Civic Systems: Power

Power corrupts.                                   

Absolute power is kind of neat.         

                            --Donald Regan

Karenna and Marcellin took us to the University of Michigan Central Power Plant for their exploration of power in Ann Arbor. One of the directors of the operation, Jim Watterson, handed over the conference room for the students' explanation of how the steam-based turbines of the plant work (Jim was duly impressed). They also spent some time discussing the plant's transition from coal to steam in 1966, an environmentally based change that was years ahead of its time. After Marcellin and Karenna led a debate on the pros and cons of coal power, Jim took us into the control room of the whole enterprise (below). The next time you pass that huge plant where Huron turns into Washtenaw, you'll know why nothing ever comes out of that smokestack. It's been obsolete for fifty years.

Civic Systems: Snow Removal

Matthew and Gabe ushered in the Awesome Vehicles portion of our Civic Exhibitions with their tour around the Field Operations unit of Ann Arbor's city services, a few minutes south of Summers-Knoll off Ellsworth Road. First, our host Kirk Frederickson explained the priority system of snow removal in Ann Arbor: how much snow brings out the trucks; who gets service first, and why; how long it takes; how use of sand and salt has reduced the environmental impact of this city service; and the reduction in wintertime accidents that can be attributed to salt and plowing. Then, the good stuff. First, Kirk showed us around one of the city's six $160,000 snow trucks. (It was Matthew's father who figured out where the air horn was.) Then, we got to look inside the salt dome, where thousands of tons of salt are stored for use every winter. Some climbing and salt-sliding followed.

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.