Educators use Lego bricks or pipe cleaners to answer math questions at an interactive Nevada Youth Empowerment Fellows station during an Exhibition of Learning in downtown Las Vegas Tuesday, June 18, 2024. The event was hosted by the Nevada Future of Learning Network and the Nevada Department of Education.
Wednesday, June 19, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Teenagers used pipe cleaners and Lego bricks to show teachers how students can demonstrate their understanding of math in ways that filling in a worksheet does not.
First, they gave the teachers standard pencils to complete plain paper worksheets with simple multiplication problems. This took just a few seconds.
Then, they passed around bins of colorful, glossy building bricks and fuzzy pipe cleaners and told them to construct three-dimensional representations of what, say, 2 x 2 could look like — perhaps twisting a handful of pipe cleaners to make a butterfly with two sets of wings.
The exercise didn’t just give a tactile alternative to rote instruction in learning multiplication, it illustrated the kind of personalized learning that is at the heart of the Portrait of a Nevada Learner, a philosophical, people-first shift in teaching and learning that is being promoted by the Nevada Department of Education. The Exhibition of Learning program brought dozens of teachers from across Nevada to the MEET Las Vegas venue in downtown Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Sahara Chatterpaul-Taylor, one of the young session leaders, said the worksheet-versus-pipe cleaner project was to show how students are assessed, or tested.
There was no creativity in the worksheet exercise. It was boring and not meaningful, she said. It’s the old way of doing assessments.
The pipe cleaners were a new way.
“They feel more connected to it. They feel more challenged,” said Chatterpaul-Taylor, who graduated in May from Foothill High School in Henderson. “It shows that assessments can be done in a different way.”
The Portrait of a Nevada Learner embraces the reality that students of all ages are individuals, and they can show the same readiness in their own ways. Two times two is four, and can be written in pencil — or built as crafty butterfly wings. It doesn’t eliminate the “old” way. One educator said she talked less while making her pipe cleaner butterfly. She said she was much more engaged. Another colleague said she found the hands-on exercise more stressful than the traditional method.
But flexibility is supposed to motivate students.
Jeanine Collins, chief innovation officer at ed.Xtraordinary, an education innovation unit inside Teach for America Nevada and partner in the Portrait of a Learner initiative, said the U.S. education system was designed 200 years ago. It is outcome-driven, pushing toward a destination.
Over the last two years, the Nevada Department of Education has launched the Portrait of a Learner and its companion, Nevada Future of Learning Network, to connect educators from around the state to learn best practices from each other.
While there are essential skills and knowledge to master, there are different ways to ascertain them. The Portrait of a Nevada Learner is process-driven. It focuses on “competencies” like critical thinking, resilience, curiosity and communication. It lives in the journey, not just at the destination, Collins said.
She called the Portrait of a Learner a shared vision, developed in collaboration with educators, families, community members and policymakers and students.
Chatterpaul-Taylor is one of several young people lending their thoughts to the Nevada Department of Education. In one exhibition room, she and her peers offered their reasons for advocating for competency-based learning.
“We should not limit our students to what they should and shouldn’t learn based on their pace and interests. Exploring our interests beyond the confines of the classroom and or curriculum adds such a connection to what’s in front of them,” wrote one student, Estrella, in a testimony propped up on an easel. “It should never just be about passing the exam, but it should also be about where and how the student can apply their newfound knowledge.”
“My reason for advocating for competency-based learning is because it helps ensure that no one feels ashamed of where they are in their path to success,” wrote another, Addie.
Chatterpaul-Taylor, who plans to major in secondary education at UNLV this fall, said that Foothill did creative project-based learning too. In her senior English class, for example, after reading a book, the students created artworks instead of writing essays. Chatterpaul-Taylor, who generally excels at essays, said she made a mixed-media collage illustrating the theme of the book — reclaiming individual identity in a dystopian society where everything had become collective. Visualizations like this conveyed what words couldn’t, she said.
“For so long we just had a cookie-cutter impression of a student, what a student should be,” she said. She never fully fit in a single standard, she said.
“Even if someone gets really close to it they still have some things that they do differently that doesn’t fit into that model,” she added.
[email protected] / 702-990-8949 / @HillaryLVSun
