Fifth Grade Grows Up

On any given day in Shore’s three Grade 5 homerooms, you might find students leading a contentious class discussion about a central figure in American history, planning the smallest details of a “crazy sock day,” or recording music and narration for a documentary created on an iPad during an overnight trip to the coast. And off to one side, you might catch a teacher with an iPhone snapping a photo of the action to post to the class’s private Instagram or Twitter account.

Noisy, exciting, and natively digital, Grade 5 at Shore is a thrilling experience for the students who see themselves as the leaders of the Lower School. And that’s just how fifth grade homeroom teachers Mullery Doar, Louis Frank, and David Lund like it.

“It's almost as if the world opens up,” says Lund. “Their eyes are uncovered and they're no longer children, but they're not quite adults, or even teenagers yet. They start seeing the complexity in things.”

Lund, Doar, and Frank take it as their personal mission to celebrate the world’s complexity in every lesson, every discussion, and every trip or activity they plan for their students, from researching unsung American heroes to tracing the food chain in and around tidepools on Salem Sound.

“We take all the skills that they've learned in the lower grades,” says Doar, “and we encourage them to use them across the board to think more critically about source documents, discuss ideas, and form opinions based on facts and evidence about what they're learning.”

During the spring 2015 term, students were asked to question the conventional wisdom about the significance of the achievements of some key individuals in American history. For example, they read source documents about Harriet Tubman, and had to decide whether the risks Tubman took by helping to free fellow slaves and family members by way of the Underground Railroad were outweighed by the number of people she actually saved.

“What we do is very provocative,” admits Frank, “but for us, the worst thing that could happen in the classroom is that everyone agrees. Because then it's not fun, and they're not really learning anything; it’s just facts. That's what so challenging: We have kids who say, ‘Well, I agree with what you said about this, but I don't agree with what you said about something else.’ You have all these conflicting ideas in the room that require a lot of thinking that's very abstract.”

Shore introduces student-centered teaching and learning through discussion - often referred to as the Harkness method - in the fifth grade.

“It's a modified version [of the Harkness method],” explains Doar. “We have rules and you raise your hand, but you're called on by the previous speaker, as opposed to being called on by a teacher. That really fosters discussion, and requires you to reference what your classmates have said, to agree or disagree politely and respectfully, and to provide your rationale, your evidence, for your thoughts and opinions. It helps deepen their thinking and understanding.”

Adds Frank, “A lot of what we do is actually so-called ‘life skills,’ like listening to each other. It’s character education, and it’s very much related to empathy and, ultimately, understanding other people.”

“At this age,” Frank continues, “there's a heightened sense of self-awareness, and we have to reconcile that with the fact that so much of what we do academically requires discomfort: The idea of taking a risk and potentially saying something that someone might not agree with, or saying something that might be perceived as incorrect. So there's two competing impulses: keeping it intellectually rigorous, but also making it socially and emotionally comfortable for them in their heightened sense of self-awareness and self-consciousness.”

“Puberty - and all the emotional and physical changes that come with it - is a very real challenge for us,” admits Doar. “In so many ways, fifth graders are beginning to figure out who they are, and where they fall in the world. They start to grow up a little more, and they want more independence. But on the other hand, they don't always quite know what to do with that independence, so we’re constantly teaching and reinforcing that they need to think before they act, and understand how their actions affect others, both positively and negatively.”

But most importantly, says Doar, “We show them it's okay to be wrong. It's okay to be confused. That's normal, and everyone experiences that at some point in time. Asking for help is a good thing, not a sign of weakness.”

For Doar, Frank, and Lund, just as important as helping students grow up - both intellectually and emotionally - is celebrating their discoveries and achievements, often through digital means.

“Social media is a very easy way for us to showcase our students and what they're capable of,” says Doar. “We’re proud of them. They accomplish a lot, and we're proud of the curriculum we've built, and the projects, and the field trips we've gone on. We put two new field trips on the calendar this school year that I think have been some of our best yet, so why not showcase those if it only takes 15 seconds on my iPhone?”

While undeniably rich opportunities for Instagram posts and Twitter hashtags, those field trips are also an increasingly important part of Shore’s curriculum, especially in Grade 5.

“Studying branches of government - it's a hard concept for fifth grade,” explains Lund. “It didn't really become real until the trip to the new Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston. We were the first school group to visit this amazing place. And when they went into the replica of the Senate chamber and sat there and voted, they immediately understood how legislation is made. It was just really important to get out and experience that - otherwise the government unit could be dry for kids.”

The Mystic Seaport overnight trip also made an impact.

“There's real value in being taught something by someone new who is a subject-matter expert,” asserts Frank. “To hear about blacksmithing or whaling culture from us doesn't pack the same punch as when you go somewhere and experience it first hand. Beyond that, the overnight stay provides a huge growing experience for kids who have not slept away from home before, and also a great bonding experience for the class as a whole.”

“The overnight is special,” adds Lund. “They're really psyched about going away from home, but also nervous and scared. For some, it could be their first time away. When those kids return home after a great trip, they feel so proud of themselves.”

Planning new field trips around key curriculum areas is just one way Lund, Frank, and Doar are changing the fifth grade experience. They say faculty collaboration will continue to be a huge driver of innovation in their classrooms, and across the entire school. Technology is one area that’s advancing rapidly.

“We use technology very well,” says Doar, pointing to the iPad documentary project from the Mystic Seaport trip as an example. “But there are so many more ways it can further the students' learning. This year they did a lot of vocabulary study through online programs. But we're looking into other offerings that can strengthen math skills and grammar skills through online applications that look and feel like games to the kids.”

“We're always talking and thinking of things,” Frank confirms. “There's a lot of confidence in the faculty as a whole. I think, too, our collective curiosity is great. We're all really passionate about education; we like to learn and read.”

Adds Doar, “I don't think any of us is satisfied with the response, ‘That's how it's always been done.’ We like to continue to change things and mix it up, see what is best.”

Frank describes this as a kind of remixing. “The so-called ‘inspiration’ for what we do, it's not static; it's always sort of evolving based on new ideas we encounter, or best practices we see put in place down the hall. Anything we do, it might be based on a book that David read over the summer, or a suggestion that Mullery found on Twitter, or something new down the hall in the first grade or the fourth. If there’s a good idea, we know we can just run with it. We have no shame about stealing – what we’re really doing is remixing. The fact that we're always working to make it better, and always working to learn ourselves, makes it more exciting for us and engaging for the kids, ultimately.”

To an outsider, that kind of passion for an already tough job might seem extraordinary - an example of going well above and beyond the call of duty. But Shore faculty like Frank, Doar, and Lund see it differently.

“You’re not really thinking about it like a job,” Lund says. “You’re doing it because you enjoy teaching, you enjoy working with kids. You're thinking about doing the best you can and doing what seems exciting to you as a teacher. All of us go above and beyond in our own way; we’re people who really feel called to be teachers. ”

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Fifth Grade Grows Up

Shore Country Day School