Pushing for Depth in Our Students' Thinking - David Camp

The Shore School (also known as the Sydney Church of England Grammar School). What a view!

It's a drizzly, slightly-steamy Saturday morning in Milson's Point, and I'm mingling with the learning cultures set at the Shore School for the 2017 'Cultures of Thinking' Conference. This convergence of teachers from all sectors of education comes at the behest of Project Zero, the Harvard School of Education's 50 year-old investigation into the Arts as a cognitive science.

It's free professional learning, which in my mind is one of the best kinds, and it's the best way to end a teaching week. Imagine contrasting the chaotic daily challenges that come with teaching in a comprehensive high school setting with a day of positive pedagogy. The sharing of growth-promoting teaching practice not only meets our Professional Standards for Standard 6 (Engage in Professional Learning); it also feels good and enables me to continue developing my approach to the classroom. 

There was mention made today of 'learning teachers'. If I'm anything in my job, I believe that I'm a 'learning teacher'. I won't ever stop learning and it's explicit exploration of this concept that continues to give my job meaning and, if I'm honest, adds value to my life.

David Camp is Head of English at the Emmanuel School, a Jewish school in Randwick, and he presented a fantastic session on rendering thinking more visible in line with Project Zero's aims for building a more pragmatic and embedded 21st century learning culture.

I've written before about Project Zero's See Think Wonder activity but it's always useful to revisit this practical tool for visible thinking with different examples, and Mr Camp showed us a great example in his session, which I'll outline below.

But firstly, to recap, the See Think Wonder paradigm asks for the responder to look at a text and ask the following questions, in this order:

1. What do you see
2. What does that make you think about?
3. What does it make you wonder?

Watch the Pink Floyd film clip above (a classic) and then See Think Wonder it. Can I use 'See Think Wonder' as a verb? Why, yes I can, it's a neologism.

So, firstly, we SEE. Identify what you can see but don't attach anything of significance to your notes for this part.

Secondly, THINK. What associations or connotations come from what you see? What is being suggested?

And the third part, we WONDER. What do you want to know more about? What does it make you wonder? What are the bigger questions that arise from this text?

Here's my modelled example, completed in context during the session administered by Mr Camp (IE. The conditions we would ask students to do it in, only perhaps I was given less time to do it in - which is fine as Mr Camp covered a lot!)

See

People walking, classrooms, stuffy, high angle vs. low angle shots, muted colour scheme, modern/1970s music, montage of images, corporal punishment, drudgery, panning shot of bricks and grey, marching students, cellblocks, large clock, close-up on feet walking in unison, identical uniforms, teacher with idiosyncratic accent, angry, wide shot of hundreds of students, shadow of hammer falling with machinery, students turning into sausages, students smashing school, breaking bricks and windows, piling up of wood, burning building down, camera panning down to flames, flames are the first glimpse of real colour in the whole clip.

Think

Historical associations - teacher's accent reminiscent of German / hard to understand - allusions to Nazism and Hitler? Dystopia. Symbolism of students being ground into sausages representative of exploitation and waste. Piling up of wood - French Revolution. Panning shots show how big and insidious the control is. Wall being broken down - connection to Berlin Wall coming down (a prediction?) Revolution. High angle and low angle shots establish relationship of power.

Wonder

When was this text made, specifically? What was going in the world at that time? What happens to the sausages? Do the adults eat them? Who directed it? Is it a criticism of private schools? Or all schools in general? Or education in general? Or society in general? Which message is the most important - the value of the individual? The rigid structured nature of education? Has the system ever worked?

As you can see, the See Think Wonder activity is a great way to deepen student cognition. Mr Camp says that it takes thinking from the 'literal to the figurative, the shallow to the deep', and he also speaks about applying the framework to non-visual texts, explaining it as thus:

1. What do you see? (identify the key words)
2. What does it make you think about? (Which of the elements you have studied - themes, techniques, moments, quotes - comes to mind for these ideas?)
3. What do you wonder? (What are the deeper ramifications raised in the question?)

This was just a small part of David Camp's overall seminar.

Something else I'd like to share that he covered was exploring what the future classroom might look like. 

The Jetsons view of the future classroom gets points for including robot teachers, however, the apparent presence of a blackboard seems unnecessarily hip and retro.

We were asked to imagine what our class would look like if money and time weren't issues. In other words, what would we do with our room to create the sort of student we want to see. This activity was guided through the use of six key questions, and it might be fun, intrepid reader, if you wanted to try this too - it's a useful activity for rendering our abstract philosophy as something more explicit.

• What does this classroom look like?
• What does it sound like?
• What type of questions are being asked? and by whom?
• Who is interacting with whom and how?
• What types of activities are taking place?
• What is the headline for your classroom? That is, if a newspaper came along five years after you created this perfect classroom, what headline would they run?

My thoughts in relation to each of the above questions:

• I'd love to have windows that could be closed with shutters to keep light out, screens on each wall for projection from my computer, air conditioning, whiteboards on every wall, single tables to facilitate better maneuverability in the classroom - or, better yet, some way of programming a table-organisation plan into an app that then moves the tables around in my room for me on a period by period basis. How cool would that be? Also, I'd love a way of electronically opening my classroom door with a button on a key (like my car). 
• Soundwise, I'd hope my classroom would sound loud during discussion, and quieter than that when I'm trying to speak to everyone. To be honest, I haven't really thought about sound in the classroom that much. I'd love to have high quality speakers that played loud enough without distracting neighbouring classrooms. Sound-proofing between rooms, maybe?
• In terms of the third and fourth points, I would want students to question everything, from in-context and comprehension questions relating to the content of texts being studied, to metaquestions about curriculum and teaching practise. I would like students to feel comfortable giving honest and useful feedback to me, and to ask why we learn what we learn, and how it relates to what they might want to do with their lives.
• The kinds of activities would be predominantly student-designed with teacher guidance (where necessary). Students would match what they learn with their vocational goals and interests, they would research projects of their choice in order to apply their learning authentically to the outside world, and would interact with teachers in a meaningful way to meet their personal learning goals.
• And my headline? Students Take Control of Classroom: Coming to grips with co-design between teacher and student.