Lab Days: Past, Present and Future
Mr. Brown, formerly Dean of the Class of 2017, assumed a new title this year: Director of Integrative and Co-Curricular Learning. This is a new position at Grace Church School, one primarily aimed at the development of Lab Day programming and scheduling in the High School.
Wednesdays are an important part of GCS’s programming and one of our main draws for prospective families, but does the advertised Wednesday of out-of-the-box thinking and introspective learning match up to the lived reality? In Mr. Brown’s words, “It’s actually safe to say no.” However, when it comes to whether or not Lab Days are as important as we make them out to be, he replies with a definitive yes.
According to Mr. Brown, one of the main purposes of Wednesdays is to extend beyond traditional learning and focus more on how and why the things that we learn in school relate to each student. Wednesdays are a chance for the kind of individual learning that is not always available in a traditional classroom setting. Mr. Brown puts it like this: “Yes, we want you to know some things, but we also want to consider how to integrate those things into how you live your life.”
So, how will Mr. Brown’s new role actually affect the average student? Well, that starts with the change he is working towards; change that has already begun to take place in this year’s schedule. One of Mr. Brown’s main focuses is the integration of Lab Day styled thinking into everyday classes. He says, “They really feel like different worlds in ways that I don’t know is helpful to you all as students, and I don’t know that it’s helpful for teachers either.” Currently, he says, core-curriculum classes can be more focused on content and less on how or why that content matters: “I think it’s the students’ experience that on Wednesdays you’re asked a certain set of questions and on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday you’re asked to think about a different set of questions.” However, Mr. Brown recognizes that some classes are more inclined to this kind of analytical thinking and real-world application than others such as history or literature. According to Julie Morse ‘19, the placement and focus of Wednesday classes “disrupts our ability to catch up on work and meet with teachers.” It will be up to Mr. Brown to find a balance between encouraging cohesion between focuses of learning and allowing students time to work on their core-curriculum classes. His intention remains to ensure that there is not a stark divide in the way we address topics on Lab Days and the way we address topics for the rest of the week.
Mr. Brown also wants to use Wednesday as a chance to integrate the school with the city and world around us. According to Mr. Brown, Wednesdays are a chance to extend beyond and break through “our own little bubble.” In his eyes, this means allowing elements of the world around us to enter the school as well as allowing our community to extend into the world. This effort might include trips around the city or inviting experts and speakers to come speak to classes.
Although changes in programming this year may seem minute or even unnoticeable, Mr. Brown says they are all geared towards a central goal of creating more continuity throughout the entire high school curriculum of Lab Days: “One of my intentions for Wednesday is that there will be a kind of spiraling of knowledge.” The change that Mr. Brown intends to make in the way Lab Days are used has barely even begun. Some of his plans for encouraging continuity include classes of students staying with the same teachers over the course of the year and the reintroduction of topics that students cover as underclassmen later in their high school experience. An example of this is the creation of a parallel 11th grade Foundations that ideally works in tandem with the already existent 9th grade Foundations.
Now, all of this change and reform sounds pretty fantastic, but, in the eyes of many students, like one junior who prefers to remain anonymous, Lab Days are simply “a whole day off” filled with “pointless classes.” When asked about the reality of students’ attitude towards Wednesdays, Mr. Brown says this: “Feeling relaxed? Cool. Feeling disengaged? Not cool.” Mr. Brown is well aware that students are not always as engaged on Wednesdays as they are the rest of the week. He has no issue with the relief that an hour and forty minute tutorial brings, but issue does arise when no effort is given to Lab Day classes or lectures. According to Mr. Brown, the success of a Wednesday is entirely based on the engagement of students, making lack of engagement the primary reason why he believes that the theoretical Wednesday does not match up with our reality.
So, how can this be solved? Well, that’s why Mr. Brown’s position is so incredibly important. He pointed out that GCS doesn’t have to include Lab Day in the schedule. The fact that 20% of our time is devoted to such an unorthodox method of learning shows how dedicated our school is to educating the complete and individual student. An obvious remedy for the engagement issue would be to introduce traditional letter grades into Wednesday classes, but, according to Mr. Brown, “the trade off might not be worth it.” In his eyes, one of the driving forces of Wednesdays is the differentiation of “intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.” Letter grades are an example of the ladder: the student is prompted to complete their work as they face a consequence provided by an outside force, in this case, a teacher. However, Mr. Brown hopes to encourage intrinsic motivation on Wednesdays. This means allowing a student to say “I’m doing this or learning this for me.” Allowing for motivation to “come from within,” as Mr. Brown puts it, can make it difficult to encourage consistent work ethic in students, but once that inspiration or realization does occur, it is well worth the wait. One of the prime examples of the success of intrinsic motivation is the sophomore class’s March Madness Projects. Although it takes a few months to initially become invested in the self-selected project, it is difficult to find a student at the final symposium who has not become completely absorbed by their idea.
Lab Days are an integral part of GCS life. Are they a waste of time? Are they over-scheduled? Are they under-organized? Well, according to Mr. Brown, “Student’s know their experience best.” It is his belief that the development of Wednesday’s can not be successful if it is just a teacher-driven conversation. He knows that “students want their experience to be of value.” What ‘value’ means to the members of our community is subjective, but, lucky for us, Mr. Brown has already begun to curate and direct our hopes for Wednesday, which we all have, into a program that will function effectively and innovatively for our school.