Aliyya Swaby Photo
Students explore 3-D design.
As part of a quest to design the school of the future, Elm City College Prep students got a break from classes to go on a three-day “expedition” — without actually leaving their building.
Originally they were supposed to go on “expeditions” out in the community. Then the plan was modified.
As part of an effort to build a K‑8 “school of the future,” the school’s administrators incorporated expeditions into the calendar as a way for fifth and sixth graders to get real-world experience outside of their normal, structured academic routine. A few speed bumps along the road meant administrators had to scale back the idea to a more realistic format, and build up from there, the said.
During the regular week, students alternate in their classes between self-directed learning using technology, small-group discussion, and one-on-one interventions with teachers. But last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, they ditched class for half the day for one of five extracurricular “expeditions,” three-hour explorations of another discipline, intended to broaden their horizons past the classroom.
Collective Consciousness Theater was the community partner organizing one of the five expeditions. Students played a game putting on the same play in different styles — including “old person style” and “recent graduate who lives in their parents’ basement,” said Carol Crouch, who led the expedition with Collective Consciousness Theater. The game helped them delve into discussions on vocabulary and language. Choosing a location for the play at the start of Thursday’s expedition period, students considered setting it into an asylum, and then were prompted into a discussion on the stigma of the word “crazy.”
They were asked to answer the question: What does “going crazy” actually mean?
“Issues with your mind,” one student said. “It mostly comes from stress.”
“You’re trying to eat people!” another exclaimed.
The “expeditions” are part of Achievement First (AF) charter network’s experiment in reinventing K‑8 education using a new educational model called “Greenfield.” Fifth and sixth graders at Elm City College Prep Middle School at 495 Blake St. are getting the chance to take charge of their learning and get real-world experience in and out of academic classes — with a few tweaks as administrators work through building a “school of the future.”
The school was originally planned as a joint venture with New Haven’s Board of Education; AF set off on its own with Greenfield after public opposition killed the joint venture. Elm City College Prep Middle School’s 144 fifth and sixth graders moved from the main 794 Dixwell Ave. building to pilot the model in a separate space on Blake Street.
Sam Purdy (pictured), hired in July as the associate director of expeditions, said the expeditions are intended to “roll back some of these structures that are in place” in the classroom, while ensuring students take the activities seriously. “We don’t want anyone to think that theater is just a break or 3D design is just a break. We want kids to see this as just as rigorous…as what you do in a classroom,” he said.
Students spent half of each day taking math, reading and either STEM or music, and the other half in one of the expeditions — including photography, ceramics, and 3D design — led by community partners.
Principal Robert Hawke realized earlier in the school year that teachers and students were burning out from the longer day — which runs from 7:15 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The expeditions offer both teachers and students a chance to take a break from the regular demanding schedule. Teachers spent some of their time helping run specific expeditions and the rest of their time in professional development, either self-directed or with the help of an administrator.
An earlier model of the expeditions set aside a two-week block for students to explore different career paths outside of the classroom. After an attempt to go camping fell through in the fall, administrators decided to “deviate from the model,” Purdy said. They decided to start smaller and build up to a longer program with expeditions outside of the school building, he said.
Purdy connected with community partners, including Elm City Shakespeare Company and local photographer Chris Randall, to plan the types of programs that would be ideal for the students. He held training sessions “on class culture and management” and helped them plan their curricula.
Evans: Good to see students being “goofy.”
Fifth-grade math teacher Morgan Evans, who started at the school in late November, said the expeditions reminded him of his previous school in Philadelphia, which had a vibrant afterschool program. He had taught all of the students in an expedition with Collective Consciousness Theater he helped run Thursday. “It was nice to see them being themselves,” he said.
During Evans’ regular math class, students alternate between self-directed learning periods on their computers and student-driven group “investigations” led by a teacher. “When they’re working on their computer, they not talking to their neighbors, there’s no discussion,” Evans said.
The expedition was less structured than the classroom. Students still respected the community partners teaching their three-hour expedition periods each day. But they chattered to each other in the larger groups, between raising their hands and answering questions. By Thursday, they were “talkative,” not used to the new structure, Evans said.
Still, by the third day, many were excited to get to try new activities, including students who had not been looking forward to the schedule change, Evans said.
School administrators changed the layout of the math class this winter, to allow more time for teachers to pull students for one-on-one instruction. They realized students would return to the new layout the same week as the school rolled out its expeditions — and worried it would be a difficult adjustment.
“Fifth graders don’t love sudden change,” Evans said. He taught his fifth graders math for 60 minutes instead of 80 minutes for the three days of expeditions. But students adjusted well, he said. Those who were behind in math skills started to grasp concepts they had been missing.
Canissa Grant (pictured at right in above photo), who teaches fifth-grade science, spent Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons playing in fast-drying clay at a ceramics expedition. She learned more from her students than they did from her. “They helped me make my bowl,” she said, laughing.
The lab exercises students work on in her class are not much different from the process of making ceramic art, except for one factor: “The creativity is not there,” in science class, she said. “You have to get an answer,” instead of following an internal creative process and “owning it,” Grant said.
She pushed some students to work on their self-directed learning science activities at home, since they would not have science class for the three days of expeditions.
Tamika Alexander (pictured above left), who teaches fifth-grade humanities, said she isn’t worried that her students missed three days of her class for the expeditions. “They need a mental break,” she said. She watched students “come out of their comfort zones” getting into character with Elm City Shakespeare Company and creating three-dimensional robots and rockets.
Two students who are not usually focused in her classroom excelled at the computer-aided design expedition, competing with each to build the best rocket. “The instructor went way longer than he was supposed to,” she said.
Grant said she hopes future expeditions will incorporate more science, technology, engineering and math.
That’s part of the plan, Purdy said. He will go through a process of gathering feedback from the community partners, teachers and students to figure out what each took from the expeditions and how to expand them in the future. Getting partners in the science community has been more difficult than getting arts partners, but Purdy said he has leads on partners for ecology and environmental expeditions.