Building the Cunniff Community

As we pause this month to remember the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, we are reminded of the importance of community. Dr. King frequently spoke about our collective need for a united, thoughtful, and committed community if we are to build the just society he envisioned for us. Similarly, in education, we know that being part of a strong, welcoming community helps children learn and grow. At the Cunniff, we are particularly lucky to have a community that is diverse both culturally and linguistically. We are also fortunate in the opportunity we have as a neighborhood school to build strong home-school ties for our children. Our task, then, is to design lessons that will make the best use of these strengths to help our children be the citizens we want them to be.

To this end, this month, we will be beginning the "homeside" component of our new, school-wide social curriculum, "Caring School Community". Designed to parallel the work we do with the children in school, the Homeside Activities provide a structure for families to share meaningful conversations with children. By asking children and adults to take the time to tell the stories of each family, we send several messages: families are important in making us who we are, each family is a uniquely valuable part of a larger community, and bringing family stories to school enriches our school. We also let children know that we value who they are and where they come from. Listening to and re-telling stories aloud, sometimes in other languages, help children develop the thinking skills they will need for their academic work, such as listening, sequencing, remembering details, and telling a compelling, interesting story to an audience. Finally, sharing theses stories with their classes means that the children can become the teachers, spreading the learning in even more, valuable, and sometimes unexpected directions.

Here are the "Homeside Activities" in a nutshell:
*Assignments are sent home once or twice a month.

*Children are asked to sit with an adult and share stories related to a given topic.

*No assignment should take more than 15 or 20 minutes.

*Family members are encouraged to share the stories in their native language. (We all express ourselves best in our native language.)

*There are no "Right Answers."

*Children then share the answers with their classes. They use these stories to reflect on both similarities and differences in our school community, to problem-solve effective ways of working with one another, and to appreciate different perspectives.

Research tells us that a strong home-school connection helps children feel a greater sense of belonging, and as a result, learn better. It is our hope that the Cunniff families will embrace the activities in this new program. We, here at school, look forward to the promise this initiative offers to strengthen an already rich community.

Collective Intelligence- Group IQ

In preparing our children to live and work in this new era, we need to remember that teaching them the skills of collaboration- negotiation, compassion, active listening, compromise and collective creativity- will be essential to their success. And, while asking children to work cooperatively with one another in small groups has been a central component of teacher practice for many decades, deliberate instruction in the skills of collaboration has not. Now, it seems, investigators studying successful adult interactions have discovered that groups can actually demonstrate a kind of collective "intelligence" based on the ability of the group members to work well together.

In a recent article in the Globe (December 19, 2010 "Group IQ"), reporter Carlyn Y. Johnson sited research from MIT and Carnegie Mellon that indicates that "group intelligence is not strongly tied to either the average intelligence of the members or of the team's smartest member." Nor were the group's "motivation, satisfaction or unity" important in predicting team success. The trick seemed, rather, to be in the make up of the team and its ability to "grapple with a complex task" effectively. The research further suggested that there were three criteria, in particular, that tracked with group effectiveness: leadership that encouraged active participation by all group members, with people taking turns speaking; the ability of the group members to "read" others feelings; and evidence of stronger "social sensitivity" on the part of more members in the group. In schools, it may be more a question of using this new insight and tweaking, rather than changing practice that will help us prepare our children to contribute to winning teams.

This year, all three Watertown elementary schools have adopted the "Caring School Communities" program as part of our effort to strengthen our school environments for children. Key to this curriculum is the expectation that children will learn to listen to and value the thoughts of other people. Identifying issues, brainstorming and evaluating proposed solutions to problems, and encouraging children to recognize the contributions of their peers to the success of the group also feature in the explicit goals of regular group meetings. This spring, the schools will be piloting a home-based component of the program, in which parents and guardians will be asked to take a role in similar conversations with our children. More details regarding this new kind of "homework" will be included in future newsletters.

As Johnson's article points out, "much of human history has been shaped not by one person at a time but by networks of people, whether they were bands of hunter-gatherers or corporations...[Moreover] new knowledge is increasingly being produced by teams." It is up to us all to ensure that our children will be active, thoughtful participants on those very important teams.