Sharing Perspectives is a Distance Learning program that will link 24 students (fifth/sixth grade class) from Harmony School in Bloomington, a predominantly white, middle class school where parents of students tend to be college educated with 24 students (fifth grade class) at Carrie Gosch School in East Chicago, a school in which the students are predominantly African American, are low income and often come from families in which no one has attended college. The goal is to get these youngsters together to share meaningful learning experiences and support them in creating meaningful relationships with each other and with I.U. students who are members of the Groups program at I.U. in Bloomington and who went to elementary schools in East Chicago. These folks will serve as our facilitators of the groups that will be made up of students from both schools. Students will have a variety of educational experiences. These will include all aspects of language arts - reading writing, speaking and listening. They will be reading critically as they share books that deal with important issues. They will be asked to make thoughtful choices, work through decision making with their groups, assume responsibility for completing assignments and follow up on making connections with their partners and their groups. They will research either a career or a closely related interest. They will make organized, interesting presentations. They will use a variety of technological strategies. They will have the opportunity to develop a broader, deeper and richer view of potential careers that are available as opposed to the shorter list that many of them consider - teacher, lawyer, doctor or basketball player. Most importantly, they will be given opportunities to work with students who come from a different culture, speak with a different dialect, and possibly hold different beliefs and have different ideas. They will work and eventually socialize side by side and experience the joy of diversity.
It would probably be impossible to create the kind of relationships that are desirable without a CEC grant and the use of two-way video technology. It is not practical to take students out of school for several entire days to travel four hours in one direction. It would also be terribly expensive and logistically difficult. However, in order to build the trust that would allow students to share their thinking and perspectives freely it's necessary to create these meaningful relationships. This will require "getting together" on an ongoing basis. Through a variety of distance learning experiences they will come to know each other and develop a willingness and sense of freedom to express themselves to each other. And, finally, they will meet, face to face, first in Bloomington and then in East Chicago.
Sharing the Perspectives of Students from Two Indiana Communities through a Variety of Powerful Learning Experiences
Background
Carrie Gosch Elementary School in East Chicago and Harmony School in Bloomington have been partners in exploring
ways to provide more powerful learning experiences for almost 5 years. Because of funding through Indiana's State Department of Education's Title I Office Daniel Baron, the director of outreach services at Harmony, has served as facilitator of schoolwide restructuring at Carrie Gosch, and several Harmony teachers and Carrie Gosch teachers have collaborated on a variety of teaching and learning experiences.
Goal
One of the primary goals from the very beginning of this work was to create opportunities for the students in the two schools to get to know each other well, so that both schools could benefit from the diversity of the two populations, and so
that learning experiences could be greatly enhanced by the different perspectives that would be brought together. Harmony students are
predominantly white. The elementary program has only 70 students. The families represent a wide variety of socio-economic
levels, but most of them are from well educated backgrounds. The students attend Harmony because their parents have chosen to
send them to an independent school. Bloomington is a mostly homogeneous community.
Carrie Gosch students are predominantly African-American. There are 500 students. They attend a brand new public school in a
low income area of East Chicago. 88 - 93% of the students are on free or reduced lunches. Since the schools are 4 hours
apart this goal has not been realized. Our two schools would like to propose that through a CEC Distance Learning Grant we could in
fact realize this dream by creating several opportunities to get the students together via Distance Learning in order to create opportunities
to form meaningful relationships. Once these friendships are nurtured through a variety of activities such as get-acquainted poetry,
literature discussions and collaborative inquiry studies the students from Carrie Gosch would be invited to visit the Harmony
students in Bloomington and actually spend a couple of days together. This visit would be reciprocated when Harmony students
would visit Carrie Gosch later in the year.
"Group" Group Facilitators
Another very essential element of this proposal is to tap the resources of the Groups Program at Indiana University in
Bloomington. Usually the Groups program is responsible for providing mentors to students who come to I.U. as members of
families in which no one yet has received a college degree. Many of these I.U. Groups students come from the northwest region of
Indiana. Since there are often more volunteers than are needed for this program, Lou Moirs, the coordinator of the Groups
Program is certain that she could provide 6 of these volunteers who grew up in East Chicago to serve as facilitators to the 6 joint
groups of Carrie Gosch and Harmony students. This would be an invaluable experience for each group of young people. The East
Chicago students would have an opportunity to develop a relationship with someone who grew up in their neighborhood and aspired
to get further education. These facilitators could potentially serve as role models. All of the fifth and sixth grade students would
have an opportunity to have first hand knowledge of what it's like to choose a career in this day and age. They will learn from the I.U.
students about many different fields that are available, the education that's necessary to enter these fields, the potential salaries, the
possibility of job availability, etc.
Importance of Distance Learning
It would probably be impossible to create the kind of relationships that are desirable without a CEC grant and the
use of two-way video technology. It is not practical to take students out of school for several entire days to travel such a long distance.
It would also be terribly expensive and logistically difficult. However, in order to create the kinds of relationships that would
allow students to share their thinking and perspectives freely they would have to "get together" on an ongoing basis.
Through a variety of distance learning experiences they could come to know each other and develop a willingness and sense of
freedom to express themselves to each other. The goal would be to get the students together via distance learning at least 7 times
before they meet each other in person.
First Meeting
The first meeting would be an introductory meeting in which the classes would all meet together and read some of
Fleishman's "Poems for Two Voices" together with the help of the facilitators. One of the "voices" would be practiced
ahead of time by each of the classes at the respective schools before meeting via distance learning. Then the students would come together
and read both voices. Also, beforehand, as the second part of this visit students would be asked to create lines for paired poems in
anticipation of creating with one other person from the partner school a joint poem that would allow the students to share their commonalties.
The students would be asked to write lines in response to questions such as: What's unique about your family? Where do you like to be?
What do you like to do in school? What do you like to spend time doing outside of school? What was the highlight of your summer?
What book has stuck with you? The students could be paired according to the linkages between their poetic lines. Once they
know who their partners are they could correspond by e-mail and then together write their poem and decide how they'll present it to the larger
group. During the distance learning meeting each of the 24 pairs would present its poem. They could then be compiled into a book
which would become a part of each class library. It would be nice to have pictures of the pairs included. This meeting would end
with a debriefing and planning for the next meeting.
Second Meeting
At this point the pairs of students would be put together into groups of 8, and one of the I.U. students would serve as the facilitator
for each of the 6 groups. Everyone in each class would then read Flying Solo by Richard Fletcher. Because it would be difficult and
expensive for each of the six groups to meet for an hour, the proposal is that the entire class from each school will meet via
distance learning once the entire book is read by each class, but only one of the groups will participate in the discussion. The rest
of each class will sit in a circle on the outside and view the participants as if they are in a fishbowl.
Because everyone will be familiar with the story the observing students will be asked to write notes about questions that they would like to pursue, responses they
would like to share about the book and reflections they have on the process. This book was chosen because it presents issues that
will most likely be important to these students. Very briefly, the story is about an intermediate classroom in which the teacher is absent and the substitute doesn't show up,
so the students are on their own for the entire day. The students have to decide whether to be responsible even when there is no
adult to set limits, allow a leader to emerge, cope with the student who has been mute ever since a child in their classroom died, and
resolve whether they did the "right thing." As a culminating activity, following the distance learning visit, there will be an essential
question posed to all the students. All of the answers will be typed and collected. Each student will receive a copy of all the
responses. Further discussions will take place both in the respective classrooms and via e-mail as the students ask questions of
their group members.
Third-Fifth Meetings
Because students are most likely to be motivated to read when they have a choice of what they read, the next round of literature
circles will involve several options. There will be 6 sets of books from which students can choose. The options will be put together
from a list of suggestions made by the students, the teachers and the facilitators. Each group will have to decide on which book they want to read together. This
time after the book is read, each group will have an hour of distance learning time to talk about their book together. This would
require six hours of interactive video time in order for each of the six groups to meet. If groups want to continue their
conversations, students can continue via e-mail with a listserve.
Sixth - Seventh Meetings
A month later students will be invited to participate in collaborative inquiry with the focus being on careers. Each group will
brainstorm via e-mail ideas that they are interested in and try to come up with 2 to 4 topics that they'd like to pursue. Byron Smith
who does a radio program on careers at Indiana University has agreed to provide copies of the 24 audio tapes of past shows to
serve as one resource. Students will work once again via e-mail sharing resources and Web addresses and questions they're
wondering about as well as descriptions of how they're progressing. A week before the distance learning meeting students will
exchange copies of their papers between the two schools. Students who are working on similar topics will communicate via e-mail
how they plan to make their presentations. Each group will have 40 minutes to share.
The Actual Face to Face Meeting
The following month Carrie Gosch students will visit Bloomington. They will take a bus to Bloomington and either stay with families
of the Harmony students, or sleep at the school or at I.U. dorms. A dinner will be held at the school for all of the students and the
facilitators. The facilitators will be asked to trace their educational history - their school experience in East Chicago, the first
impressions they had of Indiana University when they came from "the region" to the university campus, their career choices and the
paths they followed to get where they are now and what their visions are for the future.
Educational Experiences
Students will have a variety of educational experiences including all aspects of language arts - reading, writing, speaking and
listening. They will be reading critically as they share books that deal with important issues. They will be asked to make thoughtful
choices, work through decision making with their groups, assume responsibility for completing assignments and follow up on
making connections with their partners and their groups. They will research either a career or some related topic.
They will develop organized, interesting presentations. They will use a variety of technological strategies - e-mail, the Internet,
Distance Learning, video and computer presentations. They will have the opportunity to develop a broader, deeper and richer view
of potential careers that are available as opposed to the shorter list that many of them consider - teacher, lawyer, doctor or
basketball player. Most importantly, they will be given opportunities to work with students who come from a different culture, speak with a different dialect, and possibly hold different beliefs
and have different ideas. They will work and eventually socialize side by side and experience the joy of diversity.
Budget for "Sharing Perspectives" Grant
On-line charges
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Created: Apr. 4.2000 Last updated: Apr. 4,2000. Comment to Dave Bartlett.