Real learning
Kapka Family Groups | 11/13/2008 | 1.5 hours field work | Present: Kapka students, teachers and myself
This week in the Kapka Family Groups I had the opportunity to witness a 17 year old tradition in the process of unfolding. The tradition is the preparation and eventual delivery of a complete Thanksgiving dinner to 19 local families.
The Tradition
The Kapka community has had a connection with several families, consisting mostly of elders who lack the means to enjoy a meaningful Thanksgiving meal on their own. The community has for 17 years prepared and delivered a complete dinner to these families. The planning, preparation and delivery of the meals involves students, teachers and parents. This year, the group will be delivering 45 meals to a total of 19 families, many of who are known to the school for many years. This is tradition provides a rich, authentic learning experiences in everything the social studies subject area stands for including connecting with diverse people, of many different background and cultures, finding a way to build responsible and sensitive relationships with people in your local community, providing a social service, participating in community traditions, amongst some of the goals of the discipline.
The completed gift that a group of 3-4 students deliver to each family consists of a whole Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings, a card with a poem written by a student, a centerpiece for the table, placemats made by students, all contained in a banker box decorated with art work created by students.
Key observations and learning
While the idea of this activity came long before any of the students participating in it, they were all keenly connected and involved in the preparation work I witnessed. Today, they did leaf printing that will be part of the art work used to decorate the banker box for each family. I think the students are able to do this because the individual activities that bring this extravaganza together are carefully designed to be meaningful and engaging to the students.
The teachers take care to involve all students in all steps of the process from planning the meals, determining the shopping list, going shopping, preparing the meal, creating the banker box and the accessories that go into it. This level of involvement gives the students a sense of ownership and connection that makes the gift even more meaningful to them.
Teachers take care to speak to students about what they might experience when they go to deliver the meal. They are in this way prepared in some way to deal with the diversity of the family they might meet. They are also provided an opportunity to reflect on the experience. This contextualizes and provides space for students to consider and contemplate the richness of meeting a set of people in a space that is very different from their own reality.
The various activities involved in creating this gift provide for some of the most integrated learning experiences. For example, determining the shopping list involves taking the recipe for each dish and multiplying it to come up with the quantity for each ingredient. This is an authentic mathematical problem that students are most willing to engage in. It is tied to a deep social studies experience. Similarly, the poems that students write provide for authentic literacy experiences.
Takeaway(s)
I am moved by the gracious and authentic nature of this learning experience. It is so real, that it is impossible to break it down to identify all the various disciplines and content areas that are covered by it. One ought not even try to do such a breakdown. That would take away from the sanctity of the wholeness of the experience. It is such whole, real, compassionate learning experiences that provide real learning to real students touching them in some deeply real ways. Why couldn't all learning be like this?