Expert Learning with Francis Atuahene!
One of the most powerful learning strategies we have at DAA is our willingness to invite expert learning to help our students ground their thinking in the world around them. For 2nd grader’s, in our first module we study and compare schools around the world, and the different challenges some communities face with sending students to school. We discuss and read about the different solutions communities can find to help their kids and adults get to school. Our second graders are immersed in several different forms of learning to help ground their thinking.
We started our module by coming to some conclusions about why school is important and taking a look at the history of schools right in our home city of Detroit. It’s helpful for students to get hands on examples, and be able to see why school is important, and why some kids might have a more difficult time getting to school each day. We started to compare different learning communities and discussed the challenges and solutions those communities find to help get their students to school. We explored the Tent School in Haiti, the Rainforest School in Xixuau Brazil, and the Boat School in Chalanbeel Region, Bangladesh. Not only did we compare in detail the different problems and solutions, we also grounded ourself with the guiding question – why is school important.
Once we had explored different texts, videos, and stories from these different communities we had a chance to talk to one of my high school classmates about the challenges he faced when he was growing up and getting to school in Ghana, Africa. Francis Atruahene grew up playing soccer and attending school in a small village in Ghana and with his strong academics and impressive soccer skills made his way to The Hotchkiss School for high school, played soccer for the University of Michigan, and then professionally for Detroit City FC. We had the privilege of inviting him to come speak with our second graders to offer some expert knowledge of how some communities and families solve some challenging obstacles when getting their kids to school.
Francis talked about how playing soccer inspired him to do well in school so he could continue to do what he loved. The second graders came up with several questions to ask Francis and learned that he had to ride his grandfather’s bike 4 miles to get to school each morning, he couldn’t play soccer unless he kept up with his homework and did well in his classes and that his favorite food is pizza! The second graders were able to take the challenges Francis’s village faced and compare them to the different books and information we were learning from other sources in the classroom. By inviting an expert to come discuss schools around the world, our second graders were able to ground their learning with more concrete and real-life examples.
Even the middle schoolers got to come hang and ask some questions about playing professionally and how staying focused on his school work got him to all his success on the soccer field.