Creativity and Collaborative Learning: The Practical Guide to Empowering Students, Teachers, and Families, Second Edition - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557665788 ISBN 13: 9781557665782

Publisher: Brookes Publishing, 2002

Synopsis

In today's inclusive classrooms, teamwork between students, teachers, and families has never been more important. Focusing on the power of these partnerships, this book shows education professionals how collaborative learning addresses challenges like literacy, behavior issues, teacher success, access to the general curriculum, multiculturalism, and more. Readers will get

• an overview explaining why collaborative learning works



• updated research and best practices



• diverse perspectives on practices like peer tutoring and small-group learning



• research-based teaching strategies educators can use to foster teamwork in classrooms from preschool to secondary school

About this title

About the Author

Jacqueline S. Thousand has been a teacher educator since 1981 and has more than 20 years of experience in training teachers and providing technical assistance to schools to create inclusive educational experiences for children from preschool through high school. At the University of Vermont, she coordinated an early childhood special education teacher preparation program and one of the first Inclusion Facilitator graduate programs (1986-1996) in the United States. As the coordinator of the Vermont Homecoming Project in the early 1980s, she was a pioneer in developing instruction and curriculum modification strategies for including students with moderate and severe disabilities that came to be the staples of inclusive practice in the 1990s. With her move in 1996 to California State University San Marcos, she coordinates a teacher credential program that endorses graduates as general and special educators, thus enabling them to advocate for and support students with disabilities as either classroom teachers or special educators. In addition to directing the college's special education credential and master's programs, she continues her commitment to community development by working with leadership and staff of local schools to restructure special day class programs and move the teachers and students in these classes into the mainstream. She also works closely with families to make inclusive education communities a reality. She sits on the editorial boards of a number of professional journals and is past co-editor of Teacher Education and Special Education. She currently serves on the International Board of TASH (formerly The Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps), an international advocacy association of people with disabilities, their family members, other advocates, and people who work in the disabilities field. Dr. Thousand has authored numerous books, research articles, and book chapters on practical how-to strategies for meeting the needs of all students in general education; adapting curriculum, instruction, and assessment; collaborative teaming; and creative problem solving.

Richard A. Villa, Ed.D., has worked with thousands of teachers and administrators throughout North America and the rest of the world in developing and implementing instructional support systems for educating all students within general education environments. Dr. Villa has been a classroom teacher, special education coordinator, pupil personnel services director, and director of instructional services. He has authored more than 70 articles and book chapters regarding inclusive education and has co-edited three previous books for teachers, administrators, and parents: Restructuring for Caring and Effective Education: An Administrative Guide to Creating Heterogeneous Schools (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1992), Creativity and Collaborative Learning: A Practical Guide to Empowering Students and Teachers (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1994), and Creating an Inclusive School Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, (1995). He has presented at numerous national and international conferences and is known for his enthusiastic, humorous style of presenting.

Ann I. Nevin, Ph.D., earned her doctoral degree in educational psychology in 1970 from the University of Minnesota with Maynard C. Reynolds, one of the pioneers of the mainstreaming movement. As a scholar and teacher, Dr. Nevin is passionately committed to discovering what educators, parents, advocates, and students can use to improve academic and social success of students who are difficult to teach. Since 1968, she has been involved in university-level experimental teacher education programs (e.g., in 1969, she collaborated in the development and evaluation of the Vermont Consulting Teacher Program; since 1979, she worked with consulting teachers to replicate the Johnson and Johnson cooperative group learning model for students with special needs). Since 2000, she has collaborated with public school administrators and mentor teachers to empower special education interns to teach self-determination skills and student-led individualized education programs within the K-12 curriculum. Most recently, Dr. Nevin collaborated with technology experts, continuing education programs, and various interdisciplinary faculty to create, implement, evaluate, and redesign graduate-level classes in special education for teachers to learn entirely over the Internet.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpted from chapter 1 of Creativity and Collaborative Learning: The Practical Guide to Empowering Students, Teachers, and Families, Second Edition, edited by Jacqueline S. Thousand, Ph.D., Richard A. Villa, Ed.D., & Ann I. Nevin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2002 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

HARMONY SCHOOL: FAMILY MEETING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENT VOICE

Harmony School, an independent pre-K through secondary school located in a university town in southern Indiana, was founded in 1974 with the purpose of renewing the civic mission of public schooling. Its handbook states that the school is "designed for the development of the "whole person," encouraging the students to achieve academic excellence, feel good about themselves, and see learning as a lifelong activity, . . . [while striving] to give the students a sense of personal control over their lives" (Cosgray & Bonchek, 1996, p. 1). In addition to its innovative curricula and methods, Harmony also provides professional development opportunities for public school teachers and carries out research on democratic education and school change. Harmony has become host to the National School Reform Faculty, an organization of more than 20,000 teachers and principals working in more than 1,000 schools to create more caring and just communities in schools throughout the country. The commitment to democratic education is described in the handbook as the effort to "provide a real-life environment that would foster the skills necessary for active and constructive participation in our country's democratic process" (Cosgray & Bonchek, 1996, p. 3). Harmony's democratic orientation is interpreted in different ways by each member of the school community. One teacher explains,

We're trying to teach kids to be responsible citizens, and we're trying to do that in a way where we teach them by having them practice what it means to be a responsible citizen. So the democratic education part of Harmony is about practicing being a responsible citizen. It's not necessarily just about the kids getting power over X, Y, or Z; it's really about practicing being a responsible citizen. So I think that's the base philosophy behind the entire school.

In the years since its founding, Harmony has gradually strengthened its democratic ethos through innumerable hours of committee meetings, schoolwide Family Meetings, and the daily workings of the classroom. Like any community, Harmony has struggled with negotiating the boundaries of democracy and power and maintaining the delicate balance between the individual and the community. The Family Meeting takes place regularly in all of Harmony's programs and is one of the foundations of the school's democratic practice. At the Family Meeting, students learn to solve their own problems, make meaningful decisions, plan future group learning experiences and social activities, and assess the work of the group. The structure of the Family Meeting differs from program to program depending on "age-appropriateness," but all Family Meetings emphasize student leadership, community feedback, and collective decision making. In the middle and high school Family Meetings, students chair meetings, set the agenda, and are responsible for maintaining order during the discussion. Teachers are subject to the same guidelines as students for adding items to the agenda, contributing feedback, and voting. Harmony's faculty members stress the importance of the Family Meetings as learning opportunities. In the high school, students receive one credit per semester in social studies for participating in the Family Meeting, underscoring the emphasis placed on learning. A high school teacher explains,

We really seriously do think that Family Meeting is training for engaged citizenship and responsible citizenship. Because that's really how communities . . . work in the first place; they have to have meetings. And for you to be able to deal with the kind of meetings that you're going to be dealing with later on in your life, to be an engaged person, Family Meeting's a [great] model. Because it's hard. It's really hard. And you can observe people making mistakes, and you can observe people doing it right.

For teachers at Harmony, practicing democratic decision making means a commitment not only to innumerable discussions amongst themselves but also to nurturing this process with their students in classrooms, Family Meetings, and all other school activities. Democratic process goes beyond the limitations of weak democracy, encompassing more than the simple definition of majority rules; it means a commitment to instilling a sense of confidence and leadership in students, the responsibility to share one's opinions while knowing that compromise is essential, and the humility and humor to accept that each individual will not always get his or her way. A teacher explains,

The big thing is that we expect the kids to be leaders. And to have 60 leaders is really hard; it makes it very difficult to deal with a lot of situations, but we think it's worth the trouble, because that's really what we're asking them to do — to speak up, and to understand that just because you speak up doesn't mean you're gonna get your way all the time, but at least you have a responsibility and an obligation to let people know what you think, and that that's important. And if you can't accept that you may not get your way, then your perspective might be really off, and so your sense of humor will certainly be off.

A commitment to democratic practice at Harmony School means, first and foremost, acknowledging that children should be active participants in making choices about their learning and their school. Here, democratic education is an ethos — it encompasses the ongoing efforts to help children learn who they want to be, what they want to do, and how they can accomplish these dreams, as well as a respect for Harmony's teachers, their professionalism, and their high quality teaching, independence, and innovation.

Finally, the practice of strong democracy in the school is connected with a vision, not only for the children who attend Harmony but also for the society in which they live; a vision that affirms the rights and responsibilities of all citizens to be who they want to be, to be treated and to treat others with care and respect; to celebrate differences while, in the words of Harmony's director, Steve Bonchek, continuing efforts to "compromise and work out decisions with people unlike yourself."

BARRE TOWN SCHOOL: PROBLEM SOLVING AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH LITERATURE

In the Barre Town School in central Vermont, students in the fifth through eighth grades can take a class called Problem Solving Through Literature (PSTL), an alternative to a traditional English class. Using literary works, students identify with a character in the literature to gain insight into the character's situation; to learn how the character took action and developed strategies to deal with problems in life; and, in many cases, how the character contributed to society. The students then apply what they learn from the character to their own lives. The two teachers who oversee this project, Ravell Allen and Beverly Scofield, introduce students to metacognitive concepts such as Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" and Kohlberg's "stages of moral development," utilizing these concepts in their analyses of literature and in reflecting on their own experiences. Every topic of study has an activity that is based on academic considerations as well as personal exploration and involvement. Skills learned in each grade level build so by the end of the eighth grade, students have learned how to exercise

• Independent study (e.g., note taking, interviewing, résumé writing, letter writing, research, creative problem solving)



• Self-regulated learning (e.g., time management, planning, decision making, goal setting, cooperative work, self-evaluation)



• Metacognition (e.g., thinking about thinking, articulation through journaling)



• Meta-awareness (e.g., reflection through discussion, reflection through journaling, listening)

Students in the sixth through eighth grade are asked to complete a service-learning project by the end of the year. These projects emerge out of their reflections over the course of the year. Discussions about moral reasoning lay the foundation for students to engage in meaningful service to their community. These service-learning projects emerge from stated community needs, which are discovered through periodic community-needs surveys that the students employ. One of the PSTL teachers comments on how the service learning component of the curriculum evolved:

In a way, when we first started doing this, we didn't even think of it as community service-learning (CSL). It really seemed to be a natural extension of what we were doing with the literature. . . . We talked with the kids about issues of concern for them in the world, things that were going on that they were concerned with but felt powerless to do anything about. So I think it was the second year of the program, it almost seemed that both Bev and I without even talking with each other were thinking along the same lines. Why don't we try to match these kids up with somebody who could be a mentor? We must have heard something about CSL because we thought students would work with a mentor to develop their abilities to try to solve some problem in the community.

Students carry out various individually designed service-learning projects, often based on inspirational biographies of service-oriented individuals such as Eleanor Roosevelt. One student wrote and published a story, then donated her profits to the local women's center.

Some of them engaged in teaching, such as the student who won a national award for teaching children with physical disabilities to ride horseback. By combining discussions about moral reasoning with the reading of literature and service-learning projects, these students learn the skills and dispositions of active democratic citizenship. They gain the ability to apply concepts to real-life situations. These concepts are derived from the stories they read and are applied to actions that they undertake as a part of their service-learning projects. By developing relationships with adult community mentors, students are afforded the opportunity to expand their intergenerational connections. This provides them with the "social capital" that some researchers are now saying is so important to the cultivation of democratic character. They develop the abilities to deliberate, to negotiate, and to organize their work. As one principal explains,

I can't say enough about how much these kids learn about how to work with other people and other organizations. They learn how to schedule space; they learn about organizations; they learn about hierarchies, how organizations function, and to respect other parts of the organization needing to be informed of certain activities.

The students develop the capacity to take an active role in the decisions that affect the life of their school. One seventh-grade student found that the skills she learned in PSTL have helped her become more articulate and thoughtful in her work on the student council.

Research on this project is designed to follow students through their school experience to assess the effectiveness of service-learning on their future development as citizens.

One senior at the local high school reflects back to his experiences in this program in the sixth grade:

When the topic of community service-learning was mentioned, since we didn't know much about it, it seemed like just another assignment. . . . So, sure you were doing a lot and investing a lot of time in it and eventually it caught up with you and you realized this is all that I've done, and it wasn't that bad and it's benefiting not only myself, and is a learning experience, but it addresses some of the needs of the community. And then this project (setting up a teen center) that began in seventh grade, I'm still working on. Five years has been a long time. I never would have imagined that I would still be doing it. . . . I think I've learned from the experience of always taking an active leadership role. I've gained great skills from working on this project and interacting with different people. Since almost none of the other classes have any community service-learning component, I carry these traits: . . . more questioning, more critical thinking, definitely not as passive . . . I would be willing to say that this community service-learning back in the sixth grade has shaped who I am today.

We believe that this literature-based curriculum, combined with service-learning projects, is a fine example of how students learn to take action in the world based on moral decision making. Studies of programs that involve students in active engagement in their communities, either through service or, as we will see in the next narrative, through direct political action, "indicate that this involvement may, in fact, be an important stepping stone to later (democratic) participation" (Berman, 1997, p. 145).

TAR CREEK: EDUCATION AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM

In a somewhat isolated rural middle/high school in northeastern Oklahoma, home to a population comprising numerous Native American tribal groups as well as Caucasians, students participate in a service-learning club called the Cherokee Volunteer Society. Since 1995, the group has been facilitated by Rebecca Jim, a local environmental activist and clanmother with the Tribal Efforts Against Lead (an environmental organization based with the Quapaw Tribe), and the school's guidance counselor. Students began their service-learning venture with a community recycling project. The next year, they decided, with financial assistance from the Cherokee Council, to build a traditional council house in the schoolyard. The third year of their existence, they began to tackle the serious environmental problems in their community.

The community in which these young people live is one of the nation's worst hazardous waste sites, a result of extensive lead and zinc mining in the early part of the century.

The community is home to acres of toxic lead tailings (that children play on), a water system contaminated with heavy metals, a solid waste incinerator, poisoned creeks, contaminated wells, asbestos waste from an abandoned tire plant, and abandoned mine shafts that periodically cave in (sometimes destroying buildings and roads). The people of this community suffer exceptionally high rates of cancers; kidney disease; miscarriages; immune deficiency disorders; and, most notably in the children, physical and cognitive symptoms associated with high levels of lead. There was little public outcry or activism over these alarming issues until 1995, when students of Ms. Jim's Learn and Serve club got interested enough to tackle the problems.

Students began investigating the environmental problems in their community using the Internet, primary source documents, interviews with community members, and onsite analysis of water and soil. From their research, students began to identify some causal connections between the contamination in their community, chronic (and in some cases terminal) illnesses in their families, and some of their own learning disabilities. These students, many of whom had been disengaged from school and learning, became informed, passionate activists.

One of the first things these students learned was that there was a vast amount of information about the environmental problems in their community, but it was not accessible to the general public. So, one of their first tasks was to research various aspects of the problem — fish contamination, lead poisoning, asbestos pollution, mine water flooding, environmental racism, and jobs versus the environment. Their research papers were collected, along with poetry, songs, and first-person narratives, in an anthology titled The Legacy, which was published by the Cherokee Nation.

Every year, students host the Tar Creek Fish Tournament and Toxic Tour (ironic because there are no fish in Tar Creek, except for the occasional neon green or orange creature that has somehow survived the poisons). Started on Earth Day, 1998, these annual events are designed to heighten public awareness about the Tar Creek Superfund Site. The students host speakers from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Indian Health Service as well as representatives from local Native American tribes. As part of the events, they guide people on "Toxic Tours" (walking, running, bicycling, rollerblading, and riding) to see the acres of chat piles (mine tailings), neon waters, and devastated ecosystems that pervade this community.

They organize local musicians for a "Heavy Metal Blues Fest." (Clearly, they have maintained their sense of humor throughout this work!) These events raise money for their other projects: the purchase of outdoor signs to be posted along the polluted creeks and chat piles, educational programs for elementary school children, the collection and analysis of teeth and hair of affected adults and children, and travel to national conferences to present their findings. These students have developed many skills and capacities working on these projects. They have mastered the art of identifying significant problems in their community. They have learned to carry out research in the public interest and to share their new knowledge in a useful and appropriate way. In addition to building the science and math concepts necessary for understanding the problems, they have learned a great deal about the structures of civic life — practical skills such as how to write to legislators, contact government officials, organize cultural events, circulate petitions, participate in peaceful protests (they have, on occasion, picketed polluters in the community), and engage in public relations.

They have had to hone their public speaking talents for appearances on television; on radio; at community meetings; and at local, state, and national conferences. Their writing skills improve as they write for newspapers, magazines, and their own published book projects.

Nancy Scott, the coordinator of Cherokee National Learn and Serve, expressed her admiration for the things these students have accomplished:

There was a lot of denial in that community before the students started this Tar Creek Project. I mean [the contamination] was something you just never discussed. It was there in the community, everybody knew, but nobody really talked about it. But you know . . . to me, the students are the key to getting Tar Creek . . . cleaned up or improved or whatever is going to happen.

The Tar Creek story demonstrates how service-learning, in a context rich with academic content, can be used to teach and practice active citizenship. Last year, the governor of Oklahoma formed the Tar Creek Task Force to investigate the environmental problems. A major statewide newspaper, The Daily Oklahoman, gave these students credit for getting the story on its radar screen. The students gave the governor an award for his initiative, and he came to the school to receive it. While there, he listened to the essays and poetry (pro and con) on moving two of the undermined towns, giving voice to affected youth.

All of these group projects build team spirit and a sense of the collective that crosses social and cultural differences and class boundaries. The activities contribute to the students' understanding of their rights and responsibilities as democratic citizens. As noted in Kesson and Oyler, "teaching for moral decision-making and social responsibility, with complex community-based issues at the center, requires moral courage on the part of the teacher" (1999, p. 147). There are many challenges and obstacles to overcome. We were impressed with the moral courage, integrity, passion, and commitment of these students, teachers, and community members working collaboratively on matters of genuine social concern. The Tar Creek story challenges us all to imagine the possibilities of an education committed to the development of democratic citizens.

Excerpted from chapter 1 of Creativity and Collaborative Learning: The Practical Guide to Empowering Students, Teachers, and Families, Second Edition, edited by Jacqueline S. Thousand, Ph.D., Richard A. Villa, Ed.D., & Ann I. Nevin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2002 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brookes Publishing
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1557665788
• ISBN 13: 9781557665782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Thousand Ph.D. Jacqueline, Villa Ph.D. Richard, Nevin Ph.D. Ann