Middle School Updates For the Week of March 2nd

Dear Parents,

For Mod 5, our students will dig deeper into the overarching question of the year:  what does it mean to be an engaged citizen in a sustainable community?  Math Department Chair AJ Lee led the launch of the Mod this week with a compelling documentary on the Flint water crisis (Poisoned Water) — as usual, our students were deeply engaged, thinking about how “ordinary” people in a community can advocate for themselves and become heroes in the face of a crisis. AJ and I were impressed by the complexity of thought and dialogue in their conversations and reflections.

We then screened Dark Waters, a film about Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals (read more at this link right here).  Students then began researching and making presentations on the teen activists of their choice. —they discovered how students their own age can find an issue in the world and in their local communities that they are passionate about; they discovered that there are teens who have designed different ways for their voices to be heard in order to foster change they would like to see in the world. They charted common characteristics in teen activists and also made connections to their own lives.

You might be thinking:  Where’s all this leading, Tim? What‘s the project? What’s the essential question for the Mod?

While I usually come up with an essential question that guides a Mod, AJ and I have decided that this time we would allow our students to design their essential question as a way to show evidence of their mastery of our inquiry based-model.  Based on what they learned this week, we want them to tell us what issues they are passionate about and what the change is that they want to see in the world.

Which is another way of saying: we want to know what core question drives their work, we want our students to be architects and designers of learning, we want our students to find their voice.

With so much gratitude,

Take care,

Tim