Be Present, Participate, and Produce Learning Artifacts

Our norms and principles begin with “Be Present, Participate, and Produce Learning Artifacts.” Candidly, this is a late add on to the norms and guiding principles, but it is first for a reason. Like all of the norms, this emerged from “COVID school”; in the virtual setting, there were kids who were doing one or two of the three, but never all of them. There were students who were producing learning artifacts, but they weren’t really present. There was no interaction, so their learning artifact was limited. There were others who participated, but who weren’t fully present or producing artifacts. They picked and chose their spots where they wanted to engage comfortably. They excused themselves, and we excused them when it wasn’t comfortable or easy.

True learning and growth comes from all three of these in tandem. This is where we move beyond just accomplishing a task and create the space for real learning. Students are present by engaging both mentally and physically in class activities. They participate through their using their voices and adding to discourse. The production of the learning artifact then acts as a marker of how far the person has come by continuing to be present and participate. 

As for the students, same for us, right? We, as educators, must find ways to continue to walk our talk and continue to be present for our fellow teachers and students — our fellow learners. To always model. We fail to be fully present when we simply give an assignment or task and retreat behind our big desk. We are absent when we continue to think and practice education as it was. Lack of presence means we’re not fully participating. 

We’re not fully participating when we refuse to see our students where they are in each current moment. When we respond to the learner in their fullest context then we are fully present. This participation requires a relationship with the learners. If we are not participating, we cannot understand the context of their needs or strengths.  

The challenge that we face is to both exist in the learning and to curate it at the same time. So, how do we do this? We have to do double duty in our learning artifacts in that we produce many: our unit and lesson plans, our slides, handouts, content, assessments, and especially feedback. The feedback exists as an artifact not just for the students or for our fellow educators, but also for us as educators, coaches, and learners. By continuing to live in the present, we can continue to give ourselves - educators and learners - the grace that we need not to escape from learning but to fully lean into the messy nature of learning.