Aspire High

Imagining Tomorrow's School Today

Russell J. Quaglia, Michael J. Corso, Kristine Fox, Gavin A. (Alexander) Dykes

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781506342948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Secondary Education

The ideal school is closer than you think. This high school of your dreams is a dynamic place that promotes aspirations and meaningful learning—and each aspect of its success exists in a school today, drawn from research, observations, focus groups, and interviews. Whether you’re a policymaker or district leader who can build from the ground up or an educator aiming for incremental change, you’ll find your next steps, including:

• A whole new way to work with all stakeholders
• Research and action for best practices, from physical layout to curriculum
• Principles for designing practices that encourage student aspirations
• Messages from thought leaders inside and outside the field of education

1 Students as Teachers

If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.

—John Dewey

LISTEN

Upon entering the classroom, we hear a variety of voices. We are looking for a newly minted teacher and are unable to pick him or her out of the room. The room has about 20 young adults in it. We know (because we have been directed here) that all but one of them are Aspire High students—teenagers, albeit upper-level students. But somewhere in this sea of fresh faces is someone in his or her 20s. So far, this might not be an uncommon scene. Many of us once new to the teaching profession, straight from our undergraduate degrees, have been asked by a parent to be directed to a teacher. Those who have the good fortune of a youthful appearance may still be camouflaged, happily or not, in a room full of older students.

So we look for clues in intonation, behavior, and activity. Surely, a teacher would be teaching. Those in the room are clumped mostly in threes and fours. They are working in groups. Some are gathered around a laptop or other device, some are deep in discussion. One group near the front is somewhat larger. Six people in a jagged semicircle face a whiteboard. A young, neatly dressed woman at the board is explaining a timeline. We approach her, introduce ourselves, and ask if she is the teacher.

A scruffy young man in the semicircle, dressed in khakis and a buttoned-down collar shirt, says, “That would be me. How can I help you?” He tells the student at the whiteboard that she should continue and invites us to the side. We are not entirely surprised, despite the unexpected turn. This is, after all, Aspire High.

Aspire High has, among its core tenets, a belief that young people have something to teach us. This means at least five things:

1. Students can teach us about their future hopes.
2. Students can teach us how they learn best.
3. Students can teach us about the conditions that support their learning.
4. Students can teach us about their interests and areas of expertise as well as the personal experiences of race or otherness that shape their worldview.
5. Students learn by teaching.

First, Aspire High’s mission is to provide all students with the ability to dream and set goals for the future, while inspiring them in the present to reach those dreams. It is necessary, therefore, for students to teach adults about their hopes and dreams. Genuine aspirations may be influenced by outside factors—the hopes of one’s family, role models, economic concerns, and so on. They may also include various broad and intermediate aspirations and goals along the way—postsecondary degrees or certificates, internships, and the like. All of these may be outwardly discernible, and many are evidently common to all students.

But ultimately, each person’s particular aspiration arises from within. It is no one’s job to dream another’s dreams for him or her. Nor is it practical to set out for every student some vague, one-size-fits-all goal to go to college. That’s like saying the goal of school is more school! If schools and the adults who staff them are to first and foremost support students in the achievement of the dreams they have for themselves, then first and foremost, the students must teach us who and what they want to be.

This will be an ongoing, emergent experience. Students may change their aspirations as they grow and are exposed to an ever-widening world and its possibilities. Some students will need help to find their passion and path. Adults must take seriously the kindergartener who wants to be a firefighter like his father, as well as the high schooler who wants to be a genetic scientist even though no one in her family has previously gone to college. Teachers must support the student who is struggling to find an identity, as well as those who have “known since they were five” that they wanted to enter a certain field. As students dream bigger and more broadly, their teachers must keep learning from them what they see as their future if they are continuously to inspire them in the present to reach and succeed.

Second, given that same mission, teachers must learn from each student how he or she learns best. Most schools have done an excellent job of giving students insights into their learning styles and tendencies. Students know if they are tactile, auditory, or visual learners. They know if they prefer hands-on activities or like to learn from a text. The many learning-style inventories they have been exposed to have developed a degree of metacognition that can be extremely helpful to their learning. Students are the foremost experts on how they best learn. This self-awareness accumulates over time, but ironically, the further along in school students progress, the less this is considered important to their learning. Students have this to teach us so that teachers can better support their learning throughout their school experience.

Third, if students have something to teach us about the optimal intrinsic conditions of their learning, they also have something to teach us about the optimal environmental conditions of their learning. Consider that eighth graders may have nine to 10 years of familiarity with being schooled. Their point of view on their classroom and school is expert (the root of which means “known from experience”) and different from our own. They have opinions about when group work is engaging and when it is a distraction. They can teach us when it might be best to read quietly and when they would prefer to be instructed. Students have strong thoughts about peers who disrupt the learning of others, and they know when adults are being condescending. They are good judges of when learning is fun and when having fun is a waste of time. They can teach us about the conditions that affect and improve their learning and what impedes their understanding.

Fourth, students are not tabulae rasae. They enter school with experiences, questions, insights, interests, passions, preferences, likes, dislikes, beliefs, and hobbies. These will continue to develop and change over time. Some know all about dinosaurs; others are adept crafters; still others have a passion for the Revolutionary War. There are elementary school students who can choreograph dances, middle school students who can write code, and high school students who are inventors. There are young and expert mechanics and musicians and moviemakers. Students have much to teach as experts in their own right about the many things that interest them.

Furthermore, there is no “color-blindness” at Aspire High. That is to say, race is a factor in students’ experiences of the world, as are other physical attributes such as gender or being differently abled. As a result, students can teach their teachers a great deal about how their backgrounds, thoughts, feelings, and worldviews are shaped by race, particularly if student and teacher come from different racial backgrounds. Singleton (2013) writes, “When teachers render meaningless any of their students’ visible characteristics (including race, sex, age, or physical disability), they give themselves permission not to notice how student characteristics affect student engagement and learning” (p. 105). Since Aspire High seeks student engagement and learning, race as a part of who each student is must be considered.

Fifth and finally, as teachers are well aware, there is no better way to learn and master something than to teach it. Students are most effectively learners when they investigate, research, organize, prepare, and then teach their classmates and us what they have learned. As students actively develop lessons, plays, learning experiences, slide decks, and other means of conveying what they have discovered, they move more deeply into the material and understand it in a way they could not have if they had learned it passively from a lecture.

Students at Aspire High teach in all these senses. They teach who they want to be and who they are. They teach what works for their learning and about things they know and want to know. The purpose of their teaching in these first four ways is to set the foundation for their teaching in the fifth way about things all at Aspire High discover through them. At Aspire High, the lines between teaching and learning and between teacher and learner are blurred, nearly beyond recognition.

“Nearly” because adults—those with more experience in learning—have an important role to play. In addition to obvious safety issues, adults must still facilitate, encourage, inspire, guide, probe, and assess the work of younger teacher learners. Far from a laissez-faire approach, when students are teachers, teachers must be highly intentional and expert in the learning process itself. Many of us can admit to teaching on autopilot; but it is impossible to guide the learning of eager, young teacher learners in an unconscious way. Some may think that at Aspire High, where students do most of the teaching, teachers can sit back. On the contrary, teachers at Aspire High must lean forward so that they are fully, mindfully engaged, voraciously learning everything their students are teaching them. Think of how highly focused and attentive driving instructors need to be. Even though they are not in the driver’s seat, they must be fully alert and aware precisely because they are not driving. When students are teachers, teachers must have that same kind of expanded, attentive, intentional approach to their students and the environment in which they are learning.

Teaching to Learn

Dashwood Banbury Academy is an Aspirations Academy school located in the Oxfordshire region of England.

Students at Dashwood are routinely asked to teach. Students Natalie, Rabiya, and Daniel were invited to share their thoughts about their experience of teaching at Dashwood Academy.

What does it mean to you when you have the opportunity to teach others?

It means I have the opportunity to pass on information to others and help them to gain useful skills. Also, it can help me learn more about what I’m teaching and to remember the subject. —Natalie

It means to me that I have the opportunity to pass on the knowledge that I have gained over the years. It can help others, and sometimes they help me too. —Rabiya

It means a lot because it helps other people, and sometimes it helps me as well. It also helps because other people get to learn a lot. —Daniel

How does it make you feel?

I feel proud because whoever told me to teach must believe that I have enough knowledge to give it to others. Additionally, I feel nervous and excited. —Natalie

I feel confident toward other children—younger and older—and I feel like I can express my feelings with them. I feel grateful and proud of being given this opportunity. —Rabiya

It makes me very proud of doing it. It also makes me very grateful for the opportunity. —Daniel

What are the benefits to you as a pupil/teacher?

I can learn from my pupils to widen my knowledge. In addition, you can see others progress and you know you have helped them. Your confidence in speaking to a group of people improves, assisting you for the future. —Natalie

I think the benefits to me are that sometimes I learn from others, and I can become more confident. My confidence and speaking skill improves. When you teach others, and later on see their progress, you feel proud knowing that you helped them reached their goal and become better. —Rabiya

It benefits me by working with little children because I enjoy it, and I don’t normally get the opportunity. —Daniel

• All three students refer to how having an opportunity to teach helps them learn. In your experience, why does this happen?
• What is the educational benefit of students developing confidence and pride when they teach? Is developing such emotional capacity part of a teacher’s responsibility? Why or why not?
• How can you give your students more opportunities to teach?

LEARN

The idea or practice of students as teachers has its roots in myriad educational theories and philosophies. Trends toward student-centered classrooms, active learning, and whole-child learning all provide various levels of teacher-like autonomy and responsibility for students. Student-centered learning by definition is an active experience in which students are responsible for their learning. In schools where students assume active teaching roles, they take on increased levels of responsibility and ownership for their learning and for learning design. Active learning and students as teachers are historically connected to the belief that the primary purpose of school is for students, rather than for the transmission of academic content, for supplying workers to an economy (whether industrial, service, knowledge-worker, global, etc.), or for ensuring all citizens have a common body of knowledge. If the purpose of school is for the students—for the development of each student’s full potential, what we call their Aspirations—then students must be actively participating in developing and delivering their schooling. They should be engaged in what is traditionally thought of as teaching.

Progressive educators have long asserted the importance of students learning through coconstructing their experiences. Although there are many definitions of a progressive education, it is widely agreed that it involves active participation by all students in decisions that will affect their lives. Likewise, constructivist educators have cautioned that “sage on the stage” teaching simply does not work. Constructivism calls for a much more active role in learning on the part of the students. As early as 1938, Dewey wrote the following:

There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil i...