Crew Curriculum

so crew here at River Bluff is the Center for life we have over 2,000 students it is the only course that we have that meets every single day of the week and I think that that is so important for the structure that we've built because it is where we want every kid to feel at home so it melts we actually have the wonderful wonderful pleasure of having a very diverse pool we want to cater to that and celebrate that really who really opens up this space for getting to know each other on a different level a river Bluff crew is designed around four compelling questions in the ninth grade Who am I in the tenth grade where am I in the 11th grade where am I going and in the 12th grade how can I be a better local to global citizen that culminates in an impact project where senior crews choose a compelling topic with which to provide the impact to their local community we're going to find a issue in your local community pitch their topic which they have created in advance it's research oriented to their crew mates restate the pitch several times that people have a clear understanding of what they're arguing for come up with a plan that can make a positive impact bringing in experts and finding areas for field work getting an in-depth perspective of the issue and then after that we're gonna actually go and do it with our impact conference which is a student created conference for students by students and on tuned in on the stream reaction we encourage students find the place with which you're most passionate and then serve everybody has a different idea that they really believe in that should be voice and heard we want all crew mates to be able to discuss every single issue equitably everybody comes from different perspective different backgrounds so use of protocols is really important we'll move into our corners I've got them labeled for us today as you strongly agree here we have built a relationship and crew where we are comfortable with what we are saying and we don't have to hide anything we value multiple perspectives here at River Bluff and that's something we emphasize with our students but also with ourselves we could I mean there was just no way we could do this without a food design crew design team this is mixture of teachers from all discipline levels and all grade levels and all content areas and we come together several times throughout the year what's a space for individual grade level writing but also for the structure of crew holistically so that we can support each other and support our kids I do wish that every single teacher in this building would have the experience at least once just to be a part of that team and see what it looks like to design a curriculum for the macro level of 2,000 kids every single crew has a different culture and a different vibe and one curriculum doesn't fit every single crew individually so the curriculum we write is intended to be flexible so that crew leaders can take that and make it their own we want more of like an attention for things so we added a like a project at the end of every case study so now we're doing it everybody's got a different opinion nobody's is less valuable than somebody else's and that's how we innovate and how we grow as we continue to get bigger literally in size of our student body but also in our efforts and our initiatives crew is the one thing that stays the same and I think the consistency of that home base of the the crew space is so important to keeping the culture and our value system alive one of the ways crew helps to address some of these issues of difference in identity we've really started to develop a strong sense of what needs to happen in terms of crew curriculum here at Mel's we came up with the idea of building some some case studies in each grade that really spoke to some of the challenges that we were having the elements who case studies are the unit of study that is being focused on within the the crew space so they're catered to the grade level what's developmentally appropriate so in sixth grade these are the things that we are expecting to come up in seventh grade these are the things are expecting to come up so it's the the lens through which students will be discussing all that behavioral social emotional support and needs and a family of the family is a family we learned like how families are all different like some families have two moms or two dads or some families have no children at all and really allowing kids to bring in what's going on in their house to our crew family students have the opportunity to bring in artifacts from their homes that represent their families so I'm going to be putting these around the room and we're going to do a silent gallery knock we walked around looking for connections through people's artifacts like one artifact might have been a picture of your grandfather another artifact could have been stuffed animals that really applied to you like things that got you through tough times and I learned some good things some bad things some sad things some happy things about different people in my crew because of this case study I feel like so much faster I've been able to understand kids and like what informs their perspective she said I have a connection with Elias because my teachers from my old school was like my second see a lot of kids wanted to talk about like their immigration stories or their families that live other places and at first they thought it was racist if they talked about that but like as we like unpacked that and just like define things they were able to like okay I can talk about this this is okay in our last sixth-grade case study it's called and titled after the book it's called let's talk about race and we're gonna do just that and then let's talk about race we learned what race really was and it was like kind of like making it less of like a taboo subject the case studies have definitely like helped us to celebrate our differences we're really trying to tease those case studies out and push our thinking to really get some more courageous conversations out of them the reason why we're gonna focus on trust is because someone from this crew came up to me and said that they didn't want to share their humans of Mel's story because they felt like they couldn't trust the people in this crew all the 7th graders we are working on this case I called humans of mouths our project is at the end is to be able to share personal stories we've never been a hardcore this is the curriculum you must teach we try to be responsive to what teachers and students are needing at any given moment I decided to do this trust activity so that way when we get to those lessons it will feel more comfortable for them to be able to share like if you have a friend near they tell you a secret and like you're telling everybody like what Caleb's it's not really a secret when students have that opportunity to be themselves and speak their truth we can get to know each other on a level that's not usually present in most school buildings or classrooms in case studies and crew provide a lens for first students really engaging in examining seidel issues or developmentally challenging questions that that they're engaging with at the time who our students are as they come into the building and who they become throughout this six year seven year journey that they have with us [Music]

Channel: EL Education

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Id: doDLWHQp4Ys

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020