Rethinking Learning Podcast Series Episode #4

Conversation with Paula Ford, Kindergarten teacher in Cupertino School District, San Jose, California, who facilitates collaborative global projects with her kids. Paula shares with Barbara that most of her career has been working with low-socioeconomic English language learners and why she loves it.

 

 

Tell me a little about you, your school, and your kindergarteners.

I graduated from University of California at Davis with my Bilingual Crosscultural Language and Academic (BCLAD) multiple subject teaching credential, and have been teaching for over twenty years. I began my career in bilingual education and then moved to teaching second language learners.

I taught kindergarten, first grade, third grade, and have been a resource teacher for grades transitional kindergarten through fifth grade. The majority of my career has been teaching low-socioeconomic English language learners. Currently, I am teaching kindergarten at Manuel De Vargas Elementary School. Manuel De Vargas Elementary @DeVargas, is a Title I school in the Cupertino Union School District in California. We have over 29 languages spoken at our school. Our school is in year 2 of transitioning to a STEM Project Based Learning School, and I absolutely love it.

 

Tell me about some of your projects.

I wrote a post last year for this blog in March 2016 about a Kindergarten PBL my kinder kids undertook with a school in Africa with their 4th-grade buddies. The post is called Project-Based Learning gives Kindergarteners Agency.  I’m happy that Barbara has provided a space for me to tell the stories from my classroom collaborating with others. This blog has pictures and tells about the journey my kinder kids went on as they collaborated with a school in Kenya. The kids designed the project called “Change for Change” where they made African inspired crafts to sell at a “pop-up store” on campus to donate the money to the African school and did four video presentations to ask each class to donate coins for this school. They collected $470 to send to the school in Africa.

Project-Based Learning gives Kindergarteners Agency. 

I wrote two other blog posts on Barbara’s site about our school’s work with the  Buck Institute for Education (BIE) and need to add that our school serves children who speak over 29 different languages.  I always find that fact amazing and inspiring. For those who are thinking about PBL or just starting it, it is like swimming for the first time.  You have no idea if you will sink or swim until you try it.  Letting your kids take charge of their learning is a huge risk, but the rewards are tremendous.  The excitement is contagious.  I am as excited about the learning as they are! So the next projects were about comparing cities and farms.

The driving question was “How are the city and the farm the same and different?”

We read the book, Town Mouse Country Mouse to frame the reference of the project. Since my kids only knew about their city, they wanted to learn about life on a farm. So we collaborated with a kindergarten class in rural Indiana. Both classes sent video introductions that I included on the blog along with letters and toy animals each of the kids made.

We made toy mice by decorating computer mice to look like a real mouse. The kids in Indiana make a handmade toy house for each of my children. I wrote the journey in two blogs because there was so many exciting events and stories that came out of this PBL. I included pictures and videos so I hope your readers enjoy them.

Traveling Toy Animals Part One...