Kids These Days
I spend altogether too much energy trying to impress my 3rd-grade Generation Alpha daughter. I recently handed her my holiday needlepoint project: “What if I put a fun streak of neon colors through my green and red holiday canvas? Wouldn’t that be cute?” I was confident she’d be impressed by my edgy “buck the system” approach to my decidedly stodgy pastime. She gave me a deadpan stare. “No way. It needs to stay classic.”
She left the room and emerged again with a single shoelace- white with a small gold streak through it. Much bigger than the rest of my chosen threads. “Oh- but honey, this won’t fit- see the holes? They’re really small.” Another deadpan stare. “You can make the holes bigger, Mom.” I scratched my fossilized head, wondering how I missed the chance to see that. I’m so set in my ways with my predictable thread, predictable canvas, predictable needle- neurons firing away in the same old patterns.
She surprises me every day- frequently in a way orthogonal to the unexpected ways that I’m expecting. Kids these days, let me tell you. They are bold, creative and honest; they don’t particularly care about the things we hold constant. There are many words and phrases to describe the state of our world, but kids leave me feeling hopeful.
Before I found myself here in the nonprofit arena, I studied cognitive science and applied it to education. I spent a lot of time digging into how people think, the kinds of questions according to their stages in development- even the useful mistakes they make that help illuminate their learning. I taught 7th graders at Columbia Secondary School as part of my graduate program where I developed a strong interest in effectively making students’ thinking visible to themselves where students developed reasons and evidence to support their arguments on various topics. They’d grade themselves, deducting points if their claims had no factual grounding, and adding extra points where they could effectively take aim at someone’s weak argument (never taking aim at the person themselves - because ‘we attack ideas, not people.’ It’s painful to realize just how badly America desperately needs to understand the distinction.) The most points of all were awarded for claims where students could effectively wield their opponents’ claims to further their own argument.
The most challenging part of that teaching experience was helping students see that they were, in fact, working hard and learning critical skills. Some, who struggled to develop basic, sound reasons for their opinions, would also complain that the course “wasn’t hard enough” because they weren’t tasked to memorize long stretches of impressive facts. The work was different- just as hard, and urgent- for their impending entrance into society as young adults.
I also ran a nursery school for 5 years that was just as much of a community-building effort as it was a place to learn and grow. It was all founded in my approach to process- and inquiry-based learning. It was a mash-up from my time with my terrific advisor in graduate school who was steadfast in her belief that we all must learn how to engage critically with one another in society- and the Reggio Emilia approach.
Our motto at Brooklyn Country Day: "Learn to think to grow to live to love to live to learn”
Seeing how these experiential threads are woven through me, I couldn’t help myself: I wrote a kelp curriculum. It’s a departure from traditional curricula on many fronts: (1) It’s wholly interdisciplinary, because kelp is so much more than biology and ecology, and it will never reach its potential in our society if we treat it so. (2) It’s as real-world as I could possibly make it, drawing on my experience in teaching kids the most critically useful of life skills, like asking great questions (“Why should we even grow kelp? Does it actually matter? What are the steps we need to take to get NYS into a flourishing blue economy?”). (3) It’s accessible to everyone- even to a high school student looking to lead an activity for younger students. It’s not just for trained educators who speak the language of benchmarks and learning standards. At its core, this document could be used as a self-exploration tool for prospective volunteers looking to get involved in kelp but unsure how.
Languages, cultures, and values evolve because of kids. We are doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t get kelp into classroom conversations throughout the United States- not just in coastal communities. We need kelp in most every conversation about our environment, our economy, and the creative, positive future we must make for the road ahead of us. It’s important to understand that, if we’re doing it right, we can’t decide for these kids what’s relevant about kelp; we can only propose it, introduce it, and see what they do with it. Because, invariably, they will see things we can’t. They aren’t afraid or reluctant or beaten down by burnout or the (amusingly competitive) nature of the seaweed industry. Their egos aren’t yet in the way. Their brains are stretching and taking on possibility that our hardened neurons can’t.
Schools are our best hope as incubators for ideas, testing, and imagining. A student at Elmont HS is using dried kelp to clean water. How about that. I hope they set an example for people twice their age to start a local company. Maybe that shouldn’t even be my hope; maybe I should hope that THEY do it. Adults would be wise to follow their lead.
‘Facilitating student learning’ is only one of many reasons I built this curriculum. Here are a few more:
inspiring adults, industry
getting kelp even further into mainstream conversation
building community: bridges among schools, and also school-to-industry
Kelp has so much potential for our society; we haven’t even scratched the surface. Creating an interdisciplinary curriculum with kelp in the starring role is one of our most promising vehicular strategies to get us out from under the thumbs of the closed institutional research and proprietary corporate flywheels. When these kids grow up, they’ll be in research labs, hunting for money, writing grants, pigeon-holing and watering down their burning questions to increase their chances for funding. Or maybe they’ll work at a company with the Almighty Bottom Line clipping at their heels. Let’s incubate creativity and freedom right now.
As a process-art person, I do not see my work on this curriculum as a finished product. It will only really begin to take shape once it’s utilized by educators. I want this material to live, breathe and evolve, and I will continue to serve as a consultant, connecting teachers with experts and other teachers, allowing students to showcase their work publicly. Even if they arrive at their finish line with more questions than answers: maybe it’s the epistemological nerd in me, but new questions are arguably even more worth showcasing and celebrating than any final conclusions.
The link is below because I believe these things should be free when possible. You’ll see it’s not just a link to a PDF; it’s a page that will hopefully someday house the learnings, reports, and documentation from students near and far who engage with it. I hope you download it, use it, and email me to let me know your thoughts. I hope you reach out and ask me to showcase your student work on our website so that other folks in the community can learn from your progress.