Flexibility is KEY

This is a follow-up to "So what if it's a project?"

I never did come up with a better project idea. I had the edges of something but I couldn't make it resolve. So I picked two of the more school-y but somewhat authentic projects (newspaper, conversation photostory) and let them pick. Before starting, though, we spent half an hour on a review warm-up (bellringer) that I planned as a quick thing. I saw with my first block class how much time they were taking to do it, but not in a "those kids are slacking" way - they were thinking hard about it and trying to do it without looking at their notes, and I decided that my planned 10 minutes of review at the beginning of class could be half an hour of letting them struggle with this. They struggled and then we discussed it. I asked them who was the easiest and then it just went from there.

 
What's the point? The point is flexibility. The point is the lesson plan is only the introduction to the story. I'm not always good at remembering that, but when I do, I am in that moment seeing what is happening for the students and willing to change around based on what I see on their faces and hear in their voices, those are some of my best moments as a teacher. This simple warm up was not something I expected to be a powerful learning experience - but something about it challenged them and they rose to that challenge and were willing to push through and work on it. I had kids who are not my 'hand-always-up' types coming up to me as I circulated and just let them work, and struggle, and say "Martin Luther was from Germany, right?" and the excitement in their voice at knowing this, at remembering without looking at their notes, got me excited.

After that it was time to introduce the projects. I went over the two options, they got in their groups and picked one, I handed out directions and spent the rest of class just circulating and helping out. I both love and hate those classes. I love it because I feel the most engaged with the students but I hate it because there's 26 kids in the room who all want a conversation with me to resolve their concerns so I'm worn out by the end of the period.

What happened with the projects? Out of 3 classes, only 4 groups are doing a photostory because a newspaper is easier. One group, however, took the two ideas and ran, asking if they could basically do a newscast. Some groups got into their newspapers, making it sound authentic. Some are basically rewriting the notes into their own words and calling it an article while others asked for textbooks and resources to look up additional information. Two kids called me out on details I remembered wrong. Although very few students did not get engaged and work hard, there were those few I didn't reach.

I don't know how to judge this in terms of success. Success at helping them grapple with the content? Some already got it and are just flying, others did have to go back and review and ask questions and seem to have learned from it, others seem not to be learning much from it, just completing the requirements. Success as a (somewhat) authentic project? Assuming the role of a newscaster or newspaper writer seems to have had an appeal to some students, but I'm not going to make big assertions about authenticity.

Overall I'm glad I went forward with the projects even if I couldn't make a grander idea resolve. Last week there was a lot of lecture in my regular World History classes, and to be honest, I got bored. If I'm bored, you KNOW the students are. Even if this wasn't the perfect implementation of project-based learning, it was a step in the right direction with a unit that I have previously struggled very hard with teaching. There's other topics where this is easy for me - the Industrial Revolution, for example, is incredibly easy to create simulations and stimulating activities for - but the Reformation has always been a struggle to teach well. For the first time in years I feel like I made progress on that.

So what if it's a project?

So today's dilemma is about World History II. I'm home planning with a little leisure time for once because we all got sent home after work and after school meetings were cancelled due to severe weather warnings. The plan was to slightly modify a skit project that one of my colleagues has his kids do on the Protestant Reformation. So I sat here and read through it again, thought about other project ideas, and then started to think some more.

The problem with this is that now I'm doubting my whole plan. If I weren't doubting it I could just make a few tweaks and be done and get up early to make the copies I would've made this afternoon. Given time to reflect, I start to doubt the entire premise.

See, history teachers like to do projects that are "somewhat authentic" - we're taught in college that this a better way to assess history knowledge and get kids interested in a subject than just lecture/notes and tests. The idea has been popularized by the History Alive! folks. Don't get me wrong - I like a lot of what they do. I'm just so skeptical anymore about standard history teacher projects.

As a new teacher I jumped into these ideas, following what I was taught.  I've had some success but over the years I've come to be skeptical of projects like have the students write a newspaper on the Reformation or make skits or interview historical figures. Do the kids really learn more from doing this or do they focus on the product and not retain the information? Plus, how engaging are they, really? The kids who already come to my class with some motivation will find a hook, but those are the same kids that gave me gorgeously detailed artwork for an assignment on finding pictures related to each religion we studied in Unit 1. What about everybody else? Why should they care more about writing a fake newspaper about the Reformation than notes?

I know a lot of people's answer to this is audience. Despite some initial ideas I never really jumped into the idea of having kids blog or otherwise post schoolwork online. Honestly it doesn't seem that much better - it's just another form of the same old phony project. Like how webquests were going to be so awesome (I had to make one in college for my class on social studies specific pedagogies) but turned out to be just another form of making kids do research projects, except now there's a computer. I do not believe that adding a computer/the internet suddenly makes it better. Sorry.

Unfortunately all of this has left me with lots of questions and no answers. I have time in my schedule (for once) to do more than go over the basics of the Reformation and I already told the kids we're doing a group project starting tomorrow and I want to throw my existing plan out the window and it's 7pm.

So yeah, that's my dilemma right nw.

Speaking of enough time...

We've had students for two days now, but since we're on an A/B block schedule we really have two "first days" of school. The very first thing I have students do is fill out a short survey while I take the initial roll. The questions get at their attitudes to school, how they learn, what they think about history, and things like that. It finishes up by asking for three things that I can do as a teacher to help them learn and then three things they can do as a student. This year I'm using that to help lead into the discussion of classroom commitments.

I notice that many of my students (especially my sophomores) talk about time and pacing. Asking for me to not go too fast, give them enough time to understand or to complete work, things like that. This makes me sad. Sad because if I am overwhelmed by all the material in the 10th grade world history curriculum and how to "cover" it before May, I know it has to be worse for them. Sad because it makes me feel like I'm doomed from the start. I know it's a reasonable thing for them to say, just like I know that a reasonable pace with my material would involving cutting 1/3 of it out.

There has got to be a better way.  I'm pretty seriously thinking about using some examples, like the World History for us all curriculum and the Reading Like a Historian stuff, and completely reorganizing my first quarter. I didn't want to attempt that kind of structural change while prepping a new course this year, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's necessary. Once I get to the Industrial Revolution I feel more ok, since our pacing guide gives us more time on that material and students come to it with more prior knowledge. It's the beginning of the year where I feel so rushed and that needs to change.

What do you mean, I actually have time for that?

I have a million and one things I want to write about that I'm doing or thinking about this upcoming school year, but planning a new course (and my first AP one at that) has consumed my entire life. However, I wanted to say one thing: planning a course where I feel like I have plenty of time (maybe even too much?) is a very strange feeling. I took the AP units for US Gov't and laid them out on my calendar, adding the two VA required units (State&Local Gov, Financial Literacy) in the 4th quarter and I ended up with 11 extra blocks in the 3rd quarter based on my original ideas of how long I would have for each subject.

11 extra blocks! At 80 minutes per block, that's almost 15 hours of wiggle room in my planning. Last night as I was doing some reading in one of the AP study guides and starting to lay out my first unit, I looked at what I wanted to do in terms of introducing not only the content but some of the skills and strategies we'll be using throughout the year and felt like I needed more time to do all of that well, so I made the first unit an extra week long to allow time to properly set up the year. I was able to do this and not have to worry about running out of time. It was a strange and wonderful feeling.

Now, I understand that this course is often taught as a semester course (that's how I took it back in the day - 1st semester was US, 2nd comparative) and that's part of why I feel strangely free to stretch my wings here, but I don't care why. I'm loving the thought of actually having enough time to devote to building classroom community, teaching learning strategies and skills and reviewing without constantly hearing the tick-tock in my head from the curriculum.

I've long thought that most of our curricula try to squeeze too much into the school year, and now I'm convinced. This is what planning should be like.

Don't Let Me Forget This

"No technique will ever work equally well for all students, for all classes, and on all days, regardless of how brilliantly it is executed."
- Weimer, Learner-Centered Teaching, p.191

Having an "Invisible" Disability while Teaching

I do have some things to say about the AP Institute I attended last week and the last few chapters of Awakening the Sleeping Giant, but those posts are still incubating and this is really on my mind right now.

Let me start by telling you a story:

Once upon a time, last weekend, there was a couple who bought a bed. They'd been sleeping on mattresses on the floor since forever and finally decided to put them on a bedframe. Since they bought the bed at Ikea it took most of a day of frustration to assemble, only to turn out not to fit the mattresses. The mattresses claimed to be queen sized and so did the bed, yet the bed was too big for the mattresses. After some frustration  the couple gave up on having a bed and started to disassemble that one to return to Ikea. It was late and they were tired and frustrated and at one point the wife dropped a large chunk of the bed on her right foot, breaking her big toe. It hurt a lot. A few days later she went to get groceries while wearing the ugly shoe the doctor gave her for her right foot and was relieved at how easy it was to ask for a riding cart when she had such an obvious reason for it.

Enough third person. I've used the riding cart before, and probably should have more often, but normally I feel incredibly awkward asking for it. See, I'm dealing with the acute and temporary mobility issue of a broken toe right now but I also have a chronic issue: rheumatoid arthritis. If you're not familiar with the term invisible disability, I think it can be easily summed up by the image of apparently-healthy-looking me feeling awkward asking for a riding cart at the grocery store because I don't obviously need it.