School of the Future : Chapter TWO
The School of the Future
School of the Future opened July 2010 as an inter-generational free school for the community around Sgt. Dougherty Park, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. From solar-powered lighting to a giant scrabble board, giant Tyvek mountains and experimental food sculptures, the School of the Future is an invitation to experiment and analyze learning everything through the arts. Each class, performance, and student-teacher exchange was a learning experience, encouraging the use of under-utilized public space as a way to learn and question cultural constructs and personal responses to school and education.
Led by Cassie Thornton and Chris Kennedy, School of the Future is a project about what a school can be. There are three chapters of this project: the founding of the Teaching Artists Union; the formation of the School of the Future; and the composition of a research document that will be distributed to students and teachers who are interested in starting their own schools. The document will also be offered to the Department of Education as a model for how learning can happen.
**Note: All below text is authored by Allison Faye. The original document will be posted shortly.**
Contents
1. Background
- 1.1 Experiments in Theories
- 1.2 Cassie’s Take
- 1.3 Inspiration: Big Bambu
2. Preparation
- 2.1 Teaching Artist Union
- 2.2 Research
- 2.3 Structures and Practice: Chaos Theory and Spontaneous Learning
3. The School of the Future and Curriculum
4. Feedback
5. Moving Forward
6. Use of Funds and Accounting
7. References
8. External Links
1. Experiments in Theories
School of the Future (SotF) is an ongoing experiment in dynamic theories of organization and knowledge creation. The square is the past and the circle is the future. The project asks: How do events come together and communities form without formal structures of organization? What does individual and collective agency look like and what are the key variables that make it possible?
2. Cassie’s Take
“A teaching artist is one who interacts provocatively and in interesting ways with others and is more functional than furniture.” - Cassie Thornton, SotF Acting Principal
Cassie’s definition addresses the associatively loaded idea of being a teacher and, understandings of social practice as artistic purpose. SotF artists cited people as the subject of their work, their practice as investigative, the medium as human-interaction and, the process and form as one of gentle disruption. The idea of being “more functional than furniture” certainly raises the stakes of artistic practice. At the heart of the SotF experiment is the artist as “inquirist” and, the theory of affordance as “action possibilities”, wherein possibility is nothing less thanhuman agency and knowledge of self. In the SotF experiment we all became Incidental Persons, invited to act within the events given parameters.
3. Inspiration: Big Bambú
Big Bambú can be considered to be in the realm of architecture and performance. A massive tower created from lashed together bamboo poles it brings into space representations of complexity and chaos. At its pinnacle, the continually evolving architecture being built from within (no outside scaffolding or support) will cantilever out as far as the bamboo poles network allows, and then will bridge down to the floor. At this point the first tower will be dismantled pole by pole and carried through the structure and down to create another monumental tower and then on again, walking down the 320 feet space, almost like a Slinky and then back again. BigBambú evolves through the continuous rebuilding and rethinking of the structure at all times.
“We are too comfortable with power structures. The less hierarchy the more responsibility spreads out... society should be more free.” “Whatever we make happen is it.” - Doug Paulson
Like the organically performed, free form style of intuitive construction initiated by the Starn Brothers and Big Bambú, the process by which SotF emerged and the forms that developed resulted out of a process of selection and retention and the naturally occurring collaborative practices of engagement that formed out of the open-ended, non-hierarchal systems of the experiment.
1. Teaching Artist Union
The SotF experiment began as a dialog between Cassie Thornton, founder of the Teaching Artist Union (TAU) and Chris Kennedy, founder of the Institute of Applied Aesthetics (IAA), about the nature of art, teaching, learning and conceptions of what school could be. Beginning with the closest ring of friends, acquaintances and professional relationships, people were invited into the dialog through presentations, performances, visual communications, chance encounters, internet announcements, one on one exchanges and word of mouth. As the project developed the dialog expanded in to local organizations, community councils, neighborhood associations and individuals in and around the park. In this way the ideas set in motion by Cassie and Chris about what school could be, spread, engaged and, in many cases, caught hold and, formed new connections that developed into nodes of growth and expansion.
2. Research Team
The five member research team was formed through mutual interests, coincidental encounters and synergy. The premise of our investigation and the process by which information was gathered reflects a documentary approach to research that treats “practical circumstances”, and practical sociological reasoning as topics of study. In our case the activities being observed focused on the practical circumstance of teaching and learning. Observations were directed toward identifying behaviors, teaching practices, and learning structures. This documentary method of interpretation is based on the idea that there is no absolute or privileged position. Researchers are knowledgeable agents with capacities for unique personal and professional insight.
3. Structures and Practice: Chaos Theory and Spontaneous Learning
The premise of the SotF experiment can be understood as a move away from the controlling efforts of the square toward the spiraling potential of the circle. Visualizations of the Mandelbrot set demonstrate the way that natural structures emerge from non-linear dynamics. As one thing ends another begins. The spiraling motion created through the dynamics of interactivity create form along the edges of which new forms spiral out. Chaos theory instructs us that natural and social systems are stable and survive precisely because they are ‘unprincipled’, i.e. they behave non-linearily. Chaos theory offers insight and guidance into the shifting relationship between disorder and order. Freedom expands to a point, offering sufficient room for variability to adapt to the disorder, after which freedom overwhelms and, in the same instance that coherence is lost, new forms of order emerge resulting in a continual act of balance between creativity and rationality.
Spontaneous learning happens when people are free to do what interests them. Most researchers describe interest as a phenomenon that emerges from an individuals interaction with the environment, and they distinguish between situational interest and individual interest. Situational interest occurs when one encounters tasks or environments with a degree of uncertainty, challenge or novelty. Environments that nourish our built-in propensity for curiosity and exploration trigger situational interest. Individual interest is defined as a relatively enduring preference for certain topics, subject areas, or activities. The pursuit of individual interest is usually associated with intrinsically motivated learning, increased knowledge, positive emotions and the desire to learn more. Registration of an effect is also a condition of motivation. When opportunities for action develop in balance with a person’s interests and abilities, the “I can do it” “logic of action” transforms ‘effect’ into efficacy, the feeling of agency. A key-variable in artistic practice is the understanding that there is no single end, final solution, or right answer.The SotF guiding question, What do you want to learn? and the open-ended, variable form of participation, allowed each person to engage and “effect/imprint” according to their own interests and capacities.
Arts based educational inquiry hypothesizes that art practices embody methods of research and problem solving that give agency to human ways of knowing. Kinesthetic learning is associated with the sensorial experience of physical activity. It is derived from the Greek kinein, ‘to move’ + aisthésis, ‘sensation’, whereby “sense” originates from the Latin sensus, ‘faculty of feeling, thought, meaning’. Kinesthetic operations provide simulative experiences of ideas. In creative practices of inquiry learning, learning is experienced as an action. Practices attend to relationships - activities are directed toward seeing the individual parts/elements and reasoning/imagining about how they relate to the whole. Inherent to artistic practice are flexible structures of deliberation that connect one thing with another.
The School of the Future and Curriculum
For the month of July, Sgt. Dougherty Park became a What if? zone. The peculiar park next to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in the light industrial neighborhood of North Williamsburg became artist studio, laboratory and petrie dish, where interest in learning from one another was the currency of entry.
Guerilla Gardening
North Brooklyn currently has the most stalled construction sites of any neighborhood in New York City. Join NAG (www.nag-brooklyn.org) to learn how to make seed balls, a guerilla gardening strategy used to plant wildflowers in abandoned lots.
Newtown Creek: The Gunk Under Greenpoint Bike Tour
Jump on your bike and delve into the history, pollution and health of Newtown Creek, visiting the best sites around the creek to discuss the past, present and future of this area, including the industraial heritage, oil spills and pollution plumes, combined sewage overflows, potential designation as a Superfund site and the ecosystem of estuaries.
Dawn School When precisely does the day begin? When does all the night drain away? Following on the heels of the longest day of the year, Dawn School is a special research project of SotF poised between late night and early morning.
Rebuilding the City
What kind of school do you want to learn in? What kind of park do you want to play in? Every Sunday children will build a fantasy school and/or playground/park using quirky prefab structures, wooden blocks and other recycled scavenged materials.
Tree Identification
Learn how to identify trees in Sgt. Dougherty Park and the surrounding area!
Minds in the Gutter
Minds in the Gutter is a workshop where we'll brainstorm stormwater management ideas along the border of Sgt. Dougherty park. The first part will be walking meditation, then a drawing and pin-up session, then we'll we make a chalk or rubble-scraping. (Stormwater Infrastructure Matters Coalition www.swimmablenyc.org/ and www.mindsinthegutter.org).
Urban Geological Study
To learn how to identify, classify, and tell the story of objects found in the local urban environment and to understand our connections with our surroundings through natural materials and the objects we create.
Recipes for Nourishment, Audio Cookbook
Neighborhood exploration and candid engagement with the idea of nourishment resulting in an audio cookbook.
Other courses were directed toward self reflective practices of inward observation:
Hide Your Ordinary Face and Show your Flower
People hide their beautiful flower behind their face where it's not easy to show other people. Your best friend, families and lovers know it. This class is going to help open your flower to the public by making mask!
Philosophy Yoga
Thinking and having an inquisitive conversation is great! But how does the way our body is shaped and positioned affect our thoughts? We will explore this question. We will explore some yoga positions and/or just some unconventional body positions for conversing. While in these positions we will have some sort of challenging or inquisitive conversation. We will then discuss afterwards.
“SofF is an environment that provides enough structure and material for great amounts of expansion and evolution in ways that are completely unplanned. Problems arise and are solved in ways that completely reflect and extend from the people involved.” --Kate Clark
“What worked for me was the fluidity and improvised nature of the activity happening. I really responded to multiple courses happening simultaneously, i.e. people cooking during "Stand in Your Place" class while across the way sat a table of people conversing from the "Authentic Ritual" class. It seemed to be an atmosphere of high energy, excitement and much spontaneous creative activity. I would like to consider exploring in depth what it could be like to merge a few experimental pedagogical platforms, namely the web component of The Public School, with the physical set up of The School of The Future. The Public School is powerful because it is an online open forum which organizes class proposals and the planning process in a transparent way. And what I especially like about The School of The Future is it's use of public space. So I imagine both of these things could be integrated beautifully. I would like very much to brainstorm in more detail specifically about what this could look like and look forward to hearing more about how The School of the Future unfolds this month”.--Michael Bauer
“I learned many things yesterday, but opposed to a classroom kind of situation- almost everything I learned was directly applicable to my life”. --Michelle Levy
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