I had the opportunity to visit Two Rivers Public Charter School (http://www.learnwithtworivers.org/) while in Washington, DC. Two Rivers is a Pre-K to Grade 8 school located on three campus (two elementary campuses for PK-Grade 5, and one middle school campus for grades 6-8). Two Rivers has been around for 15 years and is an Expeditionary Learning (EL) School (https://eleducation.org/). The Expeditionary Learning model began about 26 years ago as a result of a partnership between the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Outward Bound. EL schools are focused on three dimensions of student achievement: Mastery of Knowledge and Skills (students demonstrate proficiency and deep understanding, apply their learning, think critically, and communicate clearly), Character (students work to become effective learners, ethical people and contribute to a better world) and High-Quality Student Work (students create complex work, demonstrate craftsmanship, and create authentic work). Two Rivers has adapted these dimensions to support their school’s mission to nurture a diverse group of students to become lifelong, active participants in their own education, develop a sense of self and community, and become responsible and compassionate members of society. The outcomes for deeper learning that Two River’s focuses on are: Collaboration and Communication (Interpersonal Skills), Character (Intrapersonal Skills), Critical Thinking and Problem Solving (Cognitive Skills) and Core Content and Basic Skills.
Each grade level at the school completes two major 10-12 week projects a year, one of which is driven by a social sciences concept and the other which is driven by a science concept. Both projects integrate language arts and the arts, and where possible, other subjects such as mathematics or Spanish. All projects give students a chance to dive into a topic in more depth and solve an authentic problem. For example, the 6th grade students are currently working on a project examining climate change. The authentic problem they are exploring is, “What can we do to educate others about climate change and ways to slow it down?”. Students have learned about the science of climate change as well as the impacts of climate change. Each group of students is in the process of creating a climate change video using storytelling concepts from language arts. The students are also integrating math by doing some opinion polling about people’s perceptions of climate change. The 1st grade fall project was based on the question “How can we help other kids in DC have access to more books?”. As part of this project, grade 1 students learned about entrepreneurism, how to start and run a business, how to make a profit, etc. Groups of students presented ideas for a money making business to a panel and one business idea was selected. The first graders then produced inventory for the business, made advertisements and opened their business to their peers and the school community to make money to donate books to kids in need.
The focus on project-based learning and expeditionary learning has had an influence on the assessment practices at Two Rivers. The school uses standards-based grading and students are graded using 5 levels where 3 is demonstration of mastery and 5 means that a student has achieved mastery of a skill at the next grade level. In addition, students are given a score of 1 through 5 on scholarly habits. These scholarly habits were developed in alignment with the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Competencies (https://casel.org/core-competencies/). These scholarly habits are: I show compassion and embrace diversity; I can connect and collaborate; I act with integrity. Critical thinking and problem solving are also extremely important skills that are taught and assessed at Two Rivers. The skills are defined for students, parents and teachers using rubrics and these skills are explicitly taught using thinking routines from Harvard’s Project Zero as well as ones developed by Two Rivers. Each student’s ability to transfer these skills to novel situations is assessed using performance tasks (http://www.learnwithtworivers.org/teaching-and-assessing-critical-thinking-and-problem-solving.html). At Two Rivers, there is a conscious effort to focus not only on academic progress but on skill progress as it relates to their school mission.
Two Rivers has worked to develop a unique timetable for their Middle School which helps them to successfully implement their expeditionary learning projects. There is plenty of built-in time for teacher collaboration and common planning and there is time in which the whole grade level could be working on common things as it relates to their projects. Within the timetable is a large chunk of time for core learning (math, language arts, science and social science) which can be used as individual subject time or whole grade collaborative time. One thing I found unique was that science and social science is semestered. So, for example, grade 7 students might have science as part of core in the fall while the grade 8 students have social studies and then half way through the year, this swaps (as do the teachers – the science teacher will teach both grade 7 and grade 8, as does the social science teacher). Part of the reason for this model is to match the major focus of the expeditionary learning projects (of the two projects each year, one will centre on a science concept and the other around a social studies concept). When the students are in their elective courses of Spanish, PE and the arts (students in the Middle School choose two subjects out of music, art and drama), the core teachers are given common planning time. Some of this time is focused on discussing advisory matters and the remaining time is focused on curricular planning. There is also time in the schedule where students are in a LAB period. This period allows students to get remediation or acceleration as needed in core course work.
Time for professional learning, collaboration and planning is critical to the success of the program at Two Rivers. In addition to the core planning time that is regularly occurring as described above, teachers at Two Rivers begin school about two weeks before the students. This allows teachers focused time to plan expeditionary projects and cross-curricular connections. In addition, every Wednesday the elementary school students have an early release of 1:15 pm and the teachers have professional development time. The students have the option of leaving the school early or parents can opt to keep them at school for a program that is contracted out (at the parents’ cost). Similarly, students in the Middle School have “Wellness Wednesdays” where they take part in a program that is contracted out (at no cost to parents) and teachers have professional learning time from 2 pm – 5 pm. Two Rivers has opted for this model instead of dedicated PD days for a few reasons. First, they found that PD days were hard on families to find care for their children. Second, they found that regular, on-going PD was more effective for transforming the learning at their school.
Two Rivers was certainly a very interesting school to visit. They have put a great deal of effort into designing a timetable that would allow for focused academic time and collaborative project time. In order to support high quality project-based learning, the school has made common planning time for teachers a priority. Finally, their emphasis on scholarly habits and skills in addition to academic mastery has had a very positive impact on their students.
From Teaching to Learning 