At OKH, we had two teams work separately on two different protocols for Project Backpack. The first team, a team of adult LEADers at OKH collaborated to try to 'define' what each gift represents followed by skills those gifts would require of students or from those leading students. Above, you will find the synthesis of the conversations about each of the gifts.
In the discussion, something that came up over and again was the need to have the skill of active listening; listening to the needs of others, the ideas of others, to learn the gifts of others to understand what they might bring to the table.
LEADers also noted that it seems all the gifts are very connected. They wanted to call a CARETAKER someone who CONNECTS with others. There seemed to be a considerable amount of interconnectedness between the five. Each gift is unique in its own way and also connects to all the other gifts on multiple levels.
Because we have already been working to implement the gifts in our classrooms, CHARACTER is a gift that is 'missing' for the list of gifts, however, the team was readily able to see that being a CARETAKER, COLLABORATOR, CONNECTOR = a Good Citizen.
The next notice by the team is the direction in which we will likely go after we get to a place where we feel the GIFTS are well defined. Questions like:
- If you are a COLLABORATOR with an open-mind, what might it look like to teach 'open-mindedness'?
- If you are a CONNECTOR and that means reconizing and valuing connections and differences while being open to new information, what does it look like to teach recognition of credible information?
Once the gifts are well thought out and ready for a good honest first go at it, we will start thinking about the "how". How do we teach these things and what does it look like to master the skills in order to build progressions for learning.
The second team consisted of students in the Backpack CREATE class.
Backpack Create is engaging in conversations around the purpose of school, what the future demands of our students regarding our gifts and how this directly correlates with the Xperiences we have in our Backpack Create Class.
What is the purpose of school? Students came to the conclusion that school is to help them become lifelong learners, who are active in their community, able to make informed decisions and work with others with different opinions than their own. It is to be their home away from home where they gain experiences that they can carry throughout their life.
This allowed us to focus on our gifts and discuss what these gifts look like in real life. For example, our students had real conversations about what good collaboration looks like, what bad collaboration looks like and where we can improve as a class and as individuals.
Their future discussions will deepen to include types of experiences in school that bring a lot of value to their lives, what it means to be a community, and what the future demands of them and school.
