An Anatomy of a Learning Walk

Images from Learning Walk taken with 60 HS students on Friday, 10/21/11, beginning at the Staten Island Ferry, South Street, Brooklyn Bridge, Zuccotti Park, Wall Street, and back across the ferry.

At the Station

Approaching

The East Side

Midtown

Towards Manhattan

Like Rain Falling

Clouds Gathering

The Group

OWS

Chanting

The Photographer

Serfdom

Wall Street

Trinity Church

South Street Seaport

Liberty

The Narrows

Learning Walk, II

On Friday, October 21, 2011, sixty students, five teachers and I went to Manhattan via the Staten Island Ferry and took a walk along the East River to the Brooklyn Bridge, crossed it and came back to Manhattan and then some of us made our way to Zuccotti Park and then down Wall Street where we met up with the whole group at South Street Seaport, before walking back to the ferry. Along the way there was a lot of talk among students and teachers, noticings, and much photography. This is the third learning walk I have taken this year with teachers and students in Manhattan.  During the next few weeks I will be gathering impressions from both groups about the learning that is occurring and will post what I learn here, along with images and other products that students composed.

Map of Learning Walk for 10.21.11, 4.65 miles.

Out Walking: "For Every Walk is a Sort of Crusade"

Last Tuesday, I participated in a learning walk with 40 high school students and three other teachers.  The walk began and ended in Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan (NYC). 

Here is a map of the walk that I made at the site, MapMyWalk.

Map route of Learning Walk taken in Washington Heights (NYC).

Why Learning Walks?

It is a bit difficult to properly explain why simply walking, sauntering--needs to be a key method to occasion learning.  At a time when busy busy busy and faster faster faster seems to be the mode of work, slowing down to make enough empty space in which to learn may seem frivolous, unnecessary. I want to suggest it may be the most necessary action we make.  For so long we have mistakenly privileged being well educated with knowing explicit knowledge. The very way we structure secondary schools as content based courses and increasingly are restructuring elementary schools into dedicated periods to study "subjects" reinforces the notion of explicit knowledge being prized. 

Now to be sure, I am not suggesting that knowing explicit information is not important.  But I do want to stress that it is hopelessly incomplete and inside the 'school' day there needs to be large blocks of time for tacit learning.  Learning walks privilege the opportunity for both explicit and tacit knowing. For example, during the Washington Heights walk, students had the choice of using flip cameras and/or their own phones to document what they were noticing.  For example, towards the end of the walk, we were heading up Broadway and at 178th Street we met a man selling flavored ices.  He pushed a handmade cart in which he had a dozen or so bottles of flavor each in its own spot on the perimeter of the cart.  In the center of the cart was a block of ice he had covered. The students were fascinated and as the majority of them spoke Spanish, they were able to order their ices and talk with the man as his primary language seemed to be Spanish. I am uncertain as to how many, if any, of the students had previously seen ices made from an actual block of ice and a bit of muscle, but it was certainly a different experience than one might have ordering a slushy at a fast food place.  Many of the students documented the encounter.

During the next few weeks, most of the students will also take learning walks across the Brooklyn Bridge and through the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.  They previously took a learning walk through lower Manhattan via the Staten Island Ferry. On that trip we happened past Liberty Park and students were able to talk with protesters and police.  What students make of these experiences is impossible to know.  Yet, what is known is that these experiences will inform their knowing and may well become codified and shared in classes and in via their expressions.

Henry David Thoreau knew the value of walking.  In his seminal text, Walking, he wrote:

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a
genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived
"from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and
asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy
Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a
Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their
walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they
who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some,
however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home,
which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular
home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of
successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be
the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is
no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while
sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the
first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is
a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth
and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

I think both definitions work well. One outcome sought via the learning walks is to help students (and ourselves) experience a world that may be less than familiar and in doing so be at home everywhere.  The second is to create the occasion where experiential ways of knowing happen and allow for a different type of community to emerge.  In this manner, the learning walk is a type of crusade: a joining together.

Here are a few images I made during the walk. 

Community Partners in Learning: Grow it Green

Entrance to the Urban Farm at Lafayette

In earlier post, I wrote about the concept of learning walks:

...learning walks are rhizomatic.  They are inherently about being in the middle of things and coming to learn what could not been predetermined. Learning walks are part of the "curriculum" for instructional seminar (which I described here).

In explaining the learning desired via instructional seminar, I wrote:

One of the outcomes sought via instructional seminar from an institutional point of view, is that students will deepen their capacities to read, write, and problem solve. Initially, invited students to seminar have been "identified" by teachers and based on former course and state test performances.  I think of this year as a bridge year: a way to span the great difference between the factory model of lab classes and a more rhizomatic understanding of learning.  As the practice embodied in seminar becomes better established, any student could opt in and out of seminar.  Seminar is not an assigned course as no credit is earned, but rather an academic service. One might think of academic seminar as a learning center.

What is different though about instructional seminar is that tacit knowledge is critical, not ancillary. And so one might ask, how would walking about help a student to read, write, or problem solve better?  These cognitive processes are deeply influenced by our tacit knowledge.  For example, I can engage in complex reading, writing, and problem solving based on the narrative my reading of the images I made on the learning walk suggests. The walk may well anchor future expressions and inquiries.  Instead of beginning with explicit knowledge, learning walks allow for embodied learning. This difference is critical and may well be difficult for many to understand. Learning is not determined but encountered within the experiences and as such is rhizomatic.

'

Farmer Shaun

A few days ago I was visiting Farmer Shaun at the Urban Farm at Lafayette in Morristown, NJ. The Urban Farm is one of two community gardens developed by Grow it Green Morristown. The agricultural teaching farm is located on land owned by the Morris School District. The garden is located about 75 feet from where I park my car most days.  

Urban Farm is described as follows on the Grow it Green website:

Working on land owned by the Morris School District, the garden showcases the transformation of an underutilized former school yard, into a living classroom for the estimated 4,700 children of the Morris School District, as well as our local community.  Additionally, the produce from the garden will be donated to the District and to area food banks. 

The teaching garden is located at the Lafayette Learning Center on Hazel Street, in one of Morristown’s most diverse neighborhoods.  When we envisioned this project,  we had a strong commitment to securing this specific site,  believing that this garden will be so much more than just a place where plants grow.  It will be a place where community grows.  It is our hope that through creating a place of beauty and learning in the heart of this community that people from across the County will come together - people who might otherwise never had the opportunity to meet one another - to share in the experience learning the art and science of growing food.

So the other day while I was at the farm talking with Shaun, I wondered about this site being one of our community partners for Instructional Seminar. I was thinking that this garden might become a destination by some high school students during learning walks.  I discussed the idea with Shaun who was incredibly positive and added that so much could be learned about design in addition to science, mathematics, and history.

Standing among the asparagus, corn, flowers, basil, beets, carrots, sunflowers, okra, kale, and radishes (to name but some)--it seemed to me that the garden is a compelling learning space just waiting for high school students to populate it.  I imagine it as an aesthetic place every bit as much as it is a farm. Paolo Freire wrote:

It is the same for us--whether we are Latin American school-children, students in Asia or university teachers in Europe or America: friend, please never lose your capacity for wonder and astonishment in the world which you regard and in which you live.

Next September when learning walks begin at the high school, I am hopeful that the Urban Farms will become a location students want to visit and dwell.

Being in the Middle: Learning Walks

Introduction

Image made on Learning Walk 7.1.11

So imagine a commitment to learning that involved making regular learning walks with high school students as a normal part of the "school" day.  Now, these learning walks should not be confused with walking tours, which are designed based on planned outcomes.  One walks to point X in order to see object or artifact Y.  The points are predetermined, hierarchical in design.

Instead, learning walks are rhizomatic.  They are inherently about being in the middle of things and coming to learn what could not been predetermined. Learning walks are part of the "curriculum" for instructional seminar (which I described here).  Instructional seminar--a service, not a course--will replace Lab Classes at a NJ high school this September (2011). Lab classes are a hold over of a factory model where students were deposited into generic English and/or math courses and "remediated."  Knowledge transfer was the belief that fueled the efficacy of lab classes.   Instructional seminar affords a more consistent opportunity for students to access fluid academic services and to do so with agency. A vision statement for Instructional seminar might well be: Experimentation Matters. 

Learning walks represent one aspect of instructional seminar (they are scheduled for every possible block across a rotating schedule so there are lots of IS sections) that at least a few of us (Celeste Hammell, John Madden,  @doumakara, @shklepesch and I) intend to experiment with during the upcoming school year.  It's our intention that ownership of leaning walks will shift from teacher-initiated to shared between teacher and learner as the school year progresses. Although physically our learning walks will have start and stop points and be constrained by time, the potential learning that is engendered will not be confined to the walk itself, nor will the walk have a route that is determined.  There are any possible walks on any day with the same and different people, as well as learning that is both predictable and unpredictable. The process is nomadic intentionally.

A Trial Learning Walk

Contact Sheet of Images Made While Walking

Yesterday I set out on a "trial" walk.  I gave myself one hour to walk about Morristown, NJ and document what I saw using my iPhone.  I knew learning would happen, but not based on a prescribed lesson.  Instead my trial learning walk would epitomize the premise, "We know more than we can tell" (Michael Polanyi as quoted in Thomas & Brown, 2011).  Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) describe, in chapter six of The New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, the tensions between explicit and tacit knowledge. They define tacit knowledge as: "the component of knowing that is assumed, unsaid, and understood as a product of experience and interaction" (np, e-book).  I had hoped that my walking about would provide a brief occasion to experience a city-town I work in, but really don't know or understand very well. 

So I walked for an hour and snapped pictures along the way, as well as filming a bit too. I have included a contact sheet of 20 images I made while walking and a very brief film.  It's still early to make much of the images or film, but I know that there's an emerging sense of differences within the city and how geography of place gives way to neighborhoods. These may well be ideas that I will explore more, contemplate--or not.  I imagine how different the walk might be alongside others or if instead of filming and image making, I only captured sound.  I think about what it might mean to interview those I meet along the way.  Or what might happen if I and others captured (video) stories of people on the street and learned them well enough to perform a walk as an ethnodrama.

Possibilities happen when you remain in the middle of things.

Tacit Knowledge & Rhizomatic Learning

One of the outcomes sought via instructional seminar from an institutional point of view, is that students will deepen their capacities to read, write, and problem solve. Initially, invited students to seminar have been "identified" by teachers and based on former course and state test performances.  I think of this year as a bridge year: a way to span the great difference between the factory model of lab classes and a more rhizomatic understanding of learning.  As the practice embodied in seminar becomes better established, any student could opt in and out of seminar.  Seminar is not an assigned course as no credit is earned, but rather an academic service. One might think of academic seminar as a learning center.

What is different though about instructional seminar is that tacit knowledge is critical, not ancillary. And so one might ask, how would walking about help a student to read, write, or problem solve better?  These cognitive processes are deeply influenced by our tacit knowledge.  For example, I can engage in complex reading, writing, and problem solving based on the narrative my reading of the images I made on the learning walk suggests. The walk may well anchor future expressions and inquiries.  Instead of beginning with explicit knowledge, learning walks allow for embodied learning. This difference is critical and may well be difficult for many to understand. Learning is not determined but encountered within the experiences and as such is rhizomatic.

Thomas and Brown (2011) explain that:

In the old culture of learning, educational institutions and practices focused almost exclusively on explicit knowledge, leaving tacit dimensions to build gradually on its own, over time...Knowledge was valued in the old culture because it was seen as stable. It was thought to transcend time and place...The twenty-first century, however, belongs to the tacit. In the digital world we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing (np, e-book).

After the Children Went Home

Much of what we know about knowledge has been (in)formed by education and those of us who have not only attended school but have made our living working at school may find it difficult to even imagine learning that is not causal.   We have organized schools based on the belief that knowledge can be transferred from one individual to another, predicated on the belief that "knowledge" was considered to be a stable matter.  In truth, knowledge has never actually been a stable regardless of century, but dominant cultural beliefs have for the most part been the single player on the "what counts as important learning" stage and so a prescribed body of "explicit knowledge" was privileged.  Just considered the teaching of American history and the differences about what counts as knowledge as expressed in a traditional textbook, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, or Marco Torres's students' films (SFETT).  With the presence of cultural revolutions and information technologies what counts as important learning appears to be a less certain affair. Perhaps now, especially with information access via the Internet, it is easier to recognize that knowledge is never stable, but constantly changing, and so too must our ideas about learning evolve.

Learning walks, like the one I took, are not about naming already determined facts, although these may well play a role in the learning and the expression of learning. Rather learning walks are about blending what we may have learned explicitly and tacitly with what we are coming to know.

Works Cited:
Thomas, D.s & J.S. Brown. (2011). The New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.

The Big Remix: Holden, Collage, Sound, Film & Graffiti

American Mosaic II. Image by Mary Ann Reilly (South Bronx, 2009).

So here's what I am wondering: To what end does The Catcher in the Rye represent adolescence in 2010?  To explore this question I am designing an engagement with tenth grade students and their two teachers, John Madden and Chris Kenny from Morristown High School.  Here's what is planned:

1. Introduce tenth grade students to photographic collage. 
2. Accompany the teachers and their students to NYC to walk in the steps that Holden took as he made his way through Manhattan. John Madden has the route set.
3. Have everyone on the trip record/make images, film, audio along the way that reflect Holden's odyssey AND also texts that represent adolescence today (graffiti, youth, street scenes, traffic, tech tools).
4. Shoot images of book pages, written text, watercolor, scrunched up paper, paper towel, etc.
5. Remix images, sound, and film back in the classroom in order to create art works that explore the question of (re)presentation. I had a brainstorm last night and am now wondering how the Brushes app on an iPad might help us to do the remixing work. We will explore creating using iPads,  as well as Macbooks (iMovie, iPhoto and Photoshop). 
6. Print photographic work and ready any film/audio. Figure out how to display student work without a lot of cost:)
7. Consider which finished images to use and in what order.  Display finished work on internet and in a public exhibition.
8. Have students author exhibition notes that are done in print and as a podcast that is uploaded to iTunes.
9. Invite the public (virtual and real). 
10. Reconsider all of this based on feedback by John, Chris and the students.

Here are a few examples that I made of photographic collage.

Looking. Image by Mary Ann Reilly. (Tuscany, Italy 2009)

American Mosaic I. Image by Mary Ann Reilly (Manhattan, 2009).

Grand Central. Image by Mary Ann Reilly (Manhattan, 2009).

Voyeur. Image by Mary Ann Reilly (Paterson, NJ, 2009).