Making Learning Visible:  A Charter-District Collaboration

Year 1 Preliminary Summary

The Conservatory Lab Charter School was the recipient of a Massachusetts Department of Education Dissemination Grant which resulted in an exciting collaborative venture between CLCS, The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (MCPSA), and Project Zero (PZ) of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.  The first year of this project was a tremendous success!

This collaborative venture is based upon Project Zero’s Making Learning Visible (MLV) project.  In the MLV Project, participation in groups is central to how individual learning is constructed, for adults as well as for children. MLV began in 1997 as a collaboration between Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, MA, USA, and the Municipal Preschools and Infant-toddler Centers of Reggio Emilia, Italy. MLV seeks to draw attention to the power of the group as a learning environment and documentation as a way for all—students, teachers, parents, administrators, and the community—to see how and what children are learning.  MLV has found that the collective knowledge of the group is vastly more complex, comprehensive, and detailed than the knowledge that any one individual can have.

This view of group learning is vastly different from current US educational practice.  Over the past decade, much attention in U.S. education has been devoted to developing learning communities in schools. Yet the attainment of knowledge and understanding is still primarily viewed as an individual process. In and outside the classroom, thinking and learning are generally considered individual, rather than social and communicative, acts.  In our families, our communities, and the workplaces of the 21st century, the capacities of individuals to learn and function as part of a group are becoming increasingly critical. In order to live and work together effectively, we need to be able to listen to one another, to work together to identify and solve complex problems, and to acknowledge diverse points of view.

Several stages occurred in the implementation of this exciting venture.  First, the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, on behalf of CLCS, asked the 57 Massachusetts charter public schools if they would be interested in participating in this project—collaborating with other charter and district schools to share best practices on learning in groups and the documentation of that learning.  26 Massachusetts charter public schools, from a variety of geographic areas and serving a variety of students, said they would be interested in participating either as “presenters” or as “participants.”

Out of this group 6 charter schools were chosen to participate.  These charter schools were:

• Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School (Boston)
• Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School  (Cambridge)
• Conservatory Lab Charter School (Brighton section of Boston)
• Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School (Devens)
• Marstons Mills East Horace Mann Charter School (Barnstable)
• Prospect Hill Academy Charter School (Cambridge/Somerville)

CLCS contracted with Project Zero of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University to facilitate this work.  Because of the extensive costs of this project, Project Zero successfully raised substantial funds from a private foundation to augment the DOE Dissemination Grant funding.  Project Zero also recruited district and pilot schools to participate.   They were highly successful in this effort, recruiting schools from districts that historically have not collaborated with charter schools.  These schools were:

• Heath School (Brookline)
• Devotion/BEEP (Brookline)
• Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (Cambridge)
• Ezra Baker Elementary (W. Dennis)
• Fenway High School (Boston)
• Lee Academy (Dorchester)

This group of 12 schools—6 charter and 6 district—created a dynamic of learning and collaboration that is unprecedented, to our knowledge, in the Massachusetts charter school initiative.

The collaboration began with two teachers from each of the twelve schools being identified as “leaders” who would help Project Zero develop the three-day summer institute that lay at the heart of this project.  These 24 leaders attended intensive monthly seminar sessions between March and June, 2006; they each hosted school visits by PZ staff; and prepared documentation exhibits for the summer institute, some in leadership roles.

The summer institute was held on July 24-26 at Wheelock College.  It was attended by between 2-7 teachers and administrators from each of the 12 schools as well as observers from an additional seven schools that had heard about the work and asked to attend.  The institute consisted of 3 intensive days of collaboration.  These schools shared their practices and engaged in learning facilitated by PZ staff.  The Institute culminated in an exhibition of learning presented by all of the participating schools.  Much of this documentation will be posted on the “Making Learning Visible” website of Harvard University’s Project Zero in mid September, 2006 (http://www.pz.harvard.edu/mlv/).

Nearly 90 leaders and attendees from charter and district schools have participated in an enormously positive experience and summer institute.  All participants have learned about the complex dynamics of group learning, how to document that learning while “in process” as well as the final product, and to exhibit the documentation in meaningful, thoughtful, provocative, and powerful ways.  Additionally, educators from a large variety of district and charter schools have collaborated and gained new respect for one another.  In summation, we believe that this project has been a tremendous success.