Viva PBL!

I believe in Project Based Learning.  I have taught as much in my classes at National University.  My son went to a PBL high school.  I speak out in favor of PBL at every opportunity.

But….this year I haven’t practiced what I preached.  I have been so dismayed by the difficulty of simple class management that I have taken refuge in lots of individual assignments rather than risk the disorder that can come with small group projects.

Boys, was I wrong!  My school encouraged everyone to close the year with a project, so another teacher and I came up with one for the persuasive writing unit.  The project asked students in small groups to identify a neighborhood problem and then research that problem and develop solutions.  This project continues the neighborhood theme I've followed all year.  They've previously written a neighborhood narrative and a neighborhood news story.  It was a natural idea.

It was a lot of work to create all of the worksheets and guides for the project.  The project requires the groups to write letters to their city council member, create a page in Comic Life (a computer program to create comics-like pages), and make an oral presentation with power point support about the problem they’re working on.  They also have to interview people in their neighborhood about the problem.  They are using the laptops for a lot of this work.

I began implementing the project in all of my seventh grade English classes three weeks ago.  It’s a long project that won’t conclude until next Friday.  From the beginning I have been very happy about how these students have responded to this project.  What I believed about project based learning (but hadn’t yet practiced) turns out to be true! 

The boys have worked hard on all the many parts of this project.  Classes that have been very difficult to manage (like 5th period) have worked diligently.  To be sure the classes have been noisy, and not every boy is working hard every moment.  Nevertheless I have been consistently impressed with the level of focus and collaboration displayed in all of the classes.

It turned out to be perfect timing.  During the final weeks of school it is always difficult to keep students focused.  This project is succeeding at keeping them involved….so far!  They make their oral presentations at the end of this week, and I’ve invited the principal and assistant principal (big proponents of PBL) to visit. 

So what have I learned?  Students work eagerly in small groups on interesting projects.  Next year I will act on this knowledge from the beginning.  The key is establishing clear and regular procedures to be followed and then providing interesting content for group and individual work. 

I’m glad to end my incredibly difficult return-to-teaching year so successfully.  It was very uncertain at many points how this year would end.  I am eager for next year.

Alert! Alert! Contradictions detected in education “reform” movement!!

Last Saturday I went to the “Linked Learning Symposium” at Roybal Learning Complex in downtown Los Angeles.  This was a district-sponsored professional development session attended by a few hundred teachers and administrators, lured no doubt by the $25/hour training rate offered.  Actually, I was impressed that hundreds of teachers gave up their Saturday mornings for a paltry $100.  After all, these are the professionals who according to Republicans and billionaire neo-liberal school reformers are the main obstacle to quality education in the US.  Anyway, more politics later.

(I also want to comment on the venue of this training, Roybal Learning Complex, nee Belmont Learning Center.  It’s a beautiful new high school that should have opened years earlier than it did were it not for a rogue’s gallery of political opportunists who tried desperately to block the school.  More on that later too.)

“Linked Learning” is the latest formulation for an instructional pedagogy that is student-centered and holistic.  “Linked” refers to connecting academic disciplines with career paths and technical skills.  I wasn’t familiar with this term, but it is clearly derived from the career academy movement of a decade ago that lead to many small learning communities in our high schools.  The idea behind "linked learning" is that students, especially in high school, should be immersed in a rich array of academic and technical courses that together prepare them for a career broadly defined as a general area of work extending from entry level to advanced positions.

The main content of last Saturday's symposium consisted of a series of workshops describing various high school programs that exemplify this approach, including medical careers, law enforcement, graphic arts, etc.  Teachers and students presented each program, and they all included some form of direct activity in the career field as well as academic courses. 

There were also several workshops on Project Based Learning (including an excellent presentation from the LA School of Global Studies, my son Lorenzo’s alma mater!).  The pedagogy of Project Based Learning and of constructivism in general underlies all of the Linked Learning programs.  That pedagogy is that students must “construct” their own meaning by working on projects that generate learning and understanding through student initiative.

All of the programs were very impressive, and they certainly give the lie to the claim that only billionaire faux-reformers can save education.   These rank-and-file teachers (many of them with a lot of seniority!) actually addressed the needs of young people for both intellectual development and career preparation.  The billionaire reformers' claim that only by busting unions and districts can we get reform was soundly disproved by the kind of programs we saw at this conference.

NOW HERE’S THE CONTRADICTION!!  While the district and many educators are promoting project based learning and a constructivist, student-centered approach to instruction, the billionaire reformers and their allies in city halls and boards of education are fighting fiercely to evaluate teachers on test scores, which are at least secondary if not outright antithetical to the holistic goals of project based learning.   While the LAUSD’s proposed new evaluation process has some room for assessing the extent to which teachers implement project based learning, the big battle is to include test scores in teacher evaluations.  

The L A Times, for example, has devoted immeasurable resources to jury-rigging some way to evaluate teachers based on test scores but has never so much as mentioned the kind of programs that directly prepare students for both higher education and a career--programs that require intensive teacher involvement in design and implementation and can't be left to the latest computer program.

It’s not easy to measure the degree to which a teacher implements project based learning, much less the level of benefit to students who learn a wide array of interpersonal and thought process skills which won’t appear on any standardized test.  The benefits of the “linked learning” programs we heard about and of project based learning in general are much deeper and broader than the puny California Standards Test can even come close to measuring, and yet the leadership of the LAUSD and even of the federal Dept of Ed continue to insist that CST scores be used to measure teacher success.

By the way, in the early 1990's we had a test that tried to measure this broad array of student abilities.  It was called the CLAS—California Learning Assessment System—and it included group projects, writing, and other holistic activities.  Read more about it here.  But it was expensive to administer and for some reason the right wing medieval talk machine went on the attack against it, so it didn’t last long.  And now we’re stuck with the CST, which is inexorably sucking up all of the oxygen in the room so that really beneficial programs like the ones on display last Saturday are harder and harder to implement.

(More on the Belmont Learning Complex later, plus my own tardy foray into project based learning with the seventh grade boys.  And I want to share my thoughts about one of the most exciting and profound concerts I've ever attended, the LA Master Chorale's presentation of selections from Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts last Sunday.  Stay tuned.)

Hasta la vista, CST!

Well, we're through with the CST for this year.  Four days of testing for almost two hours each day, followed by movies in my class ("Holes" and then Simpsons episodes) and crafts in others.  The boys were very serious about the test.  I think they really tried, and with a little shushing they stayed quiet until everyone finished.  The logistics were well handled by some of the support staff.  In general we all feel good about it.

Now we have to go back to work.  We're not really teaching when we're administering the test, so it's easy duty for the teachers.  Next week we may experience some degree of the "holding the lid down on a boiling pot" syndrome as we try to launch instruction for the final six weeks of school.  

I have a pretty ambitious plan for these final 6 weeks.  I regret that I haven't done a single small group project all year. This is an instructional model that I really believe in, but my difficulty managing student behaviors left me reluctant to try small group activities.  I think this was a mistake, and I'm determined to conclude the year with a project.  

The teacher for 7th grade girls and I have developed a project based on identifying a local neighborhood problem and developing solutions to that problem.  The end product will be some material advocating for the solution to the problem--a poster, essay, power-point, i-movie, or brochure--plus a written description of the problem and solution.  This project fits with our final writing domain, persuasion, and with the neighborhood theme I have used all year (neighborhood narratives, neighborhood news stories, etc.).  

I hope it's simple enough to accomplish even though I haven't really gotten them used to working in groups.  The local dimension should keep them interested, and they will also use the internet for some research.  Of course I want them to put everything on their pages on the YOKA server.

Anyway, I'm determined to end with a project.  I have been making a lot of plans for next year, although recently I have learned that I may not be returning due to my low seniority.  I want to return and teach 7th grade English again, but I guess I'm flexible, or maybe stoic, enough to accept whatever comes.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  

Meanwhile, hasta la vista CST!

Teaching in the ether

Last Saturday I went to a meeting of adjunct (part-time) professors in National University's School of Education (of which I am one).  Enrollment in National's education classes is sharply down, as it is in all schools of education both public and private, and there hasn't been much work for us part-timers.  More dramatic, however, is the shift to online courses.  Over two thirds of National's enrollment is now online.  This shouldn't be surprising since so many teacher credential candidates are already working and very limited in the time they have for classes.  Many of them also live scattered throughout the state and nation and thus unable to attend classes "on the ground."

Most of us at the meeting were experienced teachers and administrators from the LAUSD and other districts.  We are struggling to be successful in online teaching.  We have found that there tends to be a lot more writing and assignments in online classes.  At the same time the university is encouraging us to use various interactive, real-time options to mix up the otherwise somewhat abstract and, frankly, dreary relationship between students and professors in an online course.  We discussed at length how to make use of the new capacity for real-time discussions with students.

The university is aware, as all of us at the meeting were, that there is something counter-intuitive about preparing teachers to interact with groups of students without actually requiring them to interact directly with anyone!  National is even planning to require that the advanced class on instruction and classroom management be taken "on the ground" rather than online.  This is clearly a recognition that learning to teach means learning to interact with real live people.

I was struck by the way that this trend to online teacher preparation parallels the trend to standardized curriculum and testing for the students themselves.  Both are ways of spending less money to educate people.  Online courses for teacher candidates cost less than ground classes, even if they are less effective. (That's not a provable claim, but it seems clear that online courses develop interpersonal skills less effectively.)  Standardized curriculum and testing allows schools to run bigger class sizes, a necessity in this era of dismantling public institutions and services.

But online courses are also THE FUTURE.  Everything is moving online in one form or another, and who are we to exempt education and teacher preparation from this trend?  Am I just a cranky old guy showing my discomfort with the ether age, clinging desperately to my old-style classroom that students and teachers traipse into and out of, spending hours on the freeway to sit face to face when everything could be handled on the internet in the comfort of our own homes?  Maybe.  Oh, and I still love paper books too! and live music! and theater! and walks in the park and dinner with friends.

Anyway....notwithstanding this little rant, online courses are here to stay.  We'd better make them as good as we can, taking advantage of features like instant communication, access to widespread resources, and geographical diversity while preserving the development of traditional teacher abilities to relate directly to students.  Some things about people really don't change even when many other things change dramatically.

(Literary postscript:  On the subject of electronic communication replacing face-to-face contact, I am reminded of a wonderful novel by Isaac Asimov that I remember vividly from many years ago--The Naked Sun.  It's one of his robot series and is set in a breakaway Earth colony called Solaria.  You can read a little summary of the novel here.  You'll see what I mean.)

CST: The saga continues

(Written Thursday, May 5, 2011) 

We’re in the final days of preparation for the California Standards Test next week.  The four of us who teach the 7^th grade boys developed a plan for addressing the academic and affective aspects of testing.  We’ve all been practicing the type of questions they will get on the tests and also giving out tips for the test such as “Get a good night’s sleep” and “Read the questions first and then the selection.” 

It’s clear that the boys’ attitude is at least as important as these practical tips.  Confidence in your own intellectual capacity and the desire to do well are crucial factors in any testing situation.  Recognizing this I have devoted more time this week to addressing the confidence and desire of the students.

The students have all written an essay on how they will improve their performance on the test.  Then they put this essay into a word document on the laptops.  I have printed them out and will share them with the other teachers on the 7^th grade boys team. 

Each of us will also have students write letters of advice and encouragement to one of their classmates.  These letters will be delivered right before the test.  We will also write brief notes of encouragement to each student in our advisory class.

So what am I thinking about the whole CST thing?  The process of building up to an important challenge for the students has value, of course.  Creating a feeling of teamwork and shared effort is good for emotional and intellectual development. 

On the other hand, the test itself is such a pale shadow of what’s really going on in their emotional and intellectual development that it almost seems anticlimactic after all the buildup. 

Anyway, we’ll see next week how it all goes.  More later.

Teaching to the test--Hooray!!

At school we are in full out CST (California Standards Test) mode—all CST, all the time.  The test is two weeks away and now all we do every day is prepare for the test.  No more writing, no more computers, no more projects—just practice questions, test taking tips, and motivational speeches. 

I don’t know how it will go.  I have such a hard time getting them to focus on a brief set of questions that I have difficulty imagining them sitting and focusing for the four 2-hour sessions coming up.  On the other hand, they claim that when it’s the real test and not a practice test, they will act differently.

Anyway, I guess there’s some value in focusing on a specific event like a test.  The CST measures valuable skills, but it still accounts for only a small fraction of what students should be learning and practicing as they grow up.  These other important milestones of maturing academically and emotionally are less measurable however and thus less valued.  That’s not good.

I haven’t posted for a while.  There’s a lot of new stuff happening, and the job remains fascinating and engaging. I have more things to write about from the couple of months I have not blogged, but I’ll get caught up later. 

 I confess to being a little discouraged by the lack of any feedback.  There are so few comments that I start feeling like no one is reading my brilliant and insightful posts.  Maybe no one is reading them, or maybe they’re not so brilliant or insightful.  Anyway, if you’re reading, could you leave a brief comment?  Thanks.

Seventh grade lives 3

Forget pedagogy, curriculum, lesson plans, learning theory, brain research and all that for a moment.  This teaching business is often just an emotional hurricane from the first bell in the morning to the last in the afternoon.  Take today for example:

Second period:  today was the last day at school for the boy who lost his mother over the weekend.  We spoke briefly of it in the class, and the boys were visibly affected by his misfortune.  I could see them trying to imagine how it would feel if it happened to them.  I continued to feel troubled by what this fragile boy was facing.

Advisory:  Today was the final game of our basketball tournament.  My class was playing Mr. Beach’s.  Emotions ran high at the game.  The other classes were cheering from the stands.  My students constantly wanted only the best players to play while I insisted on playing anyone who wanted to.  Everyone was very excited--it was wonderful!  We lost but the whole event was very positive for the 7th grade boys and for the five of us who have their advisory periods.  (Next up:  spelling bee!)

Sixth period:  The excitement of the game carried over into this period, always my most difficult.  Somehow one boy who is always pretty hyped up and volatile was pushed off the edge by something someone said.   Next thing I knew he was in a violent rage, trying to throw tables and chairs, screaming and sobbing.  I hustled him outside asked him to just stand still for a moment, get hold of himself,  and calm down.  He was shaking and sobbing, but he did slowly calm down.  Later he came back into the room and soon, in typical boy fashion, he was his usual rambunctious self.  But the display of raw emotion was awesome and hard to forget. 

Meanwhile the provocateur in this case continued to be the most willful, determined, and successful disruptors in all of my classes.  This boy doesn’t even try to control his acting out, but rather issues a steady stream of mockery, goofiness, and impudence.  Yelling doesn’t have more than a transitory effect, so I began ignoring him.  Unfortunately the rest of the class continued to find him hilarious. 

I ended up addressing myself to them rather than him.  “He just wants an audience,” I said, “and if you are his audience ask yourselves, what will he teach you?  Is it more than I can teach you?  It’s up to you to deny him his audience so we can get on with the job of learning and teaching.”  Maybe they heard that, maybe not.  I intend to repeat this argument at every opportunity.  We’ll see. 

The emotion I feel is anger at this boy for making my job so difficult, even while I keep in mind that he’s only 13 and must be deeply troubled to manifest this behavior.  This is a common dichotomy--they piss me off while they evoke my concern for their futures.  This is a basic teacher issue--we care deeply for them even when they infuriate us.  It's sort of like parents, but with scores of kids and only for school hours.  It's what makes teaching so energizing and so exhausting at the same time.

And so another day in the hurricane of emotions that makes up seventh grade lives.