Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions through Collaborative Inquiry
It was the first day of a new school year in Columbia, South Carolina, and fourth grade teacher, Julie Waugh, was chatting with her students as they gathered their belongings to head home. Julie leaned in to become a part of a small group conversation. She wanted to connect with Caitlyn, a child who was new to our school. Julie asked her, "So how was your day?"Caitlyn's face lit up as she responded, "I feel smarter here. People care about what I have to say. I have time to say what I am thinking and people listen to me. And you listen to me."Julie smiled knowingly, understanding why one day at her new school might have had such an impact on Caitlyn's identity. Caitlyn had become part of a class and school culture where teachers and children engage in collaborative inquiry, where students' insights, ideas, and questions are trea sured, where teachers create curriculum with and for children. From the moment Caitlyn crossed the threshold of her new classroom and began inter acting with her teacher and young colleagues, she somehow knew her voice and thinking would be honored.Inquiry in the ClassroomIt all started 18 years ago when two university faculty members, Heidi Mills and Amy Donnelly, joined forces with several teachers (including Tim O'Keefe) and a local South Carolina school dis trict to create an elementary school the Center for Inquiry (CFI) from the ground up. Like so many productive social changes, this CFI was born when a small group of like minded educators began dreaming of a better world for public education. Our guiding questions were: What is? and What might be? We talked with Jerry Harste, a renowned literacy scholar and founder of CFI in Indianapo lis, Indiana, about the work he and Chris Leland, professor of literacy at IUPUI, were doing at their school. We read Deborah Meier's book, The Power of Their Ideas (1995) and imagined how we might transfer and transform the work at Harlem's Cen tral Park East elementary and secondary schools to teach for democracy in Columbia, South Caro lina. We visited the Manhattan New School for a first hand opportunity to explore the impact of shared principles and practices across classrooms. This professional inquiry, while overwhelming at times, convinced us that we, too, could create the school of our dreams. We wrote a proposal to create a university public school partnership organized around inquiry based instruction and presented it to three local school districts. We will always be grate ful that Richland School District Two shared and supported our vision.Collaborative inquiry was at the heart of our school's belief system from the beginning: "Cur riculum is created with and for children. A sense of wonder and thoughtfulness about knowledge, the learning process, and our world is fostered and negotiated in predictable and democratic ways" (Mills, 2001, p. xx) Over the years, across a range of teachers and hundreds of elementary students, we have focused on bringing this belief to life moment by moment, day in and day out, across the curriculum.For us, inquiry is a stance that promotes authentic, intentional, and systematic learning. We strive to make learning in school reflect the way learning occurs in the world through an appren ticeship model. In describing inquiry, Mills (2014, p. xxi) offers the following: Instead of teaching about plants, we invite children to think, work, and communicate as botanists. Instead of teaching about a culture, we help children pose questions and make observations as anthropologists. Instead of teaching about insects, we show children how to look at the world and use the tools of entomologists. Instead of teaching about history, we explore how historians use primary and secondary sources to reconstruct events and record stories of significant moments in time. (Mills, 2014, p. xxii)This shift means that our students do not sim ply learn about reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.