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Triangle Learning Community

Middle School

Respect middle school students.Hold them to high standards,

encourage them to do great things,and give them opportunities to amaze.

The technological revolution of the past 20 years makes today perhaps the most exciting time ever to be learning. It’s possible to learn anything at any time, collaborating with people from all over the world. But most schools are not taking advantage of the learning revolution going on around us; their curriculum looks the same as when the parents today’s students went to school, albeit with some degree of computer use. There has been very little re-thinking about what’s possible in education. As a result, many students are bored with school and often don’t engage in the work they are being asked to do – they are “playing school,” often wondering whether the assigned work has any meaning because it does not connect with the rest of their lives.

Learning should be exciting, inspiring and fun. Students want to learn – they should look forward to coming to a place where they can expand their knowledge about the world and dive deep into the mysteries of mathematics, science, and computer programming. It should be a place where they can refine their communication skills – listening, speaking, writing, reading, and multi-media production. It should be a place where students are encouraged to create inter-disciplinary work that explores the classic questions posed by the humanities. It should be a place that introduces students to a world-wide variety of literature, as well as other forms of art and expression.

Contact: [email protected] or 919-357-8524

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“School” was an industrial age place where people went in an age of scarce information. That’s not the world we live in today. Information is everywhere. Learning today should not be about memorizing and regurgitating information. If we give students responsibility to do real work that matters, they will learn the skills and habits of mind they need for today’s world, such as empathy, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication with a world-wide audience through various media.

The mission of Triangle Learning Community (TLC) is to mentor a socio-economically and culturally diverse group of young people to become empathetic global citizens who make the world a better place, starting with community service work in Durham. TLC will make full use of 21st century tools to explore what is possible in education.

Schools today over-emphasize standardized testing, resulting in over-standardized instruction and less-than-engaged students. Middle school students are ready to explore the width and wonder of the world. Learning can – and should be – engaging, joyous and vigorous all at once. TLC provides personalized instruction coupled with high standards; students at TLC will develop and refine the traditional skills students learn in school, but will do so in real-world, applied situations that allow them to pursue their passion. Students will explore the Triangle and expand their global horizons in ways that get them excited about learning.

In today’s world, we can learn anything at any time, collaborating with people from all over the world. The skills and attitudes young people will need in order to live full and productive lives are quite different than they were a generation ago. Yet students continue to spend eight hours a day in schools that do not look any different from the schools their parents attended. The curricula of most schools are driven by end-of-grade tests; as a result, students are not as engaged as they could be. This needs to change.

Students who complete TLC’s three-year program will exceed traditional grade-level expectations and will have the confidence that comes from contributing to make the world a better place. TLC graduates will enter



ninth grade ready to excel, with strong skills in English, math, science, and history. They will also be conversant in at least one world language other than English.

Most important, TLC graduates will be self-directed learners who engage with the world on a regular basis. They will have spent three years in a culture of like-minded people who want to learn as much as possible. This is not to say that we will all agree – a strength of TLC will be the diversity of its student body and the respectful civic discussions that teachers model and that students learn.

The commonality will be that TLC students will develop the habits of studying, questioning, learning, and working hard to collaborate on real-world projects.

TLC graduates will:

learn to sift through mountains of information to evaluate the quality and reliability of sources as they perform sophisticated research,

collaborate on a regular basis with people of different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds from across the Triangle and around the world,

become self-directed learners who know how to learn and how to reflect upon their own learning so they can become more effective life-long learners,

successfully complete at least a standard ninth grade math curriculum,

develop a curiosity to learn and appreciate the role of math, science, and technology in our world,

gain fluency in multiple forms of 21st century communication – written, spoken, non-verbal, and multi-media,

learn to use technology in authentic, responsible and ethical ways, become conversant in at least one world language other than English,



practice being empathetic community members who engage in deep, sophisticated, civil discussions about important topics on a daily basis,

gain a global perspective, grounded in an understanding of local roots: TLC students will come to appreciate the context of the Triangle within North Carolina, North Carolina’s context within the United States, and the context of the United States as one nation that makes up less than 5% of the world’s population,

take initiative and contribute as active citizens to the local and world community through projects that become increasingly complex as they move from sixth to seventh grade, culminating with the eighth grade capstone project.

complete a capstone project during the first six months of their eighth grade year about a topic they care passionately about

work during the last three months of eighth grade to develop a plan to transition from TLC to high school, so that TLC graduates are well-positioned to get the most out of their high school experience, wherever that may be.



CORE PRACTICES

1) SAME TWO TEACHERS FOR THREE YEARS TO BUILD COMMUNITY

Feeling a part of a school and classroom community is critical for all young adults and for middle school students in particular. Students will progress through TLC in groups of 20 with the same teachers for three years. In the fall of 2013, TLC’s first class of sixth grade students will work with two exceptional teachers. In 2014-15, a new class of sixth grade students will be added (along with two new teachers), and by 2015-16 the school will be at capacity, with 50-60 students across grades 6-8. Pairs of teachers will remain with the same group of students and their families for all three years, developing and sustaining a close-knit learning community that will support one another at TLC, continuing throughout high school, and for years to come.

Because of TLC’s small size, all students will be well-known by all adults in the school – but particularly so by their two primary teachers. On occasions when it makes sense for cross-grade collaboration, we have the flexibility to make that happen.

2) PROJECT BASED LEARNING

Work at TLC is inter-disciplinary and project-based, with projects becoming more complex and more student-driven throughout a student’s three years at TLC. After two years of mentoring with students taking more responsibility with each project, every student will design a capstone project in eighth grade and lead a collaborative team to make that project a reality. All students will have an opportunity to both lead a project team and be part of at least one other project team.



Active citizenship and service will be central components to all projects across all three years. In all three years, students learn by doing and always create a product at the end that shows what they have learned.

Sixth Grade Projects

Sixth grade projects will typically involve all students in the grade, and will be teacher-led at first so that the teachers can model for students how work is done at TLC. The initial projects are designed to teach skills and habits, as well as to build community. Through these initial projects, teachers will create a thoughtful, respectful learning environment where active inquiry and mutual respect are the norm. Each student will reflect thoughtfully about what she/he learned at the conclusion of each project, and will blog regularly about his/her progress along the way.

Typical projects for sixth graders will last three to four weeks, and the initial projects will lay the foundation for further work at the school.

Initial sixth grade projects will include:

Who are we? Students will start to build community by creating a multi-media history that represents all members of the class, as well as each family’s connection to the Triangle. This project will last longer than a typical project (5-6 weeks) but will pay tremendous benefits because students and teachers (who will also create family histories alongside students) will get to know and trust one another. Students will spend time sharing their interests and passions with one another. The finished product – a version of which would be featured on the school’s web page – might include oral histories, videos, Google Earth place marks, and historical research using primary documents. This project can be a great way to involve grandparents and other family members as students conduct oral histories and work to put the



stories they learn about in a larger context.

How do we find and manage quality information? We are drowning in information. Students need to learn how to distinguish quality information from fluff and learn how to identify the bias and point of view of every source. This will be an ongoing meta-unit throughout each student’s time at TLC and will factor into each project, including the initial “Who are we?” project. Students also need to learn strategies for managing vast amounts of data, including personal data on social networking sites such as Facebook.

How do computers and the internet work? All TLC students will have laptop or tablet computers, and as a thoughtful learning environment, we will take the time to understand how our technology functions beyond a superficial level. Students will learn the basics of how the internet works and will learn how their machines work. To be thoughtful learners, students should understand the tools they use, know how to back up data, and know how to care for their equipment. We will also begin discussions about online privacy and digital citizenship. This discussion will begin as soon as students are accepted to TLC and will be ongoing as we do more projects and more learning about the world.

Making sense of Big and Small Numbers In a world with more than seven billion people, and in a country of more than 310,000,000 people with trillion-dollar budgets (and trillion-dollar budget deficits), it’s crucial to get a sense of what big numbers mean, especially in an economic context. Conversely, with the rise of nanotechnology, students need to understand what small numbers mean, and get a sense for nanometers – learning, for example, that the diameter of a helium atom is about one nanometer. This unit will lay the foundation for the math conversations we will engage in for the next three years.

Other possible projects might include:



How does our city work? Students will visit a bank, the police department, the local dump, restaurants, city hall and other local resource centers as they learn civics first-hand. The project at the end of this unit will build off of the first project and will reinforce the idea that we are citizens and should understand how Durham works. As a project, students might develop a web-based resource for newcomers to the community.

How does the stock market work? We hear daily phrases such as “the Dow Jones average was down 175 points today” – what do such phrases mean? Where did the Dow come from? What are other stock markets and economic indicators in today’s world? This unit will highlight these and other questions about commerce.

How can we make a more sustainable planet? Our resource consumption as a planet (and especially what we are doing as consumers in the U.S.) seems unsustainable on many levels. Where, for example, does the lunch we eat come from? What do we do with our waste? We’ll explore these sorts of issues as we work to complete a project that furthers sustainability practices at TLC and in the community.

Once these initial projects are further developed and completed, the remaining projects will be chosen collaboratively by the teachers and students. A possible multi-disciplinary project might be something topical, such as “Understanding the BP oil spill and putting it in context.” The end product of such a project could include a website that explains the basics of the spill to a high school student audience.

For all projects, students will be engaged in meaningful work that will result in a public exhibition of mastery (e.g. a presentation for community members, or a website about the topic to inform others). In addition, after



completing each project, students will write a thoughtful reflection about the project to develop skills of meta-cognition. This reflection might include such elements as: what they learned from doing it; how they thought they worked as a team member; how they could be more effective in future projects.

Seventh Grade Projects

As students move on to seventh grade, they will have developed skills and experience relative to real-life projects, and will be ready to take more responsibility for choosing and constructing projects about which they are passionate. Unlike sixth grade projects, which will mainly be done as an entire group of 20 students, seventh grade projects will typically be done by small groups of students who share common interests (typically 3-5 students per group). These projects will still be guided/mentored primarily by teachers, but students will take more responsibility as seventh grade goes on. These projects will be longer (8-10 weeks each) and will allow for more depth of study. Students will reflect in a more extensive way about each project at intermediate steps, as well as at the completion of the project.

Some projects will likely explore current events in more depth – for example, if TLC were in session now (March 2012), a fine project would be to spend eight to ten weeks putting recent events in Egypt, Libya and Syria into perspective by learning more about the history of the Middle East.

In addition to a concrete product, seventh grade projects will conclude with students posing open-ended questions that they would want to pursue in more depth as a result of their preliminary study. Students will come to understand that it’s not possible to become an “expert” after just 10 weeks of study, and that there is always more to learn about complicated topics.

A particularly compelling seventh grade project might grow into an eighth grade capstone project, but the idea is for seventh graders to complete at least three different in-depth projects over the course of the year to give



them exposure to a broad range of topics in the world. Teachers will ensure that students gain an in-depth exposure to science through at least one of the seventh grade projects. Science will also feature prominently in morning news discussions, as well as through natural links with the math/science/technology curriculum.

Note: there will be local community service projects built into the sixth and seventh grade curriculum to promote active citizenship on a local level.

Eighth Grade Projects

At the start of the eighth-grade year, each student – alone or in small groups of 2-3 students – will design a capstone project that the student is passionate about. The project proposal will work in a similar way that one would apply for a grant; indeed, many students may want to apply for external grants to help fund their projects. Once a capstone project is approved, the student (or group of students) will work for the next six months on that project during the afternoon project time. Students will have been mentored through sixth and seventh grade in a way that gives them more and more responsibility, so that they will be ready to work more independently. They will also have developed – through their work on real-world projects in sixth and seventh grades – a world-wide learning network that they can call upon as they work to make their capstone project a reality.

Students will have primary responsibility for one project and will also work as helpers on one or two other projects, so that all students have the experience of working diligently both as leaders and collaborators.

While most of the afternoon project time – and a great deal of homework time – will be devoted to project work in eighth grade, TLC is flexible enough to change focus for a week or so if a big event comes up – such as, say, a tsunami in Japan or war with Libya – and students decide that they want to understand these events and put them in more context than would be possible in morning sessions alone.



Here are two sample capstone projects that an eighth grade student might choose:

#1) Learn about the needs of a village in rural Pakistan and determine, after consulting with leaders in the village, that the village needs clean water and for women to have access to capital so they can start businesses.

Then, the students would work to find a way to help the villagers solve their problem. A solution to the water problem might be to apply in Pakistan an innovative well project that worked in South Africa – see http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/10/south_africa_th.html. As for getting capital to the women, a student could start an awareness campaign with the goal of arranging 50 micro-loans that will enable 50 women to start small businesses and improve their community.

Imagine doing that as an eighth grader — changing the life of a village by helping provide water and by enabling women to become business leaders. Think about the science, economics, math, politics, English, history and cultural skills a student would develop as s/he learned about the village and its needs from the people in the village, publicized the situation in that village in Pakistan, and then collaborated to convince people to donate money to build a well and/or make micro-loans. Think about the ongoing relationships the students involved in such a project would have with the people in this village as the students communicated on a regular basis with Pakistan and learned more about their lives, their culture and their religion. This sort of project allows for true empathy and will make a lasting impact on a student’s life, as well as improve the lives of the people in Pakistan.

#2) Learn all about honey bees and their plight, and then design a website that informs the world about how to best address the plight of the honey bee. Arrange a two-day conference in March where several speakers from around the country would come to the Triangle to talk about issues related to honey bee awareness. The students would videotape the conference and display the conference highlights online in the model of a TED Talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/dennis_vanengelsdorp_a_plea_for_bees.html).



http://www.ted.com/talks/dennis_vanengelsdorp_a_plea_for_bees.html

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/10/south_africa_th.html

Imagine doing that as an eighth grader – raising awareness of a critical problem you care deeply about and improving the situation by spreading information about the issue. Imagine helping to set up and carry out a real conference that would be attended by hundreds of people. Think about the biology, math, and web design skills, not to mention the literacy and communication skills, a team of students would develop as its members put together, promoted, and archived a real conference.

While the two examples provided are global, students might choose to focus their capstone projects on issues here in the Triangle. TLC students will become active citizens who learn to make a difference in their local communities. The Triangle is an incredibly complex and diverse place, worthy of concentrated study. Indeed, the first project every sixth grader will complete at the start of his/her TLC experience – the “Who are we?” unit – will require that students and teachers collaborate to create a local multimedia history that reflects and honors the story of each person – students and teachers – in the TLC community, and situates TLC within the context of the Triangle and its history. This first project will set the tone for future projects: students learn by doing and always create a product at the end that shows what they have learned.



3) A THOUGHTFUL DAILY SCHEDULE WITH TIME SET ASIDE FOR REFLECTION

The typical day at TLC will consist of seven segments:

I. WELCOME AND COMMUNITY MEETING II. MORNING NEWS DISCUSSIONIII. HEALTHY SNACK AND SHORT BREAKIV. PROBLEM SOLVING AND STRATEGIC THINKING

(OR PSST) (TO INCLUDE MATH, SCIENCE, STATISTICS, ALGORITHMS, AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMING)

V. SPORTS & PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD

VI. THOUGHTFUL LUNCH FOR AN HOUR (INCLUDES TIME TO READ)

VII. INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECT TIME VIII. REFLECTIONS ON “WHAT I LEARNED TODAY”

At the end of each day, in addition to reflecting on his/her project work, each student will assign him/herself individualized “deliberate practice” for homework so that each student’s homework is tailored to his/her individual needs.

In the first months of sixth grade, teachers will assign work to students and will consult with students and parents to help students identify areas and topics they want to spend time learning about at home. By the middle of sixth grade, students should be able to assign themselves work that is appropriately challenging. Before they head home each afternoon, each student will articulate – in writing – why he/she is doing that night’s work and what he/she hopes to achieve.

Each student will be learning a world language other than English at his/her own pace, using Rosetta Stone type software (see pages 23-24 for details). That learning will require that the student work on his/her own for several



hours per week to learn more about the target language. Teachers will check in every few weeks to see how students are progressing in their study of the language they select, and students will take benchmark quizzes and tests to see where they need more work.

Occasionally, students will blog or create other authentic projects, using their target language, and those artifacts will be reviewed by experts in the target language.

SCHEDULE EXPLAINED IN MORE DEPTH:

I. WELCOME AND COMMUNITY MEETING 8-8:15

In a relaxed setting, all community members assemble and prepare for the day. A different set of songs will play in the background each morning as people come into school. Students (and teachers) will each take a turn deciding which songs are on the playlist, which will run for about 20 minutes, starting at 7:40.

At 8 a.m., the community will come together to have the member of the community who chose the songs explain why he/she likes those songs and what they mean and how they can help inspire us as we learn for the day.

Following the brief explanation of the playlist (which gives each member of the community an opportunity to practice informal public speaking), another community member will share something meaningful with the group. This could be a piece of art, a song, a poem, a building, or a favorite inspiring person – it can be anything in the world. The student might give a shortened version of a TED Talk for 3-5 minutes about the topic, and then we will have a brief Q&A about it. Another student will be responsible for blogging about the song and the TED Talk, so that parents and friends of the school can follow along and learn what goes on each morning. Some TED Talks and song explanations will be videotaped and displayed on the school’s website.



Teachers will choose the first few songs and art pieces to model how this process works, but then students will take the lead. One of the ways we will get to know one another will be through sharing songs and art works that have meaning for each member of the community.

With the concerns about bullying going on, TLC will be a model for how people can celebrate diversity and learn from one another. The small size of the school and the 10:1 ratio of students to teachers ensures that all students will feel included at TLC.

After two members of the community share (one shares a song, the other shares something of his/her choice), we will have time for announcements – what events are going on at local universities and civic organizations? What is going on at lunch? What do people have to share from outside of school? Are there birthdays to celebrate? This is a chance for more community building, and also for students to exercise leadership. As students mature, they will take more responsibility for running these morning meetings.

As with the music, and the sharing, responsibility for leading the community meeting will initially fall on the teachers, but once teacher have modeled how to lead a meeting for a few weeks, each student will take a turn leading a community meeting. After several weeks, everyone will have led one meeting, and then teachers and students will take turns leading.

We will also schedule sessions of meditation and/or exercise to help us get ready to focus for the learning that lies ahead.

II. MORNING NEWS DISCUSSION: LEARNING ABOUT THE WORLD8:15-10:15 am: Two hours of Reading, Writing, Listening, Discussing and Public Speaking. We will also practice research skills and learn vocabulary and geography. The articles we read will teach us applied history, math and science on a regular basis.

A) READING GLOBAL NEWS AND LEARNING GEOGRAPHY USING GOOGLE EARTH: Most mornings will start with students learning about the world we live in by reading a diverse selection of the day’s news (BBC, NPR,



Wall Street Journal, etc.) for about 45 minutes. Teachers will assign one common article for all students to read to start with, but after students read that article, each student will be allowed to read about whatever area of the world that student finds most interesting. Students will record the title of each of the articles they read, and will save the locations of each article as place marks on Google Earth. Reading a few articles and taking the time to see where other people live and to imagine their lives while looking at a map of a new place helps to build empathy.

To see how the logging of articles will work, and to see Google Earth’s potential in action, please view the short video Bringing The News to Life Using Google Earth.

By reading the news daily, students will develop the life-long habit of thoughtfully learning about the world. Over three years, students will log over a thousand articles and will record more than a thousand place marks on Google Earth (assuming students read and log 10 articles per week, that’s about 350 per year). Teachers will ensure that over their three years at TLC, each student will tackle substantive stories that span a full range of topics and have a wide geographic and cultural distribution.

NOTE: Once we establish the routine of following news from around the world and from a variety of sources, some morning sessions will be devoted to the arts, to learning a world language using Rosetta Stone software, and/or to science projects that take us out into the local community. We have flexibility, as a small school, to plan regular field trips to learn first-hand about whatever interests us. We can also use some morning sessions to discuss classic literature we will be reading as a group.

The point is to get into the habit of starting each morning by engaging the world in a meaningful way and then reflecting on what we’ve learned. The spark for our learning can come from a poignant news article, a work of art, a video, classic literature, or even from a speaker at a local university or a RTP business. For example, physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer’s visit to Duke to



speak about Haiti would have been a good opportunity to do some reading and watch some videos to prepare for his visit; see him speak live at Duke; and then take time to debrief what we learned. Each member of the community would then blog about that experience.

B) PUBLIC SPEAKING AND ACTIVE LISTENING: On days when students do read the world’s news (as noted in italics above, global news mornings will alternate with arts, science and world language), students will read several articles for a total of about 45 minutes. After those 45 minutes of reading, the group will come together so that each student can orally summarize the story that had the most meaning for them and make a “pitch” to the group about why that article is more compelling than the one selected by the teachers. In summarizing their article, students will also share two or three vocabulary words they learned from the articles they read that morning, and all students will learn those words if they do not know them already. The idea is to constantly augment our vocabulary.

Students will be reading the news with several purposes in mind – they are learning to summarize the essence of each story, which they will record on Google Earth. Then, they are learning to present orally in front of their fellow learners about the most compelling article they read.

At first, sixth grade students will focus on how to read the news actively, and might read only one or two stories on their own, in addition to a common story selected by the teachers. Seventh and eighth grade students will read more stories as they get more proficient and more thoughtful about reading the news.

After “actively listening” to each student summarize an article and explain what s/he found most compelling in the news (“active listening” involves asking thoughtful questions, not just sitting there quietly), the group will vote on the story they find most interesting and that they want to discuss for the next 30 minutes.



C) DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH: The goal of a discussion is to practice civic discourse and to involve all members of the community in the discussion. A discussion is not a competition; it is a chance to further build community and learn from each other and from the world.

In the first few sessions of the year, the article that the group discusses will be an article selected by one of the teachers. However, as the year goes on and students grow more adept at finding compelling stories, it should be a regular occurrence for a student, through his/her summary, to convince the group to read a student article. The group would then decide to take several minutes to read that student’s story. Once everyone reads the student-chosen article, the group would then discuss and research that article.

Whatever article is selected, the discussion will include exploration of background content related to the article. For example, an article about the BP oil spill would require a short science lesson. Teachers are not expected to know all the answers immediately, but they should model curiosity and research skills. An intriguing article discussed on Monday could generate a Thursday morning session (or field trip) as a follow-up lesson about how oil and water react, as well as about the oil refining process. Students will learn on a regular basis that additional research is often required to discuss a topic in a meaningful way.

If we do this right (which we will), students will get excited about finding compelling topics for discussion and will share ideas from home. Having your topic discussed at the morning session will be seen as an accomplishment worth working to achieve. In this way, each student influences the learning of his/her peers several times over the course of the year.

D) BLOGGING FOR REFLECTION: After an in-depth discussion of one of the articles and some preliminary research, each learner (including each of the teachers, who will model active learning) will record in a blog entry the titles of all the articles they read, as well as a longer prose description of what they learned in the morning discussion session. Parents will have



access to the blog and therefore will get regular feedback to see what their son/daughter has learned.

By 10:15 a.m. each morning, students will have practiced all of these skills:

reading (the news from around the world) vocabulary (students will add the 2-3 words they learned to a database

and all students will learn all of the words in the database as a way to build vocabulary)

geography (locations of all stories a student reads are logged on his/her personal Google Earth atlas)

public speaking (each student gives a brief “pitch” summarizing the article he or she found most compelling)

listening (to peers and teachers explain what articles they found compelling)

the art of discussion and active listening (when the common article is discussed for about 30 minutes)

researching (with teachers modeling how to find quality information) writing (a thoughtful blog entry each morning – writing often teaches

us what we don’t know as clearly as we thought)

III. HEALTHY SNACK AND SHORT BREAK – After focusing for two hours, students will need a break and a chance to refuel. Ideally, we will eat locally grown food, depending on our location. Students may also engage in light exercise at this time – perhaps four-square or Frisbee, again depending on TLC’s location.

IV. PROBLEM SOLVING AND STRATEGIC THINKING (PSST) — 10:25-11:25 Math is everywhere in today’s world. Math is both fun and vigorous, and students will learn math in applied settings such as statistics, economics, exponential growth, and science. For instance, one math session might be devoted to exploring the odds of winning the Power Ball lottery. That would begin as an exercise in probability, but it would be broadened to consider the ethics of lotteries financing such things as education and other



public functions. Students would consider whether such games amount to an “insecurity tax” at the same time that they use math (probability in this case) in an applied setting.

In addition to working as s group on such applied math exercises, each student will progress with an individual curriculum, ensuring that each student not only comes to see how math infuses itself everywhere, but is also extremely well-prepared to tackle traditional high school mathematics. We will make use of programs such as Khan Academy, which allow students to progress in math at their own pace (www.khanacademy.org). Occasionally, teachers will spend the hour of math working individually with students to monitor their progress in math. Students will create a math portfolio as they blog about the math they learn, and teachers will read (and occasionally comment on) those blog posts.

A few times per week – perhaps Tuesdays and Fridays – students will use 20-30 minutes of their “math hour” to blog – in written, verbal, or even video format – the math concepts they have learned recently, as well as the concepts with which they are struggling. Students will describe the unanswered question(s) within the various topics they are learning, and teachers will follow up with students about those topics. Again, TLC provides a chance to reflect and practice communication – and again, parents get an update and students are held accountable.

On average, students will blog two times per week about what they are learning in math. For example, they might work for the full hour on Monday on understanding the probability of winning Powerball; they might continue that work for homework Monday night and into Tuesday’s class. After working for 30 minutes on Tuesday, each student would stop to blog for the last 20-30 minutes of the hour. They would be introduced to more math concepts for Wednesday’s and Thursday’s sessions, and for the first part of Friday. Then they would blog about the math they learned for about 30 minutes on Friday. The idea is to wrestle with concepts for a time and then step back and reflect about the material on a regular basis. Students will regularly assign themselves at least 45 minutes to an hour of additional math-related work to do at home (though at first, teachers will assign some



http://www.khanacademy.org/

basic problems and will help coach students so that they learn to evaluate what areas they need to work on).

V. SPORTS & PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES (SPA) FROM AROUND THE WORLD: 11:25-12:10 – Each day, students will be involved in physical activity. Middle school students need to be active. The activity will depend in part on the physical location of TLC and on the skills of its community members: students, teachers, parents and volunteers all may have activities to share. We will sample activities and sports from all over the world, so students might learn yoga, Frisbee, basketball, cricket, capoeira, softball, and/or salsa dancing over the course of several months.

In addition, we will often take walks and field trips either in the morning or in conjunction with lunch — we will be out in the community learning all the time.

VI. THOUGHTFUL LUNCH: 12:10-1:10 – In the first few months, as a way to build community, there will be occasional lunch-time conversations about “who are we?” that connect to the first afternoon project, where we make our own multimedia local history. Because TLC aims to be thoughtful about everything it does, we will often use lunch later in the year to address such topics as: Where did our food come from? How did it get here? What is its carbon footprint? What kind of packaging and transportation system is involved in a typical “lunch” in the United States?

As we get to know one another, lunch will evolve into a time to simply relax, eat, read and talk with friends. It is good to slow down and have a chance to reflect and play. Lunch will often include independent reading time, and students will periodically meet over lunch one-on-one with a teacher to discuss the student’s progress and any issues that may arise. The small size of TLC ensures that students will be well-known.

The ultimate goal is for each student to eat a thoughtful lunch every day – lunch is an important hour (not 25 minutes) when students can take a break and recharge after focusing for a morning of focused study.



On occasion, lunch time will be devoted to developing inter-personal relationships and etiquette as well as to discussions about how we might increase awareness about the origins and impact of the food we eat (as described in the 6th grade sustainability project on the top of page 7).

Occasional “Learning Lunches”

Breaking bread affords students an opportunity to learn proper etiquette for a variety of settings. At monthly formal lunches, we will invite members from the local international community (Fuqua MBA students, international students from NCCU, Duke or UNC) to eat with us and teach us about a variety of cultures and traditions. Eating injera bread with Ethiopians one month might be followed by a luncheon with members of the Lumbee tribe, featuring Native American cuisine. Sharing food from around the world develops a sense of global community and empathy. It’s also fun to do. We may have occasional international dinners as well. For each of these special events, we will take the time to learn about our guests’ culture so that we can ask informed and insightful questions.

VII. INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECT TIME: 1:10-3:10 – This is the core of the school’s work. This is the time when students will be working on inter-disciplinary projects such as the ones described above.

Projects will initially be teacher directed as students learn how to be independent learners and also learn the basic skills of blogging. As students progress through the second half of sixth and into seventh grade, the projects will become more and more student-directed, though teachers will always be there to mentor and support students. The end of the seventh grade year and the summer between 7/8 grade will be spent writing a proposal for a capstone project. This is an opportunity for a student to focus for six months on a topic he or she is truly passionate about.

[WHILE THIS TIME WILL LARGELY BE CONSTRUCTIVIST IN NATURE, A FUTURE VERSION OF THIS DOCUMENT WILL DESCRIBE IN MORE DETAIL WHAT THE TYPICAL STRUCTURE AND WORKFLOW OF THIS



IMPORTANT 2-HOUR PERIOD MIGHT LOOK LIKE, AT LEAST FOR THE FIRST FEW PROJECTS]

VIII. REFLECTIONS ON “WHAT I LEARNED TODAY” (AND ASSIGN YOURSELF “HOMEWORK”) – 3:10-3:30

After working on projects for about two hours, students will blog to summarize what they learned and the progress they made on their project during the afternoon. They will also include in this blog post a description of what they will work on in the evening to prepare for school the next day. This part of the blog entry facilitates communication with parents/guardians about what work is to be completed to prepare for the next day. Not all students have the same needs, so not all students will have exactly the same homework (though some elements may be in common, especially if we are working on a common math or science project, or if we are reading a common piece of literature).

Each student will typically spend at least one hour per night reading quality literature (though not always the same books). One night, Student A may be working on a tricky math concept that she struggled with during the hour of morning math, while Student B might learn Greek and Latin roots of vocabulary words. Student C might focus on re-writing an article he wrote as part of a project, while Student D might choose to look in more depth at the science involved in the long-term effects of the BP oil spill – an issue she learned about from a Time Magazine article her classmate recommended during the morning session.

Students will leave for the day only after one of their two teachers has read their end-of-day blog post and has made sure the student has clearly articulated both what work they will do and why they have assigned themselves that work to do – what do they hope to achieve? Learners who are not sure why they are doing HW often spin their wheels and work inefficiently. TLC aims to always be thoughtful about the



work that the members of the community does, wherever that work may be done.

DISMISSAL BEGINS AT 3:45, but the building will remain open until 4:30, so that students who need to meet with a teacher one-on-one can do so after school. Other after-school programs may be available as well, depending on student interest and on the options available at the facility where TLC meets.



ASSESSMENT AND PROGRESS REPORTS

As students grow and develop throughout middle school, and as teachers and students come to know each other better, the assessment methods will evolve. The small size allows for individualized feedback on a daily basis. At the end of each project, students will receive written feedback about the strengths in their work and areas where they might need to improve. Students will also reflect on each project before moving on to the next project. In sixth grade students will complete 8-10 projects, and they will reflect after each one. Reflection will include answering such questions as: How did I work with people in my group? What could I do better the next time? What was the best thing about my project? What do I still need to work on?

In seventh grade, the projects will be more involved and students will work in smaller groups of 4-6 students (not all students will necessarily do the same projects – some may do a science-based project for a few weeks while another group may work on an economics and entrepreneurship project.

Each seventh grade student might complete 3-4 larger projects during the year (at least one of those projects would involve a significant science/engineering component). Students would reflect several times on each project at two-week intervals. Also, some morning sessions might evolve into week-long projects (if, say Egypt overthrew its president one week, we might devote some time to learning about that, and the project that students might create would be a web page that explains what’s going on. That web page could include commentary from middle school and high school students in Egypt who we would contact in real time as events unfold).

During sixth grade, teachers will provide students with written feedback in a conference setting several times per year to assess the student’s project work by looking at the last 2-3 projects the student completed. Which of those projects worked well? Which did not work as well? Why? What skills does the student hope to learn through upcoming projects? How is the



student progressing in general with numeracy and literacy skills that are developed in morning sessions?

In seventh grade, teachers and students will start the year knowing each other well, allowing for meaningful progress assessments right away.

In the final months of seventh grade, teachers will help students conceptualize the capstone project that they will focus on for most of eighth grade. Students will begin drafting their proposals at the end of seventh grade and will refine their proposals over the summer so that they can present their proposals in August. Throughout eighth grade project time, teachers and students will regularly discuss the students’ progress on the capstone project.

REGULAR FEEDBACK ABOUT WRITTEN AND VERBAL COMMUNICATION

The small size and intimate nature of TLC allows for students and teachers to meet regularly one-on-one to review the writing in the student’s blog posts (and the students’ comments on others’ blogs) for the past two weeks. Each student will get regular and meaningful feedback about his/her written work. Students will also on occasion comment on the blogs of teachers so that all members of TLC improve their writing.

WHO ARE THE TEACHERS?

Teachers at TLC will be model life-long learners who regularly reflect and share about what they are learning and the projects they are working on. They will be superb oral and written communicators who excel at empathetic listening. They will connect well with students. Teachers will also be skilled in math up to (and ideally including) pre-calculus. No teacher at TLC will say “I’m not a math person.” Teachers will use technology in



ways that add value and will be open to learning more from students. Teachers will work regularly in an interdisciplinary manner and be expected to collaborate regularly not only with their co-teachers but also with all teachers in the school. Teachers at TLC will be part of learning networks around the world.



HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE COMMUNITY?

TLC will create a broad community consisting of a core of students and teachers, but also including all of the families and friends of TLC’s community – including, for example, a student’s grandparents in India, who might agree to Skype in on a regular basis. TLC will also reach out to the local and world community. Our proximity to world-class learning and business institutions will enable us to tap into quality local resources in person. In addition, 21st century technology enables us to connect with the flattened world, so that we can develop contacts all over the world as we work on various projects.

For example, if a student’s eighth grade capstone project were about saving the honey bees from extinction, that student would be encouraged to first prepare by reading experts’ work on the topic. If students determine that the leading experts in the field and the best articles seem to be written by researchers in New Zealand, that’s not a problem – especially since the student and his/her team will have six months to work on the project and plan a time to speak with experts and perhaps cultivate a relationship with an expert that grows into a lasting mentorship.

LEARNING LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH:

It is crucial for global learners to speak multiple languages. Language provides a window on another culture that allows students to better empathize with people from another part of the world.

There is a great deal of potential to use the internet to engage in immersive conversations with people from around the world. The TLC World Language program is still in development, but would likely combine best practices from the world languages program at Trinity School in Atlanta, which uses Rosetta Stone software (http://www.trinityatl.org/academics/world_languages.aspx) and the online K-12 “Interactive Languages” program from Middlebury College (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz0EV1DkrZY) (11-minute video).

Lee County Schools in North Carolina has partnered with Rosetta Stone to offer instruction in 25 languages to its entire K-12 student body (http://www.researchtriangle.org/news-and-events/lee-county-schools-launches-world-languages/).

Each student works on a laptop and uses Rosetta Stone’s interactive software and proceeds at his/her own pace. Depending on what languages



http://www.researchtriangle.org/news-and-events/lee-county-schools-launches-world-languages/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz0EV1DkrZY

http://www.trinityatl.org/academics/world_languages.aspx

students choose, TLC will design appropriate immersion experiences. For example, if six students are studying Spanish, they might go one weekend to a Spanish speaking section of North Carolina for a weekend trip. Students who want to have a weekend retreat with others who speak Mandarin, for example, could arrange to do that as well.

Students who enter TLC in sixth grade in 2013 will each have different experiences with language – some will know Spanish, some might know Chinese or Arabic or Swahili. We will approach world language thoughtfully and on an individual basis once we know the composition of our students and the skills of our teachers.

All members of the community (including the teachers) will be engaged in becoming fluent in at least one language other than English. We will have real-world immersion experiences where students can practice the target language – ideally these experiences will involve travel, which inherently broadens a student’s world view.

ARTS:

The arts are essential to help students develop as independent and creative thinkers. Students will often be exposed to art, and will be expected to browse the world’s museums online, as well as make in-person visits to the NC Museum of Art and museums at the local universities. Artists in residence may work with students at lunch or during project time. It is important for students to have opportunities to express themselves and to learn about the arts.

Several morning sessions each month will be devoted to learning about various forms of art. Local artists will often join us in these sessions, and we may, on occasion, visit artists in their studios as well.

In addition, students will be expected to regularly integrate the arts into project work. For instance, the local history project will undoubtedly have a multi-media component that includes photography and videography. That project would also likely lend itself well to making a collage of some sort, showing various images from each student’s family.



A NOTE ABOUT TECHNOLOGY

People can learn anything they want from anyone in the world any time they want to learn it. Classrooms have no walls. TLC will reflect this reality by first teaching computer basics – how does the Internet work? What is a browser and an operating system? How should you care for your system and back up your files? How can you browse effectively and safely? We will then begin to learn how to conduct sophisticated and responsible online research – this will be an ongoing process over three years. The expectation is that students will become skilled at gathering, sifting, and creating quality digital media from a variety of sources – developing critical thinking skills all the while. The world is a fascinating, rich, complex place. Students deserve to engage with the full width and wonder of the world. Today’s technology makes more of the world than ever before accessible to students – we should fully leverage the learning opportunity afforded by the changes of the past decade.

All students at TLC will have laptop computers. Most of our data will be stored online (cloud computing) so students would need a basic machine such as Google’s Chrome Book (retail $249 now; a comparable machine should cost less by fall of 2013) to create and store most of their content. For video editing, we might need additional hardware.

TLC students will regularly utilize such online sources as:TED Talks (http://www.ted.com) to spark discussions in class, Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org) for individualized math instruction at home (guided by an hour of in-person math exploration every day), and Rosetta Stone for world language instruction.

Links to earlier online content, in case the embedded links do not work:

Page 13 -- A blog entry explaining what “applied history” might look like:http://wiltoday.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/weekend-update/

Page 13 – How to use Google Earth to bring the news to life:http://wiltoday.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/news-google-earth/



http://wiltoday.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/news-google-earth/

http://wiltoday.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/weekend-update/

http://www.rosettastone.com/personal/buynow



http://www.ted.com/

http://www.ted.com/

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