Empowering Their Voices: Students Sound Off on the Puget Sound

by Nancy Skerritt and Kristin Edlund

What makes work truly meaningful? Creating curriculum that harnesses and nurtures the student’s voice is challenging work. We believe that engaging students in real world problems that affect their lives is central to engagement. Grade Nine students in Maple Valley, Washington participate in a unit of study entitled “Sounding Off on the Puget Sound.” The unit provides rich opportunities for our students to learn critical and creative thinking skills, Habits of Mind, and to practice real world problem solving.

The work in the unit is authentic, rigorous, and project based. Students participate in an online digital learning community. All six hundred experience a trip on a Washington State ferry, and they create projects of their own choosing where they “Sound Off” to a self-selected audience. The unit culminates in a call to action where the students research a community service organization for their own involvement, learning what it means to practice civic responsibility.

At the heart of this unit is a shift in voice: Whose voice is heard? In the past, the teacher’s voice has dominated the conversation. Our new model values the student’s voice – not in random or isolated ways, but by carefully orchestrating curricular opportunities. We achieve our curriculum goals by structuring experiences that allow students to find their own voice and build the skills to make their voices heard. How do we accomplish this? We focus on the processes of learning and connect students to their own local community.

One year ago, we made a decision to abandon outdated content in our Grade Nine social studies course and to invite our students to explore the critical issues challenging the health of our Puget Sound. Our unit is designed to teach students how to investigate any issue by considering baseline data, examining this data over time, and making inferences from the data about how our environment is changing.

Students consider the ways in which marine life populations are affected by water quality, the impact on local seafood industries, and projections for how our lifestyle will change if the Sound is allowed to degenerate through pollution and other human interactions. The message is clear: Students can have impact by making their voices heard, taking simple actions like cleaning up after pets, and by getting involved in local com-munity organizations that are designed to improve the quality of our environment for our students today and into the future.

Strategies for Investigating an Issue

Within the structure of the unit, students gather information, interpret this information and then take action. Students investigate stakeholder groups to understand competing wants and needs. They use thinking skills like Point of View and Analysis to explore how human actions and interactions affect the health of the Sound. Drawing on case studies from other parts of the country, they learn about the complexity of environmental issues by exploring a parallel issue in the Florida Everglades. The students study the wants and needs of the various stakeholders and search for a solution that takes into account the competing interests.

Students build on this background knowledge to research our local stakeholders: the timber industry, the commercial fishing industry, tourism, recreation, Native American interests, and wildlife. The students are acquiring the thinking skills and Habits of Mind to investigate issues and to draw their own conclusions. A key goal with this unit is to foster critical and creative thinkers who have skills that transfer to any issue, problem, or concern. We believe that these thinking skills lead to empowerment and honor individual points of view.

Problem Solving

The students then use a problem solving model to form their own opinions and ultimately to create an action plan where they can become personally involved in cleaning up the Sound. The model begins by summarizing the situation and crafting a question to focus thinking: “Evidence shows that the Puget Sound is polluted. There are various stakeholders who have vested interests in the future of the Sound. Considering the com-peting interests of preserving our environment, supporting our economic growth, and honoring our culture and traditions, how can the health of the Sound be preserved for a sustainable future? “

After analyzing the interests of the multiple stakeholders, the students develop their own point of view with evidence. Students have applied the thinking skills of Problem Solving, Point of View and Analysis. They have learned and practiced habits of mind such as thinking flexibly and applying past knowledge to new situations. Rather than passively studying a local issue, the students are actively engaged in developing their own point of view so that they can be part of the solution to a complex problem directly affecting the quality of their lives. The learning is relevant and rigorous. Students are respected as young adults with good ideas for improving our world.

Technology for Collaboration

Technology can be a powerful motivator for students when it provides a social context for their learning. In addition to utilizing a variety of technology tools for research and production, students in the Sounding Off unit collaborate creatively in an online learning community.

Web-based tools allow this virtual space to mirror elements of students’ social networks while scaffolding their collaborative skills: students learn to respond professionally and respectfully to one another’s ideas, and to incorporate others’ ideas into their own work responsibly.

Student posts begin as structured responses to prompts and evolve into more spontaneous expressions as the unit progresses. The online venue also provides a record of the class’ learning over time; the history of students’ posts allows the class to reflect on their evolving understanding of complex issues. Students’ individual voices gradually form a chorus in which their distinct tones can still be heard.

For instance, at the beginning of the Sounding Off unit, pairs of students choose one word to express their impression of Puget Sound. They post their word on the class site. As students explore the economic, cultural, and environmental issues facing Puget Sound, they are periodically asked to post additional one-word or one-phrase summaries of their understanding. Students comment and elaborate on each other’s posts, and the growing list of words and phrases generated, along with the support for those summaries, represents an increasingly sophisticated interaction with those issues.

The students are asked midway through the unit to use a web-based video generating tool to create a short video that incorporates images, words and music to express how their perceptions of Puget Sound issues have changed. With technology tools, students apply principles they have learned about how artists use those elements to provoke an emotional response in the public. The videos, in addition to synthesizing the class’ learning up to that point, serve as another opportunity to scaffold student skills, in preparation for the culminating Sounding Off Project.

The online learning community also provides the opportunity to expand the classroom beyond its walls. As students learn about Puget Sound stakeholders, those stakeholders and other experts can join the virtual community and contribute to the students’ learning. Students are empowered by interacting with adults as equal participants in exploring the real issues that affect their lives.

Certainly, technology provides powerful tools for generating creative products. However, in this unit, technology’s true power is found in its ability to foster community – to break down walls between individuals both within the classroom and beyond it. The structure of the online learning community provides a safe place for students to try out their voice, while the widening circle of that community allows them to amplify it.

Field Experiences

While the online learning community provides an engaging virtual experience for students, we find that there is no substitute for engaging students in the real world outside the classroom – for getting up close and personal with the issues. In Sounding Off, this means getting the students down to the waterfront and out on the Sound itself. In an era where field experiences are often the first casualties of budget cuts, we remain committed to these opportunities for all students.
We are equally committed to ensuring that the field experience is one of the most meaningful learning experiences the students will have throughout their educational career. This requires careful planning and orchestration of activities that are integral to the learning goals of the unit.

During the Puget Sound field experience, students engage in activities at two sites: the Seattle Aquarium and on board a Washington State Ferry. At the aquarium, students explore the marine habitat and the wildlife that calls the Sound home. They use their field journals to make observations, compare and contrast, generate questions, and pose problems.

On board the ferry, students hear from stakeholders representing different interests related to the health of Puget Sound. The stakeholder’s interest might be economic, environmental, or cultural/historical. Students have the opportunity to interact with stakeholders who might represent state fisheries, non-profit habitat restoration organizations, Native American tribes, large shellfish corporations, or others.

To prepare for the field experience, students research the stakeholders and their points of view in advance, generating questions in their field journals. On the ferry, students use their field journals to organize information around key thinking skills. Both at the aquarium and on the water, students use their field journals and cameras to capture evidence regarding the economic, environmental, and cultural/historical aspects of Puget Sound.

While our community sits right in the Puget Sound’s watershed, this field experience represents the first time many of our students have ever actually been out on the water. The powerful impact of this opportunity is evident in students’ reflective letters to stakeholders and in the way the field experience continues to influence student thinking well after it has ended. Interacting personally with the Sound’s stakeholders while out on the Sound itself is an experience that can’t be replicated in the school building.

Sounding Off! Project

The Sounding Off! Project provides a framework for students to make their voices heard. Using the structure for projects provided by Ted McCain in his book Teaching for Tomorrow, students work as a member of a team. They design projects for the purpose of raising awareness about the health of the Puget Sound. The projects educate and call their audiences to action. Students choose their message and their target audience. Then they select a medium that will best communicate their message. They manage their team and project in the online learning community.

The projects vary widely based on the audience, medium and message. For example, one project team might create a picture book for kindergartners showing strategies for home water conservation while another team might create a video podcast to highlight the importance of habitat conservation to share with our legislators. Students are encouraged to use their individual talents to make a statement. They present their project to their chosen audience, “sounding off” on the state of the Puget Sound and sharing how people’s actions can make a difference.

Choice is at the heart of this project, and students exercise their creativity and their passions as they communicate with an authentic audience about the state of the Sound. Projects have included a website for learning about the danger of bulkheads, paintings that depict the past, present and future of the Sound, movies to promote stewardship, poetry, and children’s games.

Community Service

The unit culminates with the students investigating community service organizations, exploring answers to these questions: What is community service? Why is it important? How is service a component of citizenship? Students research community organizations that are involved in cleaning up the Puget Sound. They study the mission of the different organizations, and using a decision making model, they select an organization in which to become involved. Students contact the organization of their choice, learn about the organization’s service projects, and then commit to involvement in one of these projects. Students reflect on their participation by considering how they are making a difference in promoting the sustainability of the Puget Sound . They are doing real work that has value beyond the classroom and can take pride in making contributions to their community.

Engagement leads to empowerment. We want to graduate students who know that they can make a difference and have the tools to act. Learning must be relevant and real. Our students discover how they can take action to have impact. This life lesson will last long beyond the accumulation of content. Students learn problem solving, decision making, persistence, and interdependence. They practice civic involvement through a call to action. Our democracy relies on involved citizens, and our students learn that they have empowered voices through their study of the Puget Sound. They develop the awareness that what we do today does indeed make a difference for the future.

How do we know that these kinds of learning opportunities are more meaningful for our students than traditional approaches?

We’re listening to their voices.

For more information about the Sounding Off on the Puget Sound unit, please contact Nancy Skerritt in the Tahoma School District at nskerrit@tahomasd.us

References:
Costa, A. and Kallick, B. (2009) Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind. Alexandria: ASCD
McCain, T. (2005) Teaching For Tomorrow: Teaching Content and Problem Solving Skills. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press

Nancy Skerritt, the Director of the Teaching and Learning Department, has been with the Tahoma District for 9 years. She previously worked in the Snoqualmie and Auburn School Districts. One of her most interesting assignments has been the development of the Elementary Core Curriculum in the Tahoma district. She has expertise in thinking skills instruction and she works with the Washington State Commission on Student Learning to assist with the design and implementation of the Washington State assessment system.

Kristin Edlund is a curriculum specialist in the Tahoma School District in Washington State and author of the middle school Habits of Mind curriculum. She has written social studies units that integrate the Habits of Mind and thinking skills, and she supports teachers in implementing this curriculum in the classroom. Edlund teaches classes in integrated curriculum, thinking skills, and Habits of Mind throughout western Washington and has presented at numerous state and national conferences. She worked as a teacher-librarian for 12 years before entering administration. She can be reached at the Tahoma School District office at kedlund@tahomasd.us.