Learning Floats into Summer

I am fortunate to live my passion.  Teaching and learning are at the core of who I am.  In my mind, images of teaching and learning aren’t limited to traditional classrooms.  My husband pokes fun at me because I find (and seize) teachable moments just about anywhere.  Opportunities for learning are omnipresent; hence the sticky-note pad in my center console.  I realize that not everyone shares my zeal for learning.  For some, the word “school” conjures up memories of the teeny puddle of drool they left, daily, on a doodled-up desk in Mr. Duh’s predictably dreadful class.  Anyone?  Anyone?  While my summer 2011 is booked with academic trips to Illinois and New York City, courses I am teaching and others I am taking, and professional development workshops I am facilitating, I realize that we all need a respite from all-things-school.  Summer months can offer educators, parents, and students the physical and mental space necessary for reflecting on the academic year, relaxing with people held dear, and reviving the whole being so that everyone enters the 2011-2012 year prepared to persevere.  Still, I believe that there are activities adults and students can participate in throughout the summer break so that no one slips and slides away from the learning gains accomplished. 

I’ve shared many times that I believe we lead storied, not numbered, lives.  When we want to make meaning of a particular experience, we story the experience: whether that is through a re-imagining in our minds, or a narrating of events to a trusted friend.  Story telling is a beautiful thing, and the cognitive and verbal skills it helps develop are useful both in and out of the school setting.  Over the summer, youth and adults can co-construct stories about shared experiences.  Some of the most moving pieces of writing former students composed came from opportunities to creatively represent their truths.  Often, their experiences writing creative-nonfiction led them to a parent, sibling, or grandparent.  One way to enhance the story is to make it an oral history project.    Cue StoryCorps.  A visit to the project’s website, http://storycorps.org, will provide detailed information about how you can record and archive your original oral history.  Once there, you can also listen to sample stories.  What a fantastic summer activity for a family and/or a group of friends.   

Not only do I believe in the power of storying our lives, but I also believe in the importance of 21^st century literacies.  My conceptions of learning are not bound to the four-walled classroom, and my conceptions of literacy are not limited to reading solely from bound books.  Today’s students both create and consume information in multi-media environments.  Computers shouldn’t hibernate during the summer months because there aren’t any science projects to conduct research (a.k.a. endlessly Google) for.  The thinking processes strengthened through story telling can be coupled with a strengthening of computer literacy skills.  Sites like xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com) allow visitors to create text to movie stories.  Depending on the number of extras you include in a movie, the movies can be made for free.  Many students have summer reading, and this is a fresh take on the traditional book report.  Given that text has to be composed and the student-producer must consider things like the character’s facial expressions and body language, learning can most definitely be represented through an original xtranormal movie.  Parents can challenge themselves to read the same books students have been assigned.  When finished reading the texts, students and parents can individually create an xtranormal movie and have a premiere around the family computer.  Popcorn, anyone?

Summer months offer me the time to tinker with sites I’ve bookmarked through the academic year.  The 2010-2011 school year was testament to the visual nature of our culture.  While Mr. Duh’s students drooled as he droned on about a William something or other, 21^st century students—digital natives—create vibrant stories in comic-strip style.  Sites like Pixton (http://www.pixton.com/create) invite users to write stories and complement prose with pictures and cartoons.  As an educator I have no doubt that when a student, in addition to thinking about the coherence of the story, thinks about things like selecting the background scene, attire, and shading that best complement particular points in the plot, s/he is exercising and developing a number cognitive functions.  Plus, it’s fun.  If anything melts away this summer, it ought to be the notion that representations of learning must be traditional, one-dimensional, five-five-sentence-paragraphs.  Some students have summer reading for social studies courses, can Honest Abe get an extreme make-over and still speak his honesty?  Anyone?  Everyone!

I have some more ideas for remixing summer academics.  For now, I will let these soak in.  No S.P.F. necessary.    

-Tara Payor (tafsu21@aol.com)