The Bridge - Issue 2

The Bridge

Thank you, reader, for engaging with this publication. Honestly, it is appreciated.

This is the second edition of The Bridge. It is, quite simply, an adult learning journal. It is a journal about educational practice for those involved in supporting the learning of young people. It is about sharing and spreading good stuff. Published by Gesher School, it has been kickstarted by Big Change as a vehicle for making good change bigger. These early editions feature the work of Gesher School disproportionately, but that will change as we have more readers and more contributors -- if you have something to share, do get in touch.

A word about the design. We have decided on three sections for each issue of the journal: a section about how school could be different; one specifically about working with neurodiverse children; and a third which contains resources and materials for teachers. We want The Bridge to be relevant for all schools and all teachers -- we are, after all, all educators of neurodiverse learners -- but we want it to become indispensable to those whose vocation is neurodiversity.

This issue features:

1. Rethinking School -- articles that evidence or hint at ways in which schools can be designed differently, including a first instalment about Gesher’s design process; the role that philanthropy can play in innovation; a profile of Riverside School in India; a must-read piece on ‘practical personalisation’ by Loni Bergqvist; and part two of Ron Berger’s insightful interview for our journal.

2. Teaching and Learning with Neurodiverse Children -- included is a look at exactly why school can be such a tough place for neurodiverse children; the role of therapy and therapeutic support (and how all schools can do it); the importance of life skills; and a lovely piece on personalised learning trays.

3. Resources for Schools -- this section is a treasure trove. It includes a lovely piece on ‘where projects come from’; a further selection of Project-Based Learning project cards from High Tech High and Gesher (PBL cards will feature in every issue) plus an utterly delightful example deriving from Ron Berger’s piece. There is much more -- just open the box, read and feel free to adapt and use.

Too many people to mention have generously contributed by donating material or interviews for this issue -- certainly too many for a foreword. Suffice it to say that we have yet to make a request that has not been met with enthusiastic support, and we thank all those who are helping to make The Bridge a rich resource for schools and teachers.

Holly Edwards Editorial Team

Rethinking School Teaching & Learning with Neurodiverse Children

Creating Better Schools by Design

David Jackson

Redesigning Education: What Can and Should Philanthropic Organisations Do?

Ali Durban & Paul Ramsbottom (Wolfson Foundation)

Faith and Values in Education Sarah Sultman

Practical Personalisation Loni Bergqvist

Inspired by… Profile of Another School Julie Temperley School Can Be Different

Ron Berger: An Interview

Why is School a Tough Place for Neurodiverse Children? Ali Durban

How can a Life Skills Curriculum Support Children to Access Learning? Danielle Petar

Changing School, Changing Lives Sam Dexter

Making the Most of Therapies in Your Setting -- What Works? Victoria Rutter

Building From Passions and Interests Sam Dexter

Critical Friendship Groups: Think ‘Fireside Chats’ David Jackson

Where Do Projects Come From?

High Tech High Unboxed

Project Cards Gesher School & High Tech High Unboxed

Art, Poetry and Inspiration to Benefit the Humane Society of the Palouse

EL Education

Three Houses Model World Cafe

12 Steps to Beautiful Work Steven Levy

Rethinking School

Creating Better Schools by Design

David Jackson

Ask most people to draw a house and nine times out of ten the house they imagine will be a square box, with four square windows, a pitched roof with a chimney, and often some smoke curling into the sky.

• •

Does our house have to be square or could it be a different shape?

Should it be one storey high, or two, or three? How many windows of what size should there be, really?

We share a mental model -- a blueprint -- for what a house is and should look like. We don’t stop to wonder: • • • •

What purpose does the chimney serve?

Does all learning need to be packaged into ‘subjects’?

Are one-hour lessons the best unit of learning? Is one teacher with 25 students better than two teachers with 50 students? Why are all students assessed at the same time when they mature differently? Do we have to assess by written exams emphasising memory?

…and so on.

Designing a new school for real is a chance to ask questions like these, and to ensure that the new school is more than just an improvement on the existing model.

Our shared ideas about schools are fixed in much the same way.

There are variations, but our mental model for school tends to include classrooms, corridors, rows of desks, students grouped according to age, one-hour lessons, subject teaching, tests, and so on. This model is based on schools designed in the past. We don’t stop to question whether the school, which we are after all drawing in the C21, should be -- needs to be -- very different from the blueprint created decades ago. We might ask: •

What ideas about learning are informing the layout of our school? What might classrooms look like if we thought of them as places where great learning can happen?

At Gesher School, staff, students and parents know how badly a change to the model is needed because most of Gesher’s learners have struggled in schools like the one most of us would draw. So, Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.

Gesher was transitioning from a highly successful primary school to becoming an all-through learning community and needed to find a new school building and facilities, recruit staff, create a secondary school curriculum and reframe its mission and identity.

“Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.”

The leaders of Gesher School knew they needed to go way beyond improvements on the existing model, to design a whole new way of thinking about and doing school, in ways that learned from and built on their experience with primaryage children. They asked:

How might we design an all-through school that will offer success, enhanced self-esteem, personal efficacy, and progression opportunities for all our young people?

Secondly, in doing so, how can we involve multiple stakeholders in our design process?

Thirdly, how might we stand on the shoulders of existing practices around the world?

might be ‘no selection by ability’ or ‘the school will be co-education’ or, in Gesher’s case: •

We are a school for a specific cohort of children with SEND, including language, communication and social pragmatic issues. We are a Jewish faith school. We utilise real-world learning and projects to foster curiosity and connect our young people to authentic issues and problems.

These clear non-negotiables influenced design features relating to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, to faith observance and understanding, and to the design of curriculum and pedagogy.

The design process that Gesher School entered into comprised eight workshops, each involving different stakeholders, which resulted in a school blueprint for: •

bold vision and purpose; and

set of values-based design principles; which were Brought to life in plans for a range of innovative features that add up to a very different kind of school.

Upwards of 100 school staff, parents, students, community members, and other local stakeholders contributed to this seriously intentional and inclusive school design process.

Each issue of The Bridge will address an aspect of Gesher’s school redesign process. This issue focuses on the first two of the eight school design workshops that Gesher School undertook, which concerned (i) purpose and (ii) design principles.

(i) Purpose

Gesher’s discussions about purpose started with identifying their ‘non-negotiables’. Nonnegotiables tell everyone what is and is not on the table; what is and is not within the scope of the school design team to change. Examples

A further key defining issue for Gesher to articulate was purpose – the vision and outcomes to which the school community would aspire. Being clear about what the school had to achieve with and for students; about the purpose of learning; about what matters for the community of the school -- staff, students and parents -- was an essential bedrock of the design process.

Within the current system, aiming for good examination outcomes is a given, and if that was all that mattered, then job done. However, during the workshop, through extensive discussion -- and many post-its -- it became clear that exam success on its own was not nearly enough. In brief, the outcomes Gesher agreed are that young people should become: •

Skilled for the future workplace Qualified for the next stage (exam results plus)

Independent learners Confident in their sense of self Builders of meaningful relationships Ethical and responsible citizens.

These, one might hope, could be purposes shared by most if not all schools, but two things qualify them as exceptional in Gesher’s context. The first is the inclusiveness of the intent. They are purposes for all students, regardless of their prior educational history or unique needs. The second is to remember that Gesher is a school for children with identified SEND needs, most of whom have been unable to thrive in mainstream schools.

A

A

“Upwards of 100 school staff, parents, students, community members, and other local stakeholders contributed to this seriously intentional and inclusive school design process.”

is a deconstructed version of t he Gesher Blueprint a template, if you will. In eac h issue of The Bridge, we’ll be addressing an aspect of Gesher ’s sc hool redesign. Here you can see Gesher ’s purpose -- t he non-negotiables -- as well as Gesher ’s design principles on t he following page.

are a sc hool for a specif ic cohor t of c hildren wit h SEND, including language, communication and social pragmatic dif f iculties.

are a Jewish fait h sc hool.

utilise real-world learning and projects to foster curiosity and connect our young people to aut hentic issues and problems.

are relentless in delivering outstanding personalised provision.

nur ture creativity -- discover y, conf idence and passion.

Gesher Design Principles

EVERY YOUNG PERSON IS PROFOUNDLY WELL KNOWN

Learning at Gesher is founded on relationships and attachment:

Adults know students as both young people and learners

Young people know and support one another

Gesher is a community of ambition built on relationships and compassion.

PERSONALISED LEARNING INFORMED BY YOUNG PEOPLE’S PASSIONS AND INTERESTS

At Gesher young people‘s learning will be highly personalised:

Fostering curiosity and discovering passions and interests

Developing from that to ambition and engagement

Ensuring holistic growth and development.

RIGOUR AND AUTHENTIC REAL-WORLD LEARNING

Learning at Gesher will be academically rigorous and authentic -- connected to realworld tasks in the adult world

Learning will take place in school, in the community and through internships in the workplace

Young people’s learning will include real-world projects, appropriate skill-based learning and authentic real-world assessments

We will design together rigorous and engaging projects that will develop young people’s sense of agency, ability to collaborate constructively and encourage collective achievement.

A CULTURE OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE AND COLLABORATIVE PEER LEARNING

Gesher has a culture of staff reflecting and thinking about their practice together, and collaboratively planning how to improve outcomes for each and every young person

Gesher has a culture of peer teaching and tutoring enabling young people to learn from one another.

PARENTS AND COMMUNITY AS PARTNERS IN LEARNING

Parents are critical partners -- expected to play an active role in their child’s school and home learning

At Gesher, parents are our partners in their child’s education, and our community supports and enables learning to happen

Gesher engages with the wealth of experience and expertise in our community and we create opportunities for volunteering.

(ii) Design Principles

Workshop two was exclusively concerned with design principles and involved staff at the school considering the question: What would be the design principles or features of a school that can confidently achieve these outcomes for all its learners?

Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them. They used this as a basis to shape their own, then tested the resulting principles they created together using personas of children at Gesher, asking: Would this work and how would it work for Amy or Peter?

Next Time -- Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment

Agreement on these three components -- the non-negotiables, purposes and design principles -precedes work on designing the more practical features of a school. Clear purposes provide a constant reminder of exactly what we aspire to achieve with and for learners and their families. Design principles provide the guiding architecture that relates to these purposes. They are ‘laws with leeway’ that frame what we do and how we do it. They are also the features that unify and inspire those who work in a school, and they guide and discipline decision-making.

With these three in place, the design process moves to consideration of the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices that will be informed by and consistent with the design principles and which will enable every student to achieve the outcome ambitions. That is for next time.

“Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them.”

Designing New Schools in the USA

In America, there is a long tradition of creating new school designs. Some of the most successful schools in the world have been created in this way – Expeditionary Learning schools; High Tech High (some of whose resources we share later); Big Picture Learning schools; New Tech Network are all examples. The Gates Foundation alone funded more than 2,500 ‘small school models’ across the United States, and New York alone has 200.

Not all of these new school models have been equally successful, of course. However, their students consistently outperform their peers in conventionally sized and structured high schools with comparable demographics. There are some common design features across the majority of these models -- and they are very different from the conventional UK school -- they all: • • • •

Focus on the centrality of relationships and personalising learning -- have ‘advisory’, where advisory is the soul of the school, symbolising relational support for students Include project-based learning, an engaging and empowering pedagogical model, which also requires teachers to collaborate as designers of learning Have a pervasive cultural identity and school-level ownership of what matters, including what is assessed and how and by whom it is assessed Facilitate powerful and sustained adult learning.

The Cost of Not Having New Models in the UK…

Not to foster innovation in school design means that we constantly focus on striving to improve the existing school model – a model more than 100 years old and out of date.

It is a model with multiple features crying out for redesign. For example, it has failed to achieve equitable outcomes, or to address socio-economic challenges, or to engage disengaged learners -- or to fully engage most learners, for that matter. Nor has it provided teachers with an intellectually challenging profession, or excited and involved parents around the experience of their children.

Professional Prompts

1.

2.

The design process described above is effective applied to existing schools as well as new ones -- revisiting purposes and design features together as a prelude to reviewing wider practices. Might this have value for your school?

The review detailed above distilled six clear outcomes that Gesher is committed to evidencing for all learners. Does your school have similar clarity about its purposes?

Redesigning Education: What Can and Should Philanthropic Organisations Do?

Ali Durban & Paul Ramsbottom (Wolfson Foundation)

Paul Ramsbottom OBE is Chief Executive of The Wolfson Foundation, an independent grant-making charity, funding programmes and activities throughout the UK. The Foundation’s fundamental aim is to improve the civic health of society, mainly through education and research. He is also Chief Executive of a linked charity, the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust.

Gesher School was delighted to receive a grant from the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust in 2021 to adapt and equip a Maker Space in our building. We value enormously our relationship with Paul and with the Wolfson charities because our values and mission are closely aligned and we recognise the important role that philanthropic organisations like The Wolfson Foundation can play in helping schools who want to do things differently to realise their ambitions.

We asked Paul to share with us his thinking about the role of philanthropy in education in the 21st century. Here’s what he told us…

Discussions about the role of philanthropy in the English education system have tended to polarise around two extreme positions.

At one extreme is the view that education in modern society is the preserve of Government alone, and that there is therefore little or no role for philanthropy. This is a view frequently expressed on social media, often by people who are knowledgeable about or involved in education.

At the other extreme is an articulation of a role for philanthropy that in some ways lets the Government off the hook, by plugging gaps that probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.

In between these two extremes, and in reality, there are at least three important roles that philanthropy plays:

The first is to support innovation in education; to fund schools, colleges and universities to trial new ideas. By being the provider and underwriter of risk capital

in the education system, philanthropists enable educators to do things that the Government can’t or won’t do or support.

The second is to fund capital infrastructure projects necessary for ambitious organisations to fulfil elements of their strategic vision, which would otherwise be unachievable. Buildings and equipment are difficult to fund from statutory sources and can rarely be afforded from core funding. Philanthropy can provide the additional funding that organisations need to really allow them to fly.

The third role for philanthropy, beyond funding for innovation or infrastructure, is as part of a wider ecosystem of organisations, including Government, professional educators and civil society, who are stakeholders in education and who work, together and separately, to bring about system change that will benefit children and young people.

Some philanthropists take a campaigning and lobbying approach, which can be extremely

“Recently the Foundation has invested heavily in children and young people’s mental health...”

effective. The Sutton Trust, for instance, with its focus on education for social mobility, consistently campaigns for better support in our education system for our most disadvantaged children and young people.

The Wolfson Foundation is not a campaigning organisation; on occasion, however, the Foundation funds research that grows system capacity and capability and contributes significantly to the body of knowledge necessary to support system change.

Recently the Foundation has invested heavily in children and young people’s mental health, with significant funding going to school and community-based initiatives which aim to help children struggling with anxiety and depression.

Already a growing problem, the pandemic exacerbated challenges facing children and young people, who are presenting in higher numbers than ever before with poor mental health. It’s a huge problem facing many Western societies, including our own. However, it is also a problem that is poorly understood. Whilst we might all share some intuition about why this generation of young people seems to be more troubled than previous generations -- the prevalence and role of social media, for instance -- the reality is that we don’t actually know. Even if our hunch is right, we need evidence to be able to take on social media companies and persuade them to make the necessary changes.

The Wolfson Foundation is funding research into a range of practice approaches that aim to build young people’s resilience to deal with the challenges that life unfortunately throws at us all, as well as improving access to high-quality

therapy and clinical support.

An example of this is the new Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health in Cardiff. Waiting times in the current system are lamentable and the answer can’t simply be to try and provide more counsellors than ever. In the meantime, children and young people continue to struggle without the help they need.

We need complete systemic change and there is a role for philanthropy in achieving that, both in terms of the research we can fund and providing support for innovators who are trying different ways of working.

Making Philanthropy Accessible to Everyone

If we truly believe that philanthropy can and should have a role in a modern education system, then it becomes really important that access to philanthropic funding shouldn’t simply be the preserve of schools that happen to have an affluent parent community or have professional or fundraising skills in their governing body. Philanthropic funding should be a resource for everyone.

Over the last couple of years, The Wolfson Foundation has been working with a number of partners to create a completely free framework and toolkit for every school in the country. It’s a kind of A to Z or ‘How To…’ of fundraising for schools hoping to look, perhaps for the first time, beyond their parents and local communities for financial support for their plans.

Is there a project in your community that needs transformation, perhaps a physical learning space or a bold idea?

Can you capture why it is so critical to your students, and how it will change their outcomes? Will you be able to evidence this?

Have you researched the costs to fund the project and produced a budget to support it?

Are you aware of opportunities for philanthropic support in your area? Is your organisation and proposal eligible for funding? Are there other funding opportunities beyond your local community?

Could the framework and toolkit mentioned above be of value to your school?

“Philanthropic funding should be a resource for everyone.”

Faith, Education and SEN: The Forgotten Sector

Sarah Sultman

Lost in History: Since the 1990s there has been a growing debate, both inside and outside academia, about the role faith schools should play in a 21st-century education system and whether or not they should exist at all, with strong and divided opinions both for and against. And within this politically and religiously charged debate, there has been a distinct lack of consideration given to the SEND perspective.

In the UK, policy still does not permit the creation of SEND faith-free schools and when challenged or asked why this is, no one we have met on our journey in the creation of Gesher has been able to give a satisfactory or justified answer -- other than to agree that this is indeed the statute. Today in the UK 35% of state-maintained schools are faith-based whilst ‘almost all’ (with no definitive numbers published) private independent schools are aligned to a faith but not necessarily practising faith.

Google ‘SEND faith schools in the UK’ and no list will pop up.

The development of faith schools in the UK is historic, from when cathedrals and monasteries

began providing an education to boys who were to become monks and priests in the 6th century, whilst the first schools for children, ‘blind and deaf, epileptic, and mentally and physically disabled’ were only legislated for some 1500 years later, in 1918. For many centuries, those with SEND were not deemed worthy of a formal, or even informal education, so it could reasonably be argued that the lack of consideration given to the SEND faith education community is a symptom of the immaturity of the SEND education system as a whole.

Parents and schools today are thankfully, in general, far more aspirational for their SEND children. Inclusion and neurodiversity have become part of our everyday vernacular and

our attitudes and ideas around SEND education are continuously evolving. We are still learning much about how best to differently educate those who are differently able, yet to date, the faith element simply has not been factored in. Seemingly, this group within our society has, at best, been ignored, or it has been actively decided for them that faith does not or should not play a role in how we educate SEND pupils.

There is the old African saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. For those with SEND that village is incredibly important. It extends beyond the school gate to the institutions, places of work, places of worship, and welfare systems in the communities that a young person grows up in. Yet there has been very little research done on the intersection of faith, SEND, education and community with no empirical data freely available on how SEND students feel and relate to their faith, how faith impacts their identity, how it shapes and contributes to their everyday lives and whether they and their families feel that a faith-based education is beneficial for them.

Culture and Community Values Matter

No doubt this is a complex area of study and differing cultures and faiths will have different attitudes and views towards their SEND populations. At Gesher, our Jewish religious perspective informs the type of Jewish culture, ethos and core defining principles of the school. Learning about one’s faith is not only concerned with developing the pupils’ knowledge and understanding of each aspect of their Jewish Heritage but also with developing their love for and commitment to its laws and practices, which include moral and ethical teachings and values. With this ideology at the forefront of our curriculum, Jewish Studies is taught at Gesher not as an academic subject, but as a way of life.

faith and your culture is something that matters to you because you want your kids to embrace values that you care about. And those values mean being a good person.’

For one parent, who knew that her son’s Jewish identity was important to him, it was a key factor in looking for a school. ‘It’s one of the reasons we chose Gesher in the first place. Because he enjoyed the Jewish side of things, we wanted somewhere that would meet his needs, and also meet his religious beliefs as well.’ For another parent, the faith element of the school, whilst initially seen as ‘a nice incentive’ rather than a non-negotiable, has come to be considered a crucial part of her daughter’s education. ‘I think it’s been the making of her… without it, I think she would feel quite lost.. it’s become like her safe space.’

The value of community permeates throughout the school and informs a large part of our practice. At Gesher, whilst we celebrate the individual: “...for the mind of each is different from that of the other, just as the face of each is different from that of the other.” (Talmud Brachot 58a), being part of a community means looking out for others, taking responsibility for each other and coming together in unity as a collective: “do not separate yourself from the community” (Hillel).

The power of community transforms the individual and at Gesher, we actively foster community amongst the pupils, the staff, our local Jewish community, the wider Jewish community and the world in the form of Tikun Olam which literally means to repair and improve the world. This concept shapes many of our programmes around social justice, giving to others and caring for our environment. We view school as just one of the structures that supports the young people that attend, so we must recognise that we do not operate in a silo, and the measure of our pupils’ success should not be in isolation. Rather it is our responsibility to understand the communities from which our students come and to work with them.

Parents Appreciate its Value

Ron Berger said ‘As a faith-based school, everyone who chooses to send their child to Gesher knows that there is more to life than academics. There is the human character of who you are as a human being. You choose to send your child to a faith-based school because your

In a recent discussion with parents, the topic of community was featured as an important factor. All parents, regardless of their religious orientation, spoke in a similar way about what it was like being part of the school’s Jewish community. One said, ‘You feel you’ve got a family, it’s an extended family, you know you are all in it together.’ It would be an oversimplification to suggest that this is exclusively down to the religious orientation of the school but it does certainly contribute greatly to a feeling of belonging that extends beyond

“I think it’s been the making of her… without it, I think she would feel quite lost.. it’s become her safe space.”

RETHINKING SCHOOL

the school gates. Other unifying factors, such as parents’ collective experience of having a neurodiverse child are undoubtedly also at play. However, within the discussion around the theme of community, parents regularly mentioned the role that religious festivals play in building and fostering this feeling. Talking about last year’s Passover celebrations, one parent said, ‘You feel involved… everyone [children and parents] is experiencing it together’.

For many, faith matters. For SEND young people too. They will need support to access the texts and tenets and practices and celebrations of their family’s and community’s faith so that inclusion for them is meaningful and supportive. It is a part of their learning and they have learning needs that we should strive to meet.

End Note: To quote Lord Rabbi Sacks: ‘Children who are confident in their identity, know their

people’s story, are familiar with its literature and at home in its practices, understand their responsibilities to the wider society and practise the values of tzedakah (charity) and chessed (kindness) are at peace with themselves and with the world. They become a credit to the Jewish people and an asset to Britain. We can ask no more; we can do no less.‘

Professional Prompts

1. 2.

Having read this article, what benefits are claimed from having a unifying faith, culture and belief system (across school, family, community)? How might a non-faith-based school generate an equivalent sense of unity?

What arguments might you make that there should or shouldn’t be faith-based SEND schools?

In one recent school project our year 8 students were asked to design a T-shirt which conveys their identity. What makes them who they are? How important is their name? What are the influences that shape their character? For these particular students, faith proved relevant to how they view themselves and contextualise themselves in their world at large.

“For my T-shirt, I have made a design which shows my outer and inner self. My outer self is what people see when they look at me, I have drawn a self-portrait of half of my face. I have brown hair and when I am happy, this shows on my face by having a wide smile. My inner self and the other half of my face is a football as well as my future career as a footballer. Inside the ball, I have written the emotions I feel most on the inside which are happiness, excitement and sadness. I also added feeling nervous as this is how I feel before I play a football game. I have also drawn a Kippah, dreidel and Torah as this represents my Jewish identity which is very important to me.”

-- Shamai (Year 8)

“My inspiration for this project was to focus on what my passion is and to me, that’s cars. Based on this, I split my face in two and used one half to show how people see me on the outside and the other half to show how I like to be seen by the world. I did this by replacing some of my facial features with my favourite parts of a car. Also, I replaced my brain with a twin-turbo V8 engine representing the power of thinking. As well as cars, I’m very passionate about making people laugh. Coming up with jokes is one of my favourite hobbies and I can make my friends feel better with my jokes whenever they’re hurt or feeling sad. To show this, I gave myself a big smile and added a ‘HAHAHA’ over my head. Being Jewish is a very big part of my identity and it is something I am very proud of so I drew a star of David in the middle of my eye to show my unique Jewish perspective on life. This piece represents my favourite parts about myself and shows everyone what makes me, me.”

-- Ariel (Year 8)

Practical Personalisation

Loni Bergqvist

Loni was a teacher at High Tech High before coming to the UK to support the REALProjects programme in 2014. Since then, as founder and partner of Imagine If, Loni has worked with schools around the world to re-imagine education. Her projectbased learning expertise has been used in several international initiatives and yet she finds time to be a source of friendship and expertise to Gesher.

Differentiation is Not Personalisation…

Ditch the word differentiation. Never use it again. Forget it exists.

By default, using the term differentiation causes us to look first at and make assumptions about what’s different about students before designing assessment or a lesson. We weigh these differences against what’s seen as ‘normal’ and by doing so, we categorise without really properly getting to understand individual students. Differentiation is a quick and inadequate way to streamline the process of knowing or categorising our students. We assign them labels so that we feel as though we understand their needs… but do we really?

Personalisation, on the other hand, begins with the unwavering belief that all students are capable of excellence. All. But, in order really to live out this philosophy, it takes a commitment to dig deep into children who enter the walls of the classroom. Personalisation starts with deep understanding. It’s not a term that is used exclusively with students who struggle to read or have learning challenges, or who are identified as being gifted. Personalisation should be done for every single student, such that we can give all learners access to their gifts and mitigations for their challenges.

This is not an over-idealisation. In adulthood, people find, navigate and express their gifts –intellectual, practical, emotional, and spiritual. We identify with and gain respect for what we can do or enjoy doing. Schools have tended to emphasise, for many learners, what they can’t do.

Personalisation starts in a different and more optimistic place.

Idea One: Create a community of learners

Creating a community where everyone (regardless of perceived academic ability) feels included, valued and comfortable is essential for all students and especially necessary for students who may have been marginalised in the past and felt excluded. At High Tech High, for example, they have a simple mantra: We expect all learners to be successful and to produce beautiful work. It is the responsibility of the entire class to help them do that. THAT is a community of learners.

Things we can do to create these learning communities

Facilitative of Classroom Culture:

Knowing students individually

Allowing for student voice

Teachers openly being learners in the classroom, too

Mixed groupings – gender, experience, abilities

Encouragement of risk-taking and celebrating it publicly

One-on-one conversations with students

Celebration, recognition, and affirmation activities.

Techniques,

Tools, and Activities:

Critique of work activities using peer feedback

Appreciations share-out at the end of a class

Individual reflection – and perhaps journal use

Use of protocols that scaffold learning and contributions

Question wall (a Parking Lot for questions and ideas)

Think-Pair-Share

Ice breakers and opportunities for students to share with each other (non-academic)

Show & tell activities that highlight student passions and interests

Variety of activities that necessitate different talents (Socratic Seminar, World Cafe)

Display of ALL beautiful work where students have invested, regardless of whether it’s ‘the best’.

Idea Two: Focus on what students CAN do, first.

It’s easy to start the year by looking at student deficits. However, any student who has struggled with school in the past, knows whether they’re perceived as being ‘good’ or ‘not good’ at school. The most important thing is to build confidence in students by examining and recognising what students can do, and what they’re already good at, to provide more access points to help with areas that need development.

Ways we can focus on what students can do: •

Teacher/student interviews

Be flexible in the ways students show understanding (dictation, partner writing, pictures, etc.)

Take a ‘learning preferences’ survey and design lessons or learning pathways around different types of learners

Activate prior knowledge and related knowledge before new knowledge

Ask them: ‘What are you comfortable with? What do you struggle with?’ They know

Invite other students to celebrate what they value about peers

Some of the strategies in Idea One.

Idea Three: Provide scaffolds for students to reach higher. Don’t lower expectations.

When creating scaffolds for students to complete a desired task, it is essential the support matches with the need of an individual student. Determine what the task is, what an individual student may need in terms of support to reach the desired task and provide resources accordingly. We do this instinctively when a student has a visible, physical barrier – a broken leg; a sight impairment – but we are less intuitive about more generic or subtle support strategies.

Ways we can scaffold learning:

Graphic organisers (give the option to all students, some will need them without ever officially getting support)

Modify assignments to do less if it’s the same skill

Allow dictation to a teacher or another student

Partner work

‘Workshop Groups’ with a particular task as a theme. (Open these to all students who may need support! They can also be done after school.)

Chalk Talk (Protocol available here: https://www.nsrfharmony.org/wp-content/ uploads/2017/10/chalk_talk_0.pdf.)

Think-Pair-Share (Resources available here: https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/thinkpair-share.)

Include visuals with text

Untimed Learning Stations, so that students can go at their own pace in a supported context. You can combine this with Daily Checklists.

Idea Four: Honour student interests

This one is really important. Those old enough to remember Barry Hines’s novel (and film) “Kes” will remember the young boy who received no affirmation in school, but who kept, trained and flew a kestrel outside school. When an empathetic teacher joined him in the fields near his house to watch, he was awestruck.

Our students have rich lives outside our classrooms – they fish, they look after siblings, they go to evening classes, they have collecting hobbies, they are masters at online games, they play the guitar... And the more we can do to bring these experiences into school, the better chance we have of honouring who our students are, what they are passionate about and what they are skilled and knowledgeable about.

Ways we can involve the interests of students: •

Choice in assignments (what to write about, the theme of a project, etc.)

RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) Resources here: https://www.edutoolbox.org/rasp/840. Conduct home visits and meet with students and their families Have Show and Tell each Friday with different students presenting each time Give open-ended projects where students can include their own ideas for products and exhibitions.

End Note: Personalisation, then, is basically about designing learning tasks and environments and classroom culture which optimise every student’s chances of success. It is both as simple and as difficult as that. And if the range of suggested ideas above seems daunting, remember two things: •

Just as we need to know our learners well to optimise their learning, so we have to know ourselves -- and what we feel confident about and where we need help.

Teaching is not an individual sport – or at least it shouldn’t be. Teaching with other teachers and/or with support assistants can create a context for dialogue. So, too, can the design and planning process, in which peer critique is as valuable for teachers as it is for students.

“Personalisation begins with the unwavering belief that all students are capable of excellence.”

Inspired By... Profile of Another School

Julie Temperley

In each issue of The Bridge, we will be sharing stories from schools around the world where exciting new learning opportunities are inspiring and challenging us. In this issue, we take a look at Riverside School in India, which was created using a human-centred design approach and where exploring identity and what it means to be part of a diverse community helps learners develop a strong sense of self and agency.

This story is just one of many you can find in FutureSchool: How schools around the world are applying learning design principles for a new era, by Valerie Hannon with Julie Temperley, Routledge, 2022.

Riverside School, Ahmedabad, India

Kiran Bir Sethi, the founder of Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, came into education with a designer’s mindset, determined to create an engaging and empowering learning environment for her young son, who was becoming disillusioned with school at an early age. Drawing on her design training, Sethi’s focus in conceiving her school was not: What is the curriculum and how should we teach it? but: Who are the learners and what do they need to learn?

A focus on learners -- their strengths, interests and needs -- led Sethi inevitably to contemplate the implications for learning of the unique challenges and opportunities that each learner faces and the diversity of experience of learners and their communities which follow them into school. Here too, Sethi drew on her own experience of arriving at design school where, for the first time, she met people whose lives and perspectives were vastly different from her own.

“I was awed by the sheer diversity in religion, culture, demographics and sexuality on the campus. It was here that I began to believe in inclusion as a right and not the privilege of a select few.”1 Kiran Bir Sethi, 2018

Through their student admissions and teacher recruitment policies, and over a period of ten years, Riverside explicitly set out to create a ‘mini India’ amongst the 390 students in their school2, ensuring representation from all communities, demographics, religious affiliations and gender and welcoming learners with special needs ‘beyond any labels and biases’.3

With diversity and inclusion so prominent in the school’s design and ethos it is perhaps unsurprising that identity soon became an explicit focus for learning, and Riverside’s commitment to inclusion found expression in their Inclusive Campus Programme (ICP).

Mind -- personality, gender and orientation

Body -- ability, age and appearance

Centring on nine aspects of identity, the ICP is made up of a range of workshops and experiences that continue throughout a student’s time at Riverside. The nine aspects, categorised under the headings of mind, body and heritage are: • • •

Heritage -- religions and beliefs, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic class

Awareness, compassion and engagement are at the heart of the ICP.4 From stories that challenge gender stereotypes for younger children to intentional conversations between a gay teacher and older students; from a collaborative redesign by students of school spaces to accommodate a wheelchair when a disabled student joined the school to regular visits to heritage sites and culturally significant spaces around the city, the ICP explicitly and systematically engages students with alternative perspectives and experiences to challenge them to reflect deeply on their own identity and the role they might play in the world.

As learners progress through the school, the ethos of inclusion and the exploration of identity expands beyond the school walls and out into the real world, to support learners to contemplate what other people’s lives are like and how the privilege -- not the entitlement -- of an education might equip them as Riverside graduates to help others. Learners are encouraged to think of themselves as individuals in the world; agents with skills and purpose and a will to change

1

https://www.thebetterindia.com/163007/inclusive-culture-education-riverside-school-ahmedabad/ 2 https://www.educationworld.in/the-riverside-school-ahmedabad/ 3 https://www.thebetterindia.com/163007/inclusive-culture-education-riverside-school-ahmedabad/ 4 https://schoolriverside.com/Home/ICP

“Awareness, compassion and engagement are at the heart of the Inclusive Campus Programme.”

“Learners are encouraged to think of themselves as individuals in the world; agents with skills and purpose and a will to change things for the better for others.”

things for the better for others. “Doing good and doing well” is the Riverside mantra.

Learners stay in rural communities where the relative luxury of city living -- sanitation, technology, transport -- is missing from everyday life. They immerse themselves in alternative realities, learning how agricultural workers and craftspeople make a living. And how a life without material wealth might be enriching in other ways.

In their final year, learners assume responsibility for leading a real and urgent change, becoming the CEO of a changemaker programme to make a positive difference in people’s lives. This leadership development is the final stage in growing their confidence and humility to take on ethical and practical challenges as adults and to become a force for good in the world.

None of the focus and time spent on identity comes at the expense of academic excellence. Riverside students have consistently outperformed the top 10 schools in maths, science and English and the school has been ranked the No.1 day school in Gujarat for several years.

Professional Prompts

1. 2. 3.

What most attracts you in this mini-case study?

What most challenges you?

Could you use this as a think-piece with your staff?

FutureSchool: How schools around the world are applying learning design principles for a new era by Valerie Hannon with Julie Temperley

1.

School Can Be Different

10 Things We Believe...

What should be different...

Every learner is able to name at least one adult in school who knows them and believes in them.

Every learner is routinely involved in decisions about their learning.

Every learner is able to understand what they are learning, and to explain their learning to others.

Learning targets work brilliantly because learners understand them and know why they matter.

Teachers use the work that learners produce as evidence for what is being learned.

What this could look like...

Advisory or crew is how some schools have achieved this. Prioritising learning relationships means allocating quality time for advisory at the start and end of each day, every day.

Learners choose what, how and when they learn, with opportunities to follow their passions and interests in school, as well as outside of it.

Oracy programmes. Student-led conferences. Routinely inviting parents and community members and significant others to critique or discuss learning with students.

Teachers talk regularly, with learners as partners, about what they want and need to learn next, and how to get there.

Public exhibitions, presentations of learning and student-led conferences. Teachers curate, discuss and evaluate learners’ work together.

Teachers routinely use evidencebased tools and protocols that model and support great learning.

Staff use the same learning protocols they use with learners to scaffold and bring consistency and rigour, to adult learning.

7.

6. 8.

Structures and cultures in school prioritise time for teachers to work and learn together.

Each school is learning from other schools -- no single school has all the answers.

Teachers routinely work together to design and plan learning and present their designs and plans to other teachers for peer review.

Schools that look outward, including overseas, to build alliances and grow collegiate relationships with other schools to share learning.

9.

Each school is deeply connected to their local communities: families; businesses; civil society.

Each school is celebrated and supported by experts and advocates.

Schools that are permeable to community expertise and who welcome external critique of learners’ work through e.g. public exhibition.

Schools that are known and valued by people who can help the institution, and the learners and teachers in it, to thrive.

kids have a purpose for their work, that’s beyond their classroom, a real social purpose, a purpose they care about, then they’re way more motivated to do more drafts.”

“When

Ron Berger: An Interview

Ron Berger is internationally recognised for his educational wisdom and insight. He was a public school teacher and master carpenter in his early career and those craft values now inform his educational leadership. He is Chief Academic Officer for Expeditionary Learning, which embraces over 300 schools across the United States, and he also teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

This is the second instalment of our interview with Ron. He is a wonderful storyteller as well as a wise educator -- might those things just be linked? Anyway, it is so rich that we are feeding it in small servings! Towards the end, he talks about a lovely project done by ten-year-olds. In the Resources for Teachers section, we have included a teaching guide to that project.

Critique and multiple drafts

Rowan Eggar, Assistant Head: Curriculum & Assessment at Gesher How can we best support kids to make critiquing and drafting a dynamic process, as opposed to them being basically annoyed because we are having to review again? So that’s my question: What ways are there to design drafting and critiquing so that you can get the best possible outcome for the students?

Ron Berger

Great question. I think the way I’m most known in the world is the Austin’s Butterfly video. And so people understand I am obsessed with kids polishing their work and doing multiple drafts, but it’s not easy, as you say. So, I can give a few reflections on that.

The first, I would say, is that it’s only useful to keep doing drafts if the work keeps improving, if kids can see improvement happening. After that, there is no need to make them do six drafts. There’s not a magic thing that says Austin did six drafts, so therefore everyone should do six drafts. Austin’s work actually kept getting better, and that’s why it made sense for him to keep pursuing

Austin’s Butterfly

that drafting process in the video. One of the things that we can see in the Austin’s Butterfly video is that Austin had a reason to do six drafts, which was, importantly, that there was an audience for that work that he really cared about.

The butterfly Austin drew went on a card. It was sold across the entire state of Idaho. Wow. And all that money was used for butterfly habitats. And so his drawing was supposed to be so good that people would be able to use it to identify the actual butterfly, which is a reason why his first draft wasn’t that useful because you couldn’t actually identify the butterfly from that draft. Some art teachers have critiqued me for making him do something that’s very mechanical but that’s because this isn’t an expressive art project. It’s a scientific illustration. And so there was a reason for him to care about getting it right. And the kids in the video also had that photograph that they were looking at. So they knew what it should look like and felt empowered to say, ‘I can see what’s different about your drawing from that photograph.’

There’s a couple of things to take away from that. One is just the motivational thing. When kids have a purpose for their work that’s beyond their classroom, a real social purpose, a purpose they care about, then they’re way more motivated to do more drafts. Is there a way that what they’re creating can be used for something that matters a lot to them and where they really want it to be good?

For example, I went into a first-grade classroom where kids were working on letters, writing letters, and they were Y2, second years in the US. And they were still working on some of the basics of capitalisation and punctuation and ending sentences and writing legibly. They were young kids, they were six and seven years old, but they had visited the local fire station where they had met firefighters. And so instead of doing practice, they were actually writing a personal letter of appreciation to each firefighter and each student was assigned a firefighter.

So, if I were assigned Loni to write to, I would think, oh my goodness, I’d better get this letter to be perfect because I’m writing to this woman, who’s a firefighter, who’s protecting us, and she’s going to put it up on her locker and look at it every day. I want it to be perfect. I want my lettering to be perfect. I want my punctuation to be perfect. I want my spelling to be perfect. And so there was not a lot of pressure to say to kids, ‘You have to do another draft.’ It was like, ‘I need to keep making it better.’

A second thing is, do they have a model of what good looks like? If they have, then they can give critique.

So if I’m working on my thank you letter for Loni as a firefighter, and Ali is a peer of mine and she has a model of a thank you letter that we’ve all looked at together, a really good one, she can say, ‘You know, Ron, yours doesn’t have this actually. And notice how this one has it.’ And so it’s easier for her to give critique. And it’s easier for me to think, ‘oh yeah, you’re right, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do that’. And I know that we are often, as a culture, afraid to give kids models because we think, oh, what if they copy? But I have an entirely different attitude towards that, which is that copying is how we learn. So if we, as adults, want to learn to do something new like play guitar or speak Danish or do yoga, what do we do?

“A second thing is, do they have a model of what good looks like? If they have, then they can give critique.”

We go to a class or we go online and we watch somebody do it, and we try to copy them. And then we get critiques about what we’re not doing. Right? And then we try to copy them again. And we keep trying to copy them. We don’t start by improvising, right? We start by watching how they do a yoga pose, listening to how they pronounce something, watching how they do a chord on the guitar. And then we copy it. And then we critique ourselves and we get critique from others.

Modelling is how all of us as adults learn. We should not be afraid to show kids models of what a good letter is, what a good maths solution is, what a good anything is and to agree together why it is good. And then that empowers the kids to critique each other.

So I think it makes sense that kids get frustrated because they feel like ‘I just wanna be done. And you’re just delaying.’ The dynamic is totally different when you feel that this is what we’re aiming for. It’s about giving kids more power over it, by it not being us, the ones telling them it’s not ready, but them being able to see themselves.

Rowan

Amazing. Thank you. That’s really helpful!

Ron

Teaching is about relationships. If you want to draw the best out of each kid in your school, in your class, in your group, it’s really about knowing that kid. It’s knowing what they’re proud of, knowing what they’re worried about, knowing what motivates them, knowing where their heart is. And if you want to draw them out, you have to know when it’s okay to tease them and what you can tease them about as a way of showing that you love them.

It’s all about relationships, but that doesn’t mean that we have to individualise what every kid works on. I think that’s a mistake we make, thinking that knowing kids well and loving them and caring about them means that I have to have a totally different task for Rowan, for Loni, for Ali and for Charlotte because one’s interested in dogs and one’s interested in cats etc., so they can’t do the same

How do we know our children well enough to understand what is relevant or right for them?

task as it’s not their passion. I don’t believe that. I believe sometimes kids should be able to write about their passion, read about their passion, do projects about their passion. But I think there’s a side of all of us that wants to do some good for the world.

So, it’s not just a question of passion. It’s a question of if you’re a human, you also want to do something appreciative for others.

I’ll share another story, a project from year fives (10 or 11-year-olds) in Moscow, Idaho, another rural community in the United States. All the kids were brought to an animal shelter and each kid was paired with an animal. Now, this is not an animal that they’re going to be allowed to take home. Their parents are not going to say: ‘You can take this stray dog home or this stray cat. But the kids learned the story behind each animal. What do we know about this dog? What do we know about this cat, her past, what she likes, what she’s afraid of -- what do you know?

So they learned the story of their animal. They took a picture of their animal and then they went back and they did a portrait, an artistic portrait of their animal based on the photograph they had. And they did many drafts because there was a real purpose for this. The purpose was that they wanted their animal to be adopted. Oh, wow. Then they wrote a poem about the story of that animal, what they had learned about that animal’s past. Then they took the artistic portrait they had drawn and they took the poem that they had written about the animal, both of which had gone through drafts and they made a poster of it and they laminated those posters and they put them up all over town.

Now, if you’re in the laundromat, and if you are in the motor vehicle registry where you get a driver’s licence, or you’re in the doctor’s waiting room, there are posters of all these animals with poems and portraits. And once those went up all over town, guess what, people started adopting those animals. Because how much can you look at these beautiful animals on these posters without thinking’ I’ve got to adopt that one right there’.

So there was a tremendous reason for kids to care about multiple drafts of their poems and multiple drafts of their drawings and to get critique from each other and from the teacher and from experts. But we didn’t have to think, oh, that’s not a kid who likes dogs, or that’s not a kid who likes cats, therefore we won’t bring her on this trip. We just assumed, correctly, that every kid would understand the human quality of ‘we can save these animals’ lives -- if we’re really good at this.’

Yes. Purpose and agency. I’m just thinking already, my students would be so motivated by that project. That sounds like a dream project. Absolutely amazing. Love it.

Ali Durban, Gesher Co-Founder

It also emphasises the connectedness to the real world which, especially for our students, makes learning much more tangible -- rather than knowledge that floats around that doesn’t actually mean anything.

Editor’s Note: A Project Card to support this project has been included in the Resources for Teachers section on page 69

Rowan

“... my students would be so motivated by that project.”

Teaching & Learning with Neurodiverse Children

Why is School a Tough Place for Neurodiverse Children?

Ali Durban

A Short Reflection on Bravery

If all schools were judged by the provision they make for their most vulnerable learners (which feels not to be an unreasonable measure) it could be that there would be more “inadequate” judgements than there are currently. For some learners attendance at school requires reserves of courage.

Bravery is not a word that we would want to define any child or young person’s daily experience of school. After all, school is meant to be a place of safety, fulfilment, and positive relationships, yet for thousands of differently abled children and young people, navigating their normal school day is challenging, complex, damaging even, and bravery is a daily necessity of survival. In his recent book ‘The Inclusion Illusion’, Dr Rob Webster highlights the everyday experience of students with SEND in mainstream school as being characterised by separation and segregation.

‘There are structures and processes ingrained within these settings that serve to exclude and marginalise them (children and young people). The arrangements that led to this might be defendable if they were necessary for creating an effective pedagogical experience. Yet the evidence… suggests that, if anything, they result in a less effective pedagogical experience.’

The Policy Context

Over 1.4 million children in Britain are reported to have some sort of special educational need and we all know that the unassessed number is probably much larger. Three-quarters of these (about 1.1 million) are on SEND support and 365,000 have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The current SEND Green Paper talks about ‘a clear vision for a more inclusive system’ but gives no real sense of how it will be achieved. To put this inclusive

thinking into context, following a consultation on behaviour management policies and exclusion, the Department for Education appointed a “behaviour tsar” to create “behaviour hubs”. Guidance also referred to the use of “removal rooms” in schools as a punishment and to the use of managed moves as an early intervention measure for pupils at risk of exclusion. To be clear, the children and young people most impacted by these measures are the most vulnerable in society. Mostly they are those with SEND.

The Government (and constant merry-go-round of Education Ministers) continues to wrestle with inclusion and SEND system reform, with no clear approach to system transformation in sight. For this article, we set aside the complexities of system change and instead take a grassroots-level deep dive into exactly why life in mainstream education is so tough for differently abled students.

Introduction

Gesher’s Ashleigh Wolinsky, Speech and Language Therapist, and Ingrid Mitchell, Educational Psychologist, have extensive experience working with SEND learners. We asked them to share some insights drawn from that professional experience. It will not be a shock to readers to learn that SEND identification, poor resources, and assessment and diagnosis delays are some of the consistent features.

However, with that as background we have extracted from the interviews three further clusters of issues:

1. 2. 3.

Those that are endemic to ‘school’ -- the way secondary school in particular works. Issues that are unique to the learner -- the needs of a ‘differently able’ youngster. What we have called ‘wisdoms’ -- some practical suggestions that may be of help.

“School is meant to be a place of safety, fulfilment, and positive relationships, yet for thousands of differently abled children and young people, navigating their normal school day is challenging, complex, damaging even.”

The variability and unpredictability of the school day with constant transitions for students, physically from room to room, mentally from subject to subject and relationally from teacher to teacher.

Poor understanding and training for teachers on SEND, including how the external environment impacts and can cause dysregulation.

Fewer individualised classes in secondary.

Lack of understanding about children’s behaviour as a form of communication, and the role of trauma-informed practice as a strategy.

Potential Dysfunctions of Secondary School Design

Limited access to therapists.

Over-stimulating environment -noise, lighting, smell.

Shortage of resources to support individual needs.

An overwhelming workload for teachers.

Teaching assistants often lack specific training or expertise to deal with vulnerable children.

Teaching to a majority in a large classroom with diverse needs -both behaviourally and cognitively.

Insufficiently strong relationships, which means students are not known or understood -- learners may have up to 10 or more different teachers each week.

Mismatch of stage environments and poor information on transfer.

School is a confusing social-emotional environment. Deciphering people’s intentions and meanings is hard for me, especially on the playground at lunchtime.

Language and the way information is processed are important for my understanding – I often need visual/ oral/written/ pictorial/signing cues.

I am constantly taken out of class for different reasons. It is lonely.

I find school to be an overwhelming sensory environment -- noise, smell, light, touch, and balance.

Meltdowns can further impact my mental health and widen gaps of need.

Navigating peer relationships and social situations can be a daily challenge.

The Learners’ Lens

I can go into a meltdown if I am not understood or able to express myself, or if I’m anxious about what is going on.

A lack of strong relationships means I do not feel known or understood in the way I was in primary school.

I may engage in internalising or externalising behaviours if I’m not appropriately stimulated. This can exacerbate behaviours that cause me to challenge or withdraw.

As well as anxiety, I often feel fear and shame, coupled with physical symptoms such as a racing heart, sweating etc. I often have to manage these and process the environment around me at the same time.

In addition, I also have very limited access to regular therapeutic support.

In fact, I often need personalised support, which is in short supply.

Some Very Practical Wisdom

From the conversations with Ashleigh and Ingrid, we have also distilled some key insights that might be of value to those working with SEND learners. They are far from exhaustive, but they are practical, and they are expertise and practice-informed.

Make problem-solving for learners with needs a regular part of staff dialogue.

Ensure visuals are used in the environment to support understanding, expression, daily routines, key rules. Things like visual timetables, flow charts with instructions for activities, now/next boards, volume-o-meters, word mats, colourful semantics question boards…

Ensure that every youngster with needs has an adult relationship with which they are secure -- and that they know they can access this when required.

Think about where children are positioned in class and with whom they are working.

Ensure there is a wholeschool culture of embracing and understanding students that are differently able.

Educate teachers, TAs, other students, playground staff and anyone else that is part of the school community.

Normalise asking for help and making mistakes, and offer opportunities for children to say if they don’t understand something.

Ensure key children are listening before giving instructions.

Use their name, gestures and visuals to cue children in before giving instructions.

Use the ‘zones of regulation’ and have daily check-ins during tutor time to access how people are feeling.

Ensure the school culture is underpinned by socio-emotional values that are evident in the daily practices of ALL teachers and learners. Learners should support each other regardless of their learning differences, and the overarching culture should be one of trust and respect.

For those who find following instructions difficult: keep the language simple, use keywords, write down instructions or get children to write down instructions (or present visually using pictures).

Think about how the school day impacts a learner beyond the classroom, from assembly to the playground, to transitions between classes. How can you help those with needs manage these situations?

Ensure you check that students have understood instructions by getting them to repeat back what they need to do, or show them one-to-one.

End Note: This article is not a criticism of mainstream schools, nor of secondary schools in particular. Nor is it a eulogy for special school provision. Let’s be clear: we believe that both mainstream schools and special schools can do a great job for neurodiverse SEND youngsters -- hence the insights and advice.

What we are also clear about, though, is that hundreds of young people across the country have a potentially damaging and unhappy experience of school and that there is knowledge about how things could be better. This piece is a small contribution to that, drawn from those with expertise.

How can a Life Skills Curriculum Support Children to Access Learning?

Danielle Petar

than just practising daily tasks…’ Gesher’s new life skills scheme

The idea of teaching life skills in schools as part of a young person’s education has been formalised since the late 1990s when the World Health Organisation (WHO) introduced its ten core life skills principles. They defined life skills as ‘a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathise with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner’. Before that, it was a core mission of the scouting movement (since the 1920s) and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (founded in 1956). We have long known that life skills are an essential thing to have. For specialist schools like Gesher, they are crucial to school success, future life chances and emotional well-being.

Despite this, what the student experience of life skills learning means for day-to-day teaching can be difficult to picture. Is it discrete individual lessons about part of the WHO’s definition? Is it traditional lessons like maths, literacy, and science which implicitly teach these skills? Is it practising skills that young people will need for daily life in their classrooms and beyond? Is it something which teachers teach, or should this learning be happening at home?

These are some of the problems that Gesher’s Inclusion Team, (Danielle Petar and Matt Summers), grappled with when they first set out to develop Gesher’s own life skills scheme at the start of 2020 -- and they are sharing their experience in the hope that it will be of value to others. Two years on, this scheme, called Bridges: Foundation, has been launched to Gesher’s students and will shortly also be introduced to

parents. In anticipation of this, we sat down with Danielle and Matt to find out more about the journey they went on to design the scheme as well as some of its features.

Setting Up The Scheme

‘The notion of creating something which meets all of the WHO definition of life skills was exciting but also rather daunting. In the first stage of the process, we looked at the four key areas in the Government’s ‘pathway to adulthood’ guide. These are employment; independent living; good health; and friendships, relationships and community. However, we quickly realised that we’d need some more focus and to break these down further’. After going through various combinations of themes, the team decided on eight child-friendly themes.

‘More

“What the student experience of life skills learning really means for day-to-day teaching can be difficult to picture.”

Within each of these themes, there are eleven badges for the students to work towards achieving. In the ‘My Home’ theme, for example, the badges range from ‘Clearing the Table’ to ‘Preparing for Social Occasions’. ‘While each badge is very different they are all designed to focus on developing creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, the ability to communicate and collaborate, as well as commitment to personal and social responsibility.’

The approach is driven by the student’s motivation to learn new skills, explore their areas of interest and develop their independence, as well as encouraging them to think about their future. Therefore, they have some autonomy in choosing their badges.

‘We were also eager to ensure that the young people themselves were included in the design process and it’s safe to say their feedback was refreshingly honest… It ultimately had a huge impact on the way the scheme looks from a visual perspective. Given that it’s the young people themselves who will be using the scheme, this is exactly what we wanted.’

The final stakeholder group that Danielle and Matt sought views from while in that crucial design phase was parents from the Gesher community. ‘The scheme was designed as an exciting journey that would foster a partnership between home and school, with students completing badges

both at home and at school. As parents were going to be a vital part in implementing it, then it was equally important to get their input in the design process.’

Taking Ownership

The design of the Bridges scheme was very much focused on ensuring that students can take ownership of their learning. Within each life skill, there are four ‘steps’ to achieve along their journey that reflect an increasing level of independence and in this way students can see their progress.

“As you journey through the different life skills badges, there are different steps along the way that you can take; each step leading you to be more independent.”

Each step has a number of success criteria provided, which are visible and accessible to students. These were created by extensive research from the Inclusion team and in consultation with a wealth of other educational professionals (Occupational Therapists,

Speech and Language Therapists, Educational Psychologists, Art Therapists, Teachers, Teaching Assistants and Dramatherapists).

‘Unlike the way that learning is normally structured, both the approach and the journey navigation are highly personalised. The different steps are not age-related but rather based on a child’s own stage of development at any given time and based on their individual skills and needs. We did this to reflect the fact that a young person’s journey to adulthood is not linear and they will navigate their own winding path.’ Put another way, both the approach and the journey navigation are highly personalised.

Beyond Practising Daily Skills and Student Ownership

Unlike more traditional life skills schemes, Gesher’s reach is broader in terms of the themes it covers and has a greater focus on softer skills like decision-making and critical thinking. ‘We wanted the scheme to be aspirational, more than a means by which to practise daily tasks.’ This is evident in the inclusion of themes like ‘My Imagination’ and ‘My World’, which encompass skills like ‘Making a gift’ and ‘Learning about a religion’.

This breadth means that young people don’t just work on their life skills badges in the classroom but in a home context as well. ‘The success criteria for each level have been designed to include language that is accessible for students as well as the adults in their lives.’ To further promote this, students work on a minimum of three badges at a time. The idea is that one is chosen by their teacher to work on in the classroom and relates to their project-based learning; one is chosen alongside the adults at home; while the last is selected by the young people themselves. This badge they will work on both at home and at school. ‘Obtaining these badges at home and at school should be both meaningful and fun

and will hopefully open up new experiences for students as they navigate their own journeys to adulthood. It’s also important to say that there is no limit on how many badges a student can be working on at any one time. The scheme is designed to give them the opportunity to explore and to be ambitious.’

Hiding in Plain Sight

The eight themes ensure that the life skills curriculum is incorporated across the school from the Early Years class to the students in Year 8. This will allow students to become familiar with the skills they need for adulthood as early as possible in their education journey. Each class has one discrete life skills session a week where they work on their chosen badges. This is led by the school’s ‘life skills champion’ and the class teacher. In addition, for students at Gesher who are less likely to graduate with traditional academic qualifications such as GCSE and may follow a more vocational route, life skills sessions are taught daily in small groups.

As well as this dedicated time, the school’s holistic approach to learning means that badges can be worked on during students’ therapy sessions or in-class sessions through projectbased learning. What will be obvious is that the approach (student ownership, personalisation, real-world tasks, school and community, etc) has many features in common with the project-based learning approach to the wider curriculum.

Next Steps

Whilst the Bridges scheme is very much underway, it will evolve and the team is already planning to create further resources to support the teaching of each life skill. They are also in the process of creating the next stage of the scheme, Bridges: For Life. This will expand on the four areas of preparing for adulthood and ensure that the students build on the life skills they’ve already developed through the Foundations scheme. This article offers a window into an important aspect of our work, one of which we are proud -- both the scheme itself and the process through which it was developed. If you want to know more, please contact Gesher.

Legacy

Gesher is both privileged and humbled that this scheme has been made possible by working in collaboration with the Daniels family in order to honour the extraordinary life of Sonya Daniels, their wife, mother and grandmother.

“The different steps are not age-related but rather based on a child’s own stage of development at any given time. Both the approach and the journey navigation are highly personalised.”

Changing Schools, Changing Lives

Sam Dexter

Authentic Voices

Reflecting on the content that appeared in the first issue of The Bridge, we noticed a pattern. There was a lot from the perspective of neurotypical adult experts, but very little from the perspective of neurodiverse young people. This worried us. How could we be creating an educational journal about educating neurodiverse young people, without including the voices of these young people? This is clearly not right.

So, in this issue, and all future issues, there will be a dedicated space reserved solely for pupil voice -- featuring the first-hand views of neurodiverse young people. For this issue, we spoke to five young people about how life at Gesher is different from the experiences they had in their previous schools.

Different in the Classroom

All of the students we spoke to described how learning at Gesher was different from their previous schools. One student said, ‘I didn’t learn anything… all I ever did was play around and make things’. When asked what it is like now at Gesher that differs he replied by saying: ‘I have more support here’ and ‘I like learning more… I

like learning more so I get even smarter.’

Another student, also speaking on the theme of support, told us how in his previous school:

‘I was learning, learning, learning but didn’t understand one thing and there was no support for me. They just said, you have to do it yourself… In this school, there is a lot more support, like if you don’t understand something, they explain it in a different way.’

The students told us how things were taught differently at Gesher. ‘I find learning better because it’s taught differently. We get to do PBL (Project-Based Learning)... which is fun and creative.’ For another student, not having the pressure of traditional assessment was a huge relief. ‘They [student’s previous school] had lots of tests. And I’m actually glad that my mum put me in this school because otherwise, I would have had to deal with lots and lots and lots of SATs exams.’

“The approach to emotional regulation helps in the classroom.”

A common theme related to how Gesher’s approach to emotional regulation also helps them in the classroom. ‘I can ask for a break and that means I’ll go outside and when I’m ready I’ll come back’. Another student described how, if the learning environment was too noisy, he knew to ask for ear defenders or he had the freedom simply to find them himself.

Different Outside the Classroom

Another feature shared was how school life is different outside the classroom at Gesher. Around this topic, two main themes emerged: friendship and the school’s therapy dogs. Relationships are a big focus at Gesher (they matter a lot for neurodiverse young people) and on the topic of friendship, students explained how Gesher provided them with the opportunity to build new relationships. ‘School can help us make new friends if we meet more people.’ [That same student went on to ask if the purpose of TThe Bridge was to bring more students to Gesher, suggesting that if it was, there would be ‘more friends also’.]

Other students felt that Gesher had allowed them to develop new interests and passions. ‘I like the fact that school can help me get interested in different things, [friend’s name] has got me interested in Minecraft and stuff like that.’

Another interviewee emphasised that Gesher provided the opportunity and support to build new relationships.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all students spoke enthusiastically about the positive impact that the visits of Gesher’s therapy dogs, Puplinda and Toby, had on their well-being:

Gesher student: I like it when Puplinda comes to visit.

Interviewer: Why?

Gesher Student: She makes me feel happy and calm.

Others spoke about being excited when Puplinda came to their class and were very concerned that she hadn’t visited for two weeks due to an operation (she is recovering well and will be back in Therapy Dog action before this article goes live).

Always Room For Improvement

As well as hearing their views about what was different between their previous school and Gesher, we also asked what could improve their experience. The most commonly mentioned

area for improvement was the playground, with students discussing how there could be more exercise equipment, more swings and slides, and some more creative activities. Another liked that the playground was a ‘very big area’ but felt that the surface material is ‘very tough… every time I slip a bit, I end up with everything in the cut, like rocks and everything.’

For Practitioners: Things We Have Learned

A useful mantra for thinking about ‘student voice’, especially that of neurodiverse young people, is ‘nothing about us without us’. As such, reflect on something within your setting that you want to change/are already planning to change. How might you gather the views of some of your neurodiverse learners about what this change might mean for them?

The process of gathering student perspectives and insights with neurodiverse young people can be more time-consuming because there are additional barriers compared to collecting the views of neurotypical young people. We have learned (a) to have a trusted adult ask the questions (quite often not a teacher); (b) to conduct the interview away from the classroom, and (c) to keep it short!

This part of each interview was important because it helped to give students agency over the process -- not just wanting to hear the positives, but also to learn how we can make things even better. Mindful also of not wanting simply to be a passive ear for young people’s views and concerns, the improvements they mentioned are being followed up by one of Gesher’s Deputy Heads. • • •

The use of visuals can support students to share their views about something, especially where a verbal interview doesn’t play to a young person’s strengths. In the Resources for Schools section of this issue we have included an example of the ‘ Three Houses’ model, a simple tool to elicit the view of a young person who finds it challenging to verbally express their feelings.

Turn over for Acknowledgements.

“The improvements mentioned are being followed up.”

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all five young people who gave up some of their playtime to share their views with us, and to Gesher’s Deputy Head and Dramatherpist, Mr Chris, who was the ‘trusted person’ who conducted the group interview.

Making the Most of Therapies in Your Setting

Victoria Rutter

The ever-changing political landscape has seen far-reaching implications for education and health services; spending cuts have been severe and there is currently a real disparity across the country in the amount and type of therapeutic provision available to children with SEND. It is interesting to reflect on the journey of how therapies emerged in schools, and to observe the inherent successes, but also the frustrations; frustrations largely due to ‘not enough’ rather than the quality of provision.

It is abundantly clear, from both research and anecdotal evidence, that the best possible model for effecting quality provision for each child is to do this within a team. In this case, the team would be school, parents and therapies.

Within School, Not Withdrawn

Historically children were taken out of school to attend therapy sessions in local community clinics and hospitals. This obviously disrupted children’s education and meant there was limited opportunity for liaison with school staff, and also that skills acquired in therapy had little chance of being generalised into everyday school life. With the advent of Statements of Special Educational Needs (Statements) -- now Education, Health Care Plans (EHCPs) -- the NHS began to place Therapists in both mainstream and SEND schools. Subsequently, Local Authorities (LAs), through joint funding

with the NHS, began financially and operationally to support this model and Therapists began to work regularly in schools to see children -- both with and without EHCPs.

Therapists as Members of Staff

Schools and parents could really see the benefit of children receiving therapies in their school environment. However, they also became increasingly frustrated by the amount of input they were being offered, with both the NHS and LAs rationing services due to a never-ending series of spending cuts. Schools began to recruit their own Therapists, giving them more control over the frequency of input, and allowing Therapists and school staff the opportunity truly to work collaboratively as part of a team around the children and young people in education.

Cut to today and this model is seen in both SEND and mainstream schools across the UK. Some settings have multi-disciplinary therapy teams on site full-time, while others have Therapists either employed directly by them or contracted via independent Therapists and practices. Therapists may visit weekly, half-termly or termly depending on the needs and budgets of individual schools.

Arrangements in one SEND School

At Gesher, therapy is not seen as an ‘add-on’, instead, it is part of the overall curriculum and is designed and delivered in tandem with the educational and social curriculum. Therapy targets are woven into all aspects of day-to-day school life, and therapies can be delivered in a variety of ever more creative ways. Staff upskill each other and are able to plan jointly and run interventions.

As in most settings, therapy staff work to a three-tiered approach: Universal (for all), Targeted (for small groups) and Specialist (for individuals). It is at the Universal level that the work can really make an impact: devising, teaching, modelling and reviewing whole-school approaches such as communication and sensory-friendly classrooms, signs and visually supported speech, Zones of Regulation, Movement breaks, facilitating lunchtime chats, playground games and Fun with Food.

Some Lessons For Any School

This model can differ from setting to setting, particularly in mainstream schools. So, what can a regular school do to maximise the impact of therapeutic support where provision can be limited in frequency?

Preparation is Key

Identify the key person who will liaise and plan with the Therapist. This is usually the Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities Coordinator (SENDco). The SENDco can then ask school staff and senior leaders to come up with a list of priorities and areas for development with regard to the particular Therapist that is working with your school; this could include:

Identifying particular children (specialist) or groups of children (targeted) who may require assessment and/or intervention

Identifying areas of universal need for your particular school, for example: vocabulary, listening, play, handwriting, sensory regulation, etc

Creating optimal learning environments such as communication and sensory-friendly classrooms

Identifying opportunities for Team Teaching to model and embed Quality First teaching strategies

You may wish to identify a Teaching Assistant with relevant skills and/ or interest to also liaise with the Therapists and who helps to coordinate and deliver the therapeutic interventions in school

Identifying training needs for all staff

Identifying training needs for identified staff

Identifying pieces of work with parents.

Plan For Each Visit

The SENDco and Therapist can make a joint plan prior to the visit, by email, which ensures:

Taking children out for one-to-one work may be necessary if outlined in a child’s EHCP. In these circumstances, a Teaching Assistant should be able to accompany the child to observe and participate in the session and effect meaningful carry-over. If you are unavailable to catch up at the end of the visit, ask the Therapist to send you a summary of who was seen, meetings that took place, interventions/training carried out, etc.

How

Therapists share the frustration and challenges of our colleagues in education regarding provision. However, as suggested above, there are ways to maximise outcomes and utilise the therapy provision a school does have.

In essence, those universal approaches will have a significant impact and are achievable and sustainable. Investing in staff training and setting up whole-school approaches benefits all students, leaving the precious remaining Therapy time directed where it is needed the most.

Building From Passions and Interests

Sam Dexter

In the first issue of The Bridge, we introduced Gesher’s Five Design Principles. These principles were developed by members of the Gesher community, friends and supporters of Gesher, and with input from members of the wider community. They are central to everything that happens at Gesher and as such, across the next five issues of The Bridge, we will look at how they are put into practice.

For this issue, we spoke to Monique Lauder, a Teaching Assistant in the Early Years/Year 1 Class about Gesher’s second design principle; personalised learning informed by young people’s passions and interests. Monique has spent twenty-one years working in Early Years settings and joined Gesher two years ago. In that time she has developed her own approach to personalising sensory trays and tuff trays.

Sensory Trays and Tuff Trays

Sensory trays and Tuff trays are a regular feature of many Early Years and Key Stage 1 classrooms. They promote and support language development, gross and fine motor skills and support children to develop their problemsolving skills. They are typically large plastic trays filled with materials such as shredded paper, coloured rice, pasta, different types of lentils, couscous, shaving foam, or water. They also often include small-world play items or objects linked to a topic. When we sat down to chat with Monique, her latest sensory trays were full of small white stones, tweezers, and what looked to me suspiciously like old Weetabix.

Planning and Creating the Personalised Trays

For Monique, the decision about what to include in the trays is driven by her deep knowledge of the young people she works with. ‘I try to get something I know will interest them, maybe someone is really into cars, so I would put cars in that tray… It’s mostly about looking at the children, seeing what they really like, asking them what they like and going from there.’

As well as knowing about the interests of the young people she works with, Monique also discussed how a young person’s individual targets feed into the personalisation of a tray. ‘A lot of our students have targets related to communication and interactions so I use the trays to encourage role-play… the students are seeing their friends or adults playing in a certain way or interacting with an object in a certain way and they’re able to do the same.’ Monique also told us how, if a student is working on a very specific target, that can be practised in the tray. For a student working on recognising numbers up to twenty, for instance, putting objects in the tray and asking students to find them, means the skill from a maths lesson can be practised throughout the day. The student’s Project-Based Learning (PBL) topic also helps Monique to decide how to personalise a tray. A PBL topic usually runs for half a term so one of the trays will also be linked to this.

Monique also shared with us how her approach to planning and setting up the trays has developed throughout her time at Gesher. ‘At first, I was doing two a week but I changed it because I felt that students needed more time to explore’. Now, Monique will change the trays once a week and this gives the students much more time to be curious and work out which different sensory experiences they like and don’t like. ‘The other thing I’m trying to do more is implement what the students are doing in the classroom into the trays.’ At this point in our chat, the young people Monique works with came charging in from the playground. After taking off their coats and putting away their bags, they headed straight for the trays filled with the white stones and Weetabix. One of them grabbed a picture of a mouth and the other immediately picked up the tweezers asking who wanted to be the first dentist to collect the teeth. Monique explained that their topic this term was healthy bodies and that specifically this week they were looking at how to keep healthy (and that I was correct, it was old Weetabix).

“The decision about what to include in the trays is driven by her deep knowledge of the young people.”

“... the personalisation of learning informed by young people’s passions and interests.”

Monique’s Tips for Creating a Personalised Sensory Tray

Ideas

The vast majority of Monique’s ideas come from knowing the young people she works with really well, so her biggest piece of advice is to take time to build relationships with the young people. Once you’ve done this you can start including personalised objects in the sensory tray and build the process up from there. Knowledge of a young person’s targets and next steps will also ensure the tray can be further personalised to their needs, as can a broad awareness of the curriculum experiences they are having.

Resources

Monique told us how most of her resources come from things she would have usually recycled, like food containers and packaging, as well as natural materials from the garden like leaves, conkers and acorns. A store of these materials can be built up relatively quickly, especially if more than one person is contributing to it. The materials could then be shared between classes and reused for different topics. Finally, she said that shops like B&M, Tiger, Poundland and Wilko are great places to get inspiration (and often bargains!)

End Note

Whilst the work that Monique does is specifically related to sensory trays, this article is also about something much bigger -- the personalisation of learning informed by young people’s passions and interests. The principles are the same whether it is six or seven-year-olds or much older learners -- build relationships; know the learner well; involve the learner; connect to the real world; and design experiences relevant to their learning ambitions.

Professional Prompts

1. 2.

We included this article because Monique’s sensory trays provide a highly accessible example of personalisation in practice. What is the best example in your school?

This example is built on relationships -- and knowing students’ SEND needs, learning challenges and passions. Who in your school has this relationship with SEND learners?

Critical Friendship Groups: Think ‘Fireside Chats’

David Jackson

Gesher School serves children who learn differently -- many of whom have had highly stressful school experiences previously.

To do a brilliant job for these children, we want to be the best that we can be -- the best in wellbeing, best in assessment, in project-based learning design and facilitation, in exhibitions, best community links, best staff development, best parent engagement, skilled in the use of technology and so on. Not best or better in any comparative way -- just the best that we can be to serve the young people, adults and families who are part of our school community...

To do that we need to be the most informed and intentional learning organisation that we can be, and one feature of that is to reach

out to people who have relevant knowledge and experience to help us with dilemmas or ‘problems of practice’ and to debate with us key elements of our ambition. One strategy for this is Critical Friendship Groups.

Critical Friendship Groups (CFGs)

Gesher started as a primary school and is now an all-through school. For the first 18 months of its existence as an all-through school, it is emphatically in learning mode. We plan to harness the goodwill and professional generosity of the school’s multiple partners and connections to establish a small number of CFGs around key themes that are central to the school’s success.

At the time of writing we have held one CFG so far, on the theme of well-being, when we asked our critical friends:

“We need to be the most informed and intentional learning organisation that we can be.”

How do you empower young people to manage and own their own mental and emotional wellbeing through adolescence and beyond school?

Eight people from backgrounds as diverse as the Anna Freud Centre and Place2Be, and as geographically spread as Bolton to Israel, met online for two hours to engage in a facilitated conversation, the outcomes of which will be featured in Issue 3 of The Bridge. We plan to share both a think-piece distilled from that session and also a tool or framework that might be of practical value to teachers.

Critical Friendship Group Objectives

There are four objectives to CFGs, which are:

To connect Gesher with advanced practice and thinking around issues linked to the school’s ambitions, and to the needs of the SEND sector.

To generate usable knowledge and ideas around key ‘problems of practice’.

To build relationships with people who have experience, knowledge and insights that can help to advance Gesher’s work and the work of the sector.

To create an informal space that allows people to engage and contribute to Gesher’s evolution.

We hope, of course, to learn a huge amount. And we plan to share the things that we learn which are of collective value through the journal.

For the moment, we offer up the idea of ‘fireside chats’ with a group of people who know stuff and who care about young people’s learning, as one that might have value for other schools.

Resources For Schools

Where Do Projects Come From?

HTH Unboxed

We would like to thank High Tech High for their generosity in allowing us to share in The Bridge project cards and the occasional article from their Unboxed journal.

High Tech High in San Diego, now some 16 small schools serving over 6,000 young people K-12 across four campuses, is one of the most feted and influential school designs in the world. It is known for its commitment to a project-based curriculum, to relationships, to deep learning and to the development of students through the development of staff. More relevantly for The Bridge, HTH is also committed to sharing practices and learning in multiple ways. They have a graduate school supporting Masters degrees for their own staff and others; they host literally thousands of visitors to their campus each year; they facilitate a MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) available internationally and, for the last 14 years they have published their own adult learning journal, making it available both in hard copy form and via the Unboxed website, which is a rich treasure trove of resources.

Where Do Projects Come From?

by Angela Guerrero

On a cold October morning, my colleague Breawna and I carpooled to school together as we often do. I piled my bags into the back seat, hopped in the passenger side, handed over a cup of coffee, and settled in for a drive full of teacher talk. The topic of discussion, as it so often is, was how to make projects meaningful and still hit the content needed in the history standards. This is an odd question for us to ponder, since we teach at a school that alleviates some of that “standards” stress by asking teachers to teach what they are passionate about through projects. But there we were, without the pressure of a frustrated principal or a zealous department chair, agonising over our fear of not giving the kids enough content. This may be because we both started our teaching careers at traditional high schools, attended traditional universities, and attended traditional high schools where school looked very much the same; teachers lectured, students feverishly took notes, a test was given, an essay written and a grade awarded that measured proficiency on some standard. Breawna and I are both struggling to

define what education is all about, and building the curriculum around projects requires a break from the past that is often difficult. But on that morning when Bre asked me, “Where do good projects come from?” I felt I finally had something to say.

This question, and the struggle to meet standards, plagued my first year teaching at High Tech High Chula Vista. So much of my work in the first year was simply writing and reading a pretty standard English class by most accounts. As I entered my final grades and completed my first year of teaching, I made a promise to myself to create engaging projects that would also comfort me by hitting standards. But what were the projects going to look like? Where would I get the ideas? Where did projects like that come from? Thirty journal entries, ten morning walks, hours of reviewing the state standards and countless conversations with friends left me no better off with my query as the summer days slipped by. I decided to simply enjoy summer for a while and return to the burning question in August.

But then something happened that answered my questions. And it happened while I was enjoying myself, no less.

My sister invited me to a local museum to see an exhibition called “Historical Takes”, by Eleanor Antin. I sauntered into the swanky evening exhibition expecting to be impressed by the art. Indeed I was, but it turned out to be a lesson planning adventure like no other. Antin had created a collection of photographic portraits depicting historical tales from ancient Greece and Rome with feminist spins on the events. Helen of Troy was a devious vixen slinging a rifle on her hip. Ancient Grecians strolled casually by the dying veterans of the Trojan War with shopping totes and sunglasses. Wealthy Romans dined in elaborate clothing while servants died in the wings unbeknownst to their masters. And next to each scene was an explanation of the artist’s “take” on it. I was fascinated and found myself wondering how the artist came up with her interpretations. Then I wondered how I would create scenes from different time periods from different perspectives, say, a nihilist’s perspective, or a child’s perspective on the French Revolution. As I gazed at more images, and wondered more about how to create my own, I felt my legs tremble with delight. I had reached a new understanding. “This is perfect!”

I exclaimed, to the surprise of the museum docent. History, photography, costume design, set and scene design, research, literature -- all these things were present in the work. And they could all be studied in a project modelled after this exhibition. It almost felt like cheating since the idea came to me, not when I was agonising over the state standards or feverishly writing up drafts at my desk, but rather while I was out

looking at art and doing something I enjoyed. From this outing, my 35mm Revolution project was conceived. In this project, students choose a revolution to research and write about and then choose one scene to re-enact in a photographic portrait. We plan to unveil the students’ artwork at High Tech High Chula Vista’s 2009 Festival Del Sol.

After the “art aha moment” as I now refer to it, I started thinking about projects while doing all sorts of things I love to do. Checking out music at local venues, I thought about starting a local artist Rolling Stone magazine to teach writing, photojournalism, editing and advertising. Running through the city, I thought about “walking a mile” in the shoes of someone who was homeless. Hiking up in the Sierras, I thought about nature reflections, the history of natural parks and the preservation efforts in California. It seemed that every time I was doing something I truly enjoyed, a new idea for a potential project sprang into my head. Some of the project ideas had been done before, but somehow, this new revelation made them feel fresh, pristine.

Do what you love and let the project drive the curriculum. These are the mantras of my wise teaching partner, Rod Buenviaje. Rod would listen patiently as I voiced my concerns about my inability to come up with what felt like meaningful projects. At the end of each conversation, he would repeat these mantras. I would nod in agreement and stare blankly out the window. I could never fully comprehend what he meant. After viewing Antin’s exhibition, however, the mantras made sense. I was doing something I loved. I was passionate about it. I wanted the kids to see it. I wanted to teach it. It turned into a project that would guide the curriculum.

So, where do projects come from? My answer is this: they are born in the places we love to visit, the things we love to see, the tasks we love to lose ourselves in. They are the things we find exciting. They are the things we deem worthy of writing essays and graphing charts about. They come from teachers who fall in love with something and decide to share that something with their students.

To read this article online, and to see High Tech High’s full collection of project cards, visit:

https://hthunboxed.org/blog/unboxed_posts/ where-do-projects-come-from/

Eleanor Antin, “The Tourists” from Helen’s Odyssey. Copyright Eleanor Antin. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, www.feldmangallery.com

Give Me Shelter

Sacha Casciato, Math/Science; David Visser, Humanities Charley Jacob, Makerspace High Tech Middle North County

In this project we discussed the issue of homelessness and poverty to encourage students to develop empathy and to see the world from different perspectives. Students took a closer look at the underlying issues of homelessness. We examined the issues of resource availability, equity, and access. We grappled with questions about over represented populations. Students took a hard look at their own biases and misconceptions and developed a better understanding through community service. Students created change with public service announcements, demonstrations holding cardboard signs with facts and statistics, and the creation and implementation of community food pantries.

Teacher Reflection

We saw a tremendous shift in our students’ thinking and perceptions about what it means to be homeless. Throughout the process it was evident that students were growing as empathetic individuals who wanted to create change in their local community. Each student worked to help the homeless population in our community gain access to much needed resources.

Student Reflections

This project was based on empathy and helped us see how the other half of the world lives, and that we can do so much to change the world if only we try.

—Emersyn

The campout made me realize that the homeless live in harsh conditions, like cold, rain, and hard places to sleep. Having to build our own shelters helped me understand because ours fell down in the middle of the night.

—Ashby I had seen some homeless people in the park in Escondido but it was drastically different to see the camps downtown.

—Bree To learn more visit: Mrvisser.weebly.com, Mrscasciato.weebly. com, or Charleyjacob.weebly.com

Come Play With Us

Elementary Explorer

Patricia

Lim, Kindergarten Stacey Stevenson, Kindergarten High Tech

High Tech Elementary Explorer had a run-down grassy area as a part of its playground, and a real shortage of options for creative outdoor play. Patricia Lim and Stacey Stevenson decided to create an inquirybased project about the nature of play, in the hopes it could ultimately transform the underused space into a nature playground. They began their project by asking some open-ended questions: Why do children like to play? How do they like to play? What allows children to be creative, to pretend, to build, to be active?

Stacey and Patricia launched the project with a trip to a nature playground, where their classes played for hours and also reflected on how they played, and how the materials they encountered encouraged them to play. In the following days, when they were back at school, they observed other students playing. Finally, based on their observations and field work, they began a process of re-designing the run-down play area. Children made sketches of their ideas, and gave and received critique from classmates as well as older students and adults in the school. They voted on final ideas for various areas of the playground, which ultimately included a sand house for pretend play, sticks and rocks for building, stumps for balancing, a water wall, a music/sound wall; and a giant tire for climbing. The final weeks of the project were spent building. Each group also created safety rules for each play area, and wrote how-to books to teach other children how to use the new play area.

Project Learning Goals

This project met many standards for kindergarten learning, including counting; measuring; data collection; observation; reflection; persuasive speaking; drawing a model of a proposed solution; giving and receiving critique; and writing informational how-to manuals. Social and emotional learning goals included collaboration; negotiating over final products; analyzing what makes playtime fun; and understanding and creating rules for play spaces.

Toy Story

Janna Steffan, Ruby Rodrigues, Jami Saville, 2nd Grade High Tech Elementary, Chula Vista

In the Toy Story project, second graders explored the essential question, “What is the magic of toys?” To investigate this idea deeply, our students visited a local preschool and became buddies with these young children. They surveyed their new friends to learn about the types of toys they like, their favorite colors, favorite characters and so much more. After finding trends in the data collected, the students used this information to design the perfect toy for their preschool buddy. After many drafts, critiques, revisions and prototypes the students took their designs to MakerPlace (a DIY workshop in San Diego) in order to professionally create the toys. Students also studied story elements by reading a variety of stories that have a toy as the main character. They incorporated the elements they learned into a story about the toy they created for the preschooler. And then they learned the writing process in order to publish their story in a board book for their buddies. Finally, our second graders returned to the preschool to give both the toy and the book to the preschoolers.

Teacher Reflections When designing this project, it was important for us to have a product that was minds on, hands on, and hearts on. Since every second grader loves toys we thought that would be the perfect fit. This project felt like a great blend of allowing the students to have choice and be creative while learning many essential math, reading, and writing skills. Throughout the project, we wondered if our students would be upset to give away a toy and story they had worked so hard on but we were pleasantly surprised at their eagerness to give a gift to another child. We felt like the authentic audience in the project was also another driving force in its success.

—Joshua “The magic of toys is that they have feelings too. They can talk!” —Zuri To learn more visit: http://jsteffan9.wix.com/digitalportfolio#!toy-story/c5ic

Here Now, Gone Tomorrow

Curtis Taylor and Ivan Recendez, 6th Grade Math/Science High Tech Middle North County and High Tech Middle Chula

Vista

As a collaborative project between the Chula Vista and North County campuses, students created and published a children’s book detailing their chosen endangered species challenged with the impacts of climate change. Students created a watercolor illustration of their endangered species which was included in the children’s book. Our created children’s book is now being used to help educate other students and the public, on how human impact has become problematic for our wildlife. This project was aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.

Teacher Reflection This was such an impactful project dealing with a very important issue, not only in our country, but worldwide. Students were able to be scientists, researchers, artists all in one through this project. To have the students create their own learning around this issue by exploring this phenomena really allowed for them to want to become activists. Also, the cross-school collaboration allowed for our schools to come together. We feel literacy is very important and we wanted to find a fun way to incorporate it in a math and science classroom. We saw students step out of their comfort zone, and we teachers did too. We had no experience using watercolors, and it was great learning experience, which we shared with our students.

Student Reflections I feel good about helping the earth, because now I know ways to save the environment in the future.

—Rishi I didn’t know I could paint. My animal looks really cool!

—Leo The best part was seeing my book on a website. People can buy it and my name is there.

—Illeana To see or purchase the book, visit http://www.blurb. com/b/7640975-here-now-gone-tomorrow

Ron Berger: Project Card

EL Education

Three Houses Model

The Three Houses model is a tool which provides a visual way for people to express their views about a topic or experience. The tool was originally developed in 2003 in New Zealand for use in the field of child protection, but since then has been adapted for use with other groups. The version here is based on that created by Cunningham (2020) who used the tool as a way of eliciting the views of autistic children about what made their school autism-friendly.

How Does It Work?

The Three Houses model is a very flexible tool, which can be adapted to suit the needs or preferences of the young people you work with. Below are two options for how the tool could be used.

Option 1: The adult and young person draw three houses together. Once the houses are drawn the adult explains the name of each house: house of good things; house of less good things; house of dreams. The adult then asks the young person some questions and the young person’s responses are recorded in each house. For example, the adult could ask questions about what is going well at school. After the young person has given their responses, the adult would add these to the relevant house, in this case, the house of good things. This would be repeated until all three houses are filled.

Option 2: The adult shows a young person a picture of three houses and then asks the young person to draw their own version on a separate piece of paper. The adult would then explain the name of each house: house of good things; house of less good things; and house of dreams. Next, the young person would be asked to write or draw pictures of all the ‘good things’ about something, for example, school. As the young person draws or writes, the adult can ask the young person for more information about what they have drawn or written. This process would be repeated with all three houses.

Example

The below three houses are from Gesher’s conversation with students for the Changing Schools, Changing Lives article on page 46.

HOUSE OF GOOD THINGS

HOUSE OF LESS GOOD THINGS

HOUSE OF DREAMS

World Cafe

World Cafe is a protocol to discuss a ‘Question that Matters’.

This is what it says it is – a key question that matters to participants.

The Basic Format or Protocol

Groups sit at round tables, where all participants have a felt-tipped pen One person, who has been briefed, hosts and facilitates the conversation and stays at that table throughout Each group discusses and attempts to answer the ‘Question that Matters’ posed by the host –they come up with ideas

In the first round, each group has a blank paper tablecloth or flip-chart paper in front of them They engage with the question and make notes or jottings or diagrams on the tablecloth that record key issues that emerge in the discussion. It can be either the speaker who writes down their own point, another table member who does so, or both – the important thing is those good ideas find their way onto the tablecloth. An alternative is to have a scribe as well as a facilitator. Tables rotate after a set amount of time (15 or 20 minutes)

The host stays at the table. He/she welcomes the new group, repeats the ‘Question that Matters’ and shares the essence of the previous conversation, the insights that have started to emerge -- where the previous group got to. That might include the beginnings of some categorisation of issues or lines drawn between points. (No more than 3- 5 minutes.)

The new discussion then builds from the previous conversation(s) With each new rotation, the room might also be asked to consider a particular aspect of the question:

o Within that question, what about x?

o Who do you think is best placed to do this work and why and how?

o What key recommendations would you make?

Key Protocol Rules

Keep introductions short

•

Everyone should contribute – all voices matter Everyone has the right to write on the tablecloth.

Feedback

At The End – From The Table Hosts

Avoid ‘This is what was said on this table’. Better is ‘The four key things that I would synthesise from this table…’ or ‘The most original two ideas that emerged on this table were…’

This group feedback can be publicly recorded, in writing or graphically.

12 Steps to Beautiful Work

Steven Levy

12 Steps to Beautiful Work

Here are twelve progressive layers of scaffolding that teachers might employ to help students achieve high quality -- and beauty -- in their work.

1. 2. 4.

3. 5.

Assignment -- Make a poster showing what you have learned about ancient Greece. What kind of work might you expect from students? What else would they need?

Components -- Your poster must be 2 ft. by 3 ft. It must represent culture, politics, religion, or architecture. It must include an example of how that aspect of ancient Greece affects our culture today. There must be a title and captions for each illustration/photo explaining why it is important. There must be a map of ancient Greece. How might this poster be higher quality than the first? Would describing the components be enough?

Characteristics of a Quality Product -- Your poster must be organised, balanced, creative, and pleasing to the eye. It must use colour, space and borders effectively. How would this help increase the quality? What else would be needed?

Models -- Use samples of exemplary student work to show what quality looks like. What does ‘organised’ look like? Balance? How can colour enhance meaning? What is effective use of space?

Design Rubric -- Describe different levels of quality. Look at student work and professional models to name the attributes of weak and strong work. Identify 4, 3, 2, and 1 levels.

Mini-lessons and Workshops -- Teach skills needed to complete the product. Offer lessons on organisation, relevant content, balance and colour, word choice, sentence fluency, etc.

7.

6. 8.

Self-Assessment -- Help students assume responsibility for their own learning. They can assess themselves on the rubric.

Feedback from Others -- Students can learn how to give effective feedback, based on the rubric, that is kind, helpful, and specific.

9. 11.

10. 12.

Multiple Drafts -- Students focus revision on one aspect at a time. They get feedback after each revision.

Conference with Teacher -- Students get feedback from the teacher before producing final drafts.

Exhibition -- Publicly display work to peers, to the community, to experts in the field.

Reflection -- What did I do well? Where did I meet the learning targets? Where did I fall short? What do I need to work on to reach them next time?

Thank You

Contribute to The Bridge

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Please email us at admin@gesherschool.com to share your ideas and we will provide you with submission and style guidelines.

To all involved in bringing The Bridge to life, we thank you for your commitment, enthusiasm and collective expertise.

Gesher School

www.gesherschool.com/the-bridge/