Lynne Kirkpatrick, seventh grade social studies teacher at West Windsor-Plainsboro’s Grover Middle School, talks about her Learner-Active Classroom and how she has incorporated the principles of Understanding by Design with IDE’s Ten Principles of Successful Classrooms to prepare her students to be citizens of the world.
What led you to become a teacher? What experiences have you had as an educator, or in life, that have shaped what you value in your classroom?
I came to teaching later in life. I had been forging a 
career in the world of retailing for some 17 years, as a department store buyer, corporate marketing manager, and, later, a consultant. The face of retailing had changed, and I didn’t spend nearly enough time at home with my husband and two children. My mother-in-law asked me one day what I would do if I could pursue any career I desired. When I replied, “I would teach,” she told me to find a way to do it. I did, through Rider’s Graduate Certification program, and I‘ve never looked back. My retailing career gave me a tough skin and the confidence to take risks. I was fortunate enough to travel throughout Europe and Southeast Asia as a buyer, and that helped shape my ideas about what’s really important. Most of all, I teach because I want to teach. I can’t think of anything more entertaining or more fulfilling than helping kids on their way to becoming productive, sentient adults.
What do you value about teaching in your Learner-Active Classroom? Have your beliefs about teaching and learning changed as a result? If so, how? If not, how have you grown as an educator?
Creating a Learner-Active Classroom forces me to make decisions about my teaching goals. I have to determine what it is I want my students walk away with after each learning experience. My units are more consistently driven by concept now, rather than content. On the surface, differentiation seems like it’s about offering many choices to students. I’ve found that it goes much deeper than that. A Learner-Active Classroom creates pathways for students to construct meaningful stories and gain insights into larger concepts. Some stories are more intricate than others, but all kids have the capacity to successfully reach the learning goal. And more students buy into the learning. Some students are better able to become confident readers if they can tackle and master text that is closer to their present reading level. Some benefit from the social nature of collaborating and discussing ideas. Gifted students who, in a more conventional setting, might become complacent are more challenged to stretch their thinking. I have a much better sense of who my students are as learners because I’m out there helping, discussing, and observing.
Making the shift to a Learner-Active classroom is hard! My shift has come about in steps – a unit here, a mini-unit there – and now I find my classroom is learner-active more than it’s not. But I’m still in transition… I’ve been supported and encouraged every step of the way, and there is no doubt that my teaching has improved because of the process.
How do your students benefit from learning in a Learner-Active Classroom? Are there specific strategies or structures that you feel
really make a difference?
Establishing trust has been essential for me. Honestly, some students are uncomfortable learning in a fully differentiated environment. It’s unlike anything they have been asked to do before, and it requires self-discipline and initiative. When I tell my students that we’re all in this together, I really mean it. I stumble often when trying to maintain a Learner-Active Classroom, and I have the bruises to prove it! We have to learn together how to schedule our time, reflect on our learning experiences, and knit the conceptual pieces together. I try to debrief not only on the overarching concept of the unit, but on the logistics of the learning plan. Often, students have meaningful suggestions about improving the experiences if we just ask them.
How do you incorporate the Ten Principles into your classroom?
In as many ways as possible! The Ten Principles seem to me to be a logical summary of good teaching. We hear the same principles in many forms: make learning meaningful for kids, meet the needs of individual students, focus on problem-solving and critical thinking skills, encourage students to become life-long learners, build learning partnerships…whether we call them mission statements, Middle School Initiatives, or Ten Principles of the Learner-Active Classroom, they are what we try to orchestrate every day.
Are there any of the Ten Principles that you particularly value or emphasize in your classroom?
I think it all begins with understanding the “Felt Need” principle. It’s incredibly important to give kids something to link their learning to; otherwise the learning drifts away, unanchored. Creating the context for learning by choosing meaningful assessments and activities that build toward an understanding that we value is key. If the “Felt Need” is there, the rest follows. We’re focused on higher order thinking skills. I tell my students that I want their brains to hurt…just a little. They buy into this, and it becomes a running joke throughout the year.
Can you describe one or two of your favorite authentic units? Why are they favorites?
I 
pulled together a mini-unit on the Crusades that was meaningful.
Our essential question was, “In what ways might the Crusades of the Middle Ages still be going on today?” The culminating activity was a Socratic Circle where we discussed our findings. Ultimately, students were called on to make recommendations about how we can promote tolerance and solve some of the problems that cause violence. This, I think, was an intriguing and controversial felt-need that helped students explore with purpose. The learning centers themselves were varied, interesting and fun. There was a rich spectrum of learning resources on many levels and in many modalities from this historical period.
How have students responded both socially and academically?
In general, students are remarkably accountable for their actions. 
If we provide clear expectations and models for them, most kids will live up to the task. The nature of the middle school brain is such that some students will have trouble focusing in such an active setting. A few will take longer to learn how to be productive in an environment where they must schedule and make good use of their time. Remarkably, 90% of the conversations I hear as I roam around the classroom is about the subject at hand. The proof of learning indicates that students are walking away with deeper grasp of the concepts, if I’ve crafted the unit intentionally enough to steer them toward an understanding.
How have you melded the principles of Understanding by Design with the Learner-Active Classroom approach?
I think most teaching professionals use backward design instinctively. We ask ourselves, “What do we want our students to learn?” before we design an assessment and craft a unit plan. Creating a Learner-Active Classroom forces me to think more intentionally about backward design, and I’m learning to plan better assessments and better learning opportunities in the process.
Tell me about your plan for building global citizenship in your students over the course of the year. . .
Our course is centered on encounters and the connections that result from those encounters. While the content focuses on the medieval world, the concepts are timely and relevant. I believe that the heart of the course centers on global citizenship. To me, there really is nothing more important than helping students develop their sense of place in the world. Add to this my desire to teach the research process in a way that makes it stick, and voila! We have a year-long problem-solution research study. In September, each student identified a global challenge based on their own interests: science, the environment, religion, poverty, music, etc.. Over the course of the year, he or she will research the root causes of the problem, explain some of the ripple effects caused by the problem, and investigate what has been done to try and solve the problem. All students will be encouraged to become part of a solution, whether it is by taking direct action or increasing awareness. Once again, we’re learning together. We have an independent research day roughly every six days. Each day begins with a fifteen minute benchmark lesson in the research process. We’ve tackled, for example, recognizing credibility of sources, topic webbing, and developing a thesis. The rest of our time is spent utilizing what we’ve learned.
Why do you believe it is important for students to have a sense of their world?
In a nutshell, the people who are going to be running the world are
passing through our classrooms each year. The way they see their world is intrinsically tied to the way they will run it. Our students are global citizens, whether they like it or not. It’s very important to me that kids begin to understand that they are a dynamic force in the world and that they have the capacity to contribute to it in a positive way.
How does your classroom help build students into global citizens daily?
First, we create an environment of mutual respect. I believe this is key to developing in students a sense of collaboration and accountability. Everything we do we do as a team, and I try to be seen more as a guide than a taskmaster. If students buy into the idea that mutual respect creates a positive experience, then they take that with them to other chapters of their lives. Next, I try to take historical concepts and make them relevant to kids by showing them how these ideas still affect us today. To that end, we incorporate current events whenever possible. For example, students learn about the causes and effects of the Crusades and link that learning to Muslim-Christian tensions today. We often are able to see both sides of an issue once we gain an historical perspective. Being able to see multiple sides of an issue, I believe, also contributes to the qualities that make responsible global citizens. Third, I try to make new information about global activism available to students. When I run across great web resources like studentsagainsthunger.org or learningtogoive.org, I share them. We track new programs to help alleviate world problems, like Plumpy Nut or the $100 laptop. Teens are easily inspired by good news. Hopefully, students realize that they have the power individually to make those small differences that, together, result in larger positive changes.
How do you design units to enable students to see their role as contributors to a global society?
Backward design helps a great deal with this. We remain true to the essential questions of our course, and they are important enough to anchor each historical unit of study.
It all gets back to the choices individuals and groups make when they encounter one another. We consistently return to the overarching theme of encounters and their resulting connections that defines our course. How could these encounters change? How does the initial encounter affect later connections? Also, each historical unit ends with a modern-day tie-in. We discuss how we are connected today politically, socially, economically and culturally. Students can see just how much smaller the world has gotten. This, I think, makes the felt-need greater.
