Experimental archeology with Travis Finneran
We’d like to think that the professional development we spend time and money on garners this enthusiastic a response much of the time:
“No joke, it’s been life changing for me.”
The fact that it doesn’t is a real problem. The fact that we are often stuck in patterns of telling and explaining, of talking at folks instead of with them, of assuming there’s been learning when there hasn’t been much, that’s a problem.
Professional development does not need to follow old models. Here’s what I experienced this morning, firsthand. An experience of joy, enthusiasm, respect, expertise, and collegiality.
Background
For over a decade, Leysin American School has invited teachers to suggest passion projects that extend across the academic year (and often beyond). Teachers with successful applications receive a stipend and some support from those of us leading professional learning. The actual time we spend on support is minimal. The most significant support is the message that we want teachers to experiment and that their self-directed work is worth doing and sharing.
This morning the faculty had a chance to attend two presentations among the eight that were offered, all led by teachers completing a year of self-directed professional learning. I heard project updates from Andie and Travis.
Outdoor education is education – Andie Flett
We’re about ten people, discussing the value of outdoor education, the why and some of the how. The presenter, Andie, is hitting the exact right tone for teaching adults: friendly, not taking herself too seriously, responsive. This is not a lecture, it is a series of structured discussions on a theme.
This is the third time Andie has been what we call a “resident scholar” since the program began. She and a colleague explored homework support in the resident halls in 2014-2015 and student agency in the activity program in 2020-2021. This current school year she has created a curriculum for an outdoor education class as a regular part of course offerings.
Our group talks about the importance of outdoor education from a variety of angles. Andie asks us, “What if we called our current academic classes ‘Indoor Education’ and we called outdoor education simply ‘Education?’’ The reframing makes us stop and think. What are our priorities? She asks us if it is okay to excuse students from academic classes for outdoor education experiences. Matt, an IB English teacher sitting next to me, says “of course” for his star students. For a struggling student, he hesitates. He names a student who is very focused on the outdoors but not very into Shakespeare. “Actually, who am I to say he should miss an outdoor activity for more Shakespeare, when outdoor activities are his passion, what he is good at?”
Right. In the twenty-five minute session we consider not just outdoor education, but differentiated learning and student choice and whole child development. Andie gets a chance to share her curriculum work with colleagues. We all get to observe an incredible example of non-teacher-fronted instruction. Everyone wins. And Andie knows we care about her and her interests. She matters.
Experimental archeology – Travis Finneran
The second session begins with a student playing the carnyx. The carnyx is a long horn, a bit like an alphorn, but the straight metal tube is held vertically, ending in the fanciful head of a dragon. The student can find various pitches, working the mouthpiece with an appropriate carnyx embouchure. Hatty, an English teacher, asks if it took him a long time to learn. “A very long time,” answers Travis, as he thanks the student and starts his presentation.
There are eight of us, sitting in a half circle around a table filled with jars and boxes and cloth and tree branches and rocks. And the carnyx and other stuff I can’t really identify. Travis, who is in his second year of introducing experimental archeology to the school, shares technologies with us from a time when this area of Central Europe was inhabited by the Celts. He talks about how the Romans died clothes, he lifts up bottles of dye made from berries, lichen, and other natural materials. He shows us ingots that he and students have smelted, making sure to share the safety measures he takes as well. He demonstrates how simple cutting tools were made by flintknapping, a process of hitting a stone with a hammerstone at the right angle to create a sharp-edge flint. Lithic reduction, it’s also called.
Travis’ enthusiasm is infectious and we all ask questions and have some good laughs, especially when Travis, who likes to do things as they were done in the past (this is experimental archeology, after all) says that there are limits to sticking with ancient processes. The ammonium he uses, for example, does not come from the source it would have come from back in the middle ages, essentially aging urine.
As teachers file out of the session, past the table of artifacts, Travis tells me he is considering getting a degree in a related field. These past two years of self-directed professional development have been “life changing, no joke.”
The big takeaway
Professional development done right is an amazingly rich and meaningful experience, both for the learning of content and skills and for the sense of professionalism and self-efficacy that comes from sharing one’s continuous growth as an expert in a specific field. Almost universally teachers want to learn and grow and wonder and share with each other. If your professional development program struggles to build teachers up, to engage them, to offer a sense of intellectual wellness, well, build new models that do.
For a list of the teacher-led projects since 2014, see Resident Scholars (www.las.ch/laser)
For more discussion of the promise of highly useful professional learning, see the work of Patrick Alexander (patrickgalexander.org/). We particularly like his conceptualization of “intellectual wellbeing.”
Contact Paul if you’d like to set up a similar program: [email protected].