I don’t know where to start. I’ve spent the past few days silent. Listening. Learning. Reading. Watching. Trying to make sense of what is happening in the world; a world that is in the midst of grappling with a global pandemic, and now also dealing with collective grief that has turned to rage and violence. I haven’t added my voice into the mix because, quite honestly, the world is already too familiar with my perspective as a white, cis, hetero, woman. At the same time, I do not want my silence to imply complicity and indifference to what others are feeling. I’ve been watching, listening and hurting. 

Amidst the flood of content on the internet and social media, I came across this post from Sesame Street. 

It reminded me of afternoons spent at my grandma’s house growing up. Sesame Street was, most likely, where I first saw and heard people who didn’t look like me. Their goal of promoting understanding and creating a world that is “smarter, stronger, and kinder” helped shape my own understanding of community and diversity. 

On those same afternoons, we would walk to the local public library. It was part of our community. I had the privilege to be able to not only access that library and its resources, but to find shelves of books with characters who looked like me once we arrived. I am grateful for all of the adults in my life who made sure that the stories I read represented diverse perspectives, and featured characters who didn’t necessarily look like me or share my experience.

There is power in the knowledge and storytelling found in books. Whenever I needed to grasp a big idea or wanted to understand something better, I turned to books. They offered me language and vocabulary. They offered new viewpoints, and most importantly, a place to begin. 

As adults, particularly those of us in the roles of teachers and leaders, we need to pause, but not remain silent forever; as our silence ultimately will signal complicity. We need to be intentional in our words and actions as we continue to teach our students to be kind, empathetic and compassionate. Similar to Sesame Street, we are working to “promote understanding and create a world that is smarter, stronger and kinder” one student at a time.  

As a teacher and librarian, I certainly don’t have answers, but I know where I’m going to start. I recognize no list of books will ever be fully comprehensive. Particularly for children, the stories in these lists will need to be paired with others so that they can see similarities, not just differences, between themselves and children of all races and cultures.

However, I hope that the lists of books curated below will help us to start conversations with people in our lives. I truly believe that compassion and love speak louder than hate. I hope that the stories in these books, like the ones told on Sesame Street, help us to gain a deeper understanding and provide us with language so that together we can use our voices to become smarter, stronger, and kinder.

Let’s start a conversation.

(Download the full set of lists here)

A few years ago, a friend of mine, Mary Cantwell, wrote a blog post that really resonated with me, entitled ‘Seeking a New Playground.’ That blog post caused me to pause and consider the similarities and differences between work environments and playgrounds. Working in an elementary school, the playground is an essential part of our day, where students come together to learn and play and interact with different groups of people than perhaps the students in their homeroom. What if as adults, we applied that playground approach to our own work?

Well…fast forward a few years from that initial post, and now it’s my turn. Growth, while often bittersweet, is, to me, inevitable. And so I too, am seeking a new playground. I am hoping to find a new space where I can grow and collaborate alongside members of a diverse team, much like my students do on the playground. 

My professional journey has been a windy road beginning with an undergraduate program at Rosemont College in elementary education & psychology, then moving to a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in education policy and program design. From there, my journey led me to a wonderful K-5 public school, working in the role of teacher/librarian & media specialist, and to my most recent role as a technology coordinator at a PreK-12 independent school.  Along the way, I’ve also worked extensively in public libraries and have had the opportunity to present and share my work and the work of my students in both local and state-level venues throughout the country.  I am grateful for the additional twist in my journey that allowed me to travel to San Francisco with a group of Doctoral students from Penn last spring. I had the opportunity to take classes at Stanford’s d.School and have collaborative conversations about technology and its meaningful integration in schools with a variety of educational leaders.

While I have been fortunate enough to create a makerspace in each of the schools I’ve worked in, I would love the opportunity to work in collaboration with teams of teachers, adult learners, and/or students to infuse the sort of thinking that accompanies a makerspace into the broader pedagogy and curricula conversations of an organization. I would like to take the concept of a makerspace beyond a lego wall, to move the idea of design thinking beyond a wall of post-it notes; taking each to the next level.

In short, I am seeking a new playground. For me…”choosing to go towards the cracking in order to keep expanding, is the only way to go.” While the present may be uncertain, it is filled with possibility and opportunities for growth. I carry with me a set of diverse educational experiences and skills, as well as a creative and innovative spirit.  

Until then…you can find me online @christybrenn or at christina.m.brennan@gmail.com

*Note- this post was originally published in the fall newsletter of the Delaware Valley Region-Pennsylvania Association of Supervision & Curriculum. The full newsletter can be found at: bit.ly/DVRPASCDFall2016

Why:

What if the first question you were asked every day at school was ‘what will you make today?’ How would you respond? Makerspaces provide both students and teachers with opportunities to make what they imagine. They allow teachers to introduce students to the growth mindset of ‘making’ and to develop students’ skills for both digital and physical content creation. Students are able to explore STEM and literacy concepts through hands-on projects while developing skills in the areas of innovation, collaboration, and creativity.

From a curriculum or school district standpoint, the opportunity to design a makerspace is an opportunity to design a new way in which teachers approach their craft. It is an opportunity for that third grade social studies unit on immigration to shift from students finding facts about a country to asking the question ‘How might we learn from others?’ With this as the starting point, and a bit of background knowledge on immigration, students could then head down a path of inquiry, asking questions like:

• How might we meet the needs of __(person)__?
• Could we redesign his/her immigration route?
• Could we design an object/tool that would have helped them in their journey?
• What might we create that would help them once they arrive(d) in Philadelphia?

Similarly, a second grade unit studying fairy tales could shift from reading and writing fairy tales to students asking questions like:

• How might we design a better house for the three pigs?
• Could we come up with a different way for Jack to get to the top of the beanstalk?

Makerspaces provide teachers with the possibility of shifting their thinking from writing lesson plans and unit outlines, to designing learning experiences for their students; all the while covering the same core content and standards.

What:

So, what is a makerspace? The term, though becoming widely used in education, often proves difficult to define. There is no recipe or list of essential elements that a space must have to gain the title of ‘makerspace.’ No two makerspaces are the same. It’s also important to note that ‘makerspace’ is not a verb. It’s not something you do but rather a learning environment that encourages tinkering and exploration. It doesn’t need to be shiny, new, and filled with the latest tech gadgets. It can be any place where the maker mindset unfolds, expands, and grows. Where students and teachers are inspired to create and share ideas with tools that can range anywhere from cardboard and art supplies to 3D printers and laser cutters.

How:

The task of building a makerspace and integrating it into your classroom or school may seem overwhelming. Since no two makerspaces are the same, the process for creating them is not necessarily linear. Laura Flemming in her book, Worlds of Making, identifies a cyclical process for planning a makerspace, the start of which is being able to understand your learners. Allowing for student voice and input while planning your space is critical. From there, it’s helpful to assess existing curricula and programs within your school community and see if they might benefit or be enhanced by having access to such a space. It can also be helpful to consider global trends and best practices and to develop themes within your space. Themes can range from building, creating, and coding, at the elementary level to topics like engineering, bioethics, physics, and blogging at the high school level. Regardless of the age of your students, having a mix of both fixed and flexible centers or stations based on your theme(s) can be a great way to start to introduce students and teachers to the space.  Once you’ve considered the needs of your learners and curriculum, it becomes time to order equipment and materials. Starting small, with perhaps one theme or area of focus, can be helpful. This way, students and teachers can begin to explore and play in a way that is not daunting or overwhelming. As you continue on your makerspace journey, it’s important to keep checking in with your learners (both teachers and students) and asking them the question of, “what will you make today?”

Links to additional makerspace resources can be found at: bit.ly/MakerspacesMatter Be sure to save the date and join us at our spring event, April 20th at Cabrini University, for conversations on promoting student creativity and engagement through design thinking and maker education.

I recently had the opportunity to gather together resources and stories to share for a presentation on embedding inquiry across the curriculum at a PASCD Fall event. When trying to come up with a definition of inquiry, after collecting responses from colleagues, I found it helpful to identify what inquiry is NOT. I kept coming back to the idea that inquiry is not teachers asking students questions we already know the answers to. Instead, it’s providing students with open-ended exploration driven by their curiosities.

So what might this look like in an elementary classroom?

For one of our first-grade technology lessons, we decided to explore some of the different parts of our Chromebooks and figure out how the parts came together to make a whole. Students first brainstormed some parts that they thought a Chromebook might need in order to work. Then we took one apart to see what the inside looked like. We discovered screens, batteries, screws, wires, and lots of other parts too.

Our next job was to take a closer look at two ‘mystery parts.’ We recorded our observations and made some predictions about what we thought these ‘parts’ could be and how they might work together to make a whole. We were excited to discover that our parts were LED lights and batteries and that when we put them together in a certain way, we were able to make the bulb light up!