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A time when I was taught something successfully because I was in my ZPD was when I was rowing on a club crew team in high school. I was pretty far into my novice year, and my coach had us pull 5-minute pieces on the erg. We gave it all we had (we thought), and then he said, “Okay, now we’re gonna do that again.” We were all surprised and weren’t sure if we could do it again. But when we got back on the ergs and did it again, many of us got faster times. It was a very empowering moment for the whole team, and also showed us that we often have a lot left when we think we’re empty. My coach was successful in teaching us this lesson partially because of the timing: If he had tried to show us this our first week, I think it would have been exhausting and discouraging and ineffective. Hence, his teaching was successful because we were in our ZPD’s – we had already learned technique, how to work hard, and were beginning to explore how far we could push ourselves. That was the perfect time to introduce this exercise.
At Prairie Creek this week I noticed a lot of scaffolding. For example, the main activity that Molly was running in the afternoon was leaf/tree identification. The goal of this activity was to have students go through the know-wonder-learn steps so that they not only begin asking questions about the world around them, but also realize that they can actually take actions to find out answers to things they wonder about. Molly began by asking students what they notice about leaves. After a discussion about the different aspects of leaves, the students went off to collect their own leaves. Then they came back together to look at each other’s leaves by doing a “gallery walk”. After this, Molly taught the students what a “simple” leaf is, what a “lobed” leaf is (by comparing it to students’ own ear lobes), and what a “compound” leaf is. Finally, she showed them tree identification keys, explaining what a “key” is for and how you can use the shape, color, texture, and growing pattern of a leaf to identify which tree it is from. This is a great example of scaffolding, because if Molly had jumped right into leaf identification at the start, students would have been highly confused. They wouldn’t have noticed the differences between leaves, they wouldn’t have known how to differentiate simple vs. lobed vs. compound leaves, and so they would not have been successful at understanding how to read the identification keys. This example illustrates Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development because by being an MKO and using scaffolding techniques, Molly was able to teach students about leaf identification when they were in their ZPD’s.
My role as an MKO allowed me to help students learn throughout this activity. For example, I went to find leaves with two boys in the class, Silas and Nolan. They were collecting leaves that had fallen onto the ground from trees, but were mostly getting the same type of leaf. They wanted to find different leaves, so I pointed at a plant with big leaves and said “what about those leaves?”. Silas said, “Those aren’t leaves!”, and I responded, “well what are they?”. Silas said, “They’re plants!” We discussed for a couple more minutes, with me asking questions like, “Do plants have leaves? What makes a leaf a leaf?”. They finally decided that perhaps it was a leaf! In this way, I was able to ask questions of Silas and Nolan in order to help them figure out what constitutes a leaf.
Something that I really appreciated about Wild Wednesday this week was how much it was focused around fostering a sense of place. Throughout the hours that I was there, students participated in multiple activities that encouraged them to notice things around them and work with the things they found in nature. These activities not only taught them to observe and notice more, but also allowed them to connect with the space they were in because they were learning to recognize trees, and to make art out of sticks and leaves. I think a lot of schools fail to help children feel connected to the setting that the school is in, but to me that is an important way to help students feel like they belong and to help them feel invested in their work at school. Even at Carleton, many students never leave campus. Most don’t know the name of the farmer who cultivates the corn in the arb (Mike Peterson), and don’t learn about the ways of life of those who live in Rice County. I finally started feeling connected to Minnesota when I took agroecology my sophomore year and got to go off campus and visit farms and talk to farmers every week. It was a way for me to foster a sense of place and connect with local people, instead of only campus buildings. I loved that the students in Molly’s class really seem to feel at home at Prairie Creek because of the intimate ways that they interact with the place.
Lastly, I noticed that Molly is constantly modeling while she’s teaching. She sings along during all-school-gathering. She participates in group activities, balancing her teaching role with her modeling role. She often uses a technique to get students to settle down and listen by having everyone “crouch”, and she models this by crouching herself rather than remaining standing. She also gives very clear directions to students by holding up her fingers and giving each finger a direction, and having students repeat the directions along with her so that they know what they’re doing. I was noticing this week how much she models for her students and how effective that is in her classroom. It made me think more about how I was participating in the class – was I crouching when everyone crouched? Was I participating in the activities at all-school-gathering? Did I put down my pencil when she asked all the students to put theirs down? Sometimes I forget how much students notice and learn just from watching me. It is important that I be aware of exactly what behaviors I am modeling.
Attached is a picture of a flower store (currently closed) that one of the students runs! Other students trade golden pine cones or rainbow corn for bouquets to decorate their forts.
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Being very accustomed to the rows of tiny desks surrounded by cinder block walls of a traditional classroom (and continuing to experience this in my own classroom observations), reading about the ways in which students at Prairie Creek interacted with their natural surroundings is very refreshing. I’m reminded of the quote we discussed in class on Tuesday that points out that “there is nothing ‘natural’ about educational settings.’” While the setting at Prairie Creek remains a social construction—all education is, according to Vygotsky—it seems a bit more guided by the ways in which students choose to interact with their surroundings, and those surroundings are also less constructed. Of course, Molly still managed to teach a specific lesson about types of leaves, but she did so after letting students explore the subject material themselves.
I’m also a big fan of the flower store one student set up. It reminds me of one of my favorite games I played with my sisters growing up, in which we collected sticks in the backyard and pretended to run a magic wand shop. I remember play as being largely separate from school; it was for recess and after school. I’m curious about the ways the two can be integrated better in education—and what might that look like for older students as well?
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