When I became inspired to transform the remedial reading room into a science experiment lab, with the early Elementary Science Study explorations at the core, my plan was fortified by this insight:
Question: Can I see the lesson plans for a unit?’
Answer: We have none.
Question: How does a teacher teach without plans?’
Answer: You put the materials out and see what children do with them. When children ask a question or need something, you help them.”
–Roland Barth, Open Education and The American School. 1972
I scrapped schedules and asked teachers to let kids come when it was convenient. Yes, low standardized test scores put certain kids on the list, but I said teachers could send whomever they wanted…just so long as “those” kids came.
So kids grade 1-6 came “whenever.” When the room became jammed by 30, I locked the door with a sign hanging on the knob: “Come back later.”
One interesting fact: Freeing teachers to send “whichever” kids when it was convenient resulted in a brilliant first grader, spending much of the day in my room. He did everything from making cottage cheese to directing 5th and 6th graders in a play.
Parents in the working class neighborhood were very enthusiastic with the whole deal.
The PTA asked me to bring some experiments to a meeting so they could see what their kids were so excited about.
Architecture students from the nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute came to help one group of kids build a bridge that the whole school could walk across. Wood for that bridge was bought by the district director of music, who’d been very impressed by what kids were doing with old discarded band instruments and with guitars they made from Clorox bottles, fish string, & strips of wood.
This was only one group of kids. Other kids were busy doing other things that interested them: dinosaurs, water, food coloring, and oil experiments with test tubes, and so on. A first grader spent days proving that 100 bottle caps on one side of a balance beam weighed the same as 100 caps on the other side. I’ll never forget his satisfied grin when he finally nailed this observation.
Yes, this was “remedial reading.” To “do” an experiment a kid had to read the “directions” card AND write up results in a notebook.
When state inspectors of reading came to see why the end-of-year test scores had soared, they were very confused. They kept asking to see the “program” I used. I pulled out Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, saying, “Everybody loves this book.”
I used to try to share the idea by recommending the Elementary Science Study booklets that suggested topics kids might like to explore. Alas, McGraw-Hill bought the publications and turned them into Objective-mad crap.
Then, I was persuaded by the new Assistant Superintendent in Charge of Curriculum to join her new team. She was objectives-crazed and I lasted one week. I asked her to meet with me and the superintendent, where I announced I would take any job in the district but had to get off her team. I think she saw it as punishment to send me to start a school for 42 kids required by probation to be in school but whose past behavior denied them admission to the regular high school. There, with Elementary Science Study as my guide, I challenged kids to build toothpick bridges. The grin on the faces of the winning team whose bridge held 34 pounds reminded me of a certain first grader.
Susan Ohanian 