Community Conversation Recap (Nov. 2023)
Across the year on a handful of Fridays, we schedule time for “Community Conversations” — the aim of these conversations is to help the adults in our community come together to discuss ways we can support our learners. Our first Community Conversation of the 2023-24 year occurred last week. We created a reel on Instagram highlighting a few key points, and we hope, paired with this blog, those who were there can reflect more on the discussion and those who were not can feel included in the conversation.
We began with Claire Rudden (math content leader for Gold Band) giving an overview of the personal finance series we are in the midst of during Monday morning Campfires. We are working to make sure all learners have exposure to aspects of personal finance through this teacher-led Campfire series, which spans three weeks. Last week, the four options for Campfire centered around saving money. Yesterday, the four options taught about various aspects of spending money. And the week after Thanksgiving break, we plan to have four options teaching about investing. (See photo at right of our Campfire calendar, which shows the topics that were addressed thus far.) Claire then shared a helpful resource from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Money As You Grow.
Next, parents shared ideas of how they help their children learn about financial literacy at home:
Giving your child cash of a certain amount at a store and letting him/her find the items he/she wants which fit within that cash budget
Going to the bank to set up an account and talking about what the account is for (Ex: IRA or simple savings, etc.)
Joining an entrepreneurship club and helping children build a “business” (even if it is as simple as selling cookies at the farmers’ market), and talking about revenue and expenses and a variety of other concepts important to running a business
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Using a website like FamZoo to help children learn about managing money digitally and spending using a debit card (rather than having cash in hand), and using that website/resource to allocate money (and automate things, making it easier on the parents)
Talking about the philosophical aspects of money – why we get it, who earns it, how is it earned, how is earning/spending money tied to “success” – and letting those discussions be messy and honor the complexity that these topics bring up
Kaylie White (math content leader for Magenta Band) then helped us move into the heart of our community conversation, which was about how we see learning as a continuous process, with revisiting ideas and revising work central to how we ask learners to engage and reach a higher level of understanding. She used this Instagram post and tthis one to start the conversation. Kaylie talked about, while these two examples come from the science writing we are doing across bands, revisiting ideas is something that happens purposefully throughout the Long-View experience, across all disciplines. Big ideas are integral to how we think about content. This is a stark contrast to “covering content” and thinking of content as a list of facts or skills. When ideas are the central framework, there is a necessity in regards to revisiting these ideas from different angles, with the goal of deepening understanding and creating connections.
When we invite learners into this work of revisiting or revising, they often take one of two paths: the first might be that the learner thinks they’ve “done this before” or they “are done” and the second path, the one we view as more productive and the one we are constantly coaching towards, is that learners ask themselves “what else can I see, do, or understand here?”
Thus, the question was posed: How can we help our children shift toward a more productive mindset?
Families jumped in with the following:
Model this mindset yourself by “thinking aloud”
Show your child that you are reading a book again, or talk with him/her as he/she chooses to read a book again — discuss the layers you get the second time around that you couldn’t have possibly grasped the first time around
Discuss how you revise work or revisit ideas in your own profession (Ex: a dad that is an architect talked about how he shows his son the drawings he does over and over of the same space, which he does in order to get new ideas and think about the space differently)
Talk about how things could have been done differently – talking together about something you did as a family if it didn’t exactly go as you might have liked or planned, or revising some actions you took that you wished could have been different if given a second chance
Beyond the ideas above, there were a lot of examples given from literacy, so Kaylie posed the question, “What about math?” (For example, how do you crack the unproductive mindset in which kids say things like, “I know division because I can divide this”?). Luckily, we had a mom that was also a UT mathematician in our group and she remarked that this idea of “knowing math because you can do a procedure” is a cultural norm in the United States (and, from her experience, in Australia too). She added that a formative experience for her growing up in a different country was that the question “Does anyone have a different way?” was a regular refrain of her math teachers; this helped her develop a mindset of curiosity and helped her enjoy math. It also helped her develop the productive understanding that you aren’t “done” and that revisiting ideas and problems is inherent to the discipline of mathematics.
Lisa then added that the way we structure bands supports this focus on the big ideas of each discipline and also nurtures the mindset of revisiting ideas in order to reach a higher level of understanding and create more robust connections.
John Cooley (science content leader for Magenta and Turquoise Band) gave an example of the importance of revision and revisiting, situated within the cyclical nature of science. He reminded us that a good scientific investigation actually ends with more good questions. Furthermore, teaching an appreciation of expertise is something we all try to do, in science and across the school day. In a culture wherein a YouTuber can present a video on black holes and come off as a “black hole expert” or even lead the viewer to think they are, in fact, now an expert just for having viewed the video, we are coaching kids to maintain a nuanced use of language about expertise. For example, Lisa mentioned that often this comes up when kids lead a Campfire — we help them lead the Campfire with confidence while also recognizing they are not an expert. We often encourage the child to say something like, “I’ve read a lot about this but I’m not an expert” so as to not fall into the trap of exuding expertise that is not backed up by years of study and research.
Our UT mathematician parent then added a great point to this aspect of the conversation, mentioning that when her young daughter asks her something about math (a topic the rest of us in the room suspect this mom could easily answer nearly anything about), she often responds “I don’t know. What have you tried?” Then she asks questions to lead her daughter down the path of investigation without making it clear she already knows exactly how to do the problem.
As we moved near the end of our discussion time, Lisa posed the question: In a world that is so fast and answers are so readily available (with smartphones, Google, and ChatGPT), how do we nurture children to revisit ideas and stay in the important, messy work of pushing through challenges? While we didn’t have nearly enough time to discuss this question at length, we were left inspired to do so, and one father suggested that he helps his children determine which questions are worth sticking with and worth being challenged by, and which ones aren’t (and instead deserve a “Hey, Siri” to get quickly answered).
Despite the length of this blog, we were, of course, not able to capture all the details nor richness of this discussion, but we hope these notes help you feel connected to the conversation and feel like you have a few ideas on how you can nurture these threads in your own home. See you at the next Community Conversation!