The interview with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay was eye opening and engaging to me as I had never heard of the Flat Classroom Project, let alone the terms flattening the classroom. I was understanding it as taking the current curriculum that you have and with other classes around the country or world, having the students teach one another based on their interpretation. Following the interview video, I began to look up the Flat Classroom Projects and was happy to find links that worked, the first was frozen by the court. (Flat Classroom Project, Flat Connections) I was able to find the wiki pages of previous projects and had a new understanding for the "A Week in the Life" projects that are designed for grades three through five. Instead of it being related to curriculum, it is teaching other students what a week in your life is like with questions geared toward the students i.e. school days, after school, home, etc. It would be a perfect opportunity to tie into our writing and social studies curricula as well as incorporate the use of digital media and making global connections.
"A truly respectful individual offers the benefit of the doubt to all human beings" (Gardner, p.113)
As I reflected on the interview and both the respectful and ethical minds, I kept bringing my thoughts back to the Rachel's Challenge initiative that our school has adopted and implemented. It isn't an idea that I personally have created or discovered, but that my school, as a whole, has chosen to utilize as model for teaching students many of the traits or characteristics associated with the respectful and ethical minds. Here you can learn all about Rachel's Challenge and how it is used and I will also give you examples of how I believe this program fosters collaboration among my colleagues as well as our students and how it helps to develop our students' respectful and ethical minds. Rachel Joy Scott was the first student killed at Columbine in 1999 and is remembered as a student who was always looking out for others, whether they were new, being picked on or were just different than others. As a teenager, Rachel had a strong developmental base of all five minds.
"As disciplined learners, it is our job to understand the world. But if we are able to be ethical human beings, it is equally our job to use that understanding to improve the quality of life and living and to bear witness when that understanding (or misunderstanding) is being used in destructive ways" (Gardner, 142).
Within our school, which houses grades 3-6, our guidance counselor has made it her mission to improve the way our students behave and view one another. She has taken the time to educate the staff in our building on Rachel's Challenge and uses the program when she meets with students throughout the school year. One initiative that we started last year was the creation of links, where teachers and students could fill out a slip of construction paper with a positive message when someone had said or done something that made them feel important, because that person had gone out of their way to notice or help them. Once the student filled out the link, then the student could either show that person or simply put it in the envelope. From there, a group of students would meet, fold and staple them into links and add them to the chain. It was great to see at the end of the year the long chain that students just from my room had created! (Wishing now I would have taken a picture of my students with their chain!) Through many of the statements that Gardner used throughout the text in both chapters on the respectful and ethical minds, I was writing them down as quotations that would be perfect to display to students or use throughout lessons. This one in particular reminded me of a lesson my students were engaged in with the Rachel's Challenge program that teaches students about differences, especially special needs, and how they are no different than you or I. " I call on human beings to accept the differences, learn to live with them, and value those who belong to other cohorts" (Gardner, p.107). Our students are great friends to the students with special needs in our building and grade levels; they accept them into their groups of friends and treat them with dignity and respect.
"…all humans as part of a single community" (Gardner, p.120).
Throughout the school year, the students work on many projects together and discussions within their core classes and the program with the guidance counselor in which they are collaborating with their peers and teachers. Our students are beginning to learn and ask themselves the important question that Gardner reiterates throughout the chapter on the ethical mind, "What is the right thing for me to do?" (p. 144). This wonderful initiative was first implemented with the idea of anti-bullying and helping students to see ways out of being a bully as well as being bullied. It has transformed into something much larger, where we recognize that we are a community and it is our duty to unconditionally accept and respect all within, tolerating those that are not ethically oriented and not stooping to their level. However, our students are still developing this frame of mind, so it will take strong positive models in order to guide them down the right path from this point forward, as most of them were not oriented with ethical or respectful individuals in the early stages of their lives.
"…we should whenever possible, give priority to respect for those with different backgrounds and beliefs--and hope that they will return the favor" (Gardner, p.119).
References:
Gardner, H. (2008). Five minds for the future. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.
Rachel's Challenge. (n.d.). Rachel's Challenge. Retrieved August 2, 2014, from http://www.rachelschallenge.org
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