Teachers Talk Tinkering In Bentonville

STAFF PHOTO BEN GOFF • @NWABenGoff Mindy Porter, director of education with the Amazeum, takes notes during group discussions.
STAFF PHOTO BEN GOFF • @NWABenGoff Mindy Porter, director of education with the Amazeum, takes notes during group discussions.

BENTONVILLE -- The process, not the product, is what matters most when students are allowed to explore and create on their own.

That was one of the messages delivered to about two dozen Northwest Arkansas educators attending the "Tinkering Summit" at the Amazeum's Preview Center on Tuesday.

At A Glance

The Amazeum

The Amazeum is an interactive museum being built at 1009 Museum Way in Bentonville near Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It’s scheduled to open during the second half of 2015.

Source: Staff Report

"It's OK if you don't succeed. You'll learn from that," said Erik Smith, the Amazeum's director of exhibits and programs.

Tinkering involves hands-on activities through which people learn by creating things or taking things apart. When implemented in schools, tinkering activities often are student-driven with minimal guidance from teachers.

The summit gave the educators -- most of them elementary and middle school teachers from the Bentonville and Springdale school districts -- a chance to learn more about tinkering and share their thoughts and experiences with it.

Mindy Porter, the Amazeum's director of education, said the museum received numerous inquiries from teachers about integrating tinkering into their classrooms. That level of interest prompted museum officials to organize the summit.

"We assume everyone is asking the same questions," Porter told the group. "Let's have the conversation together."

The summit was held in the tinkering studio at the Amazeum's Preview Center. When the Amazeum's facility opens next year, a tinkering studio will be one of its main features.

The group discussed what tinkering is and what tinkering isn't.

"It's taking apart, it's putting together," said Joy Thomas, a gifted and talented facilitator for Tyson and Jones elementary schools in Springdale. "It's allowing productive play, with no specific end goal in mind. Not every kid is going to have the same outcome."

Amy Van Pelt, a science teacher at Bentonville's Old High Middle School, became interested in tinkering after visiting the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. She began introducing the hands-on learning methods to her classroom several years ago, she said.

"There's no instruction manual for life. You just have to figure it out. And (tinkering) is great training for life," Van Pelt said. "It's fun and learning at the same time."

Van Pelt encourages her students to bring old appliances into the classroom to take apart. They learn through other hands-on activities too, such as growing plants and taking care of lizards and insects they bring to class.

"Tinkering has bled over into every aspect of my class," Van Pelt said.

It's also a major departure from the traditional methods of teaching. Figuring out how to grade students on tinkering activities can be challenging, Van Pelt said.

Diane Snieski, a second-grade teacher at Cooper Elementary School in Bella Vista, is just starting to integrate tinkering into her class. She will ask her kids to bring old toys to school after the holidays so they can take them apart. That way the children will learn how the toys work.

Whether this kind of learning will translate to better performances on standardized tests is unclear, a subject that came up during the summit.

Leah Cheek, a second-grade teacher at Bentonville's Willowbrook Elementary School, said she makes sure her students are getting the knowledge the state wants them to get. But teachers also must keep students engaged, she said.

"I have to wrap my head around the fact I'm not in the testing business, I'm in the kid business," Cheek said.

Tinkering enables students to learn the characteristics of material, Smith and Porter told the group. It also develops their skills with tools such as screwdrivers, soldering irons and hot glue guns.

At the end of the summit, teachers agreed to share contact information with each other and possibly visit each other's classrooms to see the tinkering activities they had implemented. Porter offered the Amazeum's continued support.

"How that support looks kind of depends on your feedback," Porter said. "We are not intending to drop you off at this point and say, 'See you later.'"

Van Pelt was pleased with the summit.

"It's definitely a conversation that needs to be had," she said.

NW News on 12/03/2014

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