Community, Love and the 5-Columned Chart

Community, Love and the 5-Columned Chart

by Steven Glazer, Valley Quest

Cornish 4th graders with their friend Sally Thomas

FFEC? What the heck’s a FFEC?

Well, FFEC stands for Forest For Every Classroom.

FFEC arrived in my in-box at work like an invitation from the gods themselves: a year-long, PAID professional development opportunity—a chance to work in the field and across the seasons with cultural anthropologists, county foresters, curriculum specialists, herpetologists and historians—and get this: receive a $200 cash allowance to spend on the books and materials of my choice.

Any educator’s dream come true, was it not? But there was a catch: every FFEC participant would have to turn in a standard-based unit, complete with a 5-columned chart. Ugh! The standards! Washington, D.C., George Bush, conservative think tanks, standardized testing, the centralized control and manipulation of our student’s experience — their lives! Was I willing to make a deal with the devil for 10 days in the field and free copies of Reading the Forested Landscape, Home Place, New England Natives and A Field Guide to New England Barns and Outbuildings?

Yup, I was. The offer was so sweet I took it. Why? To walk through the woods wide-eyed with master teachers and colleagues; to learn to see our communities and landscapes—rather than four concrete walls — as the classroom; and to enhance my ability to share the big secret with my students: that the world itself is alive, infinitely rich and teacher without peer.

FFEC presented itself to me as an opportunity to hone my abilities in engaging students—their creativity, curiosity and intellect—with their places: the villages, farms and forests that made up the community. And just what was the spark that might bring the community alive, make it REAL for the students? My hunch was that the spark was love. But who would have thought that love could be fostered by the standards and a five-columned chart?

My fear of the five-columned chart? It seemed like Greek, or even worse, an IRS Form 1047b. It was so…well, structured: essential question, standards, criteria, learning activities, products and performances, and assessment. Ugh.

But slowly, with the encouragement and constant prodding of the FFEC gurus, I was able to put my “ducks,” the things I really believed in, into that “line” called the 5-columned chart. And so it came to be that what I used to envision as the circle of a living, vibrant web of relationships nestling around my students…

Standard(s)	Criteria	Learning Activity Product/Performance	Product/Performance	Assessment
4.6b Describe the role of agriculture, forestry and industry on the development of the local community over time.	Demonstrate knowledge of the changing face of the community culture: settlement, the rise of villages and industry, rural abandonment	1. Adopt an element of their village 2. Research that element using primary/secondary sources, oral history 3. Write teaching clue	Elevation and detail drawings Written summary of information gathered Rhyming “teaching clue”	Task specific rubric – drawing Task specific rubric – research Task specific rubric–clues

And so students were still getting out, and looking carefully at their community…

Photo by Piermont 7th/8th grade

...drawing the things they found.

Drawings by Piermont 3rd/4th and 7/8th grade students

They were enriching their studies, using primary and secondary sources…

Courtesy of NH Historical Society

...and writing up their work.

Students were sharing their findings with the community through their published “Quest,” a community treasure hunt:

Around 1820 was the year
Robert and Mary Evans moved to here.
He bred horses, had a tin shop, and grocery store,
Which operated in Piermont from 1865 to 1874.

The difference, simply put, was this: This process was now being undertaken in ways that were clear, easy to follow, structured, repeatable—and most of all, I suspect—evaluate-able and standards-based.

Thanks to FFEC, the Village Quest moved deeper, became standards-based, and made it out into the world, rather than remaining embedded in my personal teaching practice. Participating in FFEC, as well, I learned to see all kinds of places—not just groups of buildings—as communities: floodplains; swamps; fir-spruce woods; old fields; managed timber stands; northern hardwood forests.

If you look to the trees it does seem to me
That you’ll find quite a species diversity.
There are beech trees here, with shiny gray bark
And paper birch peeling, bright white like starch.

White ash can be seen, its bark a lattice of diamonds.
Red and sugar maple, too, you will certainly find.
These dominant trees make our story-line clear—
We’re in Northern Forest, a place we hold dear.
-Quest for the Raven

With support from the Walker Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and the Bay Paul Foundation, the Village Quest unit was published and distributed widely across Vermont and New Hampshire. As a result, in a year and a half, Village Quests have been created and submitted by classes exploring communities near and far, well-known and obscure: Brandon, Peacham, Beaver Meadows, Lewiston, White River Village, Center of Town, Jericho, Cornish Flat, Piermont, Chelsea, Bradford, Springfield, Waterbury, and Wilmington.

Quantitatively, it seems clear that the unit empowered regional teachers to meet state and national standards while exploring local places and their stories. Qualitatively, however, each Village Quest itself is a unique doorway and journey into another world. Norwich 6th graders, for example, discovered a village demolished to make way for I-91. While most of the students pass over the Ledyard Bridge to Hanover every day, not one of them realized that beneath the four-lane, divided thoroughfare were the rubble and cinders of a ghost town.

But then they read an editorial from the Hanover Gazette of April 20,1967: “More than two hundred years of history was brought low this week when the village of old Lewiston was leveled by bulldozer and flame….” Students watched a slide show of images of Lewiston: a covered bridge, Sargent’s Coal, Raycroft’s Grocery, H.P. Hood and Son’s Creamery. Using an old fire insurance map and measuring tape, they staked out the building footprints of this ghost town.

Once they were oriented to the site, they were in a position to meet with community elders, ask questions about Lewiston’s history, and take good notes. All of that learning was later folded into clues (products and performances) that could be assessed (using column 5):

-The Lewiston Quest
Marion Cross School 6th Grade

How would you assess this student work?

Task Specific Rubric—Clues

Village Quests were underway, investigating communities across the region: Agricultural villages transformed into single family homes in Beaver Meadow, Cornish Flat, Jericho and Piermont; humming mills silent in Chelsea, Springfield, White River Village: each place an invitation into mystery, community history.

Walk past a road called Sugartop.
Pass a field once filled with cow plop.
Head for an old bucket with a post.
In this white house you may find a ghost.
Built in Seventeen Eighty-eight
It was owned by son Daniel of late.
Later on, Erminie Nott called this her own.
As Jericho’s school teacher she was well known.
-The Jericho Quest
Mary Bouchard’s Social Studies Class

So there it is: community and the 5-columned chart. But what about love? Well, love is caring about something. And a pre-requisite for caring is simply getting to know something. This intimacy—like most good things—takes time.

Lyme 4th grade students collecting data

The “lessons learned” about fostering love, from FFEC, and passed on through the Village Quest unit and subsequent Cemetery Quest and Natural Communities Quest units (developed with the support of the Walker Fund and the Wellborn Ecology Fund) are few, simple, and hopefully useful to others:

Adopt a particular place in your community
It doesn’t matter whether your chosen spot is a rural hamlet, a downtown, a cemetery, a field, a forest or wetland. Adopt a place. Get to know it.

Connect with this place through repeated visits
One field trip is not enough. You have to go out again and again—over time, in different weather, in different seasons—to observe the details and discover the characters and story that inhabit a place.

Develop an overall framework for your visits
Students are creatures of habit. Their expectation is that outdoors equals recess. You need to create a framework that keeps them focused on learning: special spots get students apart and settle their energy; writing and drawing prompts move their awareness into their experience.

Be sure to focus student fieldwork
Don’t let them free range: draw buildings, GPS trails, track animals, collect data off of tombstones, I.D. and age trees…but whatever you do, make it meaningful, focused work that allows students to slow down, look closely, and move into the space where discovery, learning and insight happen.

Using a GPS to create a map of Piermont

Incorporate fieldwork into the classroom
Bring those site details back home! Integrate them with your curriculum. Bridge the academic disciplines: art, writing, reading, mathematics, science, social studies, technology (Click image to enlarge).

Utilize community resources
Fear not! You do not have to know it all. There are historical societies, conservation commissions, town clerks, librarians, community elders, foresters and specialists out there, happy to help you. Make use of the content mastery that already exists within your community.

Share student learning with the broader community
Publish your treasure hunt. Perform for your school or school board. Have students present their findings to the planning board or the selectmen.

So once again, let us return to love. Once you get to know something, you can care about it. And the more you learn about something, the deeper the intimacy, the more that connection grows and blossoms.

Here are two questions from the pre-assessment of a 4th grade student before making a Natural Community Quest.

These are the answers of fear, of unknowing, of the world where a mushroom is a mushroom is a mushroom. These are the kinds of answers born from a lack of awareness, experience, and relationship.

Below is the same student’s post-assessment, ten weeks later. Over that period of time, this student has investigated an adopted property as a member of the “wood frog” team; has mapped a wetland and beaver pond; has written clues; and contributed an entry on the red-backed salamander to the class-generated field guide.

So…is this love? There’s evidence of intimacy, and of relationship…yes, I think this is love. But if not love, at least it’s knowledge. Knowledge of the community, gained from time spent out in the field, from real life experiences, and new, unfolding relationships.

If you disagree with me and think that this is NOT love, return to the first photo of the Cornish 4th graders with their friend Sally Thomas. Please look into their eyes, and at this scene. Remember that not one of these students had really explored this village before, or visited this old town cemetery.

My question for you is this: Is this place simply the backdrop for the student’s lives? Or is there something more? Is there love?

Big gate, white paint, 338 stones
Sally Thomas stands out—
Here rests her bones.
She worked for 500 dollars
Through thick and thin,
And her house was close to the Cornish Inn.
She was a servant girl and very young,
Not aware that her life had just begun.
Many years later, she was 44 years old,
I hope she died peacefully in her Cornish home.
-Cornish Flat Village Quest
Cornish, NH 4th Grade

Thanks to FFEC partners and presenters, this teacher overcame his fear and loathing of standards and the 5-column chart and made something of benefit to his colleagues and community. Thanks to FFEC partners and presenters, this teacher enhanced his content knowledge in anthropology, forestry, field science, unit development—and his abilities and effectiveness as an educator.

I am indebted to the FFEC funders for making an incredible investment in this region’s educational community; and also to dozens of schools, classroom teachers—and hundreds of students—for joining together with me as we deepen our study of and relationship with our community. And quite possibly, fall in love.

Steve Glazer can be reached at: steve@vitalcommunities.org