What is Gifted Education? Isolated learning versus integrated learning
Welcome to the Vanguard Gifted Academy educational blog. My name is Stacey Spears and I'm the Arts Specialist teacher here at Vanguard Gifted Academy. This is article three in our second series and I'd like to talk to you today about isolated versus integrated learning.
I speak to you today from my perspective as a music and drama specialist who has spent the majority of my teaching career isolated in a classroom, far down the hall or in another building where I was completely disconnected from my students’ learning. All of that changed for me when I started working at Vanguard and the learning became very connected, very open and very transparent, not only to my students, but between my colleagues and myself as well.
Alfie Kohn, author of the book Punished by Rewards, speaks about something that has always resonated with me. The idea that he puts forth is to compare each unit of study in education as a brick.
Children throughout their education receive brick after brick after brick. Upon graduation it is expected that they will have a house. Well, what they actually have is a pile of bricks.
He speaks about decontextualized learning. The subject learning that happens in individual classrooms for 45 minutes at a time with different teachers, who do not connect, makes learning very difficult to find relevant.
In Vanguard’s open learning environment students from every band level are able to hear what's going on with their classmates. It is far from being distracting, it actually enables them to create connections and discover the relevance of their learning.
One project that I'm particularly proud of that shows this integrated learning, and the benefits of it, happened when all of our students were studying the systems of the body at the same time. Older and younger students were each doing their studies in their own age-appropriate ways. All of the teachers got together and talked about how this unit could be presented in order to fully understand how the body systems worked together and independently.
Our solution was to have the students write resumes so that each system was personified. This was both a language arts and science project. The students had to include their past experience in their resume, which helped them solidify what each system did. They had to write and read letters of reference from other systems, which talked about the interdependence of the systems and also solidified the specialty of each system. Through all of this, they were learning very specific writing skills. During our quarterly presentation night to families and friends, each student took his/her resume to a mock job fair. Everyone in attendance at the presentation was able to question the students about their body system. They used their speaking skills to show mastery of their subject material and ease at public speaking. In the end, we all played xylophones together. There was so much learning going on! The students still talk about that unit. It was so memorable and relevant.
In closing, I'd like to go back to the idea of Alfie Kohn and the bricks. Students spend a great deal of time getting a formal education.
Is your child collecting bricks or are they building a solid foundation for a beautiful home they can live in for a lifetime?
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Resources:
Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: https://www.alfiekohn.org/punished-rewards/
An example of one of the student resumes: CISCO: The Circulatory System