Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
They were filling their pockets with rocks and they were developing their own rock collection, and it just started showing up in the classroom. I finally got a call from a parent and she said, “Okay, what’s happening with all these rocks? Because my kid just gave up his whole Pokémon collection for a bunch of rocks.” That’s when I knew, okay, something’s happening here.
Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was the voice of Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen. I interviewed Rosemarie on the first day of Deeper Learning via Projects, a class I co-teach with Stacey Lopaz as part of the San Diego Teacher Residency, a teacher credentialing program at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education.
We wanted to start class by going deep into an exceptional project, and the moment we started talking about it, Stacey and I knew it had to be Rosemarie’s project, “Everybody Needs a Rock.” So, we asked Rosemarie to come in and tell the class about it, and we recorded it all so you can hear it, too. The recording starts with Stacey introducing Rosemarie, and she does a much better job than I could. So, we’re going to get right into it.
Stacey Lopaz:
I am so thrilled to introduce you all to, arguably, the best teacher of all time, Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen.
Rosemarie has spent more than 20 years working in education, more than half of which were spent teaching kindergarten down at High Tech Elementary, Chula Vista, a school where she was the founding teacher.
Walking into Rosemarie’s classroom is like walking into a different world, one that is filled with wonder and curiosity and play and joy, and where learning is born out of children’s questions and items found in nature and rooted in play.
The depth of learning that happens in Ms. Rosemarie’s classroom is what you would hope for children of all ages. And as my oldest child enter enters kindergarten, I have made it very clear to Rosemarie that should she go back into teaching, I would drive to the ends of the earth, or at least to the edge of San Diego County, so that my child could learn from her.
You all, it is such an honor to get to spend the next bit of time learning from the incomparable Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Whoa. Wow. Thank you, Stacey.
Alec Patton:
All right, we are going to be talking about Everybody Needs a Rock. This is a kindergarten project. Rosemarie, what comes to mind when you think about this project?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
There are many projects in my role now as a professional learning designer that I refer to when talking about elements of project-based learning. But I think the one that consistently comes up in terms of transformative learning for myself and for our community, and when I say community, I’m talking about not just the children, but their families and all of the educators in their care, the word that comes to mind is transformative learning.
There was something that really happened in that project experience that felt transformative for everyone, especially for myself. I feel like it shifted who I was as an educator and a human being, and really shifted my design as a teacher.
Alec Patton:
Why?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Why? Well, I think something that I really focused in on as a kindergarten teacher specifically was, I wanted to facilitate an emerging curriculum. Meaning that I wanted to be in conversation with my students. Not only literal conversations, but also have their questions really influence our curriculum and the design of learning experiences in the classroom.
For this particular project, it really came out of a genuine interest around rocks. I would have to say that it started off with one of my babies, I’ll call him B., and he was really struggling with emotional regulation, connecting with other children, because of his struggles with emotional regulation. But he started coming in with his own rock collection.
We would come in during morning meeting and he’d bring in rocks, and he’d talk about them. He had an uncle who was teaching him all about rocks. He knew all the names. He knew which ones were heart openers, which one was sandstone, which one was amethyst.
And then, the next day, another kindergartner, Lucy, brought in her rock collection. And then, other kindergartners started bringing in rocks from the kindergarten playground. Rocks started just showing up in the classroom.
High Tech High Chula Vista, as you know, is situated on this really beautiful natural space. We have the Otay Valley right behind our building, and so we would go on nature walks. And rocks became what we called nature treasures. They were filling their pockets with rocks and they were developing their own rock collection. And it just started showing up in the classroom.
I finally got a call from a parent and she said, “Okay, what’s happening with all these rocks? Because my kid just gave up his whole Pokémon collection for a bunch of rocks.” That’s when I knew, okay, something’s happening here and I should probably tap into this. I think I was a kid who really liked rocks. I wasn’t the type of rock lover that I am now, but I did like rocks.
I had a genuine interest in them, but I felt like this was a curiosity that was bubbling in the community that we had to investigate.
Alec Patton:
Okay. So, what time of year is this?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
It was second semester. We had already had our first exhibition. They had gone through what a project is. We had established our culture. We had established thinking routines where we were consistently reflecting upon our play, and I had created space for them to pose questions to the community. We were, I would say, beginning of second semester, so it was the right time to start something new.
Alec Patton:
Well, in some ways, it was the right time to start something new. What were you planning on doing if the kids didn’t have a big shared obsession?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
I don’t have a recollection actually of what I had planned for that particular second semester. I think that’s the way in which I have approached projects, or I had been approaching projects, is generally by second semester, I build in that space to have opportunities for students to share out their questions, share it out to the community for us to share our theories around these questions. And then, me, as a facilitator, build in those opportunities for us to build background knowledge, and then revisit those theories.
Alec Patton:
What I’m hearing, I’m going to fill in some gaps here, let me know if I got it right, that you come in in the autumn with a sense of, “This is a thing we’re going to be doing.” You’re not just ignoring the kids, but you have a structure in mind. And part of your-
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Absolutely.
Alec Patton:
And your thinking is, we’re going to do this more structured thing. During the course of doing that, I’m going to get to know these kids better, and then that’s going to create an opportunity for this next thing.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Absolutely. I think as a kindergarten teacher, their first semester in terms of projects, we already have an idea of what we’re going to do for the first project. Because it’s their very first project. They have no background knowledge on the elements of project-based learning. They don’t know what an exhibition is.
Alec Patton:
They don’t know what school is, or what kindergarten is.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. Exactly. A lot of it is, they’re figuring out, “Oh, I have to show up to this space every single day, and I have to work alongside with these other people.” It’s a lot of building community and getting used to the idea of coming to this space every single day. Yeah.
I would say, as a kindergarten teacher, I really wanted to create a space where questions lived and that we could investigate those questions, but it required structure on my part. I am a firm believer in play, because I really believe that that’s how human beings learn best. I say human beings, obviously children, but also human beings.
I think that PBL, for example, is inherently playful. I think when we’re investigating and we’re researching and we’re tinkering, we’re actually playing. I really like to look at this expansive view of play. I would always build in time for children to engage in open exploration, but also building in time to what I call kid watching.
While they’re engaging in open play, I’m paying attention to what questions are coming up, what theories they’re making as they’re building or paying attention to what areas of our exploration time are interesting to the children. And then, like I said, I try to be in conversation. If I notice that children are building high towers, then maybe in the next day, I’ll put in pictures of different buildings from around the world, to see what happens next when we add that piece of photography or of architecture. How does that influence their play?
And then, I build in opportunities to make their thinking visible. We would consistently meet to reflect upon open-ended play, but also the play that I would structure around a project topic. That would help drive our next activities, or the next questions that we would investigate together.
Alec Patton:
I’m getting secondhand stress just by imagining like, okay, it’s second semester, we don’t really know what we’re going to do. And then, the kids, they’re really into rocks. But then I’m like, “well, I need some time to design that.” It’s not like I’m going to go, “Hey, we’re going to launch a project tomorrow because you’re so-”
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Right.
Alec Patton:
It’s one thing. I can find some pictures of tall buildings.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
100%.
Alec Patton:
That’s fine. Great. But it’s going to be, this is our second semester. There’s a lot more there. You have this idea. And then, from when you have that call that these kids are selling off their Pokémon collections for rocks, what’s the gap between that and the point that you launched the project? Just literally number of, and I’m sure you don’t have the exact, but roughly.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
I think as a kindergarten teacher and elementary school teacher, we have to be planning no matter what. So, we’re going to have learning experiences happening. We’re going to have literacy centers that are happening already. So, all of that was already happening, even though we may not yet have a project topic that was going to ground all of the content and skills that we’re going to learn in the second semester.
But I’m not quite sure how many weeks. But I have to say that in terms of launch, something that I struggled with when I was a kindergarten teacher was the actual designing a launch. Because I felt like, because I tried to facilitate projects that were based on what was coming up from students, I felt like the project had already launched, organically.
They were already curious. They were already coming in and looking at the rocks, and building their own and having conversations around them. Going to our community rock hound and asking him, “What do you think this rock might be?” I feel like in many ways, it already launched. But in terms of the actual launch that I designed, I would say less than two weeks.
Alec Patton:
Wow. You have this idea.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yes.
Alec Patton:
What did you have to have in place before you committed to, “This is a project, I’m telling the kids it’s happening?”
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Well, I think for me, and in terms of being the teacher and really thinking about what are the content skills and mindsets that I hope children leave with at the end of the project, I think those were my main things that I wanted to have in place when I was designing the project. Because I feel like in terms of launch, the engagement was already there.
And so, I had to really think about, okay, because in elementary school you’re teaching all the subjects, I was trying to think about what is all the literature that we could read connected to rocks? Whether it’s specific science standards and GSS standards for kindergarten that I could connect to this topic. I began thinking about it through the variety of disciplines that I teach during my day, and then I just named out what my goals were for each specific discipline.
For me, as a project designer, when I’m really excited about the topic, it really excites me to go out and think about who is also engaging in this work in the community? In terms of what I had to have already planned out to launch, I think, again, having those goals of the content and skills. Because that really helped me ground what I was going to do the next day with the kids.
Alec Patton:
Yeah. Did you have a sense of what the kids were going to make? Did you have a product sense?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Somewhat. Somewhat. Because at the time, our seventh grade buddies, Kyle Linick was one of them, and he was really into lapidary at the time, and so he was telling me a lot about how they would find rocks, how he was part of this gem and mineral society and how they would polish them.
Alec Patton:
It is a teacher, to be clear.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
This is… Yes.
Alec Patton:
This is not an actual seventh-grade buddy.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
No. No. No, I’m sorry. This was a middle-school buddy, who was at High Tech Middle Chula Vista.
Alec Patton:
He was your buddy?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
His class and my class were buddies, and so they would come once a week. Sorry, for the non-elementary school teachers here, buddies, we have cross-age buddies who would come once a week and we’d engage in either project work or read books together, or sometimes just play together. But it was an opportunity for us to build community across the building and also work with another class. I had an idea that we would probably do something around lapidary. My immediate thought was jewelry.
Alec Patton:
You’re saying lapidary like everyone knows what it means, and one person at this table doesn’t exactly know what it means.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Lapidary is the art of polishing rocks and turning them either into jewelry, or there might be a fancier word for turning them into gemstones.
Alec Patton:
There’s no fancier word than lapidary.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
But again, I feel like all of these pieces came together really organically, which is why I say, I have some projects where I feel like I was very intentional with the design and the planning. But I feel like the reason why this one felt so transformative for me as a teacher, and for the community, is because there are all these pieces that magically came together.
I’m sure in this deconstruction, we’ll see that there was a lot of intentional design that went behind it. But a lot of pieces came together, such as our seventh-grade buddy also was into lapidary, so that gave me an idea like, “Oh, maybe we could do some polishing of rocks.”
Alec Patton:
You’ve mapped out your learning goals across multiple subjects, which is no small thing, and you know you’re going to polish some rocks?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yes.
Alec Patton:
With some seventh-graders?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Well, with our kindergartners.
Alec Patton:
Right. No, but they were going to polish them with seventh-graders?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
No, they were not going to polish… This was actually just in conversation with their teacher.
Alec Patton:
Right. Right. Right.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Because that was something that he was doing on his own.
Alec Patton:
Got it. Okay. You have a sense of, we’re going to polish rocks. You have a sense of, they’re going to learn these things in these multiple subjects. Was there anything else that you wanted to have, I don’t want to say nailed down, but at least in place before you committed to it with the kids?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
The idea of community partnerships was really important to me, to getting them out into the community and meeting other rock enthusiasts. I immediately put my feelers out. I did some online research. I found some gem and mineral societies. The one that actually said that they would present to young children was out in Fallbrook. We ended up doing some fundraising to pay for a bus, because our school doesn’t have buses. We rely on parents.
But being in Chula Vista and driving to Fallbrook, I just couldn’t have my parents drive that far. We did some fundraising, got a bus, and we actually went to the Fallbrook Gem & Mineral Society. We had a jeweler as one of our parents in the community. Her name is Sarah, and she is the owner and designer of ChulaMaiz Jewelry. We had her also come in.
Alec Patton:
Were you just calling people or you were emailing them? How did you make these connections?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah, I emailed. There’s a gem and mineral society in Balboa Park, but they did not necessarily work with children, which is why I reached out to a bunch. And Fallbrook was the one that was like, we love kids. Because generally, gem and mineral societies are made up of retired people. The two people who were heading this gem and mineral society were retired K-12 teachers, and one of them had taught kindergarten.
Alec Patton:
Oh, wow.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
They were like, “Yes, bring them.” That ended up being a really beautiful experience.
Alec Patton:
All right. Should we get to the launch that was maybe not really a launch?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. Yes, because we had already launched. Like I said, I feel like as a project designer, designing launches wasn’t something I did particularly well. I would always say that I was like, “Well, it’s launched itself.” But we wanted to launch and make it explicitly clear that our project was going to be all about rocks.
I went out and I bought two geodes and I put it inside a bag, and we sat in morning meeting and we were going to have the kids pass around the bag and put their hand in it, and not look in it and try to guess what our next unit investigation would be. Of course, because they were all fired up about rocks, it didn’t take very long for them to figure out like, “Oh, it’s hard. Oh, it feels a little bit bumpy. It’s probably rocks.”
I pulled them out. Some kids knew what geodes were, and then I had to explain that geodes looked like normal rocks on the outside. But when you crack them open, we’re in for a treat. I was really in it. I was super excited. I bought one of those fancy Minecraft-looking rock picks. We took out the geode, cracked one immediately opened, and they’re like, “Aww. Ooh. Ah.” Because it’s like quartz crystals, and they loved it. They were super excited.
Then, we take out the other geode, and I take the little Minecraft pick and I’m trying to hit it. It stays. Doesn’t open up at all. I try one more time with a little bit more force. Doesn’t open. I was like, “I’m going to try one more time.” Stretching, trying to hit it one more time. It doesn’t open up.
Finally, one of my little kinder babies, Leonel, says, “Well, maybe he’s not ready to open up.” I’m just like, “You’re absolutely right. Maybe the geode’s not quite ready to open up. What do you think we should do?” One of my students says, “Well, maybe we need to welcome him and introduce ourselves.”
We take this geode that is not opening up and we start saying hello. It’s like, “Hi, my name’s Ms. Rosemarie. Welcome.” We pass him around the circle. All the kids are introducing themselves to the geode. I was like, “Well, does the geode have a name? What do you think?” Again, passing around, quietly listening to the geode, and someone finally says, “I think his name is Geode.”
I was like, “Well, all right. We’ve got Mr. Geode here. What else should we do, so that we can make Mr. Geode feel more comfortable opening up?” I elicited the ideas from the kids, and they were like, “Well, maybe we should just show him around, show him around the classroom, take him out to recess.” They did that. We had some kids take Mr. Geode out to recess.
And then, I had this idea. I’m like, “Well, maybe each kid can take Mr. Geode home and write about what they did with Mr. Geode to make him feel comfortable, and then snap a picture.” I thought of this because when I was student-teaching in kindergarten, we had this bear that was a mascot called Kinderbear. My cooperating teacher at the time would let each kindergarten child take this bear home. I thought, “Okay, why don’t we do that with Mr. Geode?”
After school, I put the journal together. I sent home an email about what ended up happening with our second geode, and I put together a list of who the geode would go home with each day. The parameters were, they had to do something to make Mr. Geode feel welcome and special. They had to snap a picture and send it to me. And then, with their parents’ support, write what they did in this journal. And then, the next day they would come and share.
Believe it or not, Mr. Geode came back. There were a couple instances where it was like, we almost lost Mr. Geode, but we found him. But that ended up, again, organically, coming from this launch where it’s like, “Oh, we’re going to guess,” by just, put two rocks in a bag. And then, something else special came out of it.
Alec Patton:
Okay. So, that’s what was happening outside of class.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yes.
Alec Patton:
What did you tell them was going to happen, other than that?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. Let’s go back to the planning piece. In those two weeks, I decided what was going to be the main takeaways for content skills and mindsets. I also went out and tried to check out any kind of book related to rocks. I also put out an all-call in terms of materials. If anybody had any materials about rocks, because for second grade, for example, that’s a second-grade science standard, so there were some folks who had materials with rocks in them about the rock cycle. And then, I also just bought a bunch of materials around rocks.
During that time, we did what I would call provocations. We would, using some of the materials that I got set up, various stations where children could investigate. One was gem and mineral identification. I had a sheet that had… It was like a map that had all these different kinds of gems on them with their names. And then, students had an assortment of rocks around them, and they had to match them and figure out what the name was. I also had some agates on a light table, so they engaged in some observational drawings and practicing looking closely.
Yeah, I had a variety of stations, and I would start my day just like that. They would often walk in, and it was already carefully prepared provocations set up, so that children would already feel curious about what was going to happen during the day. I think all of that planning really happened, I would say, in the two weeks and the gathering of materials. I would start off my day in those provocations and children had a choice of where to go. We did have parameters saying, okay, there’s only four friends in each station. If there are four friends there, then you have to go choose something else.
And then, we would build in time to switch, so that there were some kids, if they didn’t get the station that they really wanted to get, that they would have an opportunity to go there. And then, that’s when we would build in time afterwards to reflect on what they noticed in these particular stations. This is where we would take a question or a theory that a child would pose, and then we’d build our theory together, if that makes sense.
Alec Patton:
Yeah, I think so.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah.
Alec Patton:
Do you remember any of those?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. Oh, in addition to that, we were also having science lessons. What is living? What is non-living? We had had some practice around living and non-living things and how we figured that living things have to eat. They need air, they drink water. They reproduce, meaning they make more of themselves. One of the questions was, are rocks living?
We went around and some kids were saying, “Well, no, because you can put it in a jar. It doesn’t need air. It doesn’t eat anything. It doesn’t need water.” And then, one child said, “Actually, yes, because it reproduces.” We were like, “Tell us more. What do you mean?” He said, “well, often when you find a rock, it’s not by itself. It’s amongst other rocks, so it’s part of a family. And it does make more of itself.”
He already had this idea of the rocks cycle. There is a way that you can find little rocks amongst bigger rocks. That would be an example of an emerging theory that I could then say, “Oh, well, let’s watch this rock cycle video and then come back to that question. Are rocks living or non-living?”
Alec Patton:
What you’re describing right now, I would describe as an interest-driven inquiry-based unit of study, where you’re learning, the kids are building expertise. Obviously, what makes it into a project is that they are creating something together or individually. How does that come in?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. I think for me, I love the idea of using metaphor, especially in projects even with young children. When I was thinking about the topic of rocks, I was also thinking about, who is the rock in our life? What does it mean to be a rock for someone else? We did a lot of investigation also around, how can a person be a rock?
With that question within our larger investigation, we started inviting folks in from our community to come in and share examples of a story when they were going through a hard time in their life, and how they had someone show up for them and who that person was, and how that person served as a rock for them.
I think when we start getting into those layers, that it’s not just the science content and learning about the math and connecting it to geometry, but also seeing how we can actually learn and transform ourselves and impact the community just from the study of a rock. I think that’s, to me, how it transformed into a project.
Alec Patton:
Yeah. What were kids creating?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. We were inspired by our community partner, Sarah, because she was a jewelry designer, to do something special with our rock. And then, I helped them make the connection that it’s really interesting that we actually give rocks to people we love as a symbol. The idea of, perhaps, making a piece of jewelry for a rock in our life came up, and so that ended up being our product.
I had to try to find a way to have students create jewelry, so that it was their hands on it and not so much adult hands. Something that I found in my research is, we would have to take a tumbled rock and then do some wire wrapping. It still required a little bit of support, but this was something that kindergartners could do, was wrap wire around rocks. And then, we turned them-
Alec Patton:
Were you tumbling your own rocks?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
We were tumbling our own rocks.
Alec Patton:
Wow.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
We were tumbling our own rocks.
Alec Patton:
Was everyone choosing? Like, “This is it? This is my rock?”
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yes.
Alec Patton:
A kid has their rock. They put it in the tumbler, which takes days, right?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
For it to look as shiny as we wanted, it was supposed to be a lot longer. I looked up some different ways that we could shine rocks, and one way was to take nail polish. This was very controversial. We had to have a talk about it. There were some kids that are like, “This doesn’t feel right. I don’t think we should be painting our rocks with nail polish so that they’re shiny.”
Yeah. We had to have some conversations around like, okay, this is a gift. We’re not trying to sell it. We’re not saying that it’s being shined for three months, and that’s why it looks… Because exhibition was going to be-
Alec Patton:
Three months? Three months is what we’re talking about, though? A properly shined rock?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Properly shined rock was in the tumbler that we had, because it was like a kid tumbler. It wasn’t like a professional tumbler. It would take months. We didn’t have that amount of time.
Alec Patton:
No, understandable.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Because exhibition was in a few weeks. We were like, “We could use some nail polish and it’ll do the same thing.” We got them all on board. There was one that was still holding out, but yeah. We chose a rock because we would engage in nature walks behind our school, and they were collecting rocks on these nature walks. We also took the time to identify who would be the rock in our life that we would like to celebrate.
They found their special rock, we put it in the tumbler, they identified who their rock would be. And then, we practiced, in terms of writing, writing letters to our rock, explaining why they are the rock in their life. For our exhibition, we shared our letters. We created a book of letters to our rocks, presenting our rocks, our tumbled necklaces. I also collaborated with our performing arts teacher at the time, and we put on a rock show. We were really playing around with the word rock for our rocks.
Alec Patton:
How much time did the kids spend on making their jewelry?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Oh, from choosing the rocks, putting it in the tumbler, which we had to do for several days, so there was a lot of waiting, and that tumbler actually runs 24 hours, goodness, I would say a couple weeks. Because we also engaged in wrapping practice just for their fine motor skills. So that when they finally got to wrapping their rock for the rock in their life, they had practice. This wouldn’t be the first time that they practiced wrapping something.
Alec Patton:
Now, did critique come into this?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. I would say the critique came more into their writing samples versus the jewelry making. Just because it just felt like a much more natural space to have critique, where it would just be more… It was a space more ripe for critique, whereas they already had their rock and there was only so many different ways that they could wrap it. But yes, critique went in, too, because they had to have an illustration that went along with their writing.
And it was in letter format, which actually is a second-grade standard. There was a lot of really pushing the kids in terms of their literacy. Some kids got extra support, but for the kids who were ready, they were actually writing the letters to their rocks, just explaining who they were.
There was critique around making sure that the illustrations matched the words. There was critique around looking at models. What is it that a friendly letter needs? It needs a date. It needs a greeting. It has to have a clear body. Is their writing easy to read? Is there adequate spacing, so that we can figure out the message of what they’re trying to say? Does it have a closing and their signature? And is the format correct? There was definitely critique around there.
Alec Patton:
Yeah. What did you decide to do for the exhibition?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
For the exhibition, we really wanted to flip the script and have the kids really be the teachers, and have learning centers where they were teaching our visitors about all the different pieces of the science behind rocks. For example, we learned about how granite is a rock that is prevalent here in San Diego County, and how it’s made up of quartz and mica and feldspar.
Yeah, we had different stations examining granite. We learned about the different hardness that you can find in rocks. One of the minerals that you can find, again prevalent here in San Diego County, is quartz, and how you can figure out if a rock is quartz or not is whether it can scratch glass. We had a center where a couple of kids were like, “Is this quartz or not quartz?” How do you know?” And have them go through that process.
There was also observational drawing. There was a wire-wrapping station, where they talked about the ways in which they created their jewelry. And then, of course, there was the area that showcased all of their letters and where they shared the idea of people being rocks as well.
Alec Patton:
How do you prepare kindergartners for that?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
I think the biggest piece for preparing kindergarten, which is a good practice, I think K-12, is that the pieces of the exhibition don’t feel new. It’s not like I’m adding this piece that they have to learn in order to get this exhibition just right. For example, it was all pieces that they have learned throughout the project.
For example, how do we know if this rock is quartz or if it’s sandstone? Well, we know because it has a hardness scale of seven, so it’s going to scratch a piece of glass. We had a glass like this jar that we would practice scratching our rocks on. Something like that, where there were practices and experiences that they could recreate for the visitors, I think, was a key piece.
We also take time to practice. I think ideally, something that we learned from our very first director and world was that, you ideally want to be done with the project at least a week before exhibition. So, you can spend that time really practicing for exhibition, and you’re setting the kids up for success. To prepare our kindergartners, we also made sure that we prepared our adults.
We did that by having a set of questions that were already set up at their stations, that visitors, when they would come to that station, could rely on some of these prompts. We had practiced these prompts beforehand with students, so it’s not just open questions for each child. But there are very specific questions that the adults can ask the students, and then the students feel prepared to answer them.
Alec Patton:
What happened to Mr. Geode?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
We decided, okay, we’re going to try to open up Mr. Geode again at the exhibition. And I was worried because he showed up. He came back. He went to all 20-plus homes and came back. But I was like, “Oh, no, what if he doesn’t open up? Because we’re going to have a big audience.”
I had invited Gabe Ogilvie, who was the director of our afterschool program at the time, who was two feet taller than me because I thought it would just be hilarious to have him crack open the geode with our rock pick. We saved that piece for last. We were like, okay. We talked about how we had Mr. Geode at everyone’s home. That’s how we, second-to-last, closed out our exhibition, was that Mr. Gabe came in, put Mr. Geode inside of a sock so that in case he would open up, it wouldn’t splatter on everyone.
Just one hit and we were all like, “Is he going to open?” He pulled him out and Mr. Geode had opened up, and all the kids could identify that Mr. Geode was a druzy quartz. And then, we closed with our rock show.
Alec Patton:
What happened to the rock show?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
I collaborated with Latonya Lockett, who is a brilliant arts integration educator, and she’s also a singer. A local singer, so she’s very much connected to the art community. She had brought one of her friends in to play acoustic guitar. She had had my kids for Exploratory for Performing Arts, and so they had been practicing Sweet Child of Mine. They closed out with Sweet Child of Mine, with a person playing acoustic guitar, and it was… All the parents did not… There was no dry eye in that room.
Alec Patton:
Oh, wow. That’s awesome.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah.
Alec Patton:
This, now, brings it over to you all. Come on up and ask your question.
Taylor Cea:
Hi, Rosemarie.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Hi.
Taylor Cea:
I’m Taylor.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Hi, Taylor.
Taylor Cea:
I had a question similar to Alec’s sentiment about just hearing your explanation and then feeling so stressed about last-minute planning. It seems to me, from what I heard, that you typically have your first semester project planned out.
My question to you is, I love the idea of asking questions and formulating whether it be a first-semester project or a second-semester project, based around the questions and the curiosity that shows up in the classroom. Do you always plan linear in that scenario? Do you ever backwards-plan?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
I do. I do. In fact, I encourage backwards planning.
Taylor Cea:
Yeah.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yeah. I think I was already thinking about what the exhibition might look like, what the product might look like, because I had a buddy, our seventh-grade buddy, who was engaging in lapidary. But yes, I do. I don’t necessarily plan linear all the time. I know it’s not a comfortable space for a lot of teachers to be in, where it’s like, “I don’t know what the next project’s going to be. We’ll see what it’s about.”
It is a space, I think, where I was in my career, where I felt very comfortable to be engaging in that dance. But yes, I do backwards planning. I highly recommend it. Because then, once you have your dream exhibition in mind, those products in mind, then you take the steps towards it.
Taylor Cea:
Yeah. Typically, I plan backwards as well, but I do like the idea of starting with the question, going to the last product that’s going to happen, and then building from there. Even though it seems like a lot of this is on the spot, there is still some type of a structure, which is very comforting.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Yes, there is. There is.
Taylor Cea:
Yeah, this is not so rogue.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
No. I think when you first hear, “Oh, we’re going to design based on their questions,” it feels very open, but there are actually structures that are put in place. I am also intentionally designing with the end in mind.
I’m already thinking about, okay, this could be a product. This could be. But also, open to the possibility that maybe in a community outside experience or with a community partner, another product comes up that feels more authentic to our experience and being okay to shifting to that.
Taylor Cea:
Yeah. I like the flexibility, so thank you.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Thank you.
Alec Patton:
I’ll just add, I think with anything like this, students will express interests and different interests. And part of the skill of teaching is building the judgment of, “Oh, you know what? We have this opportunity and this interest. Let’s actually take this project in another direction.” Or saying, “That’s all really cool, but we’re going to stick to the course that we have here.” That’s a set of muscles that you develop as you go as a teacher.
Also, you can do a lot. You can put a lot of structures in place about, we know we’re going to exhibit here. We know that we’re all making comic books. And then, there’s a lot of space within that for a student’s interest, for a student to go, “Oh, actually, I’m really excited about this particular thing.” And they take it in their own direction. It’s not an either or. It’s not either we are just a playground of wonders and nothing set in place, or everybody’s in lockstep doing the same thing.
You can create structures and give kids a lot of freedom within those structures. I think should we probably do one more? Is that…
Blair Buchanan:
Hi, everyone.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Hi.
Blair Buchanan:
I know you, Rosemarie, but I am Blair, for everyone on the pod. Actually, I was so excited to hear your project story today, because I’m in the midst of a geology rock project right now with my fourth-grade friends. And I know more about rocks than I’ve ever thought I would know. I have my own rock box, it says Ms. Blair, and we trade rock box.
We have rock box time. It’s so cool to see that the kindergartners loved it, too. This was a project that they’ve been doing a lot for the past six years, and yet, my CT says every other year, some kids will be into it, some won’t. This year, the kids are loving it, and it’s really cool to see.
My question was, how did you incorporate math into your project?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
For math, I think the one that felt like it made the most sense was through geometry, because we were looking specifically at crystal structures. I felt like when we looked at different crystal… looking at a quartz, for example, and zoomed in, you could see that it’s made up of different three-dimensional shapes. I had gone online and found all these different crystalline structures, and so I had that as a math station. But it served as this entry point into a larger geometry unit.
We reviewed two-dimensional shapes, we reviewed three-dimensional shapes, and then developed the vocabulary around that. So, learning about faces and vertices and edges, angles and sides, and also where, in addition to rocks, we can find these shapes in real life. I think for this particular project, the crystalline structures felt like it was an entry point into geometry that felt really engaging. And we got a chance to see, where do we actually see these shapes in real life? And if you zoom in, you can see them in nature. That’s where we were.
Blair Buchanan:
That’s really cool. I love that, especially because we just started geometry and vertices. And so, it fits right in. I’m going to take that into our project, so thank you.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Awesome.
Alec Patton:
All right. Rosemarie, thank you so much. Can we get a big round of applause from the crowd?
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen:
Thanks for having me.
Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen, Stacey Lopez, and all the students in the San Diego Teacher Residency.
Rosemarie is now a Professional Learning Designer on the High Tech High Graduate School of Education’s professional learning team. Stacey is Director of the New School Creation Fellowship, part of the Center for Love and Justice, also at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education.
We’ve included links where you can find out more about both of those, as well as the San Diego Teacher Residency in the show notes. And there’s a video about the Everybody Needs a Rock project. Thanks for listening.
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