Fifth-grader John Carr sat inside a classroom at The Gregory School on a recent Friday morning, focusing intently as he dissected an owl pellet, a mass of undigested food that the birds sometimes regurgitate.
He carefully used tools to separate and clean the bits of bones he found in the pellet, such as ribs and a tiny skull with teeth. The main task was to piece the bones together and identify the animal that the owl had eaten.
In another section of campus, junior Axel Schulz collaborated with a group of other high school students to figure out the best way to act out and record different scenes as part of the schoolโs Film Club.
The group started with a costume change, dressing as if they were attending a red carpet for a film festival, then began recording at the back of a school building.
The two activities were part of a wider range of courses offered during The Gregory Schoolโs Friday Explorations, a weekly program in which students get to choose four non-traditional classes to dive into for the day.
โIt encourages students to take risks and try something new without a lot of fear of failure or without the pressure that youโre locked into the thing,โ said Alicia Saposnik, the schoolโs director of communications.
The Gregory School, a private and independent institute in northeast Tucson that serves students in grades 5-12, recently received a $250,000 EE Ford Leadership Grant to continue expanding its Friday Explorations.
Wren Cuellar-Savit, right, looks at a piece of bone she found in an owl pellet during a Friday Exploration activity at The Gregory School. Students sifted through owl pellets to find what the owl may have eaten by looking at the bones.
Friday Explorations
Head of School Julie Sherrill said the program was created about eight years ago, and is based on the work of British author and educational leader Kenneth Robinson, who argued that education needs to be transformed to encourage kids to become engaged with their learning by allowing them to have some choice in what they study.
She said prior to the programโs inception, the school received a donation to build an MIT Network-affiliated Fabrication Lab, in which students could create different things using digital technology.
But school staff wanted to ensure that students of all ages and genders had equal opportunity to work in the lab, so they created a block schedule and freed up studentsโ Fridays so they could choose four activities to delve into, including use of the Fab Lab.
โIt began very organically. It began on the good faith, effort, sheer will, determination and hard work of our teachers who tried to come up with these different topics,โ Sherrill said. โThis required additional planning and time commitment on their part, but I think the teachers were excited about the idea of engaging kids in different ways.โ
At last count, Sherrill said, there had been between 2,500 to 2,700 different explorations offered since the programโs inception.
She said the grant would help cover the costs of creating a search engine where staff could have access to all exploration activities that have been offered, counseling and coaching for students as they explore their interests, and resources for creating specific pathways that kids can explore.
Saposnik said some activities, like the Film Club, are offered regularly throughout the school year and other courses, such as the dissection of owl pellets, are only a one-time offering.
Some of the upperclassmen can also opt for activities that help them fulfill internship or community service hours, such as the Cyber Seniors, in which students visit TMC for Seniors to teach the elderly patients how to use technology for things such as logging into social media or video calling their loved ones.
โI love the Cyber Seniors program and watching our kids work with senior citizens and have to practice their communication skills in a different way than just picking this thing up,โ Sherrill said, raising her cellphone. โTo me, the real reason we started it (Friday Explorations) is to truly see that growth in personality, to see students have that opportunity to make choices.โ
She added that the program also allowed students to learn more about what their interests are, before committing to a particular thing for the long run.
โWe have had graduates say that it made a significant difference for them. They were able to explore some things before heading off to college and either honed in that thatโs something that they want to do or decided to head in a different direction,โ Sherrill said.
Pursuing different interests
Schulz, the 16-year-old president of the schoolโs Film Club who leads the Friday exploration each week, said the program has already inspired some of his post-secondary education plans.
โWhen people ask me what I want to do after high school, I always say I want to go to film school. Right now Iโm feeling like Iโd like to be a director, but I also really like editing and even film business, so I guess Iโll just figure that out as I graduate,โ he said.
He added: โThatโs why I do this is because I can kind of start my future now and kind of experiment with what I might want to do in the future.โ
Nate Holler, left, and John Carr sift through owl pellets to find bones.
Back in the owl pellet dissection class, fifth-grade teachers Kendra Ritchey and Nina Hernandez led class together. On Monday through Thursday, Ritchey teaches math and science, while Hernandez teaches history and English.
โWe co-teach a lot of things together, because we know what the kids already know in each class and then we can incorporate it better in the explorations,โ Ritchey said.
Hernandez said it was rewarding to see how students often bring up knowledge from other traditional classes and exploration activities during certain lessons. And, she said, it is also fun that teachers often have opportunities to share some of their hobbies through their Friday Explorations.
Carr, 10, said it was his second time ever dissecting an owl pellet, as he had previously done that at his former school. Another exploration planned for that particular day was a Poetry Out Loud competition that students could either participate in or listen to. But what Carr was excited about was what his other classes would offer that day.
He said his favorite activity, thus far this school year, has been a class in which they made hot chocolate fudge sauce, poured it over some ice cream and had the chance to eat it.
โToday, I signed up for human body systems, which is exploring body systems such as the muscular system and cardiovascular system. Itโs really fun because you get to learn where everything is and how it works,โ Carr said. โIโm also doing U.S. LIT Magazine art, which I donโt really know what it is but Iโm excited to learn.โ
The Gregory School Film Club created this video as an advertisement to encourage other students to join.
