We started out our work at Prairie Creek School online this Wednesday morning by visiting the classroom virtually. She and some masked students were crowded around the computer, wanting to see what we looked like. Michelle had two students take us on a tour of the school building. It was a whirlwind to try and see much about the school through a computer screen, but what I could see of the school was interesting. In Prairie Creek, students are grouped into classes with students from two traditional grades, and the classes are named after different birds. The classroom I am in is called Herons and includes students from fourth and fifth grades. The two fourth and fifth grade classes are grouped together in the building and have their own bathrooms and what looks like a larger gathering space. There are also two or three classrooms for 2/3 graders, and also classrooms for younger students. We also saw a music room and the cafeteria. On the tour we met a lot of other teachers, who were friendly and interested in what we were doing. The students call the teachers by their first names, which is a foreign idea to me.
When we got back to the classroom Michelle introduced us to what the students would be doing today–they were working on presenting their final projects that were a culmination of most of a year’s work. A student named Madeline took us out into the hallway to explain the projects. They cover a big range in topics and involve a presentation and a tri-fold poster. Madeline said that students also do projects like these in younger years, but don’t use a trifold to present—only a normal one-sided poster. Madeline personally presented on Mengele’s twin experiments which is a pretty horrifying topic. The students we saw present talked about Steve Martin, binary code, and esports.
Because the students are in both fourth and five grade, they span a bigger age range than students in most classrooms—it seems like they could be anything from 8 to 10 years old. This means that the students are right in the middle of the concrete operational stage of cognitive development. In this stage students understand materialized things, but have a hard time trying to understand abstract problems and ideas. From what I’ve seen so far, this designation seems to fit the children in the class, the students presented their research in a generally chronological. They were able to answer questions that involved some extrapolation. For example, the student who presented on esports was asked how a player could get noticed for their playing and recruited. The student was able to explain how this hypothetic process would work. Is this an example of hypothetical thinking that is characteristic of the formal operational stage? I’m not sure, but I don’t think this was an extremely advanced hypothetical to consider.
I really enjoyed my first day with Prairie Creek, even though it couldn’t be in person. I grew up in the public school system in Saint Paul until I came to Carleton, so I have an understanding of how teaching works that is rooted in my own relatively traditional experience with classroom learning. The work that I have done in education at Carleton as well has been at the public middle school. There is some flexibility allowed through the charter system that I think is really exciting but takes some adjustment from me. Are charter schools based in a certain educational philosophy, or do educators have the freedom to do what they think is best for their students? Maybe this is getting too into the politics of it, but how does funding work for these schools? I am also interested in the nitty-gritty of the choices made at Prairie Creek. The website claims that they are focused on project-based discovery and hands-on learning. I look forward to understanding what they means in practice. I am particularly interested in the blended classrooms phenomenon. What are the benefits of using this system? One of my friends who went to a Montessori also had these types of classroom.
I am really looking forward to seeing what outdoor education looks like on the next Wild Wednesday that we are able to attend in person. I am an ENTS major, and I am very interested in outdoor education. This summer, I’ll be working at an outdoor preschool, so I hope what I learn here can carry really well into my summer work. I want to see how Michelle navigates being outside, what the students learn outside, how their concentration and behavior shifts in an outdoor setting, and how learning is structured in this different environment.

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