What is Mosaic?
It’s a question that us students that have been in the program for three years still have trouble answering, not because it’s too difficult, not because we don’t know what we do, but I don’t believe the teachers had a clear idea until this year.
We have always struggled in Mosaic on how much direction is given to the students.
The first year when I was a Sophomore, (The program was not open when I was a Freshman) there was very little direction, and very soft deadlines unless you were working specifically with a mentor for that project. As a result, many projects were left half-done or not quite completed. Don’t get me wrong, I accomplished a lot during that year, such as Chemistry, Math IV, Satirical Writing, and the Room Design to name a few. But I also left many things half-finished: Project Citizen, Painting the Maker’s Space, the Vietnam Project.
All of my successful projects were in their own way structured, but of my own accord. I didn’t know any better, coming from 9 years in a Charter School. Initially, what seemed so attractive to me about Mosaic was the student to mentor ratio of 10:1. At that time, I felt that I learned best through personalized conversations with my teachers, and I wanted a setting where that was the focus, or at least a daily part of learning.
Half way through my Junior year, there was an obvious split between the mentors. Some were fine with continuing the trend of last year, just with a higher rate of project completion. In other words, they were fine with “doing school differently”. Other founding members wanted, for lack of a better term, for the students to “do cool shit”. It was at this point that the stress of working with 9 other mentors that aren’t the easiest people to work with, combined with both “advisement” sessions of Mosaic doing things completely differently, and extreme competition, all with with the hatred from outside the program started to wear on the mentors. Two left last year. I was really close with both of them, possibly because they were willing to incorporate “school differently”. One is now the District Math Lead at another district, and the other is still teaching in Castle View.
This split between the mentors continued through to the students. We saw the unrest, stress, and difficulties. At that point, we still needed school approached in a different way that then could, ultimately, lead in to “true” Mosaic. The attrition rate at the end of the second year of this new program was incredible. There are only 14 seniors in the program currently. There were at least triple that in the first year. One of my good friends and partner in crime left because of the stress that comes with this program, along with the uncertainty that Mosaic would cause in his Senior year.
And all of this leads into the first two weeks of the third year of Mosaic. Every year, there is an introductory project for the new students, but for those returning as well. The first year, it took a month. The challenge was to “Hack” something - to look at what the item was designed to do, and how you can improve it. The second year, there was another design project that took three weeks. This one was to create a “cause and effect” machine. I was so done with the introductory projects at that point. I didn’t, no, couldn’t force myself to do it. I sat through those three weeks of agony, just waiting for Mosaic to start.
This year, there was a new introductory project in three parts. Each part only took one day.
Day one - A design thinking challenge for an “extrodionaire”.
Day two - Storyboard, film, and edit. Make a short film!
Day three - Upcycle project. We used old broken parts to create something new.
End week one.
Week two: Inquiry
We were asked to fill sticky notes with questions we had that started with “why”. We spent a week researching them, and had to defend our conclusions to a group of peers.
This intro project is already shorter than the others, and more well presented.
Mosaic is more well-organized this year, and I'm excited to continue!