The Art of Schooling: Places of Authentic Learning and Caring

28 The Art of Schooling: Places of Authentic Learning and Caring Zach Kelehear In the spring of the school year, the high school and firstgrade students came together for a collaborative, multi-age tile mosaic art project. Three times a week students from two first-grade classes would travel to the high school to work with a high school mentor in creating tile mosaic pieces. Those pieces would be brought together on the wall of the elementary school at the end of the year. Watching those students come together in the shared art experience served to remind me of the real treasure that teaching and learning can be. When school communities risk constructing learning that is outside the traditional organizational pattern, then they "risk" having a place where learning is authentic and caring for each other becomes real. It takes courage on the part of the student, the teacher, and the principal to risk this type of experience. In watching the students and teacher work together, one trait emerged as essential to a caring and authentic school: empathy. Empathy is that interpersonal quality that allows one to know the feelings of another (Kelehear, 2001; 2002). As students worked with each other, as teachers worked with the students, and as the principal assisted the teacher, the level of empathy present was the critical element for a qualitative relationship. And at the same time, the participants cultivated a sense of caring in the relationship as they began to understand the commitment in working together toward a shared goal. In as much as caring became part of the school climate, the relationships became more substantive and paying attention to each other became the order of the day. How does such a school community, one that emphasizes authenticity and caring, celebrate the student, the teacher, the principal, and the curriculum? Based on the observations from this multi-age experience, I share a vision for such a place. Student as Performer It would be difficult to imagine how the tile mosaic project might be assessed with a pencil and paper test alone. But the inability to conduct such an assessment does not reduce a project's academic worth. In fact, one might argue that those things that are not easily measured are most valuable. When asked what really matters, I recognize that the sine qua non in schooling is academic achievement. The difference for me, however, lies in the understanding of what constitutes achievement, about what really matters beyond the grades and testing. In his book Schools Without Failure William Glasser (1969) emphasizes that allowing grades to create an incentive for learning has, in fact, a contracting effect on what is learned. The more that grades, and by extension standardized tests, are emphasized the more that students want to know what is exactly on the test, and only those items on the test. Students come to believe that any other information can become an obstacle or a distraction to getting the grade, and thus should be ignored (p. 65). I believe that there is a role for grades and standardized testing. Indeed, they can help provide accountability for learning certain bits of information. But to rely only on grades and traditional assessments is painfully shortsighted. I would argue that students should be encouraged to do what Ted Sizer (1992) in his book Horace's School calls exhibitions. This type of assessment helps encourage students to bring together facts and basic learnings to create a new understanding—what Mortimer Adler (p. 29) called maieutic expression. A word of Greek origin, maieutic is loosely translated as "giving birth." Just as an artist might be able to take the elements and principles of art to paint a still life, it is the artist's use of those "skills" and the simultaneous interpretation of that object through experience and feelings that can give birth to a new perspective, a new understanding, and a deeper cognition (Eisner, September 2001). Similarly, other aspects of the curriculum could have the same consequence. I recognize that students must first come to command facts and information, the kind of information that is readily assessed through pencil and paper tests and standardized assessments. Quickly, however...