Well, the 25th Project Zero Classroom (PZC) has come to an end! What is PZC? PZC is a week-long professional development conference for educators from around the world. At the conference, school leaders and teachers can learn about PZ tools and frameworks that can be implemented upon return to their schools and classrooms.
What were some of The Good Project staff’s key take-aways from this year’s event?
During Ron Ritchhart’s plenary, we used the fun “conversation dance” thinking routine to learn more about the ten Cultures of Thinking in Action mindsets, such as “we can’t teach dispositions, we must enculturate them” and “learning occurs at the point of challenge.” During the conversation dance each participant begins with one of the mindsets on a card and discusses one of the questions on the back of their card in relation to their mindset with a partner (e.g. “What’s your take?” or “What might it look like?”). After both partners share, the partners switch cards and discuss their mindsets with new partners.
Later on Monday, our team members Lynn Barendsen, Danny Mucinskas, and Shelby Clark were able to share Good Project activities and research with PZC participants in a mini course entitled “Good Work: What It Is and How to Teach It.” During the session, participants explored their ideas of a good worker in small groups, noting the particular attributes they associate with these role models. Later, participants discussed whether and how these attributes merged with the Good Project framework of the three Es of good work: excellence, ethics, and engagement. This activity also serves as the first activity in our Good Project lesson plans.
Liz Dawes-Duraisingh spoke in her plenary “Learning to Dialogue: Dialoguing to Learn” about the importance of intercultural dialogue, and, importantly, of giving students specific tools to learn how to speak to one another. Her project’s “Dialogue Toolkit” gives students nine different ways that they can interact with each other’s comments in their online intercultural chatboard. For example, students are instructed to notice what stands out in another student’s post, or to make a connection between another student’s post and something in their own lives. Alternatively, students can name an aspect of their lives, identities, or contexts that influences how they see another student’s post. We’re excited to try out the dialogue toolkit in our Good Project teacher community of practice.
From Tina Grotzer’s “Educating for a Changing Climate: Helping Students to Live Sustainably and Equitably as Global Citizens” came the idea of “moral musical chairs.” In the activity, students are presented with an ethical dilemma; then, chairs are set up for each student, with each chair representing a different perspective a student could take on the dilemma. Music is played, and when the music stops students have to assume the perspective of the chair they are at and discuss the dilemma from this perspective. While Tina Grotzer applies this activity to numerous environmental dilemmas, our team is excited to try this out with many of the dilemmas located in our dilemma database.
So much other great learning happened at the PZC this year, particularly in the small study groups where educators were able to gather after plenaries and mini course sessions in order to reflect and learn together. Just type in #pzc2023 into your social media platform of choice to see examples from this year’s PZC of different activities the study groups did together. One of our particular favorites was “Bumper cars mixed with red light, green light”.
The week ended with the PZC community reaffirming its commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). In the closing plenary session, speakers addressed the importance of recognizing identity, inclusive of race, class, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and more, in confronting systemic oppression. At The Good Project, we will continue interrogating these issues as we collaborate with diverse educators and investigate our own positionality as researchers, with the goal of promoting human development for learners across many contexts and environments.