What is Mission: X?
Mission: X is the name of our spring LA curriculum. Students set goals for work to be completed weekly and are graded on process, progress, and product. I guide them in the choice of their work, which must involve reading, writing, and making. The mission lasts 8 weeks. There are stages, opportunities for self-correction and development, and a festival at the end.
General Values
They will learn some comfort with uncertainty and frustration, which are the states in which they will work to make their own decisions. The more decisions the student makes, the stronger the student becomes. I want the student to make as many decisions as possible within the world of rules I create and maintain for them. They may not be in the mood to do anything until they start to do something. They must always be actively working on something. They do not need a goal in mind. They should free themselves from working toward a defined product and be open to following the work where it leads.
LA Connection
To connect this mission to the work we have been doing in LA all year, I start from our approach to books and movies: “Act like a hero in a world of rules.” The students act like the heroes in the world I create. I create the world and the rules. The student is the hero. The student chooses, makes plans, acts, fails, regroups, adapts, and keeps going. In this case, however, our goal is not to save someone, escape from the labyrinth, or slay the minotaur. Our goal is to make the journey, step by step, week by week, and become, at the end, a hero.
Examples
A student interested in food may write three entries per week for a food blog. A student interested in short fiction may write one draft per week. A student interested in music may write two song lyrics per week. Other work may include a talk show, an arts magazine, a poetry chapbook, a student news blog, a commonplace book, a zine, a script, a short film or films, interviews, reviews, a how-to poster or posters, a photo blog, a journal that tracks change over time, a web comic or comic book, a children’s book, an exploration of vocabulary words, a journal, a how-to video, a performance, an exhibit, and so on. Students, however, must start with activities in mind, not end products, and allow their work to develop.
Rest assured that I guide the students every day in class. For example, I have already given mini-lessons on copyright to both 7th and 8th grades, because students asked how their written work could be copyrighted. I also noticed that some students were interested in putting the lyrics of contemporary songs on T-shirts and selling them on Etsy, and I put the kibosh on that with a mini-lecture about copyright infringement. Student questions will be one driver of mini-lessons and impromptu mini-lectures.
Flexibility
Students track themselves and may switch work if their progress stalls. Students are expected to start small and be open enough to develop, refine, and expand their work. The focus is on working weekly, not on producing a predetermined product. A student writing music lyrics may develop her work by recording another student performing her song. A student blogging about food may choose to make a difficult dish and document the process. A student writing a script may ask others to act in a short film of the first several scenes. Each student must pursue their own work, but any student can support and participate in the activities of another student. I caution students about working with others outside of Woodlawn. Students should be able to work at all times, in class and outside of class, and that is complicated when students become dependent on the schedules and participation of others.
Weekly Tracker
Students track progress on little entry sheets pasted to a poster in the classroom. We review their weekly progress to establish their status: off pace, on pace, or exceeding the pace. We do not look too far ahead but, rather, focus on what is in front of us in order to stay on pace with our progress goals.
Project-based Learning: Choice within Limits
I am excited about developing this refinement of project-based learning for Language Arts. The underlying principle is to differentiate the educational experience among many kinds of learners. This is a fancy way of saying that I create an environment in which the students, independently, make as many choices as possible while I guide them, add mini-lessons and mini-requirements, and keep them actively working throughout the trimester.
(One of the books to read is Making Classrooms Better, the follow-up to Mind, Brain, and Education Science.)
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