Designing a Learning Environment

In my Media Collage class, students took turns presenting meaningful learning situations.  The activities they discussed ranged from learning to dance, to learning to see people "as people." One student explained how he learned to be stern with adults at his job at the local ice center, while another explained that he learned how to be a good boyfriend.  The presentations were energetic and sincere, and the students clearly cared about these moments.

The next day, it was post-it time.  I had a simple statement on the board: Learning Is. . .Their goal: fill up the board with as many words and phrases as possible to describe this activity.  The attacked this task and pretty quickly the board was filled with words like "endless," "creating," "becoming who you are," "hard work," "making connections," and so on.

One word surprised me more than the others for how out of place it seemed: "brutal."  It's not that the other words were all idealistic.  After all, "struggle" made the list.  Yet, all of the other words framed learning as something worthwhile. So after the post-its had run their course, I asked them about the word "brutal."  The person who wrote it said that she was referring to learning as it typically takes place in school.  Ouch.  Others nodded in agreement.  Opening a Google Doc., I asked them to give me some reasons why they would use this word to describe learning in school.  I assumed we would spend five or ten minutes and then move on to the next activity.  Thirty-five minutes later I had a list of 20+ reasons as to why "brutal" described their typical school learning experience.  And, while they started to run out of explanations for the Doc., they wanted to keep talking about their experiences.

The next day, we decided to embark upon a project to design a school learning environment or situation that would emphasize the characteristics that made their personal learning situations so meaningful.  Highest among these qualities were choice, the room to fail and improve, collaboration, and activity.  My direct challenge for them was this:

Decide on something that needs to be added to or changed in the school day or school environment to make learning at GBS more meaningful.  Keep the focus as narrow as possible.  You are not being asked to remake the entire day or physical space.

So now we are in the midst of working on this challenge. Among their tasks: they must consider what they want to change or add, justify why this would make a difference in what it feels like to learn at school, interview stakeholders representing different groups, and figure out how to turn this information into a short multimedia presentation. Finally, one of the hardest decisions for them is audience because a key stipulation is that it has to be people from outside the classroom. Who will this turn out to be? With the internet, who knows. But I am sure looking forward to the result.