In the past I’ve had trouble conceptualizing what collaborative learning really entails. After Tuesday’s class, I feel much more confident about my understanding of it. The biggest takeaway for me was that in collaborative learning, all students need to be vital, just like the strips of paper in ‘Let’s Make a Square!’. Students will be able to tell when their role is just a dangling unnecessary one, and their learning experience will suffer. Just a guess, but I bet this is easier said than done. I believe that being intentional as I plan collaborative learning experiences will help as I try to make sure all students are important during the whole experience.
I recently read an article “500 Feet of Respect” about a unit focusing on the fact that the criminal justice system is disproportionately full of students who are LGBTQ, black, and latino. While the article doesn’t explicitly discuss collaborative learning, I think it is an interesting example of a teacher intentionally forming groups during a unit to develop empathy and cross cultural skills. Throughout the unit, students in the New York City transfer school were placed into different groups for explicit reasons. When the class studied ‘disproportionality’ in math, straight black students worked together to analyze data about the imprisonment of queer youth. Straight and LGBTQ white students analyzed data about the imprisonment of black youth. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t acknowledge the presence of queer students of color and that is something I would definitely want to be mindful of if I found myself teaching a unit like this. As the unit progressed and the class prepared presentations for a panel of community members, the groups became heterogeneous. At the end of the unit, students had a better grasp on the realities of other student’s lives and the classroom culture shifted as a result of working together for community panel.
Colleen, I agree with you that when we plan a lesson and use grouping all the students must have a vital part to play. If not then it is just asking for a student to check out during a lesson and that isn't helping anyone learn.
ReplyDeleteI think that bringing in "500 Feet of Respect" was a great support for our cooperative learning lesson. Intentional grouping is one of the greatest powers of teaching, not to separate a group of friends, but to purposefully create groups that will work together and offer different opinions and views. Like "500 Feet of Respect", it is important for the groups to come away with two different lessons; one focusing on the content of the class, but another focusing on the group interactions and what they learned from each other. The latter will depend on how the groups are formed.
ReplyDelete"The altercation consumed me for days, raising questions about the community of respect I tried so hard to create within my room. After many contemplative subway rides, I decided to create a course that would allow kids like Ty and Stormy to hear one another and take action against their common experience: entrapment, disenfranchisement, and targeted criminalization."
ReplyDeletePowerful article Colleen. As I was reading, I imagined myself having to deal with two students in a similar situation, and I thought, WHAT IN THE WORLD WOULD I SAY? I am going to finish the article after I comment because I just wanted to get that idea out there, and add that this teacher did something truly amazing. He kept silent during the verbal fight between the two, and reflected on it afterwards. That reflection turned into an entire UNIT, familiarizing students with all walks of life and cultures. Very cool and beneficial article to read, thanks Colleen.
Thanks for the comment Ryan! I thought that article was a really interesting read. Thanks for clicking over! Rethinking Schools does a bunch of really cool stuff and posts a big chunk of their quarterly for free on their website. I really like your pointing towards the decision to stay quiet during the verbal fight....not something I was focusing on but really interesting to consider. When is staying silent a good idea? When do we need to step in, and when can we learn from letting students carry on their conversation?
Delete