In class on Thursday, Pauline asked me, “What is it that I want to learn?” Now that the first phase of this mission that Emilia and I prepared for the students has finished , I have to go back to that question. Just like anything you plan and prepare carefully for, the actual event differs from your expectation. No matter how carefully you plan the party, it is always going to be different once the guests arrive. This is always true in the classroom, so I should not be surprised that the first mission of our Inspector Gadget adventure did not turn out how I hoped.
Level 1 consisted of taking the fourth graders to Discovery Playground located on the Hudson River Greenway to search for and identify examples of simple machines. The students had a packet of materials to guide them through this adventure.

The packet of materials the students brought to the park.

Let me just focus on my hopes first, so that I can then work out how those hopes were dashed once the students arrived in the playground. In my head, I saw my students walking through the playground with their partner carefully considering each item before them. Notebooks and smartphones thoughtfully used to capture what they found. Student pairs talking to each other as they climbed, pushed, or swung on the playground equipment. Deep scientific discourse emanating from every student as they closely observed how the different materials in the playground worked. What I wanted to learn from this experience is the ways in which students could use scientific knowledge gathered in the classroom in a different and extremely engaging environment. My goal was to create an opportunity similar to that described by Petrich, Wilkinson, and Bevan, when they describe the San Francisco Exploratorium Tinkering Studio. They state, “ Our goal is to design the experience so that learners can find and pursue a purpose, exercise their creativity and imagination, and confront and solve conceptual challenges, within a STEM-rich tinkering context” (54).
I thought that the materials we designed and the setting we provided for the students set up some of the similar conditions in the Tinkering Studio described by Petrick et al. For example, I thought the playground provided a space for “engagement” defined as “active participation, which might include silent or still observation and reflection” (53). The expectations I put on this activity actually clouded my judgement and my motivations because I wanted to learn and see what I desired and in fact, my ego was in the way of the students' intentions and desires. In fact, the materials and the setting actually brought out different desires and interests in the students.
What happened instead? Well, first off I had students open their packet and proclaim they did not understand, because they did not read the instructions. Many students were confused because I put both the task for the playground and the task for homework in the same envelope. Then, they had to deal with an agitated teacher telling them to read the instructions! What did I learn from this? That my students are not independent when it comes to reading and interpreting instructions, and that as a teacher I should structure tasks so that they may be able to do so -- therefore, do not put two sets of instructions in the same packet (which is something I should have known).
Once the students arrived at the playground, the initial confusion caused by the instructions was then amplified by the setting of the playground itself. About half of the class just ran to swing set and started swinging. None of those students were documenting anything, they were just playing on the swings. Many of them split from their partner and just went off to do what they wanted to do within the playground. Kids were running around and acting as they normally do within a playground, the scientific inquiry I had hoped to see was nowhere to be found. Unlike the Tinkering Studio, where visitors “are invited to slow down, sink in, and spend time working with phenomena and materials to begin to conceive of, design, and make things themselves,” the playground on a warm spring day brought about a frenetic fever in the children (Petrick et al, 51). There was a lack of silent and still engagement and intentionality as the students ran to try out the different things in the playground.
Another thing that got in the way was the technology. Before we even left the classroom, the phones were distracting the students. One student was playing a game under his desk as I went over the objective for the day (you can’t fool me with tricks like that). On our walk to the playground the Hudson River was foggy and it was hard to see the George Washington Bridge, so the students wanted to stop and take pictures of the fog, which then turned into just stopping to take pictures of everything. Once they arrived at the playground, many of those students on the swingset took out their phones to play games while they swung. After they took pictures and video and completed their assigned task, many kids wanted to sit and play on the phones instead of the playground equipment. The thoughtful usage of phones to document learning turned into a smartphone free for all, which felt like a shame on such a wonderful spring day.
Throughout our time on the playground, many of the students were focused on playing, whether it be on the playground equipment, with their phones, or soccer. Many times I would interrupt the students while they played to ask if they completed their mission. Sometimes the answer would be, yes, and sometimes no. Sometimes when the answer was yes, I was still unsatisfied because the answer was, “Yes, I took three pictures, now I’m done.” Again, the careful, thoughtful inquiry that I had hoped for was not taking place.
So what?
I’m glad Emilia was there because she reminded me that what we saw with the students was actually to be expected. They were in a beautiful playground on a beautiful day, and they had cellphones in their hands. My frustration with the results were not necessary, because the students were having a good experience. Maybe not the experience I wanted them to have, but an experience nonetheless. In the San Francisco Exploratorium Tinkering Center, “ideas, models, tools, and facilitators in the studio are carefully curated, but there is no set of instructions, and no prescribed endpoint” (Petrick et al, 51). Perhaps this experience would be better off with a restructuring along similar lines. But there is another way to go too. Because even though I feel like the inquiry part of the task, the meaty work I wanted from the students got lost in the environment and materials I provided them, there is still a lot to mine from this experience back in the classroom.
Looking through the pictures and documentation created by the students I notice different trajectories we can explore based on the “intelligence” they gathered. Our class now has a collection of pictures of slides, swings, screws, ziplines, along with the goofy faces snapped along the way. It seems like there are two structures from the playground that caused the most confusion in identifying, the swings and the zipline. The video footage, pictures, drawings of the swings, and the students’ experiences using them can be the next “carefully curated” material presented to the class. Many of the students said the swing works the way a pulley does, but this is not accurate. Before moving into the mission of Level 2, we can explore this topic further together. Asking the students to explain, using the resources of the classroom, including the pictures and other documentation gathered by the students in the park, books, and any other materials, whether a swing is a pulley or not, will be an interesting place to linger. In fact, I believe that this will allow for the type of learning described by Petrick et al because in investigating this topic the students “are drawing on their resources; they are taking risks with their ideas; they are operating on the edge of their understanding” (54).
Picture of swing taken by student in the park.

The swing is actually not a typical simple machine, so this line of inquiry is not going to resolve in a simple solution. I know the messiness of this topic could also result in the chaos similar to that of the playground. Maybe, I will find myself disappointed at the end of this exploration too. But something tells me that when I get over my initial disappointment of not getting what I wanted, then I can reflect and engage with what was left behind. Just like visitors to the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Tinkering Studio, I can find a way to tinker with the artifacts of one learning experience and make some new creation (54). Maybe that’s where this project will lead me, the ways I can tinker with the classroom experience. I may not arrive at the place I expected, but there is value in work along the way.