Empowering Their Voices:
Students Sound Off on
the Puget Sound by Nancy Skerritt and Kristin Edlund
“I want my work to be meaningful. I want to think and be creative. I don’t like it when I just have to write down answers from a book. I like it best when I have to use my
creativity along with my knowledge and support my ideas with evidence. I want there to be value in my work for a purpose beyond getting a grade.” ~Thomas Rothschild, Student, Tahoma High School
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.
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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 fi nd 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 One year ago, we made a decision to abandon outdated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
CLEARING 2011
hat 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
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 fi shing 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.
www.clearingmagazine.org/online Page 35
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