1. Aiding & Advancing the Presence of Participatory Action Research in Saint Paul Public Schools
CTEP Americorps; Civic Engagement Group: Michelle Andrews, Isaac Mathison-Bowie, Taylor Stanton, Simona Zappas

2. Definition and History of PAR
What? - What is the purpose of Participatory Action Research?
How? - How does PAR do this?
“Participation”
“Action”
“Research”
Where? - Where does PAR come from?

3. Why we were drawn to the project
Michelle - PAR is a great tool for learning and teaching. As someone who enjoys research for the ability to choose the topic of interest and dive deep into it, I wanted to be a part of facilitating that for youth.
Isaac- This project provided an opportunity for me to serve outside of my normal environs, with a different group of learners, and to further study and learn about alternatives to standard classroom teaching methods.
Taylor - Sharing in Paul Creager’s vision of developing a curriculum that focuses on encouraging students to decide for themselves what is a culturally and socially-relevant education, and to focus teacher and staff energies on how best to provide academic and material support for the students’ transition into a more experimental, and self-directed learning environment.
Simona - After hearing the youth in my program complain about school daily, I was interested in finding ways to observe SPPS classrooms to see what all the fuss was about. This project provided me with a chance to do just that as well as an opportunity to talk with teachers and better understand the limiting factors that control SPPS classrooms.

4. Initial Goals
Encourage the use of PAR to provide SPPS students with new understandings and roles within their communities and neighborhoods
Offer technology, curriculum planning and in classroom support to teachers to help prevent burnout
Advance and support the implementation of PAR curriculum at a number of SPPS schools
Recording and reflecting
Researching PAR methods, successful projects and potential monetary support for teachers interested in PAR
Opening up dialogue on exchange of PAR resources for teachers

5. History Day Projects at Como Park High School
Provided support for students working on a project entitled ‘A Story: Encounter, Exploration, Exchange’, put on by teacher Eric Erickson and inspired by Paul Creager’s works at Gordon Parks.
Aided students who were editing together multimedia projects using iMovie on their school-provided iPads.
Helped students develop interview questions and ideas for people within their communities to tell and share digital stories.
Project was successful overall, somewhat hampered by a lack of time & students difficulties either with technology or with completing interviews.

6. Project at OWL
In addition to educating the public about the possibilities of PAR, is intended to alert educators, community workers, parents and students to the current limitations or problems of performing this type of curriculum in our public school system.
No additional prep-time / funding
Issues with technology
Issues of fulfilling district curricula requirements when facilitating interdisciplinary lessons and projects.
Solutions moving forward…

7. Battle Creek Middle School
Connected to the school through Rebecca Biel, the Social Studies Supervisor for SPPS
Rebecca recommended Battle Creek because two 6th grade social studies teachers were already interested in adding a digital storytelling project to their Minnesota Studies unit and the principal supports these efforts
Met with Rebecca twice; she introduced us to folks and was really enthusiastic about our project especially GIS
Rebecca is looking for ways to engage students outside of history day and revamp the 6th grade Minnesota Studies unit

8. Battle Creek Middle School
-Began by observing the classes of Libby Sutherland and Mouakong Vue to understand the rhythm
-Met with Rebecca, Libby, Mouakong and the school’s literacy counselor once to plan out the project
-Once the project began we came into Battle Creek regularly for about a month
-class time is really broken down into sectioned blocks that are the same every day (pride check, do now, guided notes) makes the work and lesson time pretty short (hour long class?)
-classes had about kids
-project was planned out pretty quickly; it replaced the class’ final project
- any other planning we did was via
-Libby and Mouakong put together the project and it was planned that we would come in and help the kids with any tech stuff for it
-in the classrooms we just observed then went around to the kids and offered to help them with their project during free work time (do we want to say anything about how they didn’t really need help?)

9. Battle Creek Middle School
The project we assisted with and observed asked students to interview a friend or a family member who had moved to Minnesota. Students were given set questions to ask and then had to write additional questions themselves. Students had to record the interview, write a script, and create a digital slideshow to accompany the interview.
In class, lessons focused on interview techniques; students were shown examples of digital storytelling, given time to practice interviewing each other and work on their slideshows
Pretty open prompt
Kids had a little less than a month to do the project and it was broken down into parts (original questions, interview, choosing photos…) students had lots of time in class to work on it
We got concerned about what the project was asking of the students and if it was too big of a project for such a short time. Taylor ed Rebecca explaining that the project might be too big for the amount of time given to complete it and the teachers were responsive and reduced the scope

10. Reflections & Conclusions
PAR holds promise as a more just and equitable approach to education
The highly-structured environs of public schools make it difficult to enact change to learn
Bringing outside perspectives on action research into the classroom allows for new possibilities, but also severe limitations
Teachers make heroic efforts to bring new and non-standard methods into classrooms

11. Thank You!
Questions?