October 4, 2022 • 40 mins
Ever wondered what a year in the life of another teacher looks like? Ever wonder what a year of doing project-based, interdisciplinary learning in a makerspace looks like? Trey Smith is a K - 8 digital literacy teacher in Philadelphia. He is sharing details on his units, approach to educational design, and reflections on where to go next. You'll leave this episode with a better understanding of how content can be connected and integrated into a cohesive unit. Join us for a reflective and practice-packed conversation.
Links:
Wildcat Workshop at Chester Arthur School
Philadelphia Writing Project
National Writing Project
Next Generation Science Storylines
Exploratorium Activities
PhET Interactive Simulations
StoryMap JS
Teaching with the Library of Congress Blog Post with Political Cartoon about Water Quality
Supporting Civically Engaged Argument Writing with Primary Sources: Monuments, Memorials, and Memory
Code.org
Micro:bits and MakeCode
Trey’s Personal Website
Other Makerspace and STEM Educator Episodes:
Defining STEM Education
The Experience Doesn't End in the Makerspace
Empowerment is the Why in Education
Intro Music :David Biedenbender
Other Music:
Brenton Davis- Lofi in the bank
Monday Hopes- walk on funky street
LesFm- LoFi Night Dreaming
Mandiran New Circles
Find us on social media:
Instagram: cmichcese
Facebook: cmich_cese
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ashley O'Neil (00:38):
Today we're interviewing Trey Smith. I met
Trey at a PBL workshop and BelleIsle. Before I met him in
person, I knew that he was amakerspace teacher. I knew he
was just starting out in thispretty new position. And I knew
he was coming down to K eightfrom high school. And I had some
assumptions about how that wasgoing to go. So I was the first
(01:00):
one to be absolutely blown awaywhen Trey leads a seemingly
simple activity with theteachers in this workshop. He
just asks them to talk aboutwhat we noticed in the image on
the screen. He put something upthe projector. Now I will tell
you that it was a historicalpolitical cartoon. He didn't
even give us that much. But Iwatched as a roomful of teachers
(01:24):
who just come off lunch who havehad to fill busy days of
workshops, transformed fromslightly quiet slightly wary,
into full on detectives, and Iwatched tre keep a curious
facilitator stance just not aneasy thing to do with teachers.
And they watched him askquestion after question after
(01:45):
question. And then watched as heused questions to draw out
information from teachersindividually in small groups and
in whole groups. He got us todiscuss and debate and draw
conclusions about the discoveryof microorganisms in the Thames
River. A topic that had you puta PowerPoint up with a zippy
title and a lesson planobjective, who I would have been
(02:05):
ready to secretly scroll on myphone to avoid discussing that
all afternoon. But I loved everyminute of it. And so did those
teachers. I was so blown away bywhat Trey did something
deceptively simple that wasreally complex and nuanced, and
artfully done. So I asked tokeep in touch and we have he's
(02:25):
facilitated another PBLworkshops with me. He's let me
take a look at and ask questionsabout his unit plans and his
lessons for his makerspace.
You'll hear him referenced thoseconversations a little bit in
this episode. And recently, inpreparation for this podcast, we
even traded audio recordingsback and forth, because we were
so excited to discuss studentengagement and some of the
questions he had about hispractices this year. It has
(02:45):
honestly been one of thoseprofessional correspondences in
which I learned something newevery single time we talk. So I
asked him to talk to us in thepodcast. And as I guessed, there
is just way too much to put intoa single episode and to do it
justice. So this will be thefirst installment. And what
you're going to get when I sayit out loud sounds deceptively
simple. You're going to get adescription of several of Trey's
(03:08):
units. But like everything Treydoes, it becomes this woven,
wonderful conversation about histhoughts behind his lessons, how
he creates inter disciplinaryunits. And I'll let him share
more. But I will say if you'relooking for ideas about
incorporating making and steminto your classroom, get a
pencil ready. If you'rewondering how to be more inter
(03:31):
or multiple, multidisciplinary,get a pencil ready. If you're
skeptical about how coding orlaser printers can be relevant
to you, because you teachhistory or physics or
government. This episode is foryou and all of your friends. So
I've pared down a bit of Julie'sin my conversation here, because
you want to hear Trey over usanyway, I'll jump in a few times
(03:52):
to offer some context and my ownreflections in what is a jam
packed episode full of specificideas, big picture pedagogy, and
some really thoughtfulreflection and discussion. I
hope you enjoy this conversationwith Dre just as much as I have.
As always, there's a lot here.
So make sure if you're lookingfor a transcript, you head on
(04:13):
over to our website, which islinked in the show notes. You'll
also see in the show notes linksto many of the tools and
resources that Trey brings up inthis conversation. Here we go.
Okay, so, on our podcast today,we're really excited to have
someone who I know quite welland I'm going to let him
(04:33):
introduce himself and tell us alittle bit about his teaching
story and how he got into theposition he's in now.
Trey Smith (04:41):
Great. Thanks so much for having me. I am a K to
eight digital literacy teacherin Philadelphia public schools.
What does that mean? That meansI'm asked to teach by my
district computational thinkingand coding, use of digital tools
I'm thinking about how do wesearch for information on the
(05:02):
internet, and then alsoreflecting on computing in
society. I'm fortunate that Iwas recruited by a principal who
had a makerspace ready to go forme with a podcasting booth and
3d printers and lab tables andwoodworking materials and also a
family organization, a Friendsof group, that's what our school
(05:25):
calls it, that raises money tosupport our MakerSpace, which we
call the Wildcat workshop. Andso I had been teaching high
school, prior to this biology,chemistry, I'm certified and
have taught social studies atthe middle school level for a
year alongside teaching science,just to make the schedule work.
And then during the pandemic, orthe beginning of the pandemic, I
(05:49):
should say, I started teachingcomputer science at my high
school. I'm also certified toteach technology in
Pennsylvania. And so I startedteaching, coding, computing,
computational thinking onlinevia zoom. And I really loved it.
And so that really prepared meto move into this new role,
because I had some experienceteaching science and social
(06:12):
studies and computing. And Iknew I wanted to do some
interdisciplinary work ormultidisciplinary work in my
makerspace. And so yeah, this isreally a dream job for me. I'm
in year two, at at my newschool, and I am gaming out the
next you know, 10 to 15. BecauseI'm 20, who knows? I'm a
(06:35):
millennial, so I guess I can'tthink that far ahead about my
jobs. But yeah, I'm reallyexcited to be at my school and
to really try to bring to bearknowledge of a couple of
different disciplines that Ilove and care a lot about, and
try to integrate that into whatis making your MC your
Makerspace context.
Julie Cunningham (06:54):
Yeah, you know, I have so many follow up
questions already. Yeah, Iactually knew that was gonna
happen. So I don't even knowwhere to begin in probably Trey,
if you give us an example, maybeof an interdisciplinary project,
or because I was going to askjust, I think sometimes
Makerspace interdisciplinaryprojects, and even computational
thinking don't mean the samething to everybody who's
(07:16):
listening. We'd like them to Ithink, but they don't always. So
I don't know if it's easiest, ormore interesting to give us an
example or to or just tell uswhat your students are doing
when they're engaged in thoseactivities?
Ashley O'Neil (07:34):
Yeah, that's, that's a great question. I think
one of the things that I havetried to do is I see students
about twice a week, so 284students, twice a week, we have,
you know, to kindergartenclasses to first grade, and so
forth. Pretty small class sizes,if you do the math. So I'm
really fortunate there. And Ihave tried to develop a theme
(07:55):
for each grade level, so that Ican work with students on what I
hope is a meaningful project forthe entire year, but some many
projects along the way. And thenover the course of their time
with me, through being at theschool, we will have done a
range of things with coding andmaking and some of it will be
(08:16):
iterative. So let me let me givesome examples. One would be in
second grade, we think a lotabout light and electricity. And
we start with some explorationsof like, can we see things when
there is no light? We start totry to answer that question. And
we use a storylines unit that Ipulled from my life as a science
(08:36):
teacher in my work with somefolks who do storylines design.
And so we're also testing, youknow, which materials can light
light through and, and so forth.
And we're trying to make a partof our room dark, though, so we
can do some light painting. Andso I pulled a project from the
exploratorium that I know aboutand students using closed sticks
and, you know, cameras with openaperture and they're doing some
(08:58):
light painting. And so that'ssort of the problem, if you
will, that we're trying tosolve. But I've also couched the
entire year of learning aboutlighting and trucks, light and
electricity, and tellingstudents that we're going to do
some kind of invention at theend of the year, and I'm going
to want you to bring to bearwhatever you've learned about
light and electricity. I wantyou to use that to try to solve
(09:19):
a problem. So we're also withlightning electricity. We're
today we were sketching outlike, what's a light bulb look
like a close and how does itwork? And then we're moving into
circuit simulations. And somoving into the electricity
part, but we're still trying toplay around with light itself.
We're going to be brainstormingexamples of lights in our
(09:39):
community and how theycommunicate things or help us
see things or help us do things.
Then we can read a picture bookabout his name is escaping me,
but I just the book came in thisweek. The gentleman who invented
the traffic light, right, anAfrican American man, and so we
will learn about him we alsoLouis Latimer. who worked with
(10:00):
Thomas Edison was a patentdrawer, also African American
male, he helped installselectric streetlights in
Philadelphia, our first electricstreetlights. And we have a
Latimer street like down thestreet from our school. So we're
like reading some picture booksand learning about sort of the
history of some of thetechnologies that influence our
world. We have micro bits insecond grade, where we're coding
(10:21):
LEDs to try to solve some kindof problem or communicate a
message. In this case, we'retrying to communicate a message.
And so I've had second graderstell me, one second grader told
me that he sometimes just wantsa sister to leave him alone. And
he needs a way to communicatethat with her. And so he coded
stop, just comes up and says,stop another student, she said
(10:43):
that her brother always gets theDoritos in the morning when they
put the lunches together. Andshe doesn't think that's fair.
And she wanted some kind ofsystem to show the name of who's
going to get the Doritos thatday. And so I was like, oh,
yeah, that's a great problem.
Let me tell you about lists. Andso we like, you know, create
some lists and pull out a nameor a word or something from
(11:04):
them. And then other studentsrealize that that solution for
her project is actually asolution for a couple of other
projects, potentially. So thatgets them thinking, that's
actually kind of not even ourend product. But that's sort of
our one of our test cases, orone of our experiences with
playing around with tools,trying to think about some
things in the world that wewould love to address. And then,
(11:25):
and we're also making servomotors move with the microbead
and things like that. We'reusing Snap Circuits. We do a
whole I don't know what itsgonna look like this year, but
we did four months of shadowpuppets stories, so we're using
different materials. Andstudents are writing stories
with our storyboards. I had thatthat could last the word
(11:46):
storyboards, working on scripts,I'm going through students are
still some students are reallystill emergent writers. So I'm
helping write their stories outfor them as they dictate to me
or narrate to me what they want.
And they had their ideas come sofast, and their pencils aren't
moving as fast as their ideas,so I can help them with some of
that, and then they're recordingtheir scripts in the podcasting
(12:08):
booth. They're filming, we havea partnership with the local NPR
station. And so they provide avideo cameras for us. So I've
got video cameras around theroom, and we have light stages
up with lights, and then theirshadow puppets and so that that
project takes a lot of time,because then they're editing and
iMovie, as well, which is sortof hitting my digital literacy
(12:31):
standards in using digital toolsfor collaboration and creation.
So and I'm also trying to hitliteracy standards there were
looking at, you know, fables andthings from history to as mentor
texts, if you will, to help uswrite our own stories. So
there's a lot going on there.
And yeah, at the end of theyear, I'm like, Okay, so we've
done all this stuff, like, whatcould you? What could you use?
(12:52):
What could you put together totry to solve something? And one
thing, I was just on a panelwith some other folks, and we
were talking about socioscientific problems. And, you
know, they kind of were pushingme they're like, Okay, this is
like, this is great kids aresolving problems. Like, is there
a way to bring in some extralike social dimensions in what
(13:15):
you're doing? Not that I'm notdoing enough? I don't think and
so I think I am going to try toraise the question of like, do
we? Do we need a an electricalor light solution to all our
problems, right, like, if wealready have enough with if we
have some issues on the worldwhere we don't have enough
electricity in some communities?
Do we need to automate flippingpancakes at home? Or can we just
(13:38):
do that with our spatula, right?
Like, is there because you know,a kid made a pancake flipper
last year, and it was brilliant.
It was awesome. We had so muchfun doing it. Right? And so why
not? Let's do it. But also likeadding, I think, an extra layer
on top of I think the questionfor me is like, the consequences
of what we build, trying tothink through that a little bit
more. The same with like wecould, we could look at the
(14:00):
issues of migratory patternsbeing affected by city lights,
or reflect reflect on citylights as being useful in
Philadelphia for safety, butthen also the safety of more
than human, in our modern humansin our environment, we could
think about them as well. And sojust trying to add some more
layers in but I feel reallycomfortable with my second grade
(14:21):
unit, because I think there area lot of cool sub projects that
also are then helping us get tothis final project. So I don't
know if that's helpful to giveyou a sense.
So now let's take a pause. Andremember, Trey is talking about
second grade, and he's talkingabout a unit that lasts an
(14:42):
entire year. And he sees thesestudents two times a week. He
shared a quick recap of what afee means to him, but I want to
recap what I heard and then pullout some of the features that
really make thismultidisciplinary to me. So here
I'm talking about a year longunit that's based on light and
sound He starts this unit bysharing a question and Trey is
(15:03):
great at what I like to call themeandering question. It leads to
more questions. It can go in alot of directions. It often
requires research and can berevisited over time. It is not
easily answerable. And for aunit to last year, you want some
meaty questions. So startingwith a meandering question, like
Trey's leave space for all thedirections that he then goes. He
(15:26):
also talks about explorations ortest cases later in the podcast,
you're going to hear him say helikes to have an exploration
with everything. To me, it meansways for students to learn by
exploring the tools or thematerials or the ideas, or by
testing a theory. This is not ateacher telling them the answer
it is them exploring or figuringit out for themselves. One of
(15:48):
the ways to raise questionsoften meanders is to consider
the students community. In thecase of this unit, they're
considering how lightcommunicates and the purpose it
serves their city. They're alsolooking at literature, texts to
share about inventors andcreators in the field of study,
and mentor texts later, likefables that give students ideas
instructor for when they'recreating their own shadow puppet
(16:09):
stories. Then we hear about thetools. The tools could be part
of Trey's explorations when thestudents are figuring things
out, or they could be part of anoutcome or a project. From this
theme. He mentioned SnapCircuits, shadow puppets iMovie
and light stages. Now if youremember, Trey's main ask from
his district was to teachcomputer science as part of the
(16:30):
MakerSpace. So Trey also focuseson coding messages using little
bits, and including digitalcitizen skills into the iMovie
and movie editing portion of hisunit. So those are the layers of
tres teaching that he's built sofar, for that one unit for this
one class, class grade for thisyear. And through reflection and
feedback from his peers, he'snow going back to consider some
(16:53):
social responsibility to helpstudents see the impact of
inventions.
Julie Cunningham (17:00):
Well, I think you maybe make it the best job
there is because I think lots ofpeople would find it a struggle
to make curriculum trulyintegrated. And also to use
technology as a tool to drivethe curriculum instead of to
focus on you know, how to usethe technology, right, but to
use it as a tool for the, foryour other goals. So I have so
(17:24):
many questions. So I don't evenknow where to begin. So I how do
the kids will several questions.
But you mentioned you're notalways an expert in the area
that you're teaching. And forsome people that scary. You
mentioned YouTube or relying onoutside sources, right? Somebody
(17:45):
a student of yours who's gonefor Netflix, or you're talking
to a museum? How there can't bealways that you know, everything
there is to know about all thesetopics. So how do you get
comfortable with allowing thestudents to drive some of the
ways in which you go? Without? Idon't know getting too worried
(18:06):
that you don't know that theanswer?
Trey Smith (18:11):
I can't say we do it all? Well, right. I mean, today
we were, we looked at lightbulbs, I had one break. So that
was a little bit of an issue hadto deal with that, even though
we had addressed safety. Andthen we were looking at PhET
simulations and exploring andsetting fires on FET, which is
fun, the kids love to make thebatteries. And so next time we
have to talk about that right,like Okay, so what were you
(18:33):
discovering what's actuallygoing on here? Yeah, I don't
know. I think I have some timeto do all these things. But it
is also complicated in that Ilike to have an exploratory
phase A lot of these things, andthen we try to unpack, we did.
So I think the shadow puppetstories can be tighter this
year. So I think I'll save sometime. But also, we were three
(18:53):
months in and I had a teacherthat the teacher, the homeroom
teacher said to me, she said,one of the students this morning
said, we can't be late to Mr.
Smith's class, because we've gotto work on our shadow puppet
stories. And so it tells me thatthey were still engaged. And it
was so meaningful to them. So.
Ashley O'Neil (19:10):
So that was an example of a second grade unit
with Trey. And we did a littlebit more talking. And then I
asked him to share anotherexample of a unit and what it
might look like with olderstudents.
Trey Smith (19:22):
Yeah, and I'd say just another example, would be,
this is a new one for me thisyear. Last year, we, in seventh
grade did a project where wethought about monuments in our
city and try to reflect on Arethey as meaningful to us as they
are to other people? Or what arethese monuments trying to convey
(19:43):
and who was memorialized? Orwhat ideas or what things? I
didn't find that I pulled thatproject off as well as I could
have even though it maybe that'slike a whole podcast episode
like me thinking about like,what went what could have gone
better with the project, but atthe end of the day, I was trying
to have students reach Search,if they chose a topic about one
group chose Louis Latimeractually, another group chose
(20:05):
Ramadan as a topic, anothergroup chose gun violence as a
topic. So we had sort of hadlike a range of things. And then
I asked students to think aboutwhere could this go in the city.
And we had done some mapping,using a digital mapping tool of
things they liked in the city.
But one of them to think about,where would their monument or
memorial sit in context, but theother things that might have
(20:28):
happened, like, you know, LouisLatimer have friends in the
city, did he know other peoplelike who? What was what were the
other connections? So we didsome mapping, we coded a web
page in HTML and CSS to kind ofdo a summary or sort of proposal
web page. Like if we were tryingto propose this monument, we got
to send people to someinformation about it online,
that's usually a good idea. Sowe made a simple webpage that
(20:50):
had our map embedded in it, wecreated 3d models, 3d renders,
and then printed them with a 3dprinter. That was like one
aspect of it. And then also,just doing the background
research and trying to, youknow, make a case.
Ashley O'Neil (21:07):
So you might be thinking, these specific
examples are great, but what aresome big takeaways that I
shouldn't be using, as I'mthinking about building my own
interdisciplinary or my ownmakerspace, or my own stem unit
with my students.
Trey Smith (21:23):
But But I think telling you the story is useful
and say, and trying to conveythat I sort of knew that we're
trying to do digital mapping, Iknow that we're trying to use
the 3d printer and karvy, theCNC router, or the laser cutter
this year, too. And I want to Iwant the students be able to
design something like aprototype, with these tools. But
(21:43):
also, we first started designinga mobile monument or memorial to
ourselves, if we're going tomake one try to do some identity
work, reflect on who are we, asindividuals as seventh graders,
which was more and less fun fordepending on the student? And
then the, there was anothercomponent to the project. So the
webpage, the map, the model, andthen yeah, and the research, so
(22:05):
I guess I did say all of it.
Ashley O'Neil (22:07):
So as Trey is kind of building these units
from the ground up, I hear himloosely considering the tools
that he may use and some of theskills that students may learn
through those tools. I hear himthinking about his community and
asking kind of these broadquestions. I hear I'm thinking
about identity work withstudents and literature with
students and ways that they canresearch. I have these outcomes
(22:29):
I want students to do. And thenI hear him doing a lot of
brainstorming about how he canpull all of those things
together in a cohesive way. Now,you'll hear me interrupt Trey
and bring up a conversation thatI remember the two of us having
about this unit that I wantedhim to share a little bit more
about. You talked a little bitI've when we talked about this
(22:51):
before, there were somecomponents to the research about
because some of those monumentswere coming down in your city,
right, like one of the things Ilove about the things that you
share, is that they're reallyconnected to place. And an
accessible way for the students.
So this thing was happening.
Some of the monuments werecoming down in Philly at that
time, and you were able to talkabout it with them and connect
(23:15):
it right.
Trey Smith (23:16):
Yes. So that was actually where we started was
looking at this. We looked at animage of the King George statue
being pulled out in New York in1776. It was a lithograph and we
were sort of noticing wondering,I didn't give them any context
was like this is going tokickstart our whole year. Let's
look at this image, right. Andso they're analyzing and
(23:37):
thinking about, like, what mightthis be? Oh, gosh, this is
something that's happening now.
Right? We have people trying totear down statues now. And like,
Oh, cool. Have we heard of any?
Yeah, Christopher Columbus.
Okay, cool. Let's like look up aYouTube video about that. And
then we're looking at a YouTubevideo, and it's a reporter
talking to people who there aremen standing, primarily men
standing around with baseballbats guarding the Columbus
(23:58):
memorial in South Philadelphia.
And then there are other peoplewho are there with signs like
saying we should take this down,and then the city boarded it up,
and there was a big court caseabout like, Can this money be be
removed? And so we did a nicelittle they say I say, like, to
kind of get into this issue.
What are some things that you'veheard some people say in the
(24:19):
news story? You know, they saythis? And then what do you say
in response? Right. And, youknow, I have students, and this
is not me telling students whatto say this is students saying
things like, once you said, youknow, they say that they're
going to tear down our history.
And you know, student says,well, just because the monuments
gone, doesn't mean the historyis not there. Right? You have
(24:39):
other students who are saying,and what other histories might
be told, or could we tell?
Right, so they're raising thethemes that I want them to be
thinking about the sort ofquestions because I'm coming at
this from a literacyperspective, or it's probably
other ways to talk about this,but our built environment is a
text or collection of texts tobe read right? then we can also
rewrite them.
Ashley O'Neil (25:04):
Okay, I'm gonna pause, are just gonna sit with
this idea for a second. ourbuilt environment is a
collection of texts that can beread and rewritten. Now this
concept may be familiar to you,and it may not be. And you may
also have heard of anothercomplementary concept, this idea
of Teaching with PrimarySources. So you may be
(25:26):
wondering, why are we pausing totalk about literacy and primary
sources, history and writing inwhat you may have thought of as
a stem podcast? Well, for one,this project, and this concept
is really interesting, andreally, like interesting. And
for to STEM is about the skillsand the interconnection between
disciplines. And what Trey istalking about here is building
(25:49):
meaning by reading theenvironment around the students
and allowing an authentic placeto be the launching point for
learning, really considering theplaques next to that fountain,
and discussing the holes in theparagraph story that is written
there. And asking questions thatcome up when you think about the
holes in that story. So then youdig up the news articles from
(26:10):
around that time of themonuments creation, and you look
for information about thedesigner and the folks who
wanted the statue in the firstplace. You asked about the state
of the city at the time of thesculpture, as well as digging
into the life and the history ofthe subjects in the monument.
You notice who in your town hasstreets named after them? What
story does that tell thelocation of the city center in
(26:32):
relation to the first factory inyour town? What story does that
tell how the layout of the townis built? And what industries
were there at the time of theirbuilding and the relationship
between travel and food and thefamilies of the workers that
lived there? What story doesthat tell? having these
conversations, and doing thatresearch with students makes for
(26:53):
a really rich and integratedexperience. They're reading
primary sources, meaning theoriginal documents that talk
about an event. So the birthcertificates and the news
article from that time, insteadof a curated biography or
textbook about it. They'relikely writing questions and
summaries, they're collaboratingand discussing opinions and
(27:14):
ideas. They're learning aboutarchitecture and the history of
a place and why a bridge isbuilt a certain way to
accommodate a certain thing.
They're learning about thequirky ways in which newspapers
were numbered and delivered. Andthey're learning how to read
maps. And then they're alsocreating and building and making
in a sense that may feel morefamiliar like a stem piece. I
(27:34):
love that tree is a STEM teacherwho is a part of the National
Writing Project, this way ofadding literacy moves past that
surface level attempt to connectan engineering activity to a
story, immerses students in aconcept fully and allows them to
then move around and learn toolsto satisfy their own questions.
And all the while they'recurating. And they're building
(27:56):
and they're making, okay, backto tray.
Trey Smith (28:01):
And so think of a monuments and memorials as
things to be read, potentiallyrewritten. And I've been doing
that having that discussion andconversation with colleagues in
the Philadelphia writing projectand the National Writing
Project. So, you know, I'm notpulling, I'm not making all this
up, either. I'm drawing fromreally smart folks who have been
doing this work. And then I, Ithink, Okay, I think this
(28:24):
connects in a makerspacecontext. So with seventh grade
this year, though, I justdidn't, I don't think I got the
buy in about monuments I didfrom some students, but I just
didn't feel the overall buy in.
And I don't know if I justdidn't do enough to, you know,
make the project. Feel likemeaningful, right, like an
outside partner could havehelped. There's a new Marian
(28:46):
Anderson statue going up item, Itried to invite someone to come
talk to us about, like, What'sthat process like to get a new
statue proposed and things likethat. And I've never really like
pulled that off. And so I thinkhaving an outside partner would
have been useful in kind ofhelping us see what this process
is like. I also didn't shareexamples of students getting
historical markers put up. Butthose are there examples in
(29:10):
Philadelphia, of students whohave gotten historical markers
erected. And I think that's areally exciting and empowering
story. Just didn't have time totell it right or introduced to
the students, or I didn't makethe time. And so I think that
might have affected the project.
Ashley O'Neil (29:27):
So tres reflection on this project
recognizes the need to balanceher out relevance with history.
Students need to identify withthe things that are happening.
So he wants to include somemodern examples of students,
children, his students age whohave have done something about
this who have have made theirmark on history. So in the
seventh grade unit this year,he's trying a different
approach.
Trey Smith (29:48):
This year, we're doing ancient technologies in
seventh grade and trying tocreate a museum exhibit, which
I've talked to you about someactually, and there are a lot of
different layers to this, butsome of the big components are
using 3d printer. We have a 3dscanner this year as well. Our
laser cutter and so forth. Solike, you know, if we learn
about hieroglyphics, like couldwe make our own hieroglyphs?
(30:13):
Like about ourselves? Right? Canwe design our own, but then
we're doing that in service ofwe know we're going to design
some exhibits on the road. Andso maybe, well, one of the
reasons we might think aboutlaser cutting a hieroglyph for
3d printing it is because theactual ones that we might show
in a museum, the communitiesthat they're from might want
them right, we are museum mightnot be able to have them.
(30:36):
Because we're in America. Right?
And so that's a question asocial question we're gonna be
asking is what happens whencommunities, particularly those
outside of the West, or evennative communities in the US,
where they want artifacts backthat Western museums, American
museums, European museums have,and we know that those are there
stories, the Guinean bronzes, Ithink, Germany just gave back a
(30:56):
bunch. There are 100 badeen,bronzes in the University of
Pennsylvania Museum here inPhiladelphia, which is nuts to
me, right, like 100 of themthese contested artifacts. And I
think they're like 500, of theBritish 600 of the British
Museum. But there are 100 herein Philadelphia. And that's a,
you know, a thing to think aboutright to really reflect on. And
(31:19):
I think I only saw a couple,I've been over there. And there
are only a couple that aredisplayed even. So what happens
when communities want these backso we can do argumentation,
writing research, that's goingto be part of it sort of an op
ed project, but also trying todesign our exhibits, but then
try to be respectful orresponsive to thinking about how
(31:39):
could digital tools help us dothis in a way that is respectful
and responsible and ethical, butalso teaches people. And so
we've done our 3d design orTinkercad work right now, we
designed some obelisks, which Irealized was a really great
project to start off withbecause a they could they could
(32:01):
make them they could put theirnames and different things in
the obelisk. Besides, I couldpersonalize them. And we could
also like learn about like,where those are from, then we
looked at pyramids as well,because pyramids are easy to
build. But like getting someoneto build a stepped pyramid, like
once we might find in Mexico,for instance. Like getting
(32:22):
students to design those things.
But like the, what I reallyliked about this project, unlike
the one last year kind of justsaid, go do anything was that to
make an obelisk you have to dolike a sort of stretched out
pyramid. Not that anyone who'shearing the audio can see my
hands, but I'm moving my handshere as stretched out vertically
pyramid, you have to cut off thetop right, we have to know how
(32:45):
to do that in Tinkercad. Andthen you put it like a another
pyramid on top so and then wecan embed text in it. So I I
realized that and askingstudents to design this that I'm
really actually helping teachsome particular skills with
Tinkercad. And then we also havethese like personalized
artifacts that are connected, Ithink to what we're studying. So
we're still using 3d printer,we'll still make a webpage that
(33:08):
explains our exhibit to someonewill still do some mapping.
Right now, I've been building myown map, to kind of point out
the places we are learning aboutaround the globe, I think there
are additional areas foradditional ways for students to
connect their identities to thisand that we're looking at
cultures around the world. So ifI have a US classroom with
(33:29):
students from diversebackgrounds, then, you know,
they might select areas thatthey want to know more about or
feel connected to in some way.
And then the other layer thatwe're going to be thinking
about, we had done somediscussion in web design, about
Universal Design in in on theweb front. But now we can bring
that to the museum front. And Ithink I don't know that I have
(33:51):
the time to do everything I needto do here. So I have to be
really mindful. But I thinkthat's a really important and
exciting dimension to this work.
And so, you know, what's our 3dprinter doing in terms of
helping us make this exhibit?
Accessible, right? What's ourlaser cutter doing? What's our
website doing? What's our, ourmap doing? Can we make this
(34:14):
accessible? And what kind ofpartners can we bring in? So
certainly a museum partner isI've reached out to someone
who's still working on thatfront, but then also, members of
disability communities thatcould be potential clients or
partners haven't really workedall that out.
Ashley O'Neil (34:35):
I'm just going to interject here and say that
before you start creating a UDLcomponent to your classroom
unit, I highly recommend thatyou learn more about UDL or
Universal Design for Learning.
And I recommend following somedisability advocates on social
media platforms. I'm talkingabout disabled adults and teens
who are sharing their ownexperiences and their own
preferences. Not someone elsespeaking on Half of a person or
(34:59):
community, if you're interestedin learning more here, send us a
message. We're going to jumpback into a conversation with
Trey. And I missed it on therecording. But Julie asks Trey,
how he balances all of thesedifferent things, the preps, the
units, the questions, thestudent projects, all of it.
Trey Smith (35:21):
So it's a challenge for me because I have nine
different themes, right, whereI'm trying to do this, and I'm
trying to build some of thiswhile the planes flying. And so
it doesn't mean I do it well,all the time. But I think I'm
trying to pull from existingprojects that I'm familiar with
are like resources, I'm familiarwith approaches that I felt
(35:42):
really comfortable with, andthen just kind of put it out
there to students. And let's,and I try to see what they're
taking up. And then, you know,if things don't, things aren't
going super well, then I'll justI can change, you know,
direction a little bit. Yeah,anyway, I think I have a dream
job, right? I really do. BecauseI just I get to take up things
(36:02):
that I'm interested in. And Ilove movies. I love thinking
about cinema. But I don't know aton about it. So I want you to,
but I am excited about theseventh grade project. And I'm
always excited about secondgrade. And, you know, we do
plants and pollinators in thirdgrade, we do textiles and
patterns. In fourth grade we do.
We're doing space in fifth gradethis year. Sixth grade is all
cinematography and movies. Sowe'll design movie posters we
(36:25):
are working on I just set up onetoday, we were working on a
track and a dolly to learn howto like do dolly shots, I bought
gimbals. We're going to havecranes. But I talked to students
today is like why am I doing allthis with you? Because you
people are trying to persuadeyou with media all the time. And
so when we learn about zoomstoday versus dolly shots, and we
(36:46):
think about what a Zune does, itmakes you feel a certain kind of
way. So if we can break down howwe feel when we watch media, and
also understand how someone didit, we can understand if
someone's trying to manipulateus or if manipulation is not
always a good or bad thingnecessarily, right, but just
recognize that were people arepersuading us. So like with
(37:08):
that, but then we're gonna buildmobile apps. code.org is so
useful. I use it all the timefor so many things. code.org
movie recommender app is likeone of their projects. So we can
do that in App Lab withJavaScript. And then we can
design movie posters and AdobeExpress. For our movies that
we're making. We're doing stopmotion movies right now, with
Lego characters and clay andeverything. So this is sort of
(37:31):
where I am, oh, eighth grade, Idon't say this. We build games
that are inspired by nature. Sowe build board games. And then
we also we're going to designgames for our phone, again, in
Game Lab on code.org inJavaScript, and those are for
youth who go to the HeinzWildlife Refuge. It's an urban
wildlife refuge here inPhiladelphia. And it's for them
(37:53):
in the summer. So we've taken afield trip there already, with
the eighth grade students, theywent at the end of last year to
set up this project. And thenwe've met the park rangers and
the park rangers are sort of ourclients along with like, the
other young people that we'dimagine. So yeah, that's where I
am. And I, again, like I said, Ithink I have one of the best
(38:14):
jobs there is.
Ashley O'Neil (38:18):
I'm always amazed at how open and curious he stays
when he's framing things for hisstudents. And when he's framing
conversations for his ownteaching, if I could take one
thing back with me from myconversations with Trey, it
would be to keep and build thisopen language communication in
my own teaching so thateverything I posed to students
(38:41):
had this curious, genuinequestioning nature about it,
because I think that's part ofwhat makes his me meandering
questions work so well. We'll besharing more of our conversation
with Trey on another episode, Irecommend that in the meantime,
you check out the links in theshow notes, we shared a lot of
the tools and resourcesrecommended there. One final
(39:02):
thought on makerspaces and makerlearning. A lot of times we get
asked in our space to sharewhat's maker centered learning,
what's the maker space, whatSTEM education, and it gets
tricky. You can talk to fivedifferent educators and you'll
hear some overlap and somethrough lines. And then you'll
hear some things that are reallyunique to that space, or that
(39:23):
individual or that region. Likemost things, it doesn't all mean
the same things. And it reallycan't. It is wonderful to see
makerspaces that are customizedor become specific to the
interests and skill sets of theeducators in that space. That
specific to the tools that areavailable, and specific to the
(39:45):
goals and the objectives of theeducational space and the ages
of the students. Over the years.
Our center has curated our owndefinition and practices in our
MakerSpace and that definitionis constantly evolving as we
You'll learn about and learnfrom the practices and
experiences of others. Everytime we listen to a teacher's
experience we grow and we'regrateful for getting to learn
(40:08):
from Trey this week. If you'reinterested in learning more with
us, you can always reach out atour email C E S, E, at CMI C
h.edu. You can also hearconversations that we've had
with other stem and Makerspaceeducators and previous episodes.
I've linked some of them in theshow notes as well. Teach wonder
is brought to you by the Centerfor Excellence in STEM
(40:29):
education. Thanks for listening
Today we're interviewing Trey Smith. I met
Trey at a PBL workshop and BelleIsle. Before I met him in
person, I knew that he was amakerspace teacher. I knew he
was just starting out in thispretty new position. And I knew
he was coming down to K eightfrom high school. And I had some
assumptions about how that wasgoing to go. So I was the first
(01:00):
one to be absolutely blown awaywhen Trey leads a seemingly
simple activity with theteachers in this workshop. He
just asks them to talk aboutwhat we noticed in the image on
the screen. He put something upthe projector. Now I will tell
you that it was a historicalpolitical cartoon. He didn't
even give us that much. But Iwatched as a roomful of teachers
(01:24):
who just come off lunch who havehad to fill busy days of
workshops, transformed fromslightly quiet slightly wary,
into full on detectives, and Iwatched tre keep a curious
facilitator stance just not aneasy thing to do with teachers.
And they watched him askquestion after question after
(01:45):
question. And then watched as heused questions to draw out
information from teachersindividually in small groups and
in whole groups. He got us todiscuss and debate and draw
conclusions about the discoveryof microorganisms in the Thames
River. A topic that had you puta PowerPoint up with a zippy
title and a lesson planobjective, who I would have been
(02:05):
ready to secretly scroll on myphone to avoid discussing that
all afternoon. But I loved everyminute of it. And so did those
teachers. I was so blown away bywhat Trey did something
deceptively simple that wasreally complex and nuanced, and
artfully done. So I asked tokeep in touch and we have he's
(02:25):
facilitated another PBLworkshops with me. He's let me
take a look at and ask questionsabout his unit plans and his
lessons for his makerspace.
You'll hear him referenced thoseconversations a little bit in
this episode. And recently, inpreparation for this podcast, we
even traded audio recordingsback and forth, because we were
so excited to discuss studentengagement and some of the
questions he had about hispractices this year. It has
(02:45):
honestly been one of thoseprofessional correspondences in
which I learned something newevery single time we talk. So I
asked him to talk to us in thepodcast. And as I guessed, there
is just way too much to put intoa single episode and to do it
justice. So this will be thefirst installment. And what
you're going to get when I sayit out loud sounds deceptively
simple. You're going to get adescription of several of Trey's
(03:08):
units. But like everything Treydoes, it becomes this woven,
wonderful conversation about histhoughts behind his lessons, how
he creates inter disciplinaryunits. And I'll let him share
more. But I will say if you'relooking for ideas about
incorporating making and steminto your classroom, get a
pencil ready. If you'rewondering how to be more inter
(03:31):
or multiple, multidisciplinary,get a pencil ready. If you're
skeptical about how coding orlaser printers can be relevant
to you, because you teachhistory or physics or
government. This episode is foryou and all of your friends. So
I've pared down a bit of Julie'sin my conversation here, because
you want to hear Trey over usanyway, I'll jump in a few times
(03:52):
to offer some context and my ownreflections in what is a jam
packed episode full of specificideas, big picture pedagogy, and
some really thoughtfulreflection and discussion. I
hope you enjoy this conversationwith Dre just as much as I have.
As always, there's a lot here.
So make sure if you're lookingfor a transcript, you head on
(04:13):
over to our website, which islinked in the show notes. You'll
also see in the show notes linksto many of the tools and
resources that Trey brings up inthis conversation. Here we go.
Okay, so, on our podcast today,we're really excited to have
someone who I know quite welland I'm going to let him
(04:33):
introduce himself and tell us alittle bit about his teaching
story and how he got into theposition he's in now.
Trey Smith (04:41):
Great. Thanks so much for having me. I am a K to
eight digital literacy teacherin Philadelphia public schools.
What does that mean? That meansI'm asked to teach by my
district computational thinkingand coding, use of digital tools
I'm thinking about how do wesearch for information on the
(05:02):
internet, and then alsoreflecting on computing in
society. I'm fortunate that Iwas recruited by a principal who
had a makerspace ready to go forme with a podcasting booth and
3d printers and lab tables andwoodworking materials and also a
family organization, a Friendsof group, that's what our school
(05:25):
calls it, that raises money tosupport our MakerSpace, which we
call the Wildcat workshop. Andso I had been teaching high
school, prior to this biology,chemistry, I'm certified and
have taught social studies atthe middle school level for a
year alongside teaching science,just to make the schedule work.
And then during the pandemic, orthe beginning of the pandemic, I
(05:49):
should say, I started teachingcomputer science at my high
school. I'm also certified toteach technology in
Pennsylvania. And so I startedteaching, coding, computing,
computational thinking onlinevia zoom. And I really loved it.
And so that really prepared meto move into this new role,
because I had some experienceteaching science and social
(06:12):
studies and computing. And Iknew I wanted to do some
interdisciplinary work ormultidisciplinary work in my
makerspace. And so yeah, this isreally a dream job for me. I'm
in year two, at at my newschool, and I am gaming out the
next you know, 10 to 15. BecauseI'm 20, who knows? I'm a
(06:35):
millennial, so I guess I can'tthink that far ahead about my
jobs. But yeah, I'm reallyexcited to be at my school and
to really try to bring to bearknowledge of a couple of
different disciplines that Ilove and care a lot about, and
try to integrate that into whatis making your MC your
Makerspace context.
Julie Cunningham (06:54):
Yeah, you know, I have so many follow up
questions already. Yeah, Iactually knew that was gonna
happen. So I don't even knowwhere to begin in probably Trey,
if you give us an example, maybeof an interdisciplinary project,
or because I was going to askjust, I think sometimes
Makerspace interdisciplinaryprojects, and even computational
thinking don't mean the samething to everybody who's
(07:16):
listening. We'd like them to Ithink, but they don't always. So
I don't know if it's easiest, ormore interesting to give us an
example or to or just tell uswhat your students are doing
when they're engaged in thoseactivities?
Ashley O'Neil (07:34):
Yeah, that's, that's a great question. I think
one of the things that I havetried to do is I see students
about twice a week, so 284students, twice a week, we have,
you know, to kindergartenclasses to first grade, and so
forth. Pretty small class sizes,if you do the math. So I'm
really fortunate there. And Ihave tried to develop a theme
(07:55):
for each grade level, so that Ican work with students on what I
hope is a meaningful project forthe entire year, but some many
projects along the way. And thenover the course of their time
with me, through being at theschool, we will have done a
range of things with coding andmaking and some of it will be
(08:16):
iterative. So let me let me givesome examples. One would be in
second grade, we think a lotabout light and electricity. And
we start with some explorationsof like, can we see things when
there is no light? We start totry to answer that question. And
we use a storylines unit that Ipulled from my life as a science
(08:36):
teacher in my work with somefolks who do storylines design.
And so we're also testing, youknow, which materials can light
light through and, and so forth.
And we're trying to make a partof our room dark, though, so we
can do some light painting. Andso I pulled a project from the
exploratorium that I know aboutand students using closed sticks
and, you know, cameras with openaperture and they're doing some
(08:58):
light painting. And so that'ssort of the problem, if you
will, that we're trying tosolve. But I've also couched the
entire year of learning aboutlighting and trucks, light and
electricity, and tellingstudents that we're going to do
some kind of invention at theend of the year, and I'm going
to want you to bring to bearwhatever you've learned about
light and electricity. I wantyou to use that to try to solve
(09:19):
a problem. So we're also withlightning electricity. We're
today we were sketching outlike, what's a light bulb look
like a close and how does itwork? And then we're moving into
circuit simulations. And somoving into the electricity
part, but we're still trying toplay around with light itself.
We're going to be brainstormingexamples of lights in our
(09:39):
community and how theycommunicate things or help us
see things or help us do things.
Then we can read a picture bookabout his name is escaping me,
but I just the book came in thisweek. The gentleman who invented
the traffic light, right, anAfrican American man, and so we
will learn about him we alsoLouis Latimer. who worked with
(10:00):
Thomas Edison was a patentdrawer, also African American
male, he helped installselectric streetlights in
Philadelphia, our first electricstreetlights. And we have a
Latimer street like down thestreet from our school. So we're
like reading some picture booksand learning about sort of the
history of some of thetechnologies that influence our
world. We have micro bits insecond grade, where we're coding
(10:21):
LEDs to try to solve some kindof problem or communicate a
message. In this case, we'retrying to communicate a message.
And so I've had second graderstell me, one second grader told
me that he sometimes just wantsa sister to leave him alone. And
he needs a way to communicatethat with her. And so he coded
stop, just comes up and says,stop another student, she said
(10:43):
that her brother always gets theDoritos in the morning when they
put the lunches together. Andshe doesn't think that's fair.
And she wanted some kind ofsystem to show the name of who's
going to get the Doritos thatday. And so I was like, oh,
yeah, that's a great problem.
Let me tell you about lists. Andso we like, you know, create
some lists and pull out a nameor a word or something from
(11:04):
them. And then other studentsrealize that that solution for
her project is actually asolution for a couple of other
projects, potentially. So thatgets them thinking, that's
actually kind of not even ourend product. But that's sort of
our one of our test cases, orone of our experiences with
playing around with tools,trying to think about some
things in the world that wewould love to address. And then,
(11:25):
and we're also making servomotors move with the microbead
and things like that. We'reusing Snap Circuits. We do a
whole I don't know what itsgonna look like this year, but
we did four months of shadowpuppets stories, so we're using
different materials. Andstudents are writing stories
with our storyboards. I had thatthat could last the word
(11:46):
storyboards, working on scripts,I'm going through students are
still some students are reallystill emergent writers. So I'm
helping write their stories outfor them as they dictate to me
or narrate to me what they want.
And they had their ideas come sofast, and their pencils aren't
moving as fast as their ideas,so I can help them with some of
that, and then they're recordingtheir scripts in the podcasting
(12:08):
booth. They're filming, we havea partnership with the local NPR
station. And so they provide avideo cameras for us. So I've
got video cameras around theroom, and we have light stages
up with lights, and then theirshadow puppets and so that that
project takes a lot of time,because then they're editing and
iMovie, as well, which is sortof hitting my digital literacy
(12:31):
standards in using digital toolsfor collaboration and creation.
So and I'm also trying to hitliteracy standards there were
looking at, you know, fables andthings from history to as mentor
texts, if you will, to help uswrite our own stories. So
there's a lot going on there.
And yeah, at the end of theyear, I'm like, Okay, so we've
done all this stuff, like, whatcould you? What could you use?
(12:52):
What could you put together totry to solve something? And one
thing, I was just on a panelwith some other folks, and we
were talking about socioscientific problems. And, you
know, they kind of were pushingme they're like, Okay, this is
like, this is great kids aresolving problems. Like, is there
a way to bring in some extralike social dimensions in what
(13:15):
you're doing? Not that I'm notdoing enough? I don't think and
so I think I am going to try toraise the question of like, do
we? Do we need a an electricalor light solution to all our
problems, right, like, if wealready have enough with if we
have some issues on the worldwhere we don't have enough
electricity in some communities?
Do we need to automate flippingpancakes at home? Or can we just
(13:38):
do that with our spatula, right?
Like, is there because you know,a kid made a pancake flipper
last year, and it was brilliant.
It was awesome. We had so muchfun doing it. Right? And so why
not? Let's do it. But also likeadding, I think, an extra layer
on top of I think the questionfor me is like, the consequences
of what we build, trying tothink through that a little bit
more. The same with like wecould, we could look at the
(14:00):
issues of migratory patternsbeing affected by city lights,
or reflect reflect on citylights as being useful in
Philadelphia for safety, butthen also the safety of more
than human, in our modern humansin our environment, we could
think about them as well. And sojust trying to add some more
layers in but I feel reallycomfortable with my second grade
(14:21):
unit, because I think there area lot of cool sub projects that
also are then helping us get tothis final project. So I don't
know if that's helpful to giveyou a sense.
So now let's take a pause. Andremember, Trey is talking about
second grade, and he's talkingabout a unit that lasts an
(14:42):
entire year. And he sees thesestudents two times a week. He
shared a quick recap of what afee means to him, but I want to
recap what I heard and then pullout some of the features that
really make thismultidisciplinary to me. So here
I'm talking about a year longunit that's based on light and
sound He starts this unit bysharing a question and Trey is
(15:03):
great at what I like to call themeandering question. It leads to
more questions. It can go in alot of directions. It often
requires research and can berevisited over time. It is not
easily answerable. And for aunit to last year, you want some
meaty questions. So startingwith a meandering question, like
Trey's leave space for all thedirections that he then goes. He
(15:26):
also talks about explorations ortest cases later in the podcast,
you're going to hear him say helikes to have an exploration
with everything. To me, it meansways for students to learn by
exploring the tools or thematerials or the ideas, or by
testing a theory. This is not ateacher telling them the answer
it is them exploring or figuringit out for themselves. One of
(15:48):
the ways to raise questionsoften meanders is to consider
the students community. In thecase of this unit, they're
considering how lightcommunicates and the purpose it
serves their city. They're alsolooking at literature, texts to
share about inventors andcreators in the field of study,
and mentor texts later, likefables that give students ideas
instructor for when they'recreating their own shadow puppet
(16:09):
stories. Then we hear about thetools. The tools could be part
of Trey's explorations when thestudents are figuring things
out, or they could be part of anoutcome or a project. From this
theme. He mentioned SnapCircuits, shadow puppets iMovie
and light stages. Now if youremember, Trey's main ask from
his district was to teachcomputer science as part of the
(16:30):
MakerSpace. So Trey also focuseson coding messages using little
bits, and including digitalcitizen skills into the iMovie
and movie editing portion of hisunit. So those are the layers of
tres teaching that he's built sofar, for that one unit for this
one class, class grade for thisyear. And through reflection and
feedback from his peers, he'snow going back to consider some
(16:53):
social responsibility to helpstudents see the impact of
inventions.
Julie Cunningham (17:00):
Well, I think you maybe make it the best job
there is because I think lots ofpeople would find it a struggle
to make curriculum trulyintegrated. And also to use
technology as a tool to drivethe curriculum instead of to
focus on you know, how to usethe technology, right, but to
use it as a tool for the, foryour other goals. So I have so
(17:24):
many questions. So I don't evenknow where to begin. So I how do
the kids will several questions.
But you mentioned you're notalways an expert in the area
that you're teaching. And forsome people that scary. You
mentioned YouTube or relying onoutside sources, right? Somebody
(17:45):
a student of yours who's gonefor Netflix, or you're talking
to a museum? How there can't bealways that you know, everything
there is to know about all thesetopics. So how do you get
comfortable with allowing thestudents to drive some of the
ways in which you go? Without? Idon't know getting too worried
(18:06):
that you don't know that theanswer?
Trey Smith (18:11):
I can't say we do it all? Well, right. I mean, today
we were, we looked at lightbulbs, I had one break. So that
was a little bit of an issue hadto deal with that, even though
we had addressed safety. Andthen we were looking at PhET
simulations and exploring andsetting fires on FET, which is
fun, the kids love to make thebatteries. And so next time we
have to talk about that right,like Okay, so what were you
(18:33):
discovering what's actuallygoing on here? Yeah, I don't
know. I think I have some timeto do all these things. But it
is also complicated in that Ilike to have an exploratory
phase A lot of these things, andthen we try to unpack, we did.
So I think the shadow puppetstories can be tighter this
year. So I think I'll save sometime. But also, we were three
(18:53):
months in and I had a teacherthat the teacher, the homeroom
teacher said to me, she said,one of the students this morning
said, we can't be late to Mr.
Smith's class, because we've gotto work on our shadow puppet
stories. And so it tells me thatthey were still engaged. And it
was so meaningful to them. So.
Ashley O'Neil (19:10):
So that was an example of a second grade unit
with Trey. And we did a littlebit more talking. And then I
asked him to share anotherexample of a unit and what it
might look like with olderstudents.
Trey Smith (19:22):
Yeah, and I'd say just another example, would be,
this is a new one for me thisyear. Last year, we, in seventh
grade did a project where wethought about monuments in our
city and try to reflect on Arethey as meaningful to us as they
are to other people? Or what arethese monuments trying to convey
(19:43):
and who was memorialized? Orwhat ideas or what things? I
didn't find that I pulled thatproject off as well as I could
have even though it maybe that'slike a whole podcast episode
like me thinking about like,what went what could have gone
better with the project, but atthe end of the day, I was trying
to have students reach Search,if they chose a topic about one
group chose Louis Latimeractually, another group chose
(20:05):
Ramadan as a topic, anothergroup chose gun violence as a
topic. So we had sort of hadlike a range of things. And then
I asked students to think aboutwhere could this go in the city.
And we had done some mapping,using a digital mapping tool of
things they liked in the city.
But one of them to think about,where would their monument or
memorial sit in context, but theother things that might have
(20:28):
happened, like, you know, LouisLatimer have friends in the
city, did he know other peoplelike who? What was what were the
other connections? So we didsome mapping, we coded a web
page in HTML and CSS to kind ofdo a summary or sort of proposal
web page. Like if we were tryingto propose this monument, we got
to send people to someinformation about it online,
that's usually a good idea. Sowe made a simple webpage that
(20:50):
had our map embedded in it, wecreated 3d models, 3d renders,
and then printed them with a 3dprinter. That was like one
aspect of it. And then also,just doing the background
research and trying to, youknow, make a case.
Ashley O'Neil (21:07):
So you might be thinking, these specific
examples are great, but what aresome big takeaways that I
shouldn't be using, as I'mthinking about building my own
interdisciplinary or my ownmakerspace, or my own stem unit
with my students.
Trey Smith (21:23):
But But I think telling you the story is useful
and say, and trying to conveythat I sort of knew that we're
trying to do digital mapping, Iknow that we're trying to use
the 3d printer and karvy, theCNC router, or the laser cutter
this year, too. And I want to Iwant the students be able to
design something like aprototype, with these tools. But
(21:43):
also, we first started designinga mobile monument or memorial to
ourselves, if we're going tomake one try to do some identity
work, reflect on who are we, asindividuals as seventh graders,
which was more and less fun fordepending on the student? And
then the, there was anothercomponent to the project. So the
webpage, the map, the model, andthen yeah, and the research, so
(22:05):
I guess I did say all of it.
Ashley O'Neil (22:07):
So as Trey is kind of building these units
from the ground up, I hear himloosely considering the tools
that he may use and some of theskills that students may learn
through those tools. I hear himthinking about his community and
asking kind of these broadquestions. I hear I'm thinking
about identity work withstudents and literature with
students and ways that they canresearch. I have these outcomes
(22:29):
I want students to do. And thenI hear him doing a lot of
brainstorming about how he canpull all of those things
together in a cohesive way. Now,you'll hear me interrupt Trey
and bring up a conversation thatI remember the two of us having
about this unit that I wantedhim to share a little bit more
about. You talked a little bitI've when we talked about this
(22:51):
before, there were somecomponents to the research about
because some of those monumentswere coming down in your city,
right, like one of the things Ilove about the things that you
share, is that they're reallyconnected to place. And an
accessible way for the students.
So this thing was happening.
Some of the monuments werecoming down in Philly at that
time, and you were able to talkabout it with them and connect
(23:15):
it right.
Trey Smith (23:16):
Yes. So that was actually where we started was
looking at this. We looked at animage of the King George statue
being pulled out in New York in1776. It was a lithograph and we
were sort of noticing wondering,I didn't give them any context
was like this is going tokickstart our whole year. Let's
look at this image, right. Andso they're analyzing and
(23:37):
thinking about, like, what mightthis be? Oh, gosh, this is
something that's happening now.
Right? We have people trying totear down statues now. And like,
Oh, cool. Have we heard of any?
Yeah, Christopher Columbus.
Okay, cool. Let's like look up aYouTube video about that. And
then we're looking at a YouTubevideo, and it's a reporter
talking to people who there aremen standing, primarily men
standing around with baseballbats guarding the Columbus
(23:58):
memorial in South Philadelphia.
And then there are other peoplewho are there with signs like
saying we should take this down,and then the city boarded it up,
and there was a big court caseabout like, Can this money be be
removed? And so we did a nicelittle they say I say, like, to
kind of get into this issue.
What are some things that you'veheard some people say in the
(24:19):
news story? You know, they saythis? And then what do you say
in response? Right. And, youknow, I have students, and this
is not me telling students whatto say this is students saying
things like, once you said, youknow, they say that they're
going to tear down our history.
And you know, student says,well, just because the monuments
gone, doesn't mean the historyis not there. Right? You have
(24:39):
other students who are saying,and what other histories might
be told, or could we tell?
Right, so they're raising thethemes that I want them to be
thinking about the sort ofquestions because I'm coming at
this from a literacyperspective, or it's probably
other ways to talk about this,but our built environment is a
text or collection of texts tobe read right? then we can also
rewrite them.
Ashley O'Neil (25:04):
Okay, I'm gonna pause, are just gonna sit with
this idea for a second. ourbuilt environment is a
collection of texts that can beread and rewritten. Now this
concept may be familiar to you,and it may not be. And you may
also have heard of anothercomplementary concept, this idea
of Teaching with PrimarySources. So you may be
(25:26):
wondering, why are we pausing totalk about literacy and primary
sources, history and writing inwhat you may have thought of as
a stem podcast? Well, for one,this project, and this concept
is really interesting, andreally, like interesting. And
for to STEM is about the skillsand the interconnection between
disciplines. And what Trey istalking about here is building
(25:49):
meaning by reading theenvironment around the students
and allowing an authentic placeto be the launching point for
learning, really considering theplaques next to that fountain,
and discussing the holes in theparagraph story that is written
there. And asking questions thatcome up when you think about the
holes in that story. So then youdig up the news articles from
(26:10):
around that time of themonuments creation, and you look
for information about thedesigner and the folks who
wanted the statue in the firstplace. You asked about the state
of the city at the time of thesculpture, as well as digging
into the life and the history ofthe subjects in the monument.
You notice who in your town hasstreets named after them? What
story does that tell thelocation of the city center in
(26:32):
relation to the first factory inyour town? What story does that
tell how the layout of the townis built? And what industries
were there at the time of theirbuilding and the relationship
between travel and food and thefamilies of the workers that
lived there? What story doesthat tell? having these
conversations, and doing thatresearch with students makes for
(26:53):
a really rich and integratedexperience. They're reading
primary sources, meaning theoriginal documents that talk
about an event. So the birthcertificates and the news
article from that time, insteadof a curated biography or
textbook about it. They'relikely writing questions and
summaries, they're collaboratingand discussing opinions and
(27:14):
ideas. They're learning aboutarchitecture and the history of
a place and why a bridge isbuilt a certain way to
accommodate a certain thing.
They're learning about thequirky ways in which newspapers
were numbered and delivered. Andthey're learning how to read
maps. And then they're alsocreating and building and making
in a sense that may feel morefamiliar like a stem piece. I
(27:34):
love that tree is a STEM teacherwho is a part of the National
Writing Project, this way ofadding literacy moves past that
surface level attempt to connectan engineering activity to a
story, immerses students in aconcept fully and allows them to
then move around and learn toolsto satisfy their own questions.
And all the while they'recurating. And they're building
(27:56):
and they're making, okay, backto tray.
Trey Smith (28:01):
And so think of a monuments and memorials as
things to be read, potentiallyrewritten. And I've been doing
that having that discussion andconversation with colleagues in
the Philadelphia writing projectand the National Writing
Project. So, you know, I'm notpulling, I'm not making all this
up, either. I'm drawing fromreally smart folks who have been
doing this work. And then I, Ithink, Okay, I think this
(28:24):
connects in a makerspacecontext. So with seventh grade
this year, though, I justdidn't, I don't think I got the
buy in about monuments I didfrom some students, but I just
didn't feel the overall buy in.
And I don't know if I justdidn't do enough to, you know,
make the project. Feel likemeaningful, right, like an
outside partner could havehelped. There's a new Marian
(28:46):
Anderson statue going up item, Itried to invite someone to come
talk to us about, like, What'sthat process like to get a new
statue proposed and things likethat. And I've never really like
pulled that off. And so I thinkhaving an outside partner would
have been useful in kind ofhelping us see what this process
is like. I also didn't shareexamples of students getting
historical markers put up. Butthose are there examples in
(29:10):
Philadelphia, of students whohave gotten historical markers
erected. And I think that's areally exciting and empowering
story. Just didn't have time totell it right or introduced to
the students, or I didn't makethe time. And so I think that
might have affected the project.
Ashley O'Neil (29:27):
So tres reflection on this project
recognizes the need to balanceher out relevance with history.
Students need to identify withthe things that are happening.
So he wants to include somemodern examples of students,
children, his students age whohave have done something about
this who have have made theirmark on history. So in the
seventh grade unit this year,he's trying a different
approach.
Trey Smith (29:48):
This year, we're doing ancient technologies in
seventh grade and trying tocreate a museum exhibit, which
I've talked to you about someactually, and there are a lot of
different layers to this, butsome of the big components are
using 3d printer. We have a 3dscanner this year as well. Our
laser cutter and so forth. Solike, you know, if we learn
about hieroglyphics, like couldwe make our own hieroglyphs?
(30:13):
Like about ourselves? Right? Canwe design our own, but then
we're doing that in service ofwe know we're going to design
some exhibits on the road. Andso maybe, well, one of the
reasons we might think aboutlaser cutting a hieroglyph for
3d printing it is because theactual ones that we might show
in a museum, the communitiesthat they're from might want
them right, we are museum mightnot be able to have them.
(30:36):
Because we're in America. Right?
And so that's a question asocial question we're gonna be
asking is what happens whencommunities, particularly those
outside of the West, or evennative communities in the US,
where they want artifacts backthat Western museums, American
museums, European museums have,and we know that those are there
stories, the Guinean bronzes, Ithink, Germany just gave back a
(30:56):
bunch. There are 100 badeen,bronzes in the University of
Pennsylvania Museum here inPhiladelphia, which is nuts to
me, right, like 100 of themthese contested artifacts. And I
think they're like 500, of theBritish 600 of the British
Museum. But there are 100 herein Philadelphia. And that's a,
you know, a thing to think aboutright to really reflect on. And
(31:19):
I think I only saw a couple,I've been over there. And there
are only a couple that aredisplayed even. So what happens
when communities want these backso we can do argumentation,
writing research, that's goingto be part of it sort of an op
ed project, but also trying todesign our exhibits, but then
try to be respectful orresponsive to thinking about how
(31:39):
could digital tools help us dothis in a way that is respectful
and responsible and ethical, butalso teaches people. And so
we've done our 3d design orTinkercad work right now, we
designed some obelisks, which Irealized was a really great
project to start off withbecause a they could they could
(32:01):
make them they could put theirnames and different things in
the obelisk. Besides, I couldpersonalize them. And we could
also like learn about like,where those are from, then we
looked at pyramids as well,because pyramids are easy to
build. But like getting someoneto build a stepped pyramid, like
once we might find in Mexico,for instance. Like getting
(32:22):
students to design those things.
But like the, what I reallyliked about this project, unlike
the one last year kind of justsaid, go do anything was that to
make an obelisk you have to dolike a sort of stretched out
pyramid. Not that anyone who'shearing the audio can see my
hands, but I'm moving my handshere as stretched out vertically
pyramid, you have to cut off thetop right, we have to know how
(32:45):
to do that in Tinkercad. Andthen you put it like a another
pyramid on top so and then wecan embed text in it. So I I
realized that and askingstudents to design this that I'm
really actually helping teachsome particular skills with
Tinkercad. And then we also havethese like personalized
artifacts that are connected, Ithink to what we're studying. So
we're still using 3d printer,we'll still make a webpage that
(33:08):
explains our exhibit to someonewill still do some mapping.
Right now, I've been building myown map, to kind of point out
the places we are learning aboutaround the globe, I think there
are additional areas foradditional ways for students to
connect their identities to thisand that we're looking at
cultures around the world. So ifI have a US classroom with
(33:29):
students from diversebackgrounds, then, you know,
they might select areas thatthey want to know more about or
feel connected to in some way.
And then the other layer thatwe're going to be thinking
about, we had done somediscussion in web design, about
Universal Design in in on theweb front. But now we can bring
that to the museum front. And Ithink I don't know that I have
(33:51):
the time to do everything I needto do here. So I have to be
really mindful. But I thinkthat's a really important and
exciting dimension to this work.
And so, you know, what's our 3dprinter doing in terms of
helping us make this exhibit?
Accessible, right? What's ourlaser cutter doing? What's our
website doing? What's our, ourmap doing? Can we make this
(34:14):
accessible? And what kind ofpartners can we bring in? So
certainly a museum partner isI've reached out to someone
who's still working on thatfront, but then also, members of
disability communities thatcould be potential clients or
partners haven't really workedall that out.
Ashley O'Neil (34:35):
I'm just going to interject here and say that
before you start creating a UDLcomponent to your classroom
unit, I highly recommend thatyou learn more about UDL or
Universal Design for Learning.
And I recommend following somedisability advocates on social
media platforms. I'm talkingabout disabled adults and teens
who are sharing their ownexperiences and their own
preferences. Not someone elsespeaking on Half of a person or
(34:59):
community, if you're interestedin learning more here, send us a
message. We're going to jumpback into a conversation with
Trey. And I missed it on therecording. But Julie asks Trey,
how he balances all of thesedifferent things, the preps, the
units, the questions, thestudent projects, all of it.
Trey Smith (35:21):
So it's a challenge for me because I have nine
different themes, right, whereI'm trying to do this, and I'm
trying to build some of thiswhile the planes flying. And so
it doesn't mean I do it well,all the time. But I think I'm
trying to pull from existingprojects that I'm familiar with
are like resources, I'm familiarwith approaches that I felt
(35:42):
really comfortable with, andthen just kind of put it out
there to students. And let's,and I try to see what they're
taking up. And then, you know,if things don't, things aren't
going super well, then I'll justI can change, you know,
direction a little bit. Yeah,anyway, I think I have a dream
job, right? I really do. BecauseI just I get to take up things
(36:02):
that I'm interested in. And Ilove movies. I love thinking
about cinema. But I don't know aton about it. So I want you to,
but I am excited about theseventh grade project. And I'm
always excited about secondgrade. And, you know, we do
plants and pollinators in thirdgrade, we do textiles and
patterns. In fourth grade we do.
We're doing space in fifth gradethis year. Sixth grade is all
cinematography and movies. Sowe'll design movie posters we
(36:25):
are working on I just set up onetoday, we were working on a
track and a dolly to learn howto like do dolly shots, I bought
gimbals. We're going to havecranes. But I talked to students
today is like why am I doing allthis with you? Because you
people are trying to persuadeyou with media all the time. And
so when we learn about zoomstoday versus dolly shots, and we
(36:46):
think about what a Zune does, itmakes you feel a certain kind of
way. So if we can break down howwe feel when we watch media, and
also understand how someone didit, we can understand if
someone's trying to manipulateus or if manipulation is not
always a good or bad thingnecessarily, right, but just
recognize that were people arepersuading us. So like with
(37:08):
that, but then we're gonna buildmobile apps. code.org is so
useful. I use it all the timefor so many things. code.org
movie recommender app is likeone of their projects. So we can
do that in App Lab withJavaScript. And then we can
design movie posters and AdobeExpress. For our movies that
we're making. We're doing stopmotion movies right now, with
Lego characters and clay andeverything. So this is sort of
(37:31):
where I am, oh, eighth grade, Idon't say this. We build games
that are inspired by nature. Sowe build board games. And then
we also we're going to designgames for our phone, again, in
Game Lab on code.org inJavaScript, and those are for
youth who go to the HeinzWildlife Refuge. It's an urban
wildlife refuge here inPhiladelphia. And it's for them
(37:53):
in the summer. So we've taken afield trip there already, with
the eighth grade students, theywent at the end of last year to
set up this project. And thenwe've met the park rangers and
the park rangers are sort of ourclients along with like, the
other young people that we'dimagine. So yeah, that's where I
am. And I, again, like I said, Ithink I have one of the best
(38:14):
jobs there is.
Ashley O'Neil (38:18):
I'm always amazed at how open and curious he stays
when he's framing things for hisstudents. And when he's framing
conversations for his ownteaching, if I could take one
thing back with me from myconversations with Trey, it
would be to keep and build thisopen language communication in
my own teaching so thateverything I posed to students
(38:41):
had this curious, genuinequestioning nature about it,
because I think that's part ofwhat makes his me meandering
questions work so well. We'll besharing more of our conversation
with Trey on another episode, Irecommend that in the meantime,
you check out the links in theshow notes, we shared a lot of
the tools and resourcesrecommended there. One final
(39:02):
thought on makerspaces and makerlearning. A lot of times we get
asked in our space to sharewhat's maker centered learning,
what's the maker space, whatSTEM education, and it gets
tricky. You can talk to fivedifferent educators and you'll
hear some overlap and somethrough lines. And then you'll
hear some things that are reallyunique to that space, or that
(39:23):
individual or that region. Likemost things, it doesn't all mean
the same things. And it reallycan't. It is wonderful to see
makerspaces that are customizedor become specific to the
interests and skill sets of theeducators in that space. That
specific to the tools that areavailable, and specific to the
(39:45):
goals and the objectives of theeducational space and the ages
of the students. Over the years.
Our center has curated our owndefinition and practices in our
MakerSpace and that definitionis constantly evolving as we
You'll learn about and learnfrom the practices and
experiences of others. Everytime we listen to a teacher's
experience we grow and we'regrateful for getting to learn
(40:08):
from Trey this week. If you'reinterested in learning more with
us, you can always reach out atour email C E S, E, at CMI C
h.edu. You can also hearconversations that we've had
with other stem and Makerspaceeducators and previous episodes.
I've linked some of them in theshow notes as well. Teach wonder
is brought to you by the Centerfor Excellence in STEM
(40:29):
education. Thanks for listening
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