The fun projects

I am in meeting and the discussion turned to how to incorporate STEM activities into our classes.  One teacher commented that she would live to do more but our new schedule doesn't allow for it.  She said, "I don't even have time for all my fun projects." 

I agree that the move this year to block scheduling has made it very difficult to get through the district curriculum.  This block schedule contains nearly 90 minutes LESS per week of time in science classes.  Over the course of the year we have lost weeks of time which has forced all of us to cut activities in order to cover more material.

But it was the fun projects comment that got me thinking.  What is the purpose of projects in my class?  Are they simply there to add a level of fun to the learning? If that's the case, why is the rest of my class so boring?  Why are the projects the only way to have fun in an academic class?  Or, maybe even worse, are the projects the only part of my class that the students find any meaning in?

When I started teaching, I definitely used projects as the fun part of my class mostly because I didn't know how to make the rest of the course entertaining without literally putting on a show.  But as my teaching practice has changed, projects are used to get the students to use critical thinking and creativity to find novel solutions to problems.  

As I working through this, I am having a hard time determining if the problem is that projects represent the only fun part of our course or that the rest of the course has been weighed down with too much mundane.  I know it seems like the same thing, but if the rest of the coursework had greater meaning and engaged students, projects could be used simply as fun learning.  

How do you use projects to enhance the learning in your classroom?

I'm better because of you.

I'm a better person because of my sons.  They remind me that I must be humble, passionate, caring and courageous.  They show me the wonder that is the world around us and to not take things so seriously.  I see the world anew through their eyes as they discover it's wonders for the first time.  They also show me that love has no boundaries.

I am a better person because of my wife.  She reminds me to be loving and spirited, to not take things at face value, and to always look for the good in people.  She keeps me in check and challenges me in ways no other person can.  Her devotion to our family is inspiring.

I am a better person because of my friends.  They are perfect examples of how unpredictable life can be and how you can be happy and successful doing just about anything.  The road of life has many forks in it and regardless of the choices you make, my friends show me there are joys to be had no matter what.

I am a better person because of my students.  They allow me to love what I do and never feel like I am actually working.  Their trust inspires me to not fear failure when I try risky activities with them.  And if it does fail, they support me with smiles, encouragement, and ideas of how to improve.  They inspire me with their resilience, strong work ethic, and friendly personalities.  We learn together in the classroom, both about Chemistry and life.  Their experiences help make me a more well-rounded teacher.

Who inspires you to be a better person?

Living in beta

Have you noticed that we have shifted to a beta world? A place where it's is perfectly fine to produce something that isn't quite finished or polished as long as you promise to make refinements later.  I've noticed it a lot lately especially in games for mobile devices.  You download a game, beat the first 4 levels and bam level 5 says " Coming Soon!" 

Google has made an art form out of being beta.  Gmail was beta for FIVE years!!  In fact most of their products come out as beta or invite only,  but they give us their word that they are constantly updating services and we trust them to do so.

So if beta is the accepted norm, why do we still insist, in education, that everything is perfect before it is rolled out?  Curriculum has to written over the course of a year, then checked by a supervisor,  then approved by a Board of Education before finally being put into practice.  Teachers fear new methods or activities unless they have been thoroughly tested and widely accepted.  Even new courses and clubs can take years in the approval process causing those who propose them to lose all interest in running them. 

This begs the usual question "why aren't schools adjusting to the changes in the world around them?"  I am sure that at some point there was a purpose to all of the beauracracy but I don't think those reasons are here anymore.

You know who understands this? Charter and Magnet schools. They are schools of choice; kids have to muster the courage to leave their hometown school and go to this new location where they may not know anyone.   If these choice schools do not constantly modify and make improvements to the program, their enrollment will decrease and they may have to close.  But local districts have a guaranteed enrollment so there is no motivation to change.

Maybe the key to success is to think more like Magnet schools:  Develop desirable programs that entice kids to want to come to school everyday.  And every year/month/day refine it so it is evolving and just a little bit better than it was before.

What is your school doing to stay on the forefront of education?

What's the more important skill?

I was updating grades today and happened to look at my class averages for the marking period, something I very rarely do unless someone questions me about it.  I teach 6 sections of chemistry and my averages range from 88 to 95.  Then I was sad.  Not sad because I felt they were too low, but sad because it forced me to second guess every class policy.  Specifically here is what is under attack:

1. If a student fails any assignment, they have the opportunity to retake it.  We go over the material they got wrong and then they take an alternative version of the assessment.
2. The students are allowed to ask me to check their HW before submitting it for a grade.  Any mistakes I find can be corrected, allowing them to correct misconceptions and misunderstandings before major assessments.
3. Students can use any resource they want to solve a problem on an assignment (except Tests) including other students, as long as that other student explains how to do the problem completely not just what the answer is.
4. There is no memorization.  Students may use any reference sheet they want on all assessments.
5. No points will be taken off for handing an assignment in late.  Period.  No questions asked.
6. Students may choose when to turn in assignments.  If they need an additional day or two of studying before taking a test, they can have it as long as they complete all required assignments by the end of the marking period.

Am I doing a disservice to my students by not being harsher?  Am I preparing them for the "real-world" with these policies?

Last week, a former students asked if he could use my room during lunch to help people from his Pre-Calc class on their HW.  While he was explaining some concept (I couldn't tell you what it was as it all sounded like Chinese to me), the female student turned to him and asked how he understood the material so well when no one else in the class understood a word the teacher was saying.  My former student turned to her and said "If there is anything I don't understand from class, I just look it up on the Internet and watch some instructional videos from YouTube."  I taught him that!!

So what's the more important skill?

Is it more important that I put pressure on my students to get the work done fast or give them freedom so they can get it done right?

Is it more important that memorize every fact from the curriculum or that they know how to find the answers if they get stuck?

Is it more important for them to be punished for not understanding something as fast as others or reward them for making the extra effort to learn it to the same degree?

I am afraid my colleagues are going to find out about my class averages and there is going to be trouble.  So, dear readers, please help me figure this out.

Am I doing what's in the best interest of my students?

I'm tired

I'm tired of the term "Flipped Classroom."  Besides the fact that it is a mouthful to say, no one seems to like it.  Apparently no one likes the idea of having the students more engaged in class with less HW to do outside of school.  No one likes the idea that the teacher, by no longer taking up time to lecture, no longer the focus of the classroom, is now free to converse with students for longer periods of time.  No one also seems to like the idea of experimenting with new teaching methods, but rather would prefer to judge them based on articles and blog posts on the Internet.

So I am tired of using the term Flipped Classroom to describe what I am doing.  When I cut my students' workload in half by using this method, I got attacked.  When my students began to do more inquiry labs, which require more time on everyone's part to develop, people questioned my methods.  When my students' grades in class began to rise and the lowest anyone earns is the grade that they want to earn, I am told I inflate grades (despite the fact that my students complete 3 times more work to get that grade).

So I am going to just use the term #LEARNING.  Maybe it will involve #flipclass, maybe PBL, maybe lecture, maybe discovery, maybe Mastery.  It might even have a little bit of a lot of things.  But no matter what method we choose to use, it will be about my STUDENTS  and their LEARNING.

Now that's something I can't get tired about.

New Year's Resolution

A few years ago I decided never to make a New Year's Resolution again.  Usually I failed to complete them and felt like a failure at the end of the year instead of looking toward all of the good things that could happen in the following.  A week ago a student came to interview me for a piece he was doing on New Year's Resolutions for Video Production class and I sent him away disappointed because I refused to make one.

But today I had the realization that I need to make one, but it is going to be the same every year from now on.

Do one audacious thing this year?

I am still reading In the Plex (see previous post), and they were talking about these quarterly objectives/benchmarks that every employee must keep.  The first thing that amazed me was that every employee had to publish them on the company website with their bio and picture (can you imagine publishing your Professional Growth Plan to your class website?).  The second, was that you were not expected to fully achieve your goal each quarter.  In fact, you were actually in danger of being fired if you exceeded your goal because it shows that you played it safe and were "audacity challenged."

We can't keep playing it safe.  We have to be better next year than we were this year.

So, any suggestions?

In The Plex

I picked up a copy of In The Plex:  How google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.  We hear so much about how Google is changing the world, I figured there has to be something to learn from their experiences.  I am only about halfway through it (and to be honest I haven't read everything as it tends to get too technical for what I am looking for), but there are number of quotes that I wanted to share, along with a couple of ideas of my own.

We are focused on users.  If we make them happy, we will have revenues.  We focus so much on test prep, but if we provide more meaningful coursework for the students, they will work harder to learn the material.  The standardized test scores will take care of themselves.

A healthy disregard for the impossible.

The only true failure was not attempting the audacious.

If we are not a lot better next year, we will already be forgotten.

Their hires would show traits of hardcore wizardry, user focus and starry eyed idealism.  I think this is a great philosophy to use when hiring new teachers.

Discipline must come through liberty.

Nothing a teacher does should destroy a child's creative innocence.

Our core values should be manifested in our work environment.

Anyone hired...should be capable of engaging him in a fascinating discussion should he be stuck at an airport with employee.

Can you imagine sitting in an interview and the principal turns to you and asks "Do you have a healthy disregard for the impossible?  We are only looking for educators who view teaching as a form of wizardry."  I guarantee if asked this you would look at the principal like he/she was nuts, thank him/her for the interview and quickly run to your car.

But is it too much to ask that teachers have starry-eyed idealism?  Or be interesting enough to hold up their end of a conversation about almost any topic?

One of the problems that so many of us run into is making our "crazy" ideas (or our Googliness) work within the traditional system.  Google was able to set up their ideals so easily because they were a start-up.  In fact, many of their employees left larger companies like Microsoft and Apple for the, at the time, smaller Google because of it radical philosophy (others did the reverse move for the opposite reason).  Would the Google founders have been successful if they had instituted these radical ideas in an already established environment?

When you take educational administration classes, they tell you not to make major changes for 6 months to a year.  First you must sit back, evaluate the system, and gain the trust of the staff.  But a year is a REALLY long period of time.  What steps should a new administrator have to take in order to bring some of these ideas to fruition?  Is it too much for a school/staff/student body to handle these changes right from the start of school?

Thoughts?