Design Challenge: How might we redesign the first day of school?

by Stephanie Bartlett

 Think back to your first day of school. What were some of the actions, emotions and experiences that you remember as a student?

Fifty teachers met in late August with CBE Learning Services for a three-day institute on Design Thinking. Participants were given an initial design challenge of “How might we redesign the first day of school?” The dominant themes that emerged from the first round of ideation revealed the necessity of a creating a safe place, the presence of positive and negative emotions, fear of the unknown, routines, the beginning of a journey, friendship and storytelling.

Our group created a point of view statement to help figure out the problem we wanted to solve:

All learners need a way to feel safe because when we belong and feel confident, we are more able to take risks and make discoveries in our learning.

 Why would we want to redesign the first day? The first day is always a new beginning. Teachers create amazing opportunities and get to know you games to help children feel welcome. Paperwork and information gathering is also an essential part of the day. There is always an element of uncertainty and excitement as a new group comes together at the beginning of a school year.

 As I sat down to plan my first day, I reflected on my values as an educator and as a person. What did I want students to feel? What did I want students and their families to know about me? Community is an integral part of my pedagogical beliefs. To teach a child to the best of my ability means that I need to form a relationship with not only the student, but with the parents, so that we can best work with the child. With this belief in mind, I jumped into my redesign.

 I took note of the feedback I received when I told people about the redesign. Comments and questions ranged from negative to positive as they asked me why, pointed out the potential for problems with separation when it became time to say goodbye, or nodded approvingly, saying that it sounded like a refreshing idea. Not one to back away from a risk or change, I forged ahead with my plans. On the day before school started, flowers, plates and snacks were on my to-do list to add to what I hoped was a welcoming classroom.

The most significant change that I made was inviting the parents into the classroom with the students. For the first forty-five minutes of the day, we mingled, shared a snack, and parents explored the classroom with their children. I watched as they sat and played or drew with their children and then began to introduce themselves to other parents.

 When the timing seemed right, I taught everyone our stop signal and asked students and their parents to clean up together and say goodbye to each other. We laughed together when more students than parents heard the stop signal when I used it the first time. We learned to say “au revoir” and then joined each other on the carpet to read a story.

Having a social time to mingle and share food together created the effect I hoped to achieve. Building on the belief that I want to create a safe and happy environment where students can feel comfortable enough to take risks in their learning, this was the first chance of many to model the importance of building a close-knit community. It is my guess that our first experience together smoothed out some anxious feelings of both parents and children. It felt peaceful and invigorating at the same time and I am looking forward to the beautiful year of learning and relationships that lies ahead.

Project Engage: Living our LIves for a Sustainable Future Starts Right Here in our Community

By Stephanie Bartlett

When five year olds become social activists, what are the skills they need? How can they turn a passion or curiosity into a positive action that can influence society? My students’ most recent interest is climate change. Rather than be overwhelmed by the magnitude of this task, we are working to redefine the notion of community. This work starts with compassion. We live meaningfully and we listen. When we care for our space and the natural environment, we become able to look at the world and do our part to divert us from potential crisis. Climate change and the market economy are real threats to our planetary nature. We invited our students to take action in order to create change in our local community and beyond. Our five year-old students say they can do this and want to make a difference. Here is our story, aiming to inspire others with the notion that if we start local, change is possible.

Kindergarten students are learning the process of planning social action. We recently hosted a Sweater Swap / Echange des chandails for our community at the school’s Take Action Fair. First, we identified a cause that was important to us. We are concerned about the Arctic, so we planned to raise awareness about climate change by celebrating National Sweater Day in our school.

Then, we organized a campaign, inviting the community to donate gently used sweaters.

We spent a few weeks designing posters to educate the school and we worked with the growing number of sweaters in our classrooms.  

We sorted the sweaters into colours and patterns, counted them, and organized them into groups of small, medium and large. Traditional math and literacy skills were embedded in their project work.

 We had parent and grandparents come and teach us how to crochet and knit.

We researched arctic animals and created an arctic habitat in our dramatic play centre and the block centre became a market with booths to practice selling sweaters.

We built the market in the hallway and sold many sweaters.

We even measured the length of our customers’ arms to get the right fit!

After we counted the money, we wrote a letter to the World Wildlife Fund explaining how we earned over $200.00 to help protect the animals in the Arctic. The sweaters that we didn’t sell will be donated and sent to Haiti to be remade into different materials.Through these community initiatives, students are learning to be ethical citizens by caring for our planet and earning money to donate to the common good. 

Project Engage: The Story of How Kindergarten Students Are Creating Change

by Stephanie Bartlett

Kindergarten students are powerful, yet unlikely activists. As their teachers, we are teaching them the skills that will cause our community to wake up and take notice. With their enthusiasm, children may be the right ones to give us the nudge necessary to shift societal values. Our students are leading our school in serious learning work set up establish deeper relationships between school and community, in an effort to reduce our ecological footprint at a local level. We learn through determining an environmental concern, then educating others by organizing school-wide campaigns. We have established a fourth sector enterprise where a portion of the profit is kept for our own sustainability initiatives.  We give the majority to the common good, therefore teaching the value of ethical citizenship. As we say, if five year olds can do it, anyone can! Stay tuned for a series of stories of how we are teaching our students to take action.