At Springpoint, we support our school partners in designing and implementing school models, with a priority on rigorous and purposeful instruction. Part of this support has meant that we work with schools, helping them deliver transformative learning experiences to students. Leveraging best practices for strong instruction and project-based learning, we have developed a set of units driven by multi-dimensional performance tasks, standards-aligned learning milestones, clear expectations around student performance, and more.
A critical aspect of these transformative learning experiences centers on ensuring that learning is purposeful and that students can easily see the real world applications of what they are learning. An especially enriching way that schools have done this is by inviting experts and authentic audiences into the learning experience. For example, Nowell Leadership Academy invited a professional chef and Johnson and Wales professor into their virtual classroom this spring, while students from Next Wave / Full Circle in Sommerville displayed their gentrification photo series in city hall in late 2019.
Several of our partner schools are implementing Springpoint-developed project-based units as a key part of their instructional focus. One such unit centers on dystopian literature and immerses students in daily inquiry-based lessons, engages them in activities to familiarize them with the critical elements of the genre, and helps them hone their writing skills. The unit will culminate in a final project—composing a short story styled in the dystopian genre—that weaves together the skills and competencies students have been working on throughout the unit and equips them to craft a compelling short story with their own commentary on a pressing social issue of our time.
To support the development of these stories, and to imbue the learning experiences with the richness that experts and authentic audiences provide, Springpoint has teamed up our partner schools to recruit and train writing coaches who will work directly with students, guiding them in their culminating project to write a short story in a dystopian literature unit. This short story is the unit’s “exhibition,” which serves to celebrate student work, connect the school and to the wider community, and increase rigor by focusing students to produce an authentic piece of writing.
Further, working collaboratively with writing experts imbues a project with purpose and raises the stakes for the quality of student work. And, as we all know, COVID-19—which has forced many schools to transition to remote or hybrid learning and cancelled many in-person events—has caused deeper isolation in communities across the country. This remote touchpoint will ensure that students continue to have enriching experiences with adults outside their school and immediate networks, which will impart useful social and professional skills.
Our virtual training helped coaches understand how to lead a coaching call with their students to support the development of a dystopian short story.
Springpoint trained writing coaches, demonstrating the type of feedback to give and how to present it to the student they will work with. Coaches will focus on being facilitative, asking probing questions, and making actionable suggestions for how to strengthen students’ narratives and their writing. This mentorship opportunity will help familiarize students with the process of receiving and incorporating feedback and act as a form of experiential learning, which will enliven and deepen the learning, engage students in a new experience, and expose them to diverse perspectives and post-secondary career paths.
“High school writing assignments were the only ones I consistently brought home to proudly show my parents. They made me realize journalism is the career I want to pursue, and are literally the reason I moved to New York from Amman, Jordan,” said Hani Barghouthi, a writing coach. “On a very real level, those writing assignments and classes changed my life, and I’m excited to see them do the same for even more students.”
Our writing coaches bring many background experiences to the table, including journalists, UX researchers, professors, publicists, authors, playwrights well as many, many educators. Once writing coaches are matched with their students, each pair will have four remote touchpoints explore genre-specific devices, brainstorm narrative elements, and discuss feedback.
We are so excited to support these writing coaches and our partner schools as they connect students to authentic audiences and experts who can provide writing and SEL support. Stay tuned for more updates on this!
One of the suite of tools Springpoint developed to support writing coaches as they work with students.