Meggie Gonzalez
Secondary life science teacher Digital Portfolio
Lesson Study Cycle 3
Through the course of this third lesson study cycle, I partnered with fellow middle school teachers in my cohort. As we discussed our experiences in our classrooms this year, we began to concentrate our thoughts around the concept of empathy. We all shared observations of our students seeming hesitant to consider the experiences of others, especially if these experiences are unfamiliar. With the focus of this lesson study being social justice, we wanted to work to cultivate empathy and appreciation of others' struggles. We formulated our problem of practice as: How can we develop criticality in our students so that they learn to question and/or unlearn their own hegemonic ideas/experiences?
As we began to make plans for our PDSAs, we wanted to experiment with ways of introducing new perspectives to our students. We decided to use first-hand sources in the form of interviews to do this. We believed that if we could give our lessons the personal touch of an individual's story, our students might feel more connected, and engaged, with the lessons. Presenting new perspectives was in line with our Equity Based Research Theme:
We will encourage students to be critical of existing power structures affecting a diverse group of people. We will empower students to believe they can use their learning to direct change.
For our first PDSA, I brought a video documentary to my science students. We had been studying the effects of genetic and environmental influences on the growth of organisms. To give students a connection to a current and global issue, I chose to bring in a lesson on ocean acidification. The lesson included a short documentary with an interview featuring a family of oyster farmers. The fourth generation is now working the family business, and hurting due to recent changes in the environment. Increased pH in the local waters has led to a strong decline in the number of baby oysters. The young oysters need to build themselves a protective shell, but the acidic waters are making the shells thinner than usual, and leading to a high mortality rate. I felt developing some appreciation for this global issue might be difficult for pre-teens, and so decided to bring in a human element with the video interview. In this way, students were able to see the faces of individuals whose livelihood is being negatively affected by this issue. They can now connect ocean acidification to a family that is struggling and improvising to keep the business alive. I provided students with some reflection questions at the end the lesson. I had asked who/what is being affected by more acidic oceans, and many students made the connection to the human factor (both on the business and consumer end). When I asked if they felt it was important to spread awareness about this issue, several students made some big-picture connections: global food availability, overall ocean health, potential to effect many more people, and even one's personal diet's connection to the issue.
For our second PDSA round, our team felt we wanted to continue exploring the use of interviews in our lessons. We settled on each teacher in our group using a different type of media for their selected interview. Since I had used a video interview the first round, I decided to give a podcast a try. This was my first time assigning a podcast to my students. As a life science class, we had since moved on to an introduction of genetics. After discussing concepts such as genes, traits, and alleles, I assigned a podcast discussing the genetic differenced between wolves and dogs. The podcast featured a professional geneticist describing his research. I assigned this on a day that I needed a substitute, and was a little weary that some of the concepts covered in the episode might be too advanced for the students. I had assigned some comprehension questions to guide students through the episode, which I reviewed when I got back to my classroom. I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of detail and accuracy with which most students answered the questions. They were able to decipher and write about concepts such as melanin, mutations, and dog's genetic relationship to wolves. Students seemed to follow the material well and showed a general interest in learning more about the subject. It seemed to me that once again having a real person with real-life research helped students with engagement.
Our Lesson
Our team collaborated on a lesson for a middle school English class. The class was in a dystopian literature unit at the time of our study. The goal of the unit was that students will be able to identify and compare themes of oppression and resistance in dystopian literature and compare them to real world examples both orally and in short reflection writing.
Students had been reading the novel, The Giver. The class had been working to identify themes of oppression and resistance, as well as reflected on a real world example of the indigenous boarding schools prior to this lesson.
Our theory for this lesson was: If we give students an opportunity
to roleplay marginalized people in a dystopian society and enact their own revolution, students will be able to formulate deeper and more genuine connections between core themes present in dystopian literature and modern day acts of resistance. We theorized we would see this working by collecting activity reflection sheets after the lesson was completed.
At the onset of the lesson, our host teacher, Kamal, greeted his students by informing them that they had all been selected to be a part of his utopian classroom. They were each going to be assigned a number as an identifier. This number would also determine the role they would play in their group for the collective effort of making cards. Each group was given a quota of cards to make, a promised candy and 'front of line' pass for each person in the winning group, and specific instructions on how a completed card should appear. Students were to stick to their role in the process. In addition,
on the whiteboard was a list of "forbidden" words and actions. The other teachers of our lesson study group, including myself, took on policing roles. This included keeping students on task and sending them to "prison" for one minute if any forbidden actions were witnessed. The "prison" was a small room adjacent to the classroom that was supervised by a fellow teacher. As work time began, Kamal strategically called aside a small group of students. He explained to the small group that the real goal of this activity was for the students to successfully rebel and stop production of cards. He then sent them back in to the room to try and convince their classmates.
We observed two different class periods with this same setup. In both classes, students started out focused on making cards and trying to figure out the best way to accomplish their tasks. They would ask clarifying questions and work to develop a system within their table group. Soon after, as teachers started sending students out for asking questions like, "why?" or having more than one colored pencil at a time. Some frustration was felt as team members became absent, especially since each student could only do a single task per card. The students began to strategize in their moments outside of the work area. Eventually both classes successfully staged a revolt where they planned a moment for all students to synchronously stop working. The first class organized to have all their cellphone alarms sound at the same time to signify they were done with the rules. The second class coordinated a set time at which everyone would begin clapping, and signifying an end to work and disregard of the societal norms. Both were effective.
Observation & Debrief
It was really fun to watch student interactions during this activity and eventually see how their secret communications succeeded. At the end of each class, students were asked to explain their strategies for getting everyone on board with the revolution. They explained that they began using their "unsupervised" time in prison to spread word of the resistance movement. They would then work to further spread the word during their 1 minute break periods (after every 5 minutes of production, students were allowed a break). During work time, they were not allowed to speak to other groups, but at breaks they would enlighten individuals from other groups about the real goal. They were effective at quickly spreading the movement, as less than 10 cards were completed in each class. Of the cards that were turned in, several had dissent messages blatantly displayed (pictured on the left). These messages also helped to fuel the resistance as fellow students saw them while turning in their own completed cards.
The students were all very good sports throughout the activity. After being separated into groups and introduced to the rules of our society, students began muttering, "how is this perfect?!" They recognized that one power's stance and ideals are not necessarily in line with the whole of society. Early on, while students were focused on card production, some students took on a role of policing their group. They would tell others what they were not allowed to do, and direct them to keep production efficient. However, as more and more students began to be absent, production started to slow. Students didn't know what to do when members of their team were missing, and word of the rebellion had begun in the prison room, quietly making its way back to the main classroom.
In their reflection writeup, students were asked how they would feel if the simulation was real life. Many students said they would feel angry, upset, degraded, and scared. As far as what needs they required to be successful at rebelling, their responses were a leader, passion, unity, and communication. When asked what methods were most effective at cultivating dissent, they mentioned how they broke the rules. Being sent away stopped production and also allowed time for students to talk and organize. Students were asked what incentivized them to not rebel, and that was the promised reward and fear of getting in trouble. On the other hand, sentiments that made them want to join the resistance were trust in their peers and just wanting to act on their own free will. One student gave a deep reflection likening the simulation to the Black Lives Matter movement. The student saw similarities in people facing injustice, control over others, and the courage to speak your mind.
