Civic Systems: Little Free Libraries

Ellie and Emma led us on a charming pedestrian tour of Emma's neighborhood in Ypsilanti, where no fewer than three neighbors have constructed Little Free Libraries. The girls explained that an LFL is a small, raised cabinet, usually with two shelves filled with books. Anyone who walks by can take or leave a book--or both. Most LFL creators are private homeowners who set them out on a front lawn, though others, like the Ann Arbor YMCA, may set them out on street corners or in public spaces.

The girls shared a lengthy interview with one of the LFL owners and brought a stack of books with them for us to exchange as we saw fit. (I made exchanges at two of the three libraries and ended up with a hardcover copy of Jared Diamond's outstanding Guns, Germs & Steel.)
As civic systems go, Little Free Libraries are a splendid example of an informal, grass-roots system, with no overseeing body--a sort of crowdsourcing.

Summers-Knoll hopes to set out a Little Free Library of its own in the 2016-17 academic year.


Here are a couple of worthwhile links:
https://littlefreelibrary.org/
http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel.html

Civic Systems: Public Libraries

Lee and Evan welcomed us to the downtown branch of the Ypsilanti Library. In preparation for our visit and their Exhibition, the boys conducted a formal interview with Lee's mother, Jenny Hannibal, who works at the library.

First, they showed us around the facility, both the larger collections upstairs and the children's and young adult sections and computer stations downstairs. Then they convened the group in one of the conference rooms for some background on how the library functions and its role in public life.

Finally, Evan and Lee set us up with an activity. They divided the attendees into several groups. Each group received a list of ten items to find in the library. The clever aspect of the activity was that we weren't given simple clues such a a dictionary or a novel. Rather, the boys gave more complex lists that considered different audiences, with items such as a biography that might appeal to a ten-year-old or one of Jane Austen's lesser-known novels. This gave the activity more complexity and proved an interesting challenge.

Civic Systems: Public Art

Loyal readers will remember that our Civic Systems Projects & Exhibitions began to take shape way back in the winter, when Friend of SK Mary Morgan, founder and director of the Civ City Initiative (http://www.civcity.org/), joined us for a bus tour of the area, during which the kids identified a few dozen systems, both formal and informal: our trip is at http://sikkenga.blogspot.com/2016_01_01_archive.html. Later, they requested systems for their Projects, which required them to research the system well enough to explain it, identify someone with expertise on that system, and conduct at least one interview in preparation for an Exhibition.

Kaeli and Nik were the first to prepare and present their Exhibition. Mary joined us. The topic was public art, an informal system. They chose to conduct it at the Cube behind the Michigan Union, a well-known example of commissioned art. They interviewed David Zinn, a renowned chalk artist, who works both independently and through commissions. (David's wonderful work is here: http://zinnart.com/.)

The interview was terrific--both questions & answers. In addition to exploring the ins and outs of commissioned art, they asked David his thoughts about graffiti. He replied that he always wants his art to make people feel good, and that graffiti makes at least one person feel bad --the owner of the space. That's why he sticks to an impermanent medium, private commissions, workshops, and public spaces, mostly sidewalks. After the explanation and interview review, and a few spins of the Cube, Nik and Kaeli provided their classmates with chalk, and they went to work.

Progressive Education Hits the Road

This is a story that is only tangentially about our students.

I had the great honor and privilege in early April to travel to the Friends School of Minnesota, an innovative and delightful school in St Paul, to facilitate a workshop I developed in the for two professional conferences: the Association of Independent Michigan Schools in suburban Detroit and the Independent School Association of the Central States in the Twin Cities. One of the members of our ISACS Visiting Team in the fall, Shane Zack, had been impressed enough with Summers-Knoll that he recommended my workshop to FSM's assistant head, Jeannette Lutter-Gardella, and she in turn invited me to come to Minnesota again to visit their school.

What I found there was delightful. The school speaks fluent Summers-Knoll, by which I mean that they are passionate about progressive education and adept at engaging it. They did their homework, looking over our school's website and reading many of our classroom blogs. This helped to make my visit wonderfully engaging! First thing in the morning, I attended their full-faculty meeting for my formal(ish) presentation, Progressive Education in Any Setting. After that, I met in turn, for about an hour apiece, with FSM's elementary teachers, specialists (music, Spanish etc), middle school teachers, and new Head of School.

The Head of the Kazoo School in Kalamazoo, Sally Read, also saw the presentation (at both conferences, actually), and came to SK this winter to see us in action. We hope to host teachers from the Friends School of Minnesota in the 2016-2017 academic year.

Here is a link to the presentation:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KmQ8IvsfFLBnSIKmLscmviSnAlHFZ_H9m26X96aFvCs/edit#slide=id.p

And here is a link to a description of, and rationale for, SK's philosophy of progressive education (from right here on this very blog):
http://sikkenga.blogspot.com/p/overview.html

And, yes, if you're a loyal reader, you've seen that Minnesota Twins* illustration of Minnie and Paul before:
http://sikkenga.blogspot.com/2014/10/dichotomies-have-emerged-as-compelling.html

*I love Minnesota's team names because they all reflect the location: Twins, Timberwolves, Vikings, even Wild, which is no North Stars, but it'll do.

Academic Disciplines

Much of the Summers-Knoll academic day is given over to what we call 'specials' class, each taught by a practitioner with disciplinary expertise: math, science, music, art, and languages.

The plurality of a student's time, however, is spent in homeroom. For the 7-8s, this time serves an advisory capacity, but also is the headquarters for several academic activities. In a conventional school, you might say that homeroom covers seven areas of a school day:

1. English and language arts
2. history and social studies (which I prefer to call 'history and society')
3. physical education
4. advisory
5. project planning (not usually an explicit part of a conventional school day)
6. health and sex education
7. study hall

What follows is a brief report on each of these seven. This is a snapshot of the week of April 18-22, not an overview of the whole semester; for a pithy overview of that, try the Big Chart posts:

• First Semester: http://sikkenga.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-readiness-is-all.html
• Second Semester: http://sikkenga.blogspot.com/2016/01/january-to-june.html

English. The 7-8s are working on two major prompts, the largest in scale of the year. One is a short story, inspired in part by our earlier reading of stories from Kurt Vonnegut's 'Welcome to the Monkey House'. The other is a 2-3 page history paper, about which more below. Together, we are reading Patricia Beatty's 'Jayhawker', a YA novel that takes place before and during the Civil War. Jayhawkers were abolitionist activists, who were fighting to have their territory admitted to the Union as a free state. The novel takes place during the time of 'Bleeding Kansas', a brief conflict between the Kansans and Bushwhackers, vigilantes from Missouri whose objective was to make Kansas a slave state, and to prevent raids to free sleeves in their own newly admitted state. In addition, the kids have been assigned, singly and in pairs, to read the following books.....

• The Crucible, Arthur Miller
• The World Beneath, Janice Warman
• Code Talker, Joseph Bruchac
• Boy Snow Bird, Helen Oyeyemi
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• George, Alex Gino
• Stowaway, Karen Hesse
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
• The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson

History & Society. The major paper listed above requires the students to summarize the key actions and legacies of four abolitionists: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the chronically misunderstood John Brown. Of course, this complements our work with Jayhawker. the students are reading a thirty-page coursepack on the topic, including both primary and analytical sources, as well about ten pages from Joy Hakim's textbook A History of Us. In addition, students are working in pairs on their Civic Projects, involving the study of public libraries, power and electricity, snow removal, emergency medical systems, public art, and little free libraries. Students will identify the best location for these Exhibitions, scheduled for the first week in May, during which they will explain the system, explain their choice of location, and conduct or share interviews.

Physical Education. This week, we played two rounds of the newly christened 'jumbleball'. In this game, rules are more or less fluid, though all changes come from a centralized source (me) in order to minimize talking and maximize play time. In jumbleball, a large variety of balls are kept in a bin: soccer, little rubber ones, footballs, rugby, giant yoga spheres etc. The kids play soccer with one of these. Then I throw in another, then another, till the game culminates in a sort of free-for-all with all the balls in play. We also went for a hike at the Matthei Botanical Gardens in a light spring rain.

Advisory. I am currently at work on the April McJune Tutorials document, in which each student's weekly work is listed. This will be shared on Monday and reviewed individually with all of the kids, one at a time. I'm still collecting phones each morning, part of a policy we mutually developed. Whenever a student wants the phone for work purposes (e.g. voice-to-text, photographs of a project), I hand it over, and then collect it afterwards. Phones are returned at the end of the day.

Project Planning. In addition to the Civic Projects, which involve all of the kids, the eighth graders are making progress on their Legacy Projects. Each is designing a project that will improve SK life and last beyond their graduation. These comprise new playground equipment, community service (in this case, a drive to collect t-shirts, sew them into tote bags, and fill them with toiletries for refugees), the decoration of eight ceiling tiles by each of the homerooms, a K-7/8 buddy system, an SK anthem, an additional SK animal, and an SK costume shop.

Sex Ed. We never share particulars of the Our Whole Lives program, since those conversations are confidential. I can say that we are presently discussing interpersonal etiquette, bullying, and bystander intervention, in both real-life and online situations.

Study Hall. On most days, students have between thirty and forty-five minutes to address homework at school. The kids always appreciate this time and, generally speaking, they use it wisely.

The Tempest

The kids performed William Shakespeare's The Tempest three times, twice on the 11th and once more on the afternoon of the 12th.

The Tempest is an unusual show for Shakespeare in a number of senses. It was his final play and as such has a sweet poignancy, even melancholy. It is the only one of his plays to take place in real time. It is hard to classify: normally, it is lumped in with the comedies, but it has decided elements of history, tragedy (although no one dies), and the fantastical. It coincided with European settlement of the New World, a globally significant that is thought to have influenced Shakespeare’s portrait of a new, miniature society created in Europe’s image in a wild place. The 7-8 class also created a Storm Project presentation on Google Slides (click on the link, then 'Present' in the upper right, then 'Exit' after the 23 slides are done). It was projected on the wall downstairs at our staircase entrance.

There is charming air of transitions in The Tempest: Prospero to his former, beloved life; Miranda to adulthood, Ferdinand too; Alonso to absolution; Ariel to freedom. That being the case, I have to say that I wish every eighth grade class would learn and perform The Tempest. Their upcoming transition is a big one.

Here are a few of Mary Swain's photos of our own wild place, set in our 7-8 classroom and lit by a dozen floor lamps, switched on and off and on and off during the storm; left on for the duration of the play; and turned off one by one by Prospero at the end, as he gave his and Shakespeare's valedictory.

The Boatswain (Evan Rago) rages against the storm.

Prospero (Matthew Osterholzer) schools his daughter Miranda (Lindsay Barolo).

Prospero gives orders to his spirit-servant Ariel (Margaret Keillor).

Caliban (Kaeli Sikkenga) in a rage.

Ferdinand (Gabe Resnicow) is placed under Miranda's spell by Ariel.

Antonio (Marcellin Barbeau) and Sebastian (Karenna Collins-Thompson) hatch a dastardly and diabolical plot.

March First XI

Top Ten lists are an old saw in American culture, thanks to David Letterman and our love of round numbers. I prefer the soccer tradition of a First XI. (In the sport, it refers to the starting eleven players who take the field for a match.)

Here is a First XI for the busy March that awaits the 7-8s. 

The kids are also reading books, including selected stories from Kurt Vonnegut's 'Welcome to the Monkey House', and writing on them as well as participating in the University of Michigan's Place Out of Time historical simulation--check it out at http://poot.icsmich.org/.

1. March 4: the Music and Art Café at 6:30 pm.
2. March 8: Polis Project I due (group portraits of city-states from classical Greece).
3. March 10: Civic Projects assigned (explaining various city systems in Ann Arbor, such as power, transportation and justice).
4. March 10. Storm Project due (a look at storms from several disciplinary angles).
5. March 11 & 12. The Tempest. 1:00 and 7:00 on Friday; 7:00 on Saturday.
6. March 17. Summers-Knoll Science Fair at 7:00 pm.
7. March 18. Middle School Game Night at 6:00 pm.
8. March 22. Polis Project II due (group portraits of fictional city-states).
9. March 23. Diplomacy Day (on which the Polis II city-states interact).
10. March 25. Student-led family conferences should be completed by this date.
11. March 28-31. Happy Happy Fun Time Lone Star Spirit Happiness Week (comprising Character Day, Pajama Day, Culture Day and a Fun Run).