Professional Development School

What I consider to be an extraordinary annual event occurred last Saturday morning at the Park Forest Elementary School in State College: the 10th annual Teacher Inquiry Conference. This is the culminating event of the Professional Development School - a joint venture of the State College Area School District and the College of Education at Penn State - which places about 70 teacher interns in State College classrooms for an entire school year.

As part of their internship, each student addresses an "inquiry" around an educational issue of personal interest, and then reports on the results.

Deciding on which five out of seventy sessions to attend is challenging, but I began with Morgan Bracken's "Student-Led Class Meetings: Passing the Power to the 1st Graders". I was interested in the implications for integrating 21st century skills - such as communication, leadership and collaboration - into the classroom experience of even young students.

When her students returned from Christmas break, she had observed an increase in "classroom community" issues - cutting in line, "tattling", etc. - and she wondered if giving her first graders ownership in the classroom - allowing them to identify classroom issues, and propose their own solutions - might help. Would student-led classroom meetings affect the sense of community and personal responsibility among the students in her class?

So, each week she chose four students to lead a class meeting. Those students would decide on the issue to address - selected from notes dropped in the "grievance box" - and then lead a discussion on potential solutions.

She found that while her students needed some training in how to lead a meeting (a practical civic skill that one that not every adult has), many of her young students flourished in the new role – and that it was not always who you might expect. (This has been a consistent finding in research, and suggests the value of providing multiple and various leadership opportunities to students throughout their academic careers.) Even some students who had felt uncomfortable speaking in front of the entire class were enthusiastic about being placed in this leadership role.

The class as a whole demonstrated that first graders are able to talk about social issues on their own, as well as develop appropriate solutions.

So, there were a number of positive outcomes. One thing that didn't change significantly, however, was actual behavior!  While there was agreement on what should be done, the students didn’t always follow through. Perhaps this is an age/emotional development issue; certainly a question for future inquiry.

Among Morgan’s other conclusions: these meetings are more effective when held “as needed”; and the “grievance box” was a useful tool for helping students take responsibility for classroom issues.