A Vision of What School Should Look Like

This summer was by far the busiest summer of my life. I've learned so much and made great strides as an educator this summer. With the whirlwind of events consuming me, I am recommitting myself to blogging as a way to reflect and record my thoughts as I ponder ways to be the best version of myself.

Last day selfie with one of our "veteran" campers!

One of the highlights from this summer was the production of our Second Annual Wild West STEM Camp. Because we fell in love with our campers last year (now incoming 6th graders), we decided to invite each of them back for another year along with a new group of incoming 5th graders. Again this year, we asked each Fourth Grade teachers in our district to nominate one "at-risk" student whom they believed would benefit from the opportunity from their class to attend our camp. When it was all said and done, we ended up with 39 campers, and we needed every bit of our resources to accommodate the large group!

The camp was full of success stories, and I could write a book with all the stories we learned and shared with our campers; we had another amazing group, and each one of them have their own heroes story. However, there was one little boy who caught my attention, and I'd like to share his story.

A few days before the camp started, he sent me a friend request on Facebook. Curious about the young man, I did a bit of research to find out his back story. It turns out this young man comes from a bit of a troubled background, but he's pretty bright. In Fourth Grade he found the principals office more than his fair share, and he had even punched his teacher. As I checked out his Facebook page, I couldn't help but notice his most recent post. In it, he declared that he was thinking about his future. He said that he was thrilled to be chosen to participate in the upcoming STEM Camp, and he couldn't wait to learn more about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. He went on to personally thank 39 of his friends and family members for helping him get to this point in his life. As I read his post, I knew that this young man better have his seat belt on because he was in for the ride of his life!

On the first day of camp, I watched this young man from a distance. I watched him tinker, problem solve, plan, and create. This kid jumped in head first and was doing some extremely high level thinking from the moment he walked through the door. One of their first challenges was to create a hot air balloon from a garbage bag, some string, straws, candles, and tin foil. Although his team didn't get their balloon off the floor, they were highly engaged, and they re-engineered and tinkered to try to solve their proclaimed problem of their design, the heavy weight of their "basket."

At the end of the day this student approached me. He wanted to know if he could bring his tablet to camp the next day. When I asked him why he wanted to bring his tablet, he informed me that he wanted to record everything he was learning by taking pictures. Then, he wanted to create a video with music using his pictures to share on his YouTube channel (keep in mind that this student just finished Fourth Grade). I could hardly contain my excitement because he shared the same kind of entrpreneurial spirit as me, but I also thought that it could potentially cause some problems. So, I told him that he should leave his tablet at home because I would hate for it to get damaged or stolen. That's when he said, "Mr. Coffey, I'm pretty sure I'm the worst behaved kid here, and not even I would steal someone's tablet."

I was heart broken. I replied with, "What do you mean?" Hoping he would elaborate. 

He said, "Mr. Coffey, I'm a bad kid. I get in trouble a lot. I have the worst behavior out of all the kids here. I don't think anyone else would steal my tablet."

More heartbroken then before, I exclaimed, "I don't know what you're talking about. I watched you all day, and I didn't see you cause one bit of trouble. In fact, I would say that you were one of the BEST behaved kids in this camp today."

That's when he proclaimed one of the most profound statements to part the lips of a fourth grader, "That's because I was busy all day long."

Bingo. You've got it. I think if he knew the word, he would have used the word engaged instead of busy. Because I've seen "busy" kids find trouble, but I rarely see "engaged" kids find trouble. But, he's right. He was too engaged to even consider finding trouble. He couldn't keep his eyes, hands, brain, or heart off his projects. He was too busy designing, building, testing, problem solving, re-engineering, re-testing, analyzing, and creating. He wouldn't have even glanced at trouble if trouble was dancing on the table dressed in a tutu. These students were that engaged and passionate about their creations. They had too much pride in their concepts to allow for distractions. And, this focus didn't come from any extrinsic motivation. They weren't playing for any prize or trophy. They were engaged because they wanted to rise to the challenge. Like their balloon filling with hot air, they wanted to feel their heart fill with pride when they watched their balloon hover above the tile. 

That's when it really hit home. This experience shouldn't be limited to a week long camp during the summer for 39 elementary students; this is what every student should experience on a daily basis at school. Our campers were racing to the school to give themselves a few extra moments to tinker with their creations. They were trying to stay late to make one last adjustment to their designs. They couldn't get enough. That's what school should look and feel like.

To get to that point, we have to move away from our obsession with everything being fair and equal. Listen, a great education doesn't have to look and feel the same for every student. Let students direct their path. Allow students to make some choices, to have some say, to use their voice regarding their education. If a kid is infatuated with volcanoes in Third Grade, let the kid learn about volcanoes for goodness sakes! Who cares if volcanoes aren't in the curriculum until Sixth Grade. Throw some logs on that fire before it goes out!! That doesn't mean every student has to learn about volcanoes, let them explore and find something they are curious about or passionate about.

In addition, we need to get over our other obsession with content. The point of school (at least in this day and age) is not to memorize as many facts as possible. We have moved beyond this point in education. Our students have access to facts and content in their pocket. Today, it is important that we focus on how to think. Now that we have all this knowledge in our pocket, what can we do with it? How can we analyze it? How can we interpret it? How can we use it to problem solve? These will be the skills necessary in tomorrow's world (heck, even today's world)! So, rather than focusing on learning content, we should focus on using content to teach thinking skills. When you look at education through this lens, suddenly the content become less important. You can teach thinking skills through any content. Am I saying we abandon all our standards and the Common Core State Standards? No, I'm simply asking us to think about what's important. In my humble opinion, thinking skills are most important, and our content should play a supporting role in the goal of creating independent thinkers.

This week long STEM Camp about brought me to the point of exhaustion. The planning, development, budgeting, logistics, purchasing, scheduling, and caring for the details brought me to the edge of my sanity. There were many things that I can improve for next year. In fact, our theme for next year is "Raise the Bar." But, for the second summer in a row, it was the most rewarding aspect of my summer. By the last day, our campers were literally coming to each of us begging to be invited back next year. It has been so fun to watch them develop, and I hope to get to track them as they grow into young adults. Exhaustion is a small price to pay for the hope that you had a positive impact on one of these beautiful learners. As they thanked me on their way out the door, I hope they heard my thank you; because it is them that have the impact on me.

Learning Through STEM

Last April I had this idea about creating a STEM Camp in my community. The more I thought about it, the better the idea sounded. However, I knew the project was far too big to conquer alone. So, I asked my colleague Shannon Ralph (@sralph81) who is a spectacular Biology teacher at my school to team up with me. Shannon it's an outspoken advocate for Inquiry Based Learning and her ideas lined up perfectly with my new found passion of Project Based Learning. We also enlisted the help of a few elementary teachers to help us organize and run the camp. We teamed up with Cindy Venard, Jennifer Millier (@jmill517), and my wife Amanda Coffey (@AmandaCoffey21). Although we didn't know where our funding would come from, or where we'd find students, we did know that we wanted a camp that was completely hands on and full of engaging challenges.

Shannon and I pitched our idea to anyone who would listen! We talked to community members, parents, and administration. Thankfully, every person we talked to believed in our vision and wanted to find ways they could get involved. We were able to secure donations from a private business (Dodge City Dental) and Dodge City Community College, and our administration seached, scrounged, and scraped up funding to ensure our camp received the resources we needed to make it successful. We were also able to be resourceful and use recycled and repurposed materials whenever possible. It was overwhelming to witness the generosity of our community to help put this camp together and ensure we could offer the opportunity to students at no cost!

Together Shannon and I thought that it would be fun to offer the camp to fourth graders. We thought that was a pivotal age where students were still inspired and enthusiastic about school, but also had the mental capacity to understand some of the concepts we wanted to emphasize. The problem was we didn't know how to reach any fourth graders. Without defining any terms we decided to simply ask every fourth grade teacher in our district to nominate "one at risk student who they believed would benefit from this type of experience." To be honest, I was concerned about turning over the control of who was going to be invited to our camp. However, my concerns were immediately put to rest after the first day of camp. We had an unbelievable group of young boys and girls! They were brilliant, hard working, fun loving campers with overwhelmingly positive attitudes! I immediately fell in love with each of our campers and I'm excited to follow their progress as they work their way through our school system!

We structured our camp to last three hours per day for five days. We decided to give each day a theme and create challenges and projects based upon that theme. The themes we chose were Air and Space, Ecology, Chemistry, Energy, and Engineering. As much as we could, we tried to create challenges where our campers would need to design, build, test, re-design, re-build, and re-test until they had a product that satisfied the challenge. It was simply inspiring to watch their little brains spin and their little fingers put to work. Watching our campers at work really rejuvenated my outlook on the future of our planet. We have some really creative and brilliant students in our classrooms; unfortunately, they are not always given the opportunity to let it show. At our camp we tried to give them full permission to allow their brilliance to shine!

Almost every day we had a guest speaker from the community come and talk briefly with our campers. We wanted to show our campers that there are lots of career opportunities out there in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The speakers talked to our campers about their education and the types of opportunities at their jobs. It was fun to listen to the questions our campers had for our speakers. In most cases, our speakers were able to spend the rest of the morning with our campers. They hopped right into the mix and took directions from our campers as they worked to complete their challenges. I was very grateful for their willingness to share their experiences with our young campers!

I have to give credit to my partner Shannon for thinking of the idea of having high school students volunteer to help with the camp. We both asked a few of our high school students if they would be interested in helping to run the camp, and thankfully we received positive responses. We had a total of eight student volunteers, and I would not hesitate to say they were the number one reason for the camp's huge success. We spent time mentoring our "teenagers" (as they would come to be known) about the challenges. We would also talk to them about Inquiry Based Learning and Project Based Learning. We asked them to encourage the campers to try and experiment with their ideas. We asked them not to direct the campers, but rather support the campers as they worked their way through the challenge. Our teenagers were wonderful! The campers LOVED working with the high school students!

The other afternoon I was at the city swimming pool with my son. As we were leaving, I heard a woman yelling, "Mr. Coffey! Mr. Coffey!" I turned around, and there was a grown woman chasing me! She said, "Mr. Coffey, I'm Julian's mom. I saw you and I just had to stop you so I could thank you. Julian LOVED your STEM Camp! Thank you so much for giving him that opportunity. Wednesday night Julian was down in the dumps and acting very sad. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he was sad because he only had two days left of camp. It was the highlight of his summer!" That is not the first experience I have had with parents going out of their way to thank me for inviting their kid to the STEM Camp. Although I appreciate their gratitude, I almost feel bad accepting it. I feel like I should be thanking them (and I do whenever I have these encounters). It was their willingness to arrange rides, change schedules, and commit to this camp that made it so successful. It was their children who took time from their summer, worked hard, and kept a smile on their face for three hours every day of the week! Because of them, I became a better teacher. I learned more in that week than any college course or professional development seminar could have ever taught me. I can't think of any other way I would like to spend a week of my summer! The entire experience was exponentially more amazing than any vision I had in April. I am eternally grateful to Shannon Ralph, Cindy Venard, Jennifer Miller, Amanda Coffey, our eight teenagers, each of our campers, their parents and family, my principal Jacque Feist, our school district, our donors, and all the other people in our community who helped bring this camp to life! I can't wait to see what the future holds! Thank you!!

Here is a highlight video of our experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUY94u67txM