Expedition to Encanto:
The Process

1. Public Place Description. An objective description of the public place (park, grocery, restaurant, etc.) that you visited.
   
2. Residential Area Description. An objective description of the neighborhood you visited.
   
3. Response to Guiding Question. A synthesis of your insights concerning one of the four guiding questions you asked during your interviews.
   

You'll work on documents 1 and 2 with the team that you travelled with to the two sites. For the third document, you'll work with your counterparts on each of the other teams. That is, the class will be divided into four teams, one for each question. Here are your team assignments:

Step One
The first step is to gather in your teams of four and travel to two places: one a public place and the other a residential area. At each place, take pictures where appropriate and take lots of notes. Here are specific guidelines for the two stops:

Public Place Description. Try to paint a detailed, concrete picture of the place you visited. Even though your description will be accompanied by one or more of the pictures you took, try to paint a picture in words that will make the reader see what you saw. Begin by setting the scene by telling where this place is located and what kind of place it is. Then go into more details about the place. What kinds of people did you see? What were they doing? What languages did you see and hear? Were there any special sounds or smells? This will end up as a paragraph or two. Then, if you interviewed anyone at this site, describe who they were, what they said, and how they responded to you. Summarize what they said in response to each question rather than quoting it directly unless they had a particularly colorful way of responding.

Residential Area Description. Again, try to paint a detailed, concrete picture of the neighborhood you visited. Pay attention to the little things that stood out in your mind. Cars, toys, yards, windows... anything that helps communicate your impressions. Be objective and non-judgmental. If you interviewed anyone in the neighborhoods, summarize the interview here as above.

Step Two
Return to the lab at O'Farrell. A computer with a template for your two site visits will be open and ready for you to type in your notes. Work as a team sharing and shaping your perceptions. We'll upload the results when you're done. At that moment, you'll become a published world wide web author!

Step Three
Each of you interviewed one person and asked four questions. You've each been assigned to be the summarizer of that data for one question. Talk to your teammates and organize the responses they got to your question. Then you'll move to a different computer to compare notes with your counterparts. Here are some guidelines for this step:

Guiding Question Responses. Each of these will have a slightly different structure, depending on which question you're tackling. Before you move to the group to work on these questions, you need to talk to your expedition teammates and get from them the answers to your question that they got in their interview.

Guiding Question 1: How are O'Farrell/Morse students perceived in the community? You asked your informants to come up with 5 words to describe the students at each school. Tally up the words that they used. Is there any pattern to it? Do some descriptions come up repeatedly? Chunk together the most common responses and elaborate on them in a paragraph or two. In the final paragraph, synthesize all this and come up with a summary statement that communicates your take on all this. Is the community's impression positive or negative? Is it different for the two schools? Should teachers here be proud or worried?

Guiding Question 2: How are O'Farrell and Morse Schools perceived by the community? Summarize and evaluate responses as described for question 1.

Guiding Question 3: How do residents of this community feel about where they live? Start with a paragraph that summarizes the good features of the community that people mentioned. Then summarize any problems that were mentioned. Then go on to a paragraph that describes the places people mentioned as being important to them and their children for shopping, eating and so on. Finish by synthesizing your overall take on how people feel about the area.

Guiding Question 4 : What advice do people have for beginning teachers? Group the various responses you received into categories and describe each one. You may want to illustrate each category by quoting one of your informants. Finish with a summary statement that expresses your collective reaction to this advice.