Thinking Big About Engagement (Transcript)

Rob Olazagasti: Having to learn about something so abstract and complicated as the cell, being the smallest unit of life, you know, I sorta wanted to make it larger than life. So we literally went big. We went really, really big in creating this giant cell model, just to obviously give them an experience to remember–

My name is Rob Olazagasti, sixth grade science teacher, School of the Future.

Student 1: How do you think the lysosomes digests like– destroys bad bacteria, basically?

Rob Olazagasti: A big part of this project was having them act as a teacher and I wanted them to have a setting in which they could teach from. So, you know, we created this giant, plastic cube, which we modeled after a cell, with their different cell organo models in there. And it’s something that they definitely never forget.

Student 1: Anybody else?

Dainy Tejada: It’s awesome to have my class inside the giant cell, because it’s a better understanding of the cell. Like it’s actually an experiment. Like we get to be there. We don’t just write and read about it. We get to experience that live giant cell.

Rob Olazagasti: You’re right.

Stacy Goldstein: The artistic sense of the way that he approaches science is really unique, and kids really take to that. And Rob’s definitely a great example of somebody who’s had to– he’s always had creative projects, always had really hands on science.

Dainy Tejada: When you create something, you also learn.

Rob Olazagasti: The kids have been learning about the living cell. We started off our studies with an analogy, using something that’s very common to them, something that they all obviously understand, New York City. Looking at how New York City can be structured as a cell. So they represented various organelles as metaphor, using different parts of the city. So for example, they have the subway system being representative of the rough endoplasm reticulum. The nucleus being City Hall and the Mayor. So they took the creative approach to learning about the cell parts. So taking the different working parts of New York City and applying them to a cell model allows them to understand the structures and the functions better. So as that project was sort of on its tail end, the kids then became experts on one specific part of the city, or one specific part of the cell itself and one specific organelle. So they researched, developed lesson plans and created models that they were to use to teach their students about the organelles that they had created. They were required to have sort of a structured lesson plan with a driving question and an objective, some sort of task that the students would be doing, and then some sort of assessment at the end.

And the jump start.

This project specifically, I tried taking a step back from, you know, sort of the teacher role and really helping my students develop their own voice as teachers.

Dainy Tejada: I kinda like it a lot, ’cause I like to teach people but it also feels amazing inside, like that you have experience to be a teacher.

Student 2: All right, so for the driving question, how do lysosomes protect the living cell? Daina?

Rob Olazagasti: They understand what it takes to be a teacher, and what it is like to plan a lesson, what it’s like to execute a lesson. But also, I think, more importantly for them, it builds their confidence in the content. Having to know what you’re doing before you teach it really makes a difference. So during their presentations, I was assessing their overall presentation, their confidence and their comfort with presenting the lesson, and then the content itself, how well they were hitting the facts that they needed to hit, how well they were expressing what we talked about in our individual conferences with those groups, how well they expressed that or presented that to their students. Also, their creativity and their effort. I was sort of keeping a running record throughout their lesson of things that they said, things that they did, and suggestions on how they could improve for the next time. So at the end of this, I’ll have sort of a sit down with them again to talk to them about the different elements of their lesson, from my notes and from my experience with observing.

Stacy Goldstein: People love Rob and love his class. To have such an intellectual environment, he doesn’t baby down science words. He uses sophisticated vocabulary in his class. He talks to them like scientists, talks to them very seriously.

Rob Olazagasti: So why did I go back and disagree that it would be in a plant cell?

When you can change it up, make it your own, you know, really make it personalized for the kids, it comes from the heart. It’s no longer, you know, teaching curriculum from the book. It becomes, you know, curriculum from the heart.

Schools That Work

School Of The Future