Building Knowledge Together: Community Learning at Brisdale Public School
by Melanie Mulcaster
Melanie Mulcaster’s writings highlight the sub-theme of Accountability (How might we design for engagement?) through virtual, accessible and universally designed environments. The action inquiry project at Brisdale Public School involved staff and students from K-5 in creating Community Learning Experiences. The project aimed to engage learners, connect to their identities, and build empathy and mutual understanding through culturally responsive and relevant texts and stories. The initiative included virtual learning experiences, student-led events, and feedback-driven improvements, emphasizing the importance of student voices and relationships in education. The hope is to continue Community Learning Experiences in the 2024/2025 school year, with a focus on extending participation and documenting growth.
Melanie,
ReplyDeleteYou co-create such wonderful inquiry questions! We benefit from them in Leading Learning (the revamp where the Explore stage included inquiry questions to guide users along the path) and here in your paper. Like your school, we have moved beyond monthly assemblies, although we have gone in a different direction. With providing them virtually, how focused are the students during the sessions? I find that behaviour patterns that might have developed from the pandemic and online learning (such as wandering away or multi-tasking) tend to pop up when there are online guest speakers or workshops.
I like the idea of marrying STEM/STEAM with literacy. I know that when you and your colleagues used to develop "The Forest of Making" activities, it was an amazing resource that helped me take the guess work out of connecting great picture books to meaningful tasks.
I look forward to connecting in person at TMC8 to dig deeper and talk further!
Diana
Melanie, There are 2 key points in your paper that have me excited this morning. 1) You say: "Students enjoyed the connections to the texts, which helped learn about others in the community and celebrated their own identities. They felt the learning experiences connected them to each other." This is the goal I have for focusing on disability representation. 2) The point you make about how students (and teachers likely) are comfortable in their own space. Although it wasn't ideal for library supervision, I often found that the library itself felt 'not safe' and that my first bridge to creating that relationship with some students meant visiting their classrooms and embedding our resources there.
ReplyDeleteI love how you have embedded resources throughout your paper. I have so many new reading suggestions, but will start with that book you mention by Andratesha Fritzgerald. I'll be looking for it on the exhibit floor!
In the curriculum development process of my TMC paper, I mention some of those key influences and I can see layers of Paolo Freire and Vygotzky in your work too. Diana has challenged me to uncover how we can embed better representation of disability in the elementary school library programming. Perhaps we can collaborate in the same way that we did when developing those modules on Great Canadian Books for TEACH magazine? I need yours and Diana's expertise!