSOE’s STEM Center for hosting us.

Resources

We didn’t get much time to talk through Arijit Sen’s Field School project, but he did share several links to that work with us:

J.B Jackson’s work looking at ordinary landscapes was also mention. Here’s a link for further reading https://daily.jstor.org/j-b-jackson-and-the-ordinary-american-landscape/

 

 

Collab Lab 63: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs , ,

The ability of teachers and students to engage effectively in difficult conversations, across that gap or amongst peers is central to creating the kinds of opportunities we want for students. At a bare minimum, those skills are needed to offer and receive effective feedback on student’s work. They are even more important if we want to engage students (and teachers) on challenging topics or to drive change within their school or in the broader community. The centrality of those skills seemed like a good place to kick off our  9th season of Collab Labs.

On October 10th we gathered at UWM’s Lubar Entrepreneurship Center for Collab Lab 63 and a discussion focused on Empowering All Voices. Our work for the evening engaged participants to map factors that allow all voices to participate in brave conversations.

The maps shown here were captured and included here unedited. The primary two goals of creating this experience for the attendees were to:

  • Discuss and reflect on what group members with different backgrounds but shared purpose consider relevant factors and how they relate and impact each other.
  • Reflect on how you would apply the insights generated to your own ‘self-management’ in a group setting with familiar and unfamiliar participants.

We did not explicitly ask attendees to consider a K12 setting with teacher-student(s) and teacher-teacher interactions. We are in the process of integrating these maps into our larger model, and will share that work in a subsequent post.

  • What do you see in the maps when you look a bit more closely? Are there commonalities that stand out to you?
  • What would be a question you might ask (one of the teams) to help connect some dots or further complete the map?

Thanks again to our Featured Participants:

Thanks also to Ben Trager from UWM’s Center for Student Experience & Talent for hosting us at UWM, and to his Ed Policy students who were a great addition to the conversation.

Join us on November 14th for Collab Lab 64: Place Based Engagement

Collab Labs Return for Season 9

Pete Reynolds Blog

Looking for a little rejuvenation?

If you’ve missed the chance to connect with passionate individuals from K12 and beyond, find a bit of inspiration, and get energized for what the school year could be, you’re in luck.  We kick off our 9th season of Collab Labs on Thursday October 10th at UWM’s Lubar Center for Entrepreneurship. 

Collab Lab 63: Empowering All Voices

Collab Lab 63 will focus on Empowering All Voices– what does it take to enable brave conversations with and between students? What becomes possible when we do? Join us at 5:30 for a bite to eat before we dive into the discussion at 6:00.

 

Collab Lab Sprints

If you want a jump start on putting ideas from a Collab Lab into practice, join us for a Collab Lab sprint.  We’ll kick off the first of these mini projects on Monday October 7th with a four week sprint focused on brave conversations. Over the course of the sprint we will give you the framework for short exercises you can run with your students. A check-in call each week with us and peers participating in the sprint  will give you the chance to share what’s working, and where you have questions, and what your students have been able to do.

Other Sessions

November through May, we’ll be back at MSOE’s STEM Center on the second Thursday of each month that doesn’t begin with “Januar”.

November 14th
Collab Lab 64: Place Based Engagement
December 12th
Collab Lab 65: Beyond Skills – Building Capabilities
February 13th
Collab Lab 66: Engaging Families
March 13th
Collab Lab 67: Connecting to Community
April 10th
Collab Lab 68: Making Progress in a Turbulent System
May 8th
Collab Lab 69: Celebrate & Re/Connect

 

Dream Big

Pete Reynolds Blog, Initiatives

What’s your moonshot?

What’s the big thing you’d like your students to accomplish– not this year, probably not the next, but what you and they might work up to over the next five years or so?

Coming off the pandemic has been tough, for students and teachers. Next year could be more of the same. Or it could be a chance to work towards something you are passionate about. How much more energy would you have if next year was the first leg of your moonshot.

During the week of June 17th we’ll offer a workshop to help you and your like minded compatriots craft that big vision you want to work towards. You’ll identify what needs to happen to get there, the partners you’ll need along the way, and the first steps to take to start moving.

That same week you’ll also be able to participate in any of several sessions where we will explore moonshot visions for:

  • How we might engage students to take on big challenges related to water, sustainability, and the environment?
  • What would we want students, parents, and teachers to experience to heal the anxiety too many of them have around math?
  • How can we equip students to take on challenges related to the built environment and advocate for the changes they would like to see in their schools, neighborhoods, and cities?
  • What student led enterprises could leverage the assets of a school to offer rich learning experiences and create new opportunities to engage with the community?
  • How can we foster brave conversations, build trust, and elevate student voices to drive the changes that allow students and teachers to feel safe, affirmed, and masterful at school.

Where there is interest and energy, we’ll reconvene for project design workshops the weeks of July 29th and August 5th. You’ll come out of those sessions with a solid plan for the 2024-25 school year that moves your big vision one step closer.

We have a short survey to capture interest. Please take a minute to share your thoughts. You can find that here.

Yes, I can dream big!

Building out our system map

Pete Reynolds Blog

 

Student’s in the Champion’s Program at Wauwatosa captured what drives a sense of belonging for them.

Where we started

In our final two Collab Labs last spring, we explored and mapped factors that drive feelings of safety and affirmation for students and teachers. Since then we’ve been tweaking the system map to reflect what we hear in Collab Labs and from educators who have used the map to spur conversations with their students. 

While this is a great starting point, we think there’s a lot more that could be done to:

  • develop the model,
  • explore how it can be leveraged to elevate student voices, build stronger relationships between teachers and students, or address other key factors exposed within the model,
  • develop a platform and processes that allow ongoing contributions, refinements, and extensions by students, teachers, and the broader school community.

At this point the model has been captured in Kumu as a system map. To move forward we’re putting together a series of challenges that students, in collaboration with their teachers and community partners, might take on to advance specific aspects of this effort. The design work for that challenge will get going this summer, but here’s a sense of what that could include:

Revise and Extend the Model

  • Identify factors, relationships, or actors not already shown in the system model which directly or indirectly impacts factors that are shown.
  • Produce content related to a factor or cluster of factors that would help others better understand the experience of students, teachers, or other members of the broader school community
  • Identify assets in the community (resources, organizations, programming, etc.) that may be useful in addressing one or more factors or clusters of factors.
  • Identify alternate, or more appropriate terms for factors and actors represented in the model
  • Propose revisions to the system map where the factors, relationships, and actors shown fail to adequately capture the experience of students, teachers, or other members of the broader school community.

Platform Development

  • Propose a method or platform by which the system map may be shared, amended, updated, and extended with input from individuals or teams working in different organizations, and locations
  • Propose a method or platform by which user generated content (video, audio, text, images) related to a factor or cluster of factors may be shared with others.
  • Propose a method or service by which 1) factors identified within the system map might be used to assess the current state of a school, school community, or district
  • Propose a method or service to capture data that could be used to assess the relative importance of relationships between factors

Process

  • Develop and document methods to validate the relationships shown in the system model
  • Develop and document methods to elicit exploration of the model by one or more groups within the broader school community and capture that thinking.
  • Develop and document methods by which students or other members of the broader school community might create compelling stories or images related to a specific factor or cluster of factors that would help others better understand their experience.

Solutions

  • Design, prototype, and test an intervention to drive a specific factor or cluster of factors in a positive direction within a learning environment.
  • Design, validate and implement a process (product) for students and teachers to build awareness and practice of the factors and how they can adopt them in their learning culture for improved learning results.

Design Goal

The week of June 17th we’ll pull a group of students, educators, and community partners together to frame the challenge. Our goal is to equip students and teachers to take on specific elements within the challenge that align with their interests and the learning experience educators want to create for their students. We’ll look for opportunities for students and educators to collaborate with peers from other schools, share what they have learned/developed, and engage with community partners that can support their work.

Intrigued? Let us know, and we’ll keep you up to date as we set up the work for June.

    I'd like to learn more about Learn Deep's System Map Challenge and how I can get involved












    Arch 302 Students Review Findings

    Pete Reynolds Blog

    Students in Arijit Sen’s Arch 302 class gathered in the SARUP Commons this morning to talk through what they’ve seen in the first month of their service learning/field experience supporting K-12 students and teachers at 17 area schools. This is all part of an effort that will culminate in design proposals for each school which better align the physical design of classroom with the needs of educators and learners. In the process, a huge number of Milwaukee students engage on a weekly basis with a near peer mentor pursing an architecture career. It’s what can happen when UWM’s School of Architecture & Urban Planning and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Student Experience & Talent have the chance to connect with area teachers who want a richer experience for their own students.

    UWM Architecture Students Supporting 25 Teachers in 17 Schools

    Pete Reynolds Blog, Experiments , , ,

    We’re in our second year of a working with Arijit Sen’s Architecture & Human Behavior class (Arch 302)  at UWM. In collaboration with UWM’s Center for Student Experience & Talent (SET), we’ve placed the 150+ Arch 302 students in service learning roles with 25 teachers in 17 area schools, and with us. The focus of students’ work for Arch 302 is the design of learning spaces, and the 1-2 hours per week they each spend to support teachers and students serves as a field experience and preparation for their design challenge. Over the course of the semester, In teams of 2-3, Arch 302 students will develop design proposals to better address the needs of teachers, students, and staff who use the classrooms Arch 302 students are supporting.  At five of those schools, teams are supporting teachers and students who have take on a parallel design challenge at their school. The two teams placed with us are focused on the room we use for most of our Collab Labs at MSOE’s STEM Center. 

    The framework we have in place for this effort creates wins all around– a richer experience for Arch 302 students, classroom support for teachers and schools, and exposure to new ways schools might look at the learning spaces they offer. Beyond all of that, given the number of Arch 302 students involved, roughly 2,500 K-12 students most of whom are in majority minority schools with high percentages of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, have weekly exposure to a young person pursuing the field. For an industry with a shocking lack of diversity, this is a big step in building a pipeline of talent that looks a lot more like Milwaukee.

    This collaboration was made possible because Professor Sen had a vision for what it could mean for his students, SET had processes in place to match UWM students to placement opportunities, and we’ve built up a big enough network of schools and teachers that we could find placements for everyone in such a large class. We’re continuing to explore how we can continue to sustain and leverage this model. if you’d like to get involved, let us know.

     

     

     

     

    Collab Lab 59: Recap & Notes

    Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs ,

    After a break in January, our Collab Lab Series resumed last night with a session focused on dealing with setbacks and recognizing wins.

    Challenges

    Began the discussion with an inventory of the challenges and setbacks students face when they work together on open ended projects.  These challenges primarily revolve around:

    Expectations

    • Focus on grades
    • Belief that their voice won’t matter
    • Opposing wants — freedom vs control
    • Expectations are unclear

    An ability to deal with uncertainty

    • Lack of confidence
    • Being open to the idea that there is no one right answer 
    • Aversion to risk/failure

    Communication & collaboration

    • Inability for team members to agree on a common approach
    • Ability to deal with personality conflicts within a team
    • Ability to give and receive constructive criticism
    • Lack of accountability
    • Lack of feedback

    Project structure

    • Project lacks structure that would allow students to make progress
    • Space/time to iterate
    • Access to resources necessary to effectively take on the challenge

    Skills 

    • Ability to arrive at a good definition/understanding of the problem at hand
    • Time management
    • Need for higher level thinking skills

    Strategies

    In our second round, our discussion shifted to look at strategies to help students address each of these challenges.

    Expectations

    • Set clear expectations with examples
    • Set up an environment with clear expectations for communication, collaboration, willingness to learn from things that did not go as expected.

    Dealing with uncertainty

    • Students have repeated opportunities to immerse themselves in the challenge and circle back with their teacher for input and guidance
    • Acknowledge big feelings to help understand that “failure” is not personal

    Communication & collaboration

    • Understand the context of students life beyond school and what they may need to work effectively with peers
    • Small, frequent check-ins
    • Create time/space for purposeful reflection

    Project Structure

    • Students are given a clear view of the process they will follow to arrive at a solution even if they can’t yet see where it might lead
    • Decompose challenge into smaller pieces
    • Structure challenges students to stretch at each step of the process, but those steps are within reach, and build on each other
    • Connect students with what they need when
    • Repeated opportunities to practice and develop skills within the context of the project

    Skills

    • Both students and teachers are equipped with the skills they need/supported in their development of those skills
    • Skills required build on those already acquired

    A Simple Tool

    With this inventory in hand, we recounted the story of the Number Talks Quick Refence Card that was developed out of a project we did with K-12 teachers and UWM Math faculty.  That project supported teams of teachers who wanted to establish Number Talks as a regular practice in their elementary school classrooms. Though teachers could clearly see the value of the practice, it was something new, so they wanted something that could rely on to help keep them on the right path.  One of the teachers suggested a small card of reminders that should could hold and glance down at while working with students.  The card we developed includes three sections: Talk Moves (strategies), Probes (questions to ask), and Pats on the Back (signs that things are working). 

    As the final exercise of the night, we asked each of our discussion groups to develop their own Quick Reference Cards for open ended projects.  Here’s what they came up with:

    Group 1

    Moves

    • Give yourself time
    • Accept “I don’t know”
    • Build personal connections
    • You’ve got this
    • Accept congratulations

    Probes

    • Tell me more…
    • How might we…?

    Pats on the Back

    • I was afraid to try this but I did anyway

      Group 2

    Moves

    • Yes, and?
    • Build community
    • Set Goals
    • Normalize failure

    Probes

    • What did we learn?
    • What is your why?
    • What makes you uncomfortable?
    • What do you bring to the team?
    • How might we…?

    Pats on the Back

    • Unprompted reflection

    Group 3

    Moves

    • Are students in the right groups?
    • What does this student need?
    • How is my relationship with this student?

    Probes

    • How will you define success?

    Pats on the Back

    • Students are engaged
    • Students are gaining essential skills
    • Students give and receive feedback
    • Students get the feedback they need
    • Students move from “I” to “we”

    Thanks again to our Featured Participants:

    • PJ Dever — Executive Director for Playworks in Wisconsin
    • Lana M. Minshew — Assistant Professor, Director of the Human-Centered Design Lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin
    • Nina Johnston — Program Manager of the Human-Centered Design Lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin

    A big thanks also goes out to Anthony, Audrey, Connor, Olivia, & Madeline, Architecture students at UWM. They are joining us this semester for Collab Labs and other sessions we run at the STEM Center as part of service learning field experience for Arch 302. In another example of 1 + 1 = 3, The students gain a field experience as they look at the design of learning spaces (in this case the STEM Center), we get help setting things up and cleaning up after each session, and our Collab Lab participants get the perspective of 5 individuals not far removed from K-12 who find themselves navigating open-ended, collaborative, community-engaged projects.

    Thanks also to MSOE’s STEM Center for hosting the Collab Lab Series, as well as the students from Pathways High School and Bradley Tech who joined in person/on Zoom.

    UWM School of Architecture Hosts Golda Meir Students

    Pete Reynolds Blog ,

    On Monday UWM’s School of Architecture (SARUP) hosted more than 40 middle and high school students from Golda Meir who are participating in our learning space design challenge. Members of UWM’s AIA student chapter led students on a tour of the building and supported Golda students in a hands on design challenge facilitated by Linda Keane from Next.cc

    The session gave students a chance to think through some of the changes they might explore for learning spaces at Golda as well as a view into the work of SARUP students. Over the course of the spring semester Golda students will have the regular support of SARUP students in their classroom as they work through their designs. SARUP students enrolled in Arch 302 (Human Factors) will offer their time in a service learning role to gain a first hand look at how learning spaces function in preparation for the designs they will develop for the schools they serve.

    Building Community and a Joy for Math

    Pete Reynolds Blog, Math Conversations ,

    Math = A Traumatic Experience.

    It’s almost universal and it stands in the way of our current generation navigating elementary, middle and high school with a different experience regarding math.

    Parents who have a negative experience with math are less likely to engage with their student children about homework, encourage them to attend school, etc.

    So this school year, Learn Deep is conducting a pilot, in coordination with Carmen Schools of Science and Technology’s Stellar Elementary, faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Math department and our friend Bernie Traversari, with a small seed grant from the Wisconsin After School Network to experiment with how we might provide opportunities for parents to modify their perception of math.

    Our experiment Tuesday night: arrange for parents and their children to spend time together in discourse, while attempting to solve math-based puzzles in an after school setting. Since many parents are non-English speaking, we provided UWM student support for translation when needed.

    The overall sentiment at the end of the evening: I enjoyed working on solving the challenges together, I will definitely be back for the next math evening, I wish we had math in this way when I went to school x years ago.

    Are you a school district interested in addressing parent math trauma as a way to enable parent involvement in the learning process? Follow our story as we host 2 more Math Events this school year.

    Thanks to Dean Joshua Mack, Kevin McLeod, Gabriella Pinter, Danny McCormick

     

    2024-25 Collab Labs

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