Richard Volz

Innovation in Plain Sight 

by Alex Lipoff

Multiple choice question: If you were to walk into Rich Volz’s classroom, you might immediately notice: 

A) Some of the last remaining chalk boards anywhere in the school that line the walls on three sides.

B) The missing presence of any projectors, monitor screens, gizmos, etc. 

C) Weekly itineraries for all of his class sections, with their assignments posted and dated in advance, stapled to the board.

D) Innovation happening everywhere.

E) All of the above. 

At a purely surface level, Mr. Volz’s classroom wouldn’t necessarily strike the casual observer as a place full of innovation and creativity. Where are the pricey high-tech screens and gadgets, and where is there room in his pre-planned curriculum for those impromptu and ingenious innovative lessons that seem to spring from the top of a teacher’s head and materialize in an exciting new class project?

Yet, as Amanda Ripley writes in The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way, “Old school can be good school” (214). Every cycle since the beginning of the school year, students in Mr. Volz’s classes have been experimenting with creative writing exercises. Rather than simply innovating for the sake of innovation, Mr. Volz has been encouraging his students to use creative approaches to reinforce and solidify the content and skills that have been covered. “The most successful one was the first one I did,” he said. “We were reading The Odyssey and had really belabored the themes and patterns in the text, so the creative writing served a great purpose at that point. Students were asked to rewrite a story to invert the themes of the text, and by doing that, they obviously had to show that they understood the original content and were able to manipulate it in a way that would flip it on its head.”

Similarly, Mr. Volz has been asking students to write poems about the grammar rules the class has covered as a way of studying and memorizing what would otherwise be a fairly dry and inflexible subject matter.

Andres Schleicher, originator of the PISA test, believes that “[i]n most of the highest-performing systems, technology is remarkably absent from classrooms.” While the stereotype is often that the innovative lesson is something completely different from anything the teacher has tried before, Mr. Volz’s class is a testament to the inherent innovation that occurs in any classroom: “I teach the same texts each year, but I don’t think I’ve ever taught the same text the same way. We find new things, new passages and themes, to focus on and emphasize each time. That to me is innovation. It’s the same text, it’s the same material, but we’re going to twist it around and see it from a different angle. I ask myself: ‘What will renew this material for each of my students on an individual level? How do I give them a new understanding?’ That is innovation.”

Ryan Hews

Scrapbooking American Lives

by Patty Garrison

Scrapbooking, the popular hobby, is taking on a new look in Ryan Hews' U.S. History class. Instead of the usual approach of constructing a representation of one's own life, Mr. Hews' students are busy creating a scrapbook of memories and artifacts of a fictional family that they invent. This is the "American Lives" project, which is designed by Mr. Hews to foster skills of collaboration and creativity. Additionally, and just as importantly, he allows the students a powerful learning opportunity as they "witness" history and "write the story from a personal perspective."

Here is how the project works: students form groups that collectively decide their fictional families' names and places of origin. Then, they follow this family through each stage of history that is studied in Mr. Hews' class. The rules are that no actual historical event can be changed, and no fictional character can impact the course of history; therefore, students need to conduct careful research in order to remain historically correct, yet they must also rely on their creativity to connect their families to history. They craft, develop, and gather artifacts that represent the families' experiences. These artifacts are displayed in the scrapbooks, which represent how these fictional families move, interact, and are impacted by the events of American history. For example, a family that has moved to New York State in the pre-Civil War years may experience a moral change of perspective regarding the rights of women due to the Seneca Falls Convention. The students will research the convention, decide on how their family has been changed, collect evidence of the change to display in the scrapbook, and ultimately gain a deep understanding of the issues of that period of history.

Mr. Hews says that he begins the year in U.S. History with a discussion of the events of 9/11/2001. He believes that in order for the students to fully comprehend the depth of that impact, they must first understand our country's story. Thus, the creation of the scrapbook, chronicling the journey of their fictional families, allows the students to connect in a much more personal way to United States history. The scrapbooks end at 9/11, bringing the students full circle with a much greater appreciation for the impact of historical events on the population of a country.

In The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way, Amanda Ripley includes an appendix about how to recognize great teaching. In it, she says, “sometimes learning happens in noisy places where the kids are working in groups without much input from the teacher. Some of the worst classrooms are quiet, tidy places that look, to adults, reassuringly calm." In the video below, you can catch a glimpse of this in action, as the students work through their projects individually, with Mr. Hews offering feedback to those who need it. 

Lynn McNulty

The Ugly Sweater Project
by Lucie-Knight Santos

I first heard about Lynn McNulty’s Ugly Christmas French Revolution/Napoleon sweater project last year, and I immediately thought that it would be a perfect subject for The Blue Sky Project blog. Well, actually that’s a little bit of a lie. My first reaction was to be really jealous of all the students who would get to take part in this awesome quest for tackiness involving two of my favorite subjects. I mean, who can resist a revolution that lead to the groundbreaking concept of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” or a man who crowned himself Emperor?

The goal of the project, according to Ms. McNulty, was for her AP European History students to think about these events in a totally different way and create a three-dimensional experience of their own vision. They were given the task of carefully selecting at least 8 props to put on their sweater with the understanding that, in the world of ugly sweaters, more is almost always better. They were also given the option of choosing a theme, such as the evolution of Jacques-Louis David’s paintings or feminist issues throughout the revolutionary period. Students brave enough to wear their sweaters all day on the due date and get pictures with Mr. Hews, Dr. Gillin, and Mr. Brougham were given extra credit. They were then responsible for explaining their choice of props to the class. The result, as you can see below, was amazing!