IMAGINE: A classroom where ALL students write everyday with meaning!

This is what Lynn Astarita Gatto has accomplished and is a model for authentic learning that engages all students.

In Gatto’s depiction of her elementary class 12 week vivarium project she took her students through the whole process of creating, designing, building, researching and completing a butterfly vivarium. Through this process she encompassed multiple content areas and covered all of her curriculum standards. The classes experience was truly inspiring, and what I always imagined school should be like. She created a classroom with real world application and meaning, which lead to a challenging and engaging environment.

Although I consider my classroom to be a lively and enriching environment I also felt a desire to reevaluating some of my teaching practices after reading, Gatto's article. I began asking questions like, "What control can I give over to the students"? "What can I let go of"? “What outcomes have I been forcing”? And yes, I do have an engaging vocational curriculum with  “integrated academics”, and we put on a huge fashion show which serves as a motivator with real life application- but something was missing. Something was different about Gatto’s classroom than mine, and I want to figure out exactly what it is – what I am missing? What the key is? So I tried to break down her steps and see where I could apply her process to mine: (I marked in red the lessons I learned from Gatto’s work, and her words and experiences in black).

Believe that all students are literate and valuable to the classroom experience

Gatto constantly demonstrated her belief in her students, “I believe my students to be literate before they enter my classroom. I use their experiences, interest, history, culture, language and literacy practices to develop to the literacy ”(Gatto, p.88). She respects every child and involves everyone in the classroom,” Every child knew they had something important to contribute to the unit right from the start”(Gatto,p.79). There ideas were recorded and posted and then most importantly acted upon.

Consider every learning environment to be unique and always changing

“Considering the individual students, planning carefully, selecting appropriate materials and activities, and adjusting activities are all important aspects of what I do to establish a successful literacy program”(Gatto, p.77). Gatto explains how her word wall and vocabulary change year-to-year depending on her students needs. She never takes one-size fits all approach to education.

True integration- not add-ons,

Gatto explains, everything that she did in her class had meaning and was for demonstrating the practical social use of literacy, which entailed mixing literacy’s to work towards a common goal (just as we do in real life).“Literacy is a practice, something that gets done, not skills to be learned for use at a later date”(Gatto, p.78).

Leave the unknown-unknown-Let the students decide the outcome

Gatto only put the idea out there to the class. She never told them how they were going to do it. She made them responsible from kids generate questions, acting to answer them, designing and building a vision, and sharing it with the community. They class decided what they wanted and worked as a class to make that happen. Kids decide everything; “Every child had a part in the construction of the vivarium”(Gatto, p.81). It was a real community effort with incredible outcomes.

Students have to make the connection NOT be told by the teacher-very very important!!
Gatto always allowed the students to generate their own inquiry question, “Why are we reading a book that has nothing to do with butterflies if were going to study butterflies? She never answered the question; instead she posted it on the board and allowed each student to discover the answer on their own. This is when true learning happens.

Create rituals and routines

As much as Gatto allowed for freedom and gave much of the control of the classroom to the students, she also created simple rituals and routines in which the students knew what to expect everyday and how the classroom operated. There were many practices Gatto used to engage with the students daily: keeping a journal, post it note selections in readings, silent reading, word walls, personal student spelling book, use of multiple text, research to answer students own questions, (I can not get high school students to do this), etc., which intern all lead to KIDS WRITING DAILY.
 
Make real life connections

Gatto constantly was making the real life connections. She was always taking the students on trips to enrich their learning experience and to make the personal connection, which drives motivation to learn. She, Constantly, “contextualized the topic of the unit within our community and world events”(Gatto, p.83). She created lots of dialogue and have to come up with consensus (extremely important real life skill). She remained open and flexible- a true authentic learning environment- not scripted and never the same- always bringing real life examples into the class- Wonderfully done!

Multi-cultural/Humanistic Perspective

Gatto’s involved and valued all students and didn’t only use middle class white values (she even used books written in Spanish first) to drive her curriculum. She looked at her student’s differences as assets to the classroom experience and used her Spanish-speaking students experiences and language to enrich the learning environment. She was then able to make emotional connections, which lead to empowering change, (letters to Mexican government, questioning life, questioning media). Inspirational!

Let go of control- (biggest lesson for me)
“Letting go, getting out of the way, leaving them on their own so that they may assume the responsibility”(Probst, p.55). Gatto had such faith in letting the story unfold for itself. She had a vision of the project and was a guide for the students but by letting go of control she was able to let the lesson take on a journey of it’s own which lead to incredible valuable teachable moments (letters to the Mexican government, not trusting the media, morning the death of a local artist). As well as a successful vivarium being built and shared with the community.

Gatto’s classroom experience was incredibly inspirational. It is the way education/literacy should be; there was nothing stopping Gatto from creating social justice practices, engaging all of her students and pushing them to the highest limits. She demonstrated a real life example of Freire’s problem-posing model of education. Gatto was able to touch on everything that Freire prescribes to, “For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other”(Freire, p.52). This is the process I believe Gatto to have given to her students – a real gift, and what I will strive to continue to work