“At Summers-Knoll, kids don’t just learn – they learn how to learn.”
~ Mary Perrin, Art Teacher
Imagine walking into a new work place where you are expected to be self-motivated, collaborate with various teams of people, develop new skills and knowledge and apply them to new tasks, and navigate interpersonal relationships in positive and productive ways. As working adults in the 21st century, we do this. But how did we learn how to do this?
Even people in seemingly isolated professions, such as novelists, must be both self-motivated and able to collaborate because no one truly works (or writes) alone. No matter what our jobs are, there are both individual responsibilities as well as collective expectations as we work with and among others to accomplish a shared goal.
One could argue that if students in school can learn how to be self-motivated, collaborate with various teams of people, develop new skills and knowledge and apply them to new tasks, and navigate interpersonal relationships in positive and productive ways, they will be well prepared for any college and/or career path that follows their P – 12 educational experience.
So the question is: How do teachers in schools create conditions where students can discover who they are, as unique individuals, as well as learn how to be a contributing member of a community?
At Summers-Knoll School, these 21st century intra/interpersonal skills are taught, embodied, and reflected in individual classroom communities and our school community as a whole. I think of these various communities as “communities of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998).
Social learning theorists and researchers, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, first coined the term “communities of practice” as a way to describe how novices in practice-based professions (e.g., midwives, tailors, naval quartermasters) learn the various practices that are central to a profession (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In communities of practice, learning is characterized as processes of doing, experience, belonging, and becoming (Wenger, 1998, p. 5).
“A community of practice is a set of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 98).” In schools, students learn how to be a member of a community of learners, which is also, ideally, a membership we all posses, even as adults in workplaces (especially as educators) because we are always learning and evolving together.
Early this week, the faculty and staff met with SK’s board members, and during this conversation, the board asked the faculty and staff to share what makes SK special.
Teachers spoke of the centrality of rigorous project-based learning (PBL) that is authentically connected to the real world and the ways in which a project-based approach encourages lateral thinking.
Teachers provided specific examples of how PBL makes learning meaningful and memorable.
Teachers pointed out that alumnae return to SK for school-wide events and are often the last to leave.
Others told stories about specific students that illustrated how instruction is individualized; students are given ample opportunities to express their learning in ways that reflect their individuality; and with this individualized attention, teachers help students realize their own potential.
Complementary to the focus on each child as an individual human being and learner, one of the things that makes SK particularly special is its community and the ways in which students learn how to be a part of a community, specifically a community of practice, in which we are all learning and working together toward a shared vision of what education can be when we keep students at the heart of our work, apply research-based instructional practices, honor one another’s humanity, and cultivate real world connections and applications through project-based learning.