{"id":12069,"date":"2017-03-03T15:32:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T23:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=12069"},"modified":"2017-05-22T10:26:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T17:26:44","slug":"continuous-impact-growth-checking-in-with-previous-lrng-awardees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/continuous-impact-growth-checking-in-with-previous-lrng-awardees\/","title":{"rendered":"Continuous Impact & Growth: Checking in with Previous LRNG Awardees"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the 2017 LRNG Innovators Challenge ongoing, we revisit the continuing success of some of our past grantees.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2014, the first cohort of LRNG Innovators launched with the tagline of \u201cNo Bells, No Walls,\u201d with applicants asked to focus on innovative projects and strategies to expand the time and space for youth to engage in interest-driven, production-centered work. In 2015, we once again challenged teachers to reach beyond the schoolhouse door for young people to follow their interests and do ambitious work. With the launch of the 2017 LRNG Innovators Challenge<\/a> upon us, the staff at Educator Innovator found this to be a perfect opportunity to check in with previous LRNG grant awardees to observe the continuing impacts of their innovative projects within and beyond their respective learning communities.<\/p>\n

Many of these projects have already been blogged about here<\/a>. We reached out to the project leads for updates:<\/p>\n

Making Our Worlds with the UNC Charlotte Writing Project<\/h4>\n

The Making Our Worlds team, made up of teachers associated with the UNC Charlotte Writing Project in North Carolina, sought to demonstrate how student energy, imagination, and concern for their community can be harnessed to address issues of interest to them and their families. They did this by creating in-school spaces where students could follow their interests as makers of the language arts: digital storytelling, filmmaking, poetry, music, visual design, and more.<\/p>\n

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Steve Fulton, a middle school teacher, after harvesting stories from his Making Our Worlds colleagues for more than a year, just recently published a collection at NWP Digital Is speaking to the successes, challenges, and spreadability of their work:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile each teacher\u2019s story comes out of a different school, each with a different culture, curriculum, and set of student needs, they all reflect the common belief in the importance of engaging students as makers of Language Arts. \u2026 Making gives students opportunities to play with, try out, or represent ideas through physically and digitally making things and then sharing drafts (iterations) in progress.”<\/p>\n

One teacher, Erin Pfahler, spoke directly to how making transformed her classroom. She saw it help her students unleash their creativity, increasing students\u2019 willingness and desire to learn, as well as being just plain fun:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe definition of making that seems to make the most sense throughout this past year of making in my classroom is \u2018the creation of something to express something about the life experience.\u2019 I have started to see the study of Language Arts in the same way; \u2018the creation or study of an expression of the life experience.\u2019 The combination of making and Language Arts brings life, collaboration, and creativity into the classroom in a way I never thought possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: Making our worlds: Hactivism in middle grades English Language Arts<\/a><\/p>\n

We, Too, Are Connecticut<\/h4>\n

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A year-long, inter-district collaboration between teachers at the Connecticut Writing Project-Fairfield, The We, Too, Are Connecticut team envisioned a variation of ubuntuism called Digital Ubuntu, or \u201cWe can be us, digitally, because of how we compose together with 21st Century tools.\u201d The project brought together more than one hundred students from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to exchange knowledge about writing in digital spaces, and produce personalized, inquiry-based digital products shaped around the following units of instruction: TedTalks, Digital Scrapbooks, and Podcasting and Ethnography.<\/p>\n

For example, at Central High School, students took up their inquiry through podcasting, which they called \u201cradio plays.\u201d Shaun Mitchell directed radio plays with students at Central High School. Inspired by Matt De La Pen\u0303a\u2019s We Were Here<\/em>, playwrights wrote scripts, turned them into radio plays, and performed them as original pieces. The students produced a documentary about the experience.<\/p>\n