My School Endorses Forgery

I considered a title like; This student was caught in the middle of forgery... what happened next will make your eyes leak.  Then I thought better of it.  Watch this instead, then let me explain:

About a month ago I was approached to open up a High School for credit course for students who were struggling in the 'traditional' classroom, and were coming up to a critical period in their schooling where credits were important, but gaining skills were more important.  What could I offer in the way of a "Maker" course that could give these students a different way of engaging school -- not because they needed credits, but because they needed a better, safer way of being themselves at school.

Storing a Forge in a Maker Space

A steel shank?

Two students were requesting to make a fully functioning metal foundry and forge for the school campus where they would be allowed to liquefy metals and create weaponry.

In Open-Learning one must always say yes.  Improv has taught me to qualify that with a "yes, and..."  In this case I was able to say yes, and that we would provide any necessary resources and supervision they may require.

Today we fired up the forge (and the foundry) and showed off what happens when you let students off leash for a while.

Preparing Kindling

Obviously there were safety considerations, we had to evaluate the practicality, and we had to seek out reasonable ways of asking for funding and space, and we had to learn how to do it well.  It wasn't without conditions, but we were as open as we could be.  Things ebbed and flowed as the students learned to navigate without a leash.  What has been crucial for me is to ensure that I stay as far back and wait patiently to be invited in.  Well today I was invited in, in a big way.

The conventional work that goes along with a project like this would be the places where we (as teachers) believe that everything comes down to documentation.  That if we can't curate it, then it didn't happen.  -- the ugly side; if we put external motivators in place like "we will fund your project so long as you can dot these 'i's' and cross these 't's'...  These students are the archetypes for students who don't respond well to that and yet... and YET... they were able to acquire their own building materials, arrange for their own supervision and coaching, and over the weekend they built (after a bit of hard labour and error) a working forge and foundry that they were beyond excited to bring to school today.

30 seconds in a Fire

Here I will insert a quick anecdote about how the school science-fair closed on Friday.  These students were not enrolled.

Try as I might I could not avoid being 'teacher-minded' this afternoon -- searching for a way to have these students document, share, WORK in the classic sense on the parts of the project that weren't making things burn, and melting metal... and kept wanting to kick myself in the shins and yell "WAIT"... just wait.

Shaping Steel Rods

And then I asked if maybe I could make something with their foundry... maybe they'd let me play too.  Maybe I could make a metal cast of my own.  Oops!  Not only were they interested but the heated-argument which ensued about the process I would have to use to make it happen... and all the things that would have to be thought about before I could make it happen... basically they fought like two teachers who thought there was a very different way of teaching their pupil the 'right' way of doing something.  And then we went outside together and played.

I learned something today.  I just had to talk to them, and ask honest questions, and really I didn't have to act like a teacher... I just had to be me.  Which has been the secret I've held onto since the very beginning;

"They will learn in spite of what you're trying to teach them... you are not an expert and no better than any other teacher on the planet.  But you can do one thing better than everybody else in existence -- you can be yourself."

People wondering about what we are up to...

I'm pumped.  People around here are pumped.  Two students who are not known for being pumped are pumped.  We learned something without grades, without boundaries, without structure... simply because it was there to be learned... and we're on course to learn even more.

I don't know where we go from here, and it's big... scary big.  But I'm thankful that these guys helped me find a way to make it meaningful and real.