(You might want to get a cup of coffee. This is gonna take a while…)

Well, it’s over. Our whirlwind week on-site at Suffern (NY) Middle School was part classroom teaching, part digital storytelling workshop, part slumber party, part tourist trip … but it was, more than anything else, a week spent among good friends, inspiring colleagues, and some of the finest middle school students I have ever had the privilege of working with (outside of Northfield Community School, of course!)

Our journey actually began months ago when I was introduced to Bernajean Porter by Jennifer Ragan-Fore, director of ISTE’s Second Life initiatives, in the hopes Bernajean would agree to present as part of the ISTE Second Life Speaker Series program, which I manage. I helped Bernajean quickly get up to speed in Second Life and it wasn’t long before we were talking about Peggy Sheehy and her amazing Ramapo Islands project on the Teen Grid. Soon thereafter, Bernajean met Marianne Malmstrom, a veteran educator and machinima guru whose Second Life avatar goes by the name of Knowclue Kidd. A flurry of emails and meetings later, and we had our plan: a week’s worth of digital storytelling adventure at Suffern Middle School starting Monday, March 24th and running through Saturday, March 29th. (It was Spring Recess for Marianne and I, but a regular school week for Peggy and the kids at Suffern.) Bernajean cleared her calendar (no mean feat for a consultant at her level) and it was ON.

Planning over the intervening weeks was done via email, a wiki, and a few teleconferences. Peggy handled most of the heavy lifting, working to prepare her teachers for the project. Jen Fruhling, Liza Medina and Julie Bujtas had no idea what they and their language arts students were in for, but they all pressed on anyway, confident that Peggy would, as always, deliver. Together, they brainstormed lesson objectives, developed activities, came up with questions and generally got everything ready. All systems were go.

Then, Peggy’s world came crashing down. Her big sister, Mary Jane Vanderhyde, lost her two-year battle with lung cancer on Holy Saturday, days before we were to arrive. Peggy’s amazing family, including two remarkable young women in particular (her daughters Meghan and Tara), rallied around and comforted her. The pain over the next several days would be incalculable. In her absence, her team would, of course, carry on as scheduled. Not once did Peggy or anyone else suggest canceling the week’s activities. It would be the first of many lessons learned: great leaders build great teams that don’t depend on a single individual.

Monday afternoon came and I did my best impression of a limo driver waiting for Bernajean at Newark airport (unfortunately I’d forgotten the sign I’d made at home with large, black letters spelling out her last name). A short car ride later and we were at Marianne’s house planning for the next day. We worked late into the evening, powered by Marianne’s delicious taco salad and our anxious anticipation for the week ahead. We kept Peggy up to date with occasional emails and text messages, but knew we wouldn’t be seeing her until Thursday at the earliest. We just wanted her to know the project was in good hands.

Tuesday morning broke bright, clear and cool, a gorgeous spring day, with Marianne pulling into the Suffern Middle School parking lot just as Bernajean and I did. We signed in at the office, made our way to the media center, met with Eleanor Schuster, James Yap, and several other outstanding colleagues of Peggy’s, as we prepared for the day’s first students. We knew what to do. It was time to execute.

We would be working with three amazing middle school teachers and their student this week: Jen Fruhling, Liza Medina, and Julie Bujtas. Jen’s class would be working on digital stories using iMovie representing their own personal interpretations of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Liza and Julie’s students were to use Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken as a creative environment to examine the implications of choice in their lives. The technologies involved here ranged from iMovie to Second Life, but the focus was the lesson, not the technology. Not by a long shot.

Watching Bernajean work was just … magical. Her love of children and passion for storytelling came through in equal measure as she skillfully conveyed message after message, blending video, still images, audio, and her own voice, bringing these already motivated students to new heights, masterfully utilizing techniques she has honed over the years. Her preparation – and that of the classroom teachers joining us – paid off, as the sessions were a pure adrenaline rush from start to finish. Her use of moving exemplars created by students young or old made her instruction incredibly powerful. The students were mesmerized. Mrs. Medina’s class actually told her they would rather work on their digital storytelling projects than go on a field trip as planned on Thursday. Now, THAT’S engagement!

Bernajean’s level of preparation was exceeded only by knowledge of her craft. She demonstrated how homemade “spit shields” could be used with Audacity software and a basic USB microphone to create crystal-clear audio voiceovers. Some of the student recordings I heard sounded professionally produced. Audacity’s noise reduction capabilities, including normalization, make it ideal for producing audio tracks to be imported into iMovie.

Marianne was equally impressive as she showed the students how Second Life could be used as a storytelling medium. She used her own island to demonstrate a variety of techniques the students could utilize in machinima as well as in our Storyworlds space, which we also refer to as Robert Frost Theater. The plan there is for teams of students to come up with a Second Life environment that illustrates their group’s lesson learned, arrived at via conferences with Bernajean, Mrs. Bujtas, and Peggy. The students even came up with dioramas (Mrs. Bujtas’ idea) to represent and refine their ideas. These conferences were incredibly powerful to watch. With each question, the teachers drew more and more out of the students, in some cases, causing them to come up with completely new (and far more insightful) lessons learned.

The best example in that regard was one group in particular, whose topic had to do with how choosing a house to live in can have dramatic effects on generations of lives.( This idea came from one student who has moved a great deal over the years.) The “road not taken” in this case would be the other house not purchased, and the friends and relationships one would miss as a result. The net lesson learned: seemingly mundane decisions like this can have a dramatic impact on your children and your children’s children. Think about it! I know it’s true in my case. I can see how my own family’s life trajectory has been influenced by their choice of our childhood home in 1976.

It wasn’t all just hard work – though the days started early and ran long, with planning meetings after each day that stretched into after school hours – we managed to get into Manhattan for dinner at Ruby Foo’s (thanks for the correction Liza!) and South Pacific at Lincoln Center Wednesday night. It was an INCREDIBLE spring evening with no breeze, cool temperatures and a clear sky, a delightful evening of conversation on everything from NCLB to student achievement to what great leadership looks like in the classroom, the district office, and the community. We spoke at length about Suffern’s Core Values and how easy it was to see that they have been fully integrated into daily life at the school. These are no empty slogans; students coach each other openly when one is having difficulty. It was … an inspirational environment to be in for the week. No school is perfect, but Suffern Middle School is, as far as I’m concerned, a terrific model for any school looking to achieve excellence.

Peggy’s arrival on Thursday energized us all! Impeccably stylish and effortlessly graceful, she joined us mid-week without missing a beat. It was as if she’d been there with us the entire time! She was welcomed back with open arms, warm hugs and loving words of support. She immediately drew students even further into the conversation than they already were, gently but firmly eliciting excellence from everyone, challenging us to go further, dig deeper, think harder. We came along, willingly. The photo stream tells the story.

Friday afternoon came too fast. We weren’t finished! Though we marveled at what we accomplished in the four – yes, four – classes we’d had with these students, we needed more time – perhaps another week. Unfortunately Marianne and I have our own students to see on Monday (and calling in sick just isn’t our style). We’re going to continue to support these kids remotely, during lunch hour, after school, nights and weekends if needed, to help them get where they need to be. Whether it’s the final realization of Robert Frost Theater, creation of machinima, or guidance on their iMovies, we’re going to stand for helping them finish what we started together.

After seeing Bernajean off at Newark Airport on Saturday morning, I raced home on the Garden State Parkway, arriving in time for breakfast with my family. Tired and weary, yet energized and exhilarated, I tried to explain what we’d done the whole week together, what it was like, how much fun it was, and how much work! They were amazed … and incredulous. I just laughed! Truth is, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. In fact, I can’t wait to see the look on people’s faces tomorrow when they ask me what I did over Spring Break. I’ll just say, “I spent the week working in a New York middle school with a bunch of teachers and their students on a digital storytelling project.” Ha!

As corny as it sounds, when you love your job, work isn’t work – it’s play.

So … you got the love?

-kj-