I had such great success Rethinking Meet the Teacher event and I keep coming back to the question What’s it going to be like to be a learner in this classroom?; I did some rethinking about working with parents.  I enjoy going to Curriculum Nights as a parent for three reasons.  I want to see the space and teacher that will be working with my child and I hope to learn about the teacher personally.  I enjoy learning about the topic or material covered for the year and I get really interested when they mention anything about the how we learn.

Taking my learning from the Teaching for Creativity Institute this summer, I decided to engage my parents in a creative task.  I prepared eight brown paper bags with recyclable materials.  Parents were around the room; some standing and some sitting.  I asked them to come together in small groups around the tables and introduced the material bags, task, and time limit.  They looked at me hesitantly.  The task was to decide on a problem they had they had and make something to fix it.

The room slowly became a buzz and I “worked the party” discovering this work had more benefits than I thought.

1.  Parents introduced themselves to each other and identified who their child was.
2.  They shared ideas for problems and were validated for their thinking.
3.  They laughed and giggled.
4.  They learned how hard it can be to get started.
5.  They wanted to work longer to produce their ideas.
6.  They were hesitant to share and then enjoyed that step.
7.  They wanted to make something “real” and struggled with prototypes.
8.  Parents shared more excitement than usual for our year of learning together.
9.  I felt more relaxed during the evening.
10.  I felt more engaged with the parents than just presenting information to them.

The night was a bigger success than I thought and I decided the biggest benefit was I had spent time in developing a parent community for our classroom.  We know our work isn’t just with students and I’ve had parents join us on and off every year I’ve been teaching.  This evening felt different and I think it’s because I had them engaged and being a learner, like their child will be this year.

This past summer I was lucky enough to attend the Teaching for Creativity Institute at the Columbus Art Museum for four days in June.  My teaching soul felt hopeful and excited to revisit ideas that grounded my early days of teaching and gather some new thinking.  We talked about our stakeholders and how we can advocate for creativity teaching.  Ideas were tossed around for working with parents during curriculum nights and I began thinking about the two hour window new students and families can stop by to visit our learning space and meet me.  For many years it’s been an opportunity to unpack your school supplies and find out who is in your classroom.  I began thinking about the messages I wanted to start expressing right away and thought this format could be tweaked.

I saw an idea at the art museum in the Wonder Room and wanted to replicate it.  I thought about how they could express and foster messages about our classroom.  We will be inspired.  We will work together.  We will make things.  We will talk.  We will come together.  We will imagine.  When I thought about picking up my phone for some photos tonight, I had another family to meet and visit with.  I wish you could see the room in action.  It was beautiful.

Creative spaces

1.  Coming Together – pick a fabric strip and add to chicken wire to make a class weaving
2.  Imagine – explore with post it notes and make something new, tape and colored pencils were offered too
3. Drawing with Friends – new markers and a square piece of paper hung together in a larger square grid.
4. Be Inspired – offered four picture books about bugs, tissue paper squares and rectangles, pipe cleaners, and bendable wire

At first, I was worried the creative spaces weren’t going to be used very much.  It was probably a new option for my students.  They loved adding a strip of fabric to a collaborative weave.  When the room was quieter nudging was needed to engage my new friends.  I turned around at a busy moment and there was more engagement.  Old friends were reconnecting.  Neighbors were laughing.  Parents were reconnecting.  A new student, just moved this weekend to be with us and my new friend V did a great job talking to her while her grandpa snapped photos of her new learning space.  As the two hours ended, I found used creative spaces and things to hang in our room.  My space is now our space and the messages I wanted to send about our year together have been sent.

Collaborative Weaving

In June, I had the privilege to attend the Teaching for Creativity Institute at our local Columbus Art Museum. Four days of connecting with area educators while focusing on what creativity is, looks like, and how to foster creativity.  Creativity can be practiced, you can get better at it, and creativity is the basis of change.  Learning and growth require change. To help develop creativity we studied and learned about thinking and how to create cultures of thinking.  As our learning continued, we started talking about how to explain and justify to parents things we may do to foster creativity.  Ideas were shared for engaging parents and changing up the traditional curriculum night format.  I loved the ideas shared and I’m sure I will incorporate some this coming year.

Fred Burton, one of my former principals was a guest speaker during the institute and as he discussed studying and fostering cultures of thinking he proposed an essential question to guide that work.  “What’s it going to be like to be a learner in this room?”  I loved this question and kept pondering it.  This is a big question and an important one to be answered.  It would probably help with the beginning of the year jitters, I think everyone feels on some level.

At the end of day three I visited an area of the museum that’s called the Wonder Room.  It’s a place where families and children can interact with materials either by doing something or making something.  The activities connect in some way and during my visit my head began to swirl with thinking from my time at the institute and Fred’s essential question.  If I was a student, I would hope to find out some answers about learning in our classroom right away.  All the routines and things we do can bog down our first days, if we aren’t careful.

When families visit my room before school starts to meet me and see our learning space I typically have them work together to unpack and sort the student’s school supplies.  This doesn’t answer the question, What’s it going to be like to be a learner in this room?”  I found myself wanting to change the format of coming to see the classroom and meet your teacher before school starts.  What if their time in our classroom had creativity moments and opportunities to talk to others?  What if it involved collaboration and sharing ideas?  What if it generated student work to display and welcome them on their first day?  These photos are ideas I may borrow in one way or another to revamp meet the teacher.