Guest blog post: Inquiry-based and Self-Directed Learning in the Judaic Studies Classroom

Thank you to Rabbi Avi Bernstein of The Moriah School in Englewood, NJ for guest blogging about inquiry-based and self-directed learning in his seventh grade Talmud and Dinim [Jewish law] classroom:

As our ever-changing world continues to amaze us all while enhancing our lives, it challenges us to constantly advance our every skill in order to enable us to interact successfully with the rest of humanity. Being the precursor to and prerequisite of life, education forms the foundation and serves as the active laboratory that prepares us for this brave, new world. It is, therefore, the sacred mission and moral obligation of our schools to empower students with the necessary tools to function within the society around them. 

Classically, one of the more difficult challenges in schools is to inspire students to become full participants in every class and maintain that level of interest. Children, as adults, have predipositions towards certain areas of study, areas that do not require much encouragement on the part of the teacher. In such areas, students are internally driven and thirsty for knowledge and understanding. How may we address the other classes? Which strategies may be conjured up to elicit greater involvement and present better opportunities for deeper learning, even among classes of interest! 

Towards the end of this past year, I presented a rather radical idea to my 7th grade Gemara [Talmud] and Dinim [Jewish law] students. Essentially, I offered them a new way of learning, one that was inquiry-based and self-directed. I posed a simple, yet powerful question to them, "What is one area or mitzvah [commandment] in Jewish life that you never seemed to understand and wish to know more about?" After spending a few minutes elaborating on my question, the students sat in thought before writing down several options on index cards. After several more minutes, they were able to fine tune their choices and nail down a single topic.

In the ensuing week, the students diligently research their respective topics, unearthing facts that they were unaware of before. Among the fascinating topics were animal cruelty in Jewish law, the process of a Jewish wedding, mezuzah, factors of kosher food and the laws of lashon hara [gossip]. As the week passed, the students remained fully engaged and excited each time they learned something new. Once the material was collected, the students chose their own means of presenting and teaching their information to their classmates. Several students created Powerpoint presentations, while others decided to put together Prezis. Ultimately, the students were quite proud of their achievement and enjoyed a sense of mastery and ownership over their particular topics. 

Reflecting upon the project, I believe that there were several facets that enabled the project to be as successful as it was. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the students truly appreciated the ability to choose, both their topic and style of presentation. This fact alone was at the very core of the success. Also, they each felt a certain uniqueness since no two topics were alike. They had a sense of purpose, motivation and ownership that fueled them forward. 

Looking towards next year, I will undoubtedly incorporate and perhaps expand this system into the classroom as often as possible. I have witnessed the success it brings, both in terms of content and student engagement, all of which offer a heightened academic experience - the very goal of our profession. 

EdJEWCon Session Presentation Resources

Be sure to check out our website, http://frischrealschool.org/, created by RealSchool member Ari Mendelow. To get a constant update on 21st-century learning, Like us on Facebook  and follow us on Twitter: @RealSchool1

You've found your way here because you're interested in inquiry-based learning and self-directed learning, which this website has defined well:

“In its broadest meaning, ’self-directed learning’ describes a process by which individuals take the initiative, with or without the assistance of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identify human and material resources for learning, choosing and implement appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes.” (Knowles, 1975, p. 18)

Well, we've compiled some resources for you about the various types of learning we engage in at RealSchool. Check them out:

1) Launching RealSchool: Here's a blog post with some of our favorite videos, ones which helped us launch RealSchool. We've also since that time seen some videos of kids doing some pretty awesome stuff:

If students designed their own school . . .

Students design their own car . . . 

2) David Kelley, Creativity and Design Thinking: Here's a blog post about another type of thinking we love, Design Thinking, which is when you start with empathy, asking a consumer about his/her desires and needs, and then design a product based on what the consumer has expressed. We used this type of thinking to design RealSchool, which we hope empathizes with how a student wants to learn and what a student needs to feel successful.

3) Here are some blogs and websites that are wonderful resources for those interested in 21st-century learning:

Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org We particularly like the “Schools That Work” section, which highlights schools that are utilizing strategies such as project-based learning, social and emotional learning, technology integration, arts integration and more.

Will Richardson: http://willrichardson.com

J. Robinson: http://the21stcenturyprincipal.blogspot.com

Ken Robinson: http://sirkenrobinson.com/?page_id=11

Science Leadership Academy (Chris Lehmann's school!): 

http://www.scienceleadership.org/

Eric Sheninger: http://esheninger.blogspot.cobi m

In Jewish Education:

Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky, Educational Director at The Frisch School: http://techrav.blogspot.com/

Rabbi Aaron Ross, Judaic Studies principal and educator at Yavneh Academy: http://jewishedd.blogspot.com/

Rabb Ross has been highly successful in using project-based learning in his middle school Judaic Studies classroom.

Tikvah Wiener: http://teachingwellandgood.blogspot.com/
I teach English and art history and am coordinator of interdisciplinary studies at Frisch. I love integrating the arts into my classroom and also have this AP Art History blog: 

http://aparthistorybytikvah.blogspot.com/

YUHSChinuch:  

http://www.yuhschinuchcommunity.org/profiles/blog/list

4) Here are links to self-directed projects completed by Frisch seniors this past year as part of their AP English Literature course:

The Self-Directed Learning Project: Frisch LEADs

As part of the project, students had to blog about their progress:

Student samples:

RFreilich

AHochsztein

ELevine

JNarin

CZucker

5) We love this blog because it embodies the kind of innovative thinking we love at RealSchool:

FastCompany

And we love this blog because it gives a damn:

GOOD

6) Finally, to be very meta, feel free to check out additional posts on our RealSchool blog. 

Self-Directed Learning Goes Beyond the Self

Rabbi Ross has continued the blogversation we and Rabbi Tzvi Pittinksy have been having about self-directed learning, voicing concerns about the possible loss of well-roundedness in the quest to allow students to choose their own pathways through school. Before everyone starts to worry that we're in for a future where we'll be tossing away accepted notions about what it means to be a Renaissance person, let us assure you that self-directed learning doesn't mean a student learns one subject all day, choosing, as Rabbi Ross suggested, only math classes, let's say, and forgetting that there's anything to be learned other than algebraic formulas and complex algorithms.

Math through Basketball?

Self-directed learning can mean many things. We first got interested in it because of Sugata Mitra's discovery of how students in India could teach themselves with very limited resources (thank you, RealSchool member Akiva for showing us that video!). Our interest in self-directed learning deepened because of Will Richardson's challenge to math teachers, asking them if his son, who is a basketball enthusiast, could learn all the math he needed to learn by studying his favorite sport. The answer, 60 blog post responses later, seemed to be "yes." That possibility has to be intriguing to any teacher; how much more engaged students might be if they could be analyzing their favorite sport as they learn!

Opening, not Closing, Horizons

The Sorcerer's and Their Apprentices by Frank Moss, a book Ken Gordon of PEJE suggested recently that educators from Jewish day schools read, highlights the work of the MIT Media Lab. One professor, Leah Buechley of the High-Low Tech group, works to ignite passion for engineering in those who wouldn't ordinarily be interested in it, particularly girls. Here is what Buechley's group does:

High-Low Tech, a research group at the MIT Media Lab, integrates high and low technological materials, processes, and cultures. Our primary aim is to engage diverse audiences in designing and building their own technologies by situating computation in new cultural and material contexts, and by developing tools that democratize engineering. We believe that the future of technology will be largely determined by end-users who will design, build, and hack their own devices, and our goal is to inspire, shape, support, and study these communities. To this end, we explore the intersection of computation, physical materials, manufacturing processes, traditional crafts, and design. (http://hlt.media.mit.edu/)

Buechley is on a "quest to combat what she calls the 'cultural lopsidedness of the hard sciences,' in particular the gender gap, by getting more females . . . interested and active in the world of engineering and inventing" (Moss 227). An invention as appealing to girls as this interactive wall paper means Buechley is well on her way to achieving her goal:

This interactive wallpaper, called the Living Wall,
shows people, not only young girls, that creating
through engineering is fun and can lead to something
accessible and that adds value and fun to everyday life.
Imagine if our walls could help us with daily chores!

Buechley understands what girls are interested in; they want to play with pretty things and decorate their play houses (not to be too stereotypical, but hey, we posted girls playing basketball too, so we're safe with this gender-biased assumption). The point is that Buechley is trying to reach girls on their level, that is, directing learning so the student is at the center of it, with her interests being ignited and appealed to first and then building a curriculum from that.

So rather than having self-directed learning be narrow and confining, our two examples -- of sports-based math and design-based engineering -- show that a student interest can lead to something even more broadening and enriching.

More than One Value

It's also important to remember that one value doesn't define RealSchool and other programs like it. To remind you, here is RealSchool's Mission Statement, which begins with a verse from Ethics from Our Fathers, one said by the famous sage Hillel and which we'd like to think endorses the concept of self-directed learning:

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"

But the verse continues, showing us that we must also use our talents for a common, greater good:

"And if I am only for myself, what am I?" (1:13)

Collaboration 

Thus, RealSchool also prizes our culture of collaboration. RealSchool students work together in a friendly and respectful way with others, so that while pursuing their own passions, they learn to value others for the talents and interests they have. And more often than not, because the walls of the disciplines are dissolved during RealSchool meetings, students end up peeking into the doings of other teams and learning they have an interest in all sorts of things they never thought they may have cared about.

Relevance

Bracelets we sold at our fashion show last year told wearers
"You are Beautiful. You are Enough."

Another value, crucial to RealSchool and which can also be derived from Hillel's second statement, is that what we produce has to contribute positively to the world around us. Therefore, all RealSchool students see that there is relevance to their work, that their interests can be converted into something that is meaningful and beneficial to society and the world. 

Learning by Doing

Though Hillel is silent, at least in this verse, on the concept of learning by doing, we cannot remain so, as it is one of the program's most important values. We want kids up and doing, not sitting behind desks. We want the learning process to be messy, we want kids unafraid of making mistakes, and we want to hear noise and commotion as we create and innovate. 

The Kindergartners Get a Say

We have more to share, but we'll end for today with this great video, called "Five-Year-Olds Pilot Their Own Project Learning." We love to post this video: it's of kindergartners engaged in project-based learning. While some aspects of the projects are clearly teacher-guided, one adorable one was totally student-centered: a funeral for the class pet bug. Enjoy seeing how these small students are taking ownership of their learning:

Getting Started in Self-Directed Learning

Know the problems and benefits of self-directed learning
before you embark on the process

Introduction to 21st-Century Skills

In talking with different educators and lay people about the 21st-century skills new educational methods are interested in honing, we've heard legitimate and important concerns about the fact that these new approaches are largely untested and that traditional practices have been successful in educating students, so why change them?

One of RealSchool's interests lies in giving students a voice in their classrooms, in their curricula and in the policies that shape the schools they attend. One of the ways RealSchool, which has primarily been an extra-curricular activity, has been able to empower students is by having them choose the teams and projects they want to join. Another way, in a course that was partially "RealSchool-ed," was by having seniors choose a topic they researched and blogged about all year. That project, called Frisch L.E.A.D.s (Learning. Exploring. Analyzing. Designing.) is culminating now in a term paper and/or multi-media project where students organize and present what they have learned. Here, here and here are posts about the components of the LEADs project.

Different Forms of Self-Directed Learning

Student Choice in Assessment 

Our esteemed colleague, Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky, the TechRav, has recently posted his concerns about self-directed learning, and we'd like to address his thoughtful points. Rabbi Pittinsky notes:

As a teacher in my own classroom, I find that while I want to allow my students to express themselves utilizing their talents and creativity, I also have a very strong idea of a curriculum that I wish to cover. I am especially proud of projects where I can maximize the two.

What Rabbi Pittinsky describes here is, to our mind, a form of self-directed learning. Allowing students to use their own talents and creativity in a class where the teacher is guiding the curriculum strongly is still a way to give students more voice and choice in their classes. Students are going to have higher levels of engagement if they feel more invested in the learning, either by choosing what they learn or, in this case, how they are assessed. 

Rabbi Pittinsky points to Rabbi Aaron Ross' meaningful and rich PBL (project-based learning) kashruth assignment as another way to empower students in the classroom, while still having the teacher maintain a high level of structure and organization in the curriculum. 

Student Choice in Project and Assessment

The Frisch LEADs project allows more student freedom than what Rabbi Pittinsky and Rabbi Ross have described in their work. For Frisch LEADs, students were allowed to choose the topic they wanted to research and then decide to some extent on how they would present their information. While all students had to complete at least a 10-12-page term paper, in order to demonstrate mastery of writing and depth of research, some students are choosing to do a long, 25-page research paper and no multi-media project, while others are choosing to leave their paper at 10-12 pages and complete projects such as: 

* a meal for the class
* a wiki
* an anti-bullying program for the freshmen
* a survey of religious development for the seniors and juniors
* art projects and an art exhibit

Though Frisch LEADs allows students choice in what they learn and how they are assessed, there is still structure in the project and teachers are facilitating and overseeing the students' learning. The Frisch LEADs projects did not take up an entire syllabus, however. The project was part of an AP English Literature course, during which students learned literature chosen by their teachers. What about classes that are even more self-directed and have what we would call self-organizing curricula, that is, entire curriculums based on what students want to learn and not on what teachers feel they need to teach?

Rabbi Pittinsky expresses a natural opinion:

I think that the most important opportunities for pure self-directed learning come in the area of extra-curricular activities. If students have an idea for a new club or publication, we must support them in every way possible. But in the classroom, kids crave clear direction from the teacher. This can come in many forms. Frontal teaching does not have to take up the bulk of this learning. But almost everything should be teacher-directed even those times when we allow our students to take control and teach the lesson.

Students Choose What and How They Learn

RS's App Making and Social Entrepreneurship teams
decide what's going to be in an app and how they're going to market it

RealSchool got started because students wanted more choice in what they learned and chose, after school in the club, to make apps, websites and videos; care for the environment and learn about their physical health; ask the Big Questions about religion that they didn't have time in class to ask; make fashion shows and art exhibits; and more. But why shouldn't students be able to do those things in a class? Why should a student sit through a course he/she isn't interested in when another one, just as vital to a student's development, could be offered? In fact, the English Department at Frisch will be offering Digital Media next year for students interested in web design, photoshop and other forms of digital expression. 

AP Environment is given at many schools (don't get us started on standardized testing, but we mention the course to show that it has legitimacy in mainstream venues); why not create one that's more project-based and creates relevance in the real world? One of the things we do at RealSchool is intertwine the interests of our different teams, to show students how their individual talents and interests can be used to serve a larger good. So for this year's Fashion Show, entitled Who's the Fairest of Them All?, we've focused on fair food and trade practices and are raising money to end slavery in the world. 

Jamie, a member of many RS teams, including Graphic Design,
is working on a logo for the Health and Environment team

The Health and Environment team is busy finding out about ethical trade practices in the food industry, and we've been debating whether kashruth certifications should show that a food has been created in an ethical manner. For example, does an owner of a kosher restaurant treat his workers well? One of our students has shared with us information about Uri L'Zedek, a Jewish Social Action organization, and its Tav HaYosher, a seal certifying a kosher restaurant has created a just environment. We've tied the interests of fashion and health, therefore, not only to each other, but also to a larger question students have about their religion, which is how can it be relevant in today's world?

All Jewish day schools are obviously very values-based, so we feel engaging students in this kind of whole-person learning is crucial, but what student, anywhere, wouldn't find meaning in whole-person learning? All humans want to feel there is value in what they learn and do. In fact, take a look at this article that Jeff Kiderman at AJE sent us:

All High School Courses Should Be Elective

Pretty radical title, but don't dismiss the idea out of hand. At least, begin discussion in your schools -- with parents, students (especially students!), teachers, administrators and board members -- about what students are gaining from their course work and what they'd like to see change. Students buy into the idea of RealSchool pretty quickly. They love the idea that they can choose what they want to learn; teachers need to feel they're in control and that chaos will not break out if students are in a learning lab environment as opposed to a classroom with a row of desks. We get that. Let's help each other get over that, though. There are a lot of steps we can take to make students more empowered and more engaged in their learning.

The many different ways to employ self-directed learning

Just a few days after we first wrote this post, we found this blog post about connecting learning, which is the tying of student passions into the classroom. The post extols the idea of appealing to students' interests, ones normally left for extra-curricular activities, by bringing them into the classroom setting.

Additional Resources on Giving Students Choice

Check out the Science Leadership Academy and its take on curriculum. We love this school and cannot wait to hear from Chris Lehman, its principal and a keynote speaker at EdJewCon. Check out Chris Lehman's blog for more on this visionary educator.

Here's a post from a website we love: Including Student Voice from Edutopia.

And finally: If Students Designed Their Own Schools . . .

Self-Directed Learning in Senior English Elective

For the last part of the senior year in Hot Topics, the Frisch twelfth-grade English elective course, students are completing a self-designed project. Here are the questions they answered recently about their choice of topic:

Setting up the Project

1) What do you want to learn or produce?

2) How will you go about learning or creating your project?

3) Are you going to work alone or with someone?

4) How much time do you think your learning process or project will take?

5) What will the presentation of your learning or project be?


At the end of each period, students describe what they accomplished over the course of the period. Sometimes they share aloud, sometimes in posts to the class GoogleDoc about the project, and sometimes in an app. Here are some written responses:

Sample Student Projects

J.A.'s topic is extreme sports:

Today we researched the topic extreme sports. We have discovered new and exciting extreme sports, such as Snowscootering, sand boarding, and even kayak jumping. Each of these sports requires courage and the willpower to overcome the fear of death. Our presentation will include many of these death-defying sports that will blow your mind.

O.B. is working on a presentation about exercise:

It is important to exercise because being active will prevent your muscles from becoming weak and flabby, your heart and lungs from not working effectively, and your joints from becoming stiff and prone to injury. Exercising reduces the chances of getting high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, & other diseases. Exercise also helps improves stamina by training your body to be more efficient and use less energy to do the same amount of work as you did previously. Using weights and other forms of resistance training develops your muscles, bones, and ligaments for increased strength and endurance. Stretching exercises are important for good posture, which will keep your body limber so that you can bend, reach, and twist. Improving your flexibility will reduce the chance of injury and improve balance and coordination. Exercise is important for weight loss as well. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. Exercises will also improve the quality of your life, because it helps you reduce stress, lift moods, and sleep better. Exercise will keep you looking younger and healthier throughout your life.

Three students are working on a project about drugs. Here's R.A. on his portion of the project:

My segment of the lesson on different kinds of drugs will be devoted to “hallucinogens,” “entheogens,” in other words, the “psychedelic” side of drugs. These drugs are known to create hallucinations or visions that are not real or can never be possible. Some of these drugs include LSD or “acid,” psilocybin mushrooms, Spice, and JWH018. First I would like to talk about the names of the category. For example, entheogen means literally: “creating divine within.” These drugs are often used in religious practices in order to experience prophecies and to get closer to the deity. Other times these drugs are used recreationally or to treat depression.

Apps in Self-Directed Learning

This past week students used Educreation to record their progress on their projects:

These students are gathering images about their topics and
then narrating how their projects are progressing. 

Launching RealSchool

RealSchool is all about what Sir Ken Robinson calls "changing education paradigms" (of course that video is below; it's a must-see for any education reformer), but we also model education reform by having students engage in experiential, self-directed learning.

If you're looking to initiate reform in your school or to empower students by having them try inquiry-based learning or other innovative pedagogical modalities, here is a list of videos to inspire you. They are the ones that launched RealSchool!

Top-ten lists usually go in descending order, but we're going to lay out for you our first year of RealSchool and show you, in order, the videos that our students watched to help them understand the educational experiment they were undertaking:

1) The first way to comprehend how badly education needs to be disrupted and how creativity-crushing certain aspects of the current school system are today, you MUST watch the following RSA Animate video narrated by Sir Ken Robinson.

2) The video was great, wasn't it? Sir Ken gave a TED Talk too. Want to watch that? Why not?! We did. It's entitled, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" We're trying to change the answer to a resounding "No."

3) Students immediately understood what Sir Ken was getting at in his talks, so much so that one student sent us a link to the next two videos, both of which became our go-to films when we wanted to explain that children are naturally curious and will want to learn when they feel motivated and excited about what they're discovering. Interestingly, you will not see students cramming for AP exams, making endless flashcards, or furiously filling in multiple choice questions at any point in these videos.

The first video is Sugata Mitra's TED Talk about the power of self-directed learning:

4) The second video that proves self-directed learning is something any self-respecting education reformer should be including in the classroom features Thomas Suarez, a sixth grader who learned how to make (and sell!) apps on his own. Resist the temptation to turn students into money-makers, but do focus on the power of learning by doing, another concept that powers RealSchool.




5) John Hunter is all over the concept of learning by doing, experiential learning, inquiry-based learning, interactive learning, project-based learning, whole-person learning. Yes, there are a lot of fancy and not-so-fancy names for the pedagogical concept that students want to learn as they did in kindergarten: not by sitting at desks, but by mucking about in the mud, making mistakes (sometimes gargantuan ones) and collaborating with others.

Collaboration is another one of the non-negotiable aspects of RealSchool: students must work together and, in doing so, they learn to appreciate and value the qualities that their classmates possess. RS students also discover that each student's unique talents contribute something valuable to the larger group that then enables the group to execute its projects successfully.

6) Collaboration and peer-based learning are also employed in RealSchool to connect students to the larger world. The community building in which RealSchool engages leads naturally to students' seeing how they can use their skills and talents to benefit the larger world. We posted the following ViewChange video on our Facebook page to emphasize RealSchool's commitment to helping the world:

7) The ViewChange video shows the importance of interdisciplinary studies in education, since innovative solutions to the world's problems are coming from ideas that combine different sectors and skills. The Frisch School, where RealSchool is based, focuses heavily on interdisciplinary studies, and the following video illustrates how exciting integrated studies can be:

8) RS is divided into different teams that then interact and work with each other to complete different projects and events. Sometimes the teams share ideas that fire them up with the larger RS group. Here's an example of a video the Finance team posted on the Facebook page in order to show how important and life-changing proper financial education can be. RS also values the way the school in the video integrated financial education into its curriculum and made learning math relevant to the real world:

9) RS is in awe of the video production class featured in the following short film, and we want to build an academic program as rich and connected to the community as the video production class is:

10) Want a sneak peek at how RealSchool is launching the 2012-13 school year? We're going to show the video "Where Good Ideas Come From." In it, Steven Johnson explores a notion RealSchool believes in deeply: that the smartest person in the room is the room.