Gratitude. I am so grateful to so many people for the
opportunity to have gone to Prague for the Microsoft Partners in Learning
Global Forum last week. I certainly appreciate the hard work and dedication of
the Microsoft team who pulled off an amazing event. As Pauline Roberts has eloquently
articulated, I thank Anthony Salcito, Lauren Woodman, Sophie Tual, Rob
Bayuk and Carrie Hoople Hispsher for their ability to bring together a
world-class collection of educators for a powerful professional development
experience. Thank you, Microsoft, for your willingness to honor and uplift the
work of students and teachers around the world who value effective,
transformative teaching and learning from the classrooms of our schools to the
streets of our communities.
I was humbled and inspired as I walked the aisles of the
forum. The breadth and depth of projects that my international colleagues are
undertaking is very familiar in structure to ours
and also motivating at the same time. I look forward to the chance to spend
more time deconstructing other projects and creating more global connections. I
am certainly grateful to my new friends from all over the planet for their
dedication to their students and the real learning that takes place when
students’ learning leaves the classroom and enters their lives beyond the
school building.
I am certainly appreciative of the support from the
administration, teachers, school board members, and parents of Birmingham Public
Schools. The opportunity to participate in the Global Forum is certainly a
career-altering event, and the chance to participate has been a gift that will
reap dividends in my classroom for years to come.
I deeply appreciate the most compelling reason I was able to
attend the Forum in the first place, and that is the vision, dedication, and
hard work of my teaching partner, Pauline Roberts. “Queen Pauline the Green”,
as she is known around the Joberts 56 team (54 students and two teachers),
Pauline has long been a champion of educational experiences that enable
students to view themselves as stewards of their own learning.
Pauline came to me with the idea of participation in Partners
in Learning last year, after going through the experience by herself the
previous year. The conversation went something like this:
Pauline: “Hey
Rick, what do you think about our kids’ getting involved in Partners in
Learning?”
Rick: “Okay!”
End of
conversation.
My implicit trust in all things Pauline stems from the fact
that Mrs. Roberts encourages each child to develop a relationship to self from a
place of deep integrity, and to live the principle of “see a need, fill a need”.
On the Joberts team, kids don’t need to wait for an adult to tell them what to
do. Students are encouraged to identify problem areas in the world in which
they live, and to act on them. It is this guiding principle, I believe, which has
enabled our Doing
Business in Birmingham Project to be successful.
Queen Pauline lives constructivist practice every day. She
enables our students, through inquiry, to develop their own realizations and
take ownership for bringing them to fruition. A recent example took place last
week during our sciracy class (science and literacy – rhymes with piracy). It
is during sciracy when we have to creative freedom to give students the chance
to engage in project-based learning experiences like Doing Business in
Birmingham.
We were in the midst of planning our “Global Celebration
Manipulation” in the wake of our first
place win in the Collaboration category at the Global Forum. Pauline asked
the kids,
“So, what do you want
to do for our celebration?”
The responses varied from surprisingly reasonable (“Let’s
have cake”) to more predictably daring suggestions. Pauline skillfully facilitated
the conversation to honor and uphold the students’ suggestions with the minimum
amount of necessary teacher parameters. Her consistent message to the kids was
clear: This is your party. What do you
want to do?
The empowerment of our students on a daily basis is a hallmark
of who Pauline is as an educator. It is part of her charisma. Kids flock to her
with ideas because they know that their thoughts – no matter how outlandish - matter
and will be heard. Queen Pauline the Green makes kids and their visions her
own. She uplifts and empowers, from Birmingham, Michigan to Prague and back.
Every day.
Thanks, Pauline.