{"id":19636,"date":"2024-12-17T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/?post_type=cw_post&p=19636"},"modified":"2024-12-17T17:01:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T22:01:05","slug":"designing-for-big-picture-learning-at-new-village-girls-academy","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/designing-for-big-picture-learning-at-new-village-girls-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing for Big Picture Learning at New Village Girls Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walking into the <\/span>New Village Girls Academy<\/span><\/a> (NVGA) courtyard feels like a welcoming oasis after navigating the parking lot and LA traffic. The school is full of plants and bright colors with round tables around, and students are <\/span>buzzing to and from the rooms that open to the courtyard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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All photos were taken by the author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This Big Picture Learning school opened in 2006, replacing a prior program for pregnant and parenting students. New Village now serves up to 120 students and is a school that students can choose as 9th graders. Many of the students come to NVGA with interruptions in their educational experiences resulting from a range of reasons including pregnancy, parenting, violence, foster care, poverty, and juvenile justice involvement. Many struggle with mental health issues, learning disabilities, or recently immigrated and are building their English language skills.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I could see many aspects of the <\/span>Big Picture Learning (BPL) approach<\/span><\/a> in action at New Village. Building on the foundation of strong relationships and a commitment to lead for equity, their curriculum structures include learning through passion projects and designated internship time two days a week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It All Starts with Relationships and Trust<\/b><\/h2>\n

New Village grounds itself in relationships and well-being, including a meditation and wellness program and advisory structures. One student shared, \u201cThe teachers [here are] so nice. They are so loving. You can genuinely feel that they care about you. [At] my old school. it was like, \u2018Yeah, we’re family. We care about you,\u2019 but\u2026it just felt like, you know, something you say? \u2026But here you genuinely feel like you have family.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Affirming<\/p>\n

The advisory structure provides a home base for students. NVGA has five co-led advisories, where students spend about half of their time learning and growing. Students spend the first week of each semester in advisory creating connections and community. Then advisory time <\/span>focuses on passion projects and laying the groundwork for identifying opportunities for internships and learning through interests.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Authentic relationships take time and skill to build, and require a level of vulnerability for both students and educators. In their hiring process, they focus on identifying teachers who can support students not successfully served by the mainstream system. Even with the dedicated time and commitment, teachers often face a learning curve to grow relationship-building skills or or feel fully comfortable in teaching for depth and rigorous application through student interests.<\/span>
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When they can make those connections, the students feel it and that trust translates to new pathways into learning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leveraging Interests and Real-World Learning<\/b><\/h2>\n

Passion Projects<\/b><\/h3>\n

Throughout their time at NVGA, in addition to more traditional classes organized by academic disciplines, students spend about a third of their time working on independent passion projects. Students start by identifying interests through conversations, reflection, and exploratory activities. Once they have a topic, they develop an essential question to guide their inquiry, <\/span>starting with more basic questions and building a line of inquiry that works up <\/span>Webb\u2019s Depth of Knowledge<\/span><\/a> categories to extended reasoning.\"Student\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Students conduct research and explore an appropriate range of evidence and avenues of inquiry, often including reaching out to relevant places in the community. Advisors regularly check in with each student to identify resources, needs, and possible pitfalls.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The culmination of a project focuses on a product that translates a student\u2019s learning into something meaningful. Students prepare an exhibition and speak about their learning, their process, and their product. Some students explore different topics from semester to semester, while others find a passion that they want to explore from multiple dimensions. Student-led exhibitions twice a year form an anchor in the NVGA local assessment system.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting to real interests requires a student to be comfortable enough to share what they care about. At first students may pick topics that feel appropriately academic. Christa Hollis, acting Assistant Principal and STEAM coordinator (among other roles), described one student focused on how coding can help non-profit organizations. When the student hadn\u2019t made much progress, she asked how she spent her time outside of school and after a bit of probing, the student shared about world-building.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe opened up her Google doc and she had 40 pages of things that she had written about these characters, little maps about who was related to who and what they had done. It was amazing, right? Is there magic? Is there not? Do I want this in my world? There were many influences from Greek Wars, tragedy, and American politics. You could see all of these influences\u2026I looked at her edit history on it, and she literally worked on it every single day. Every day. So, I’m like, \u201cthis is your topic, you are going to talk about this. Let’s talk about how you take all of this information [and show what you learned]…It demonstrated so much growth and development over that time.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\"StudentOther recent examples of successful passion projects include a student who created a room for kids to play and express themselves at a local school and another student who created a three-act dance on African American performer and World War II spy, <\/span>Josephine Baker<\/span><\/a> for her exhibition. Hollis shared, of the dance exhibition choreographer, \u201cShe barely spoke in her exhibition, except in reflection. And it was super powerful, super impactful. She was able to take her learning and express it the way she was most comfortable.\u201d The less directive model creates more room for students to play and explore who they are and how they want to express themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Learning Through Interests and Internships<\/b><\/h3>\n

Learning in real world contexts through internships or interest-based projects is a cornerstone of Big Picture Learning and aligned with the <\/span>anytime, anyplace learning tenet of competency-based learning<\/span><\/a>. At New Village, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are dedicated to learning beyond the classroom and beyond the school walls.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"StudentsStudents come to New Village from all around the Los Angeles area, so the internships are not necessarily bound by the immediate zip code of their location. For example, two students interested in the medical field have an internship with the Orthopedic Institute and another at a law firm.<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On campus opportunities are also available because some students (or their families) are not yet ready to be off campus. Coco Kornspan, the Director of Learning Through Interests (LTI) explains, \u201cAs much as we want the kids to get real world experience, we can’t ask them to be someone they’re not. We sometimes need to switch gears to acclimate to what they need\u2026and\u00a0 not try to push too hard on certain things.\u201d In the afternoon on the Thursday I visited, there was a front office internship, a STEAM group led by Hollis working on a collaborative Jet Propulsion Lab Rube Goldberg design competition, and a meditation and gardening group led by a community partner happening on campus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had the opportunity to talk to two students doing the on-campus STEAM internship. They also spoke about <\/span>prior internships off campus. One student described her internship at the library in her neighborhood, \u201cI also really liked it because I really like reading and I was able to\u00a0 help them and then when my internship time was over, I could get a few books to take home.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another student interned with the cultural arts department of the Mexican consulate. In addition to helping with social media, newsletters, and email lists, she described helping to organize exhibits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would do their exhibits, because not a lot of people knew that they had a little art department in their basement, which is really pretty, my favorite place to hang out\u2026So I would work with the artists to help put their stuff out. And I would talk to them about their work and stuff. I got the first look of everything which is kind of shocking, that they let me handle stuff.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Kornspan supports the students and staff in identifying interests and opportunities. She has designed a process that she hopes is owned by the teachers and students in each advisory. Rather than trying to take on the placement of each student herself, she provides tools and resources for students to explore with their advisors. While she also connects with possible host partners \u2013 I sat in on a meeting with K9 Connection during my visit \u2013 by empowering advisors and students to tap into their connections and community knowledge, the network students can access multiples. Tools include interest inventories, lessons on writing professional emails or making cold calls to businesses of interest. The school also uses the imBlaze platform to manage internships, so advisors are trained to use the platform.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In her first months on the job, Kornspan reflected, \u201cI’m making it my style which doesn’t mean it’s right, but it means that it works for what’s happening here in New Village today.\u201d Her approach models the goals of the program for each individual student. Creating what she wants students\u2019 LTI experience to be means \u201cbeing flexible, switching gears, accepting people for who they are and how they come to you and not making them fit the mold but making the mold fit them.\u201d The dream she is working towards is to \u201chave 90% of my girls actively and consistently working at internships.\u201d When we saw each other the following summer at the Big Bang 2024 conference, she expressed her excitement to continue to grow the program as she entered her second year in the position.<\/span><\/p>\n

Community Connections and Leading Towards the Future<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"ChristaThe school has an active board that sponsored a staff lunch the day I visited. As I spoke with the teachers, I sensed a learning community that both has strong foundations and continues to <\/span>grow. One topic that emerged was the challenges of building foundational academic skills while bringing real world, project-based learning to academic classes. With a relatively new staff, Hollis, who has been at the school since 2010, provides a model with a science curriculum that builds student understanding of the food cycle, solar power, and self-sufficient water systems in a hydroponic food growing system tucked into the side of the building.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And, it all came back to building relationships and trust with students. As one student described how she used to struggle in math, now she likes it, largely because the teacher \u201cdoesn’t make me feel dumb for asking questions.\u201d As we wrapped up our conversation, she got to the essence: \u201cHere you genuinely feel all the love. I feel like every student here has that one teacher that they really love that they really connect with.\u201d A second student agrees, and adds, \u201cthere’s days where I, well, we’ve, come to school in a bad mood. And then we’re standing in front of the teacher that we trust and tears just start rolling in\u2026and Ms. Q (the principal) is one of the coolest people you meet. The other day I brought a tamale and she stopped me to get a piece and she came back to say, \u2018This is so delicious.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jennifer Quinones is NVGA\u2019s third principal with a tenure of multiple years (after multiple leadership changes the first three years) and has been at the school since 2014. She came from working with incarcerated youth in South LA and first learned about NVGA from a BPL coach she worked with while working to bring project-based learning to her program, which was a \u201cpacket-based program.\u201d In the process, the prior principal became a mentor, and eventually, she became his successor. Now, as she looks forward, she hopes they can bring what they are building at NVGA to other populations, such as students involved in the juvenile justice system.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At NVGA, it’s clear that young people are known and seen for their lived experiences and talents, and the school’s BPL model allows them to take this a step further by offering one-of-a-kind, real-world learning experiences. It’s a space that I know I want to visit again, and hope to continue to learn more from this innovative learning community.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn More<\/span><\/h2>\n