January 29, 2018
As of January 2018 (the genesis of this blog), I have been teaching English to 9th graders for 14 years. I have taught every level, from a remedial reading class through honors English II at the 9th grade campus where I teach. During this time, I have attempted to reach my students through various pedagogical approaches--peer teaching, cooperative learning, differentiated instruction, inquiry learning--with various levels of success. Very rarely will I teach the same units of study two years in a row, sometimes not even two semesters in a row. Just as my students change and their interests change, I’ve come to realize so must my teaching style and what I use to teach them. The literature I used with my reluctant readers 14 years ago has little appeal with my students I teach this year, mostly because of the ever-changing technology available to my current students. However, one unit tends to find its way into almost every single semester--creating an amusement park based on the adventures of Odysseus.
A little over three years ago, my principal and another colleague approached me requesting I join the Project Based Learning committee that would provide professional development opportunities for our teachers to learn how to incorporate this into their units and lessons. I had never heard of PBL, but I figured it couldn’t be very different from some of the units I did with my classes, including the Odyssey amusement park project. During the first year of being on the committee, I probably faked it pretty good. I tried to explain to my colleagues a concept I wasn’t completely understanding and told them that what many of them were doing was already project based learning. “Oh, you’re having them write an essay? That’s PBL. Oh, you’re having them present information using something other than Powerpoint? That’s PBL.” Boy, was I wrong. Even my amusement park project, which I was so proud of, wasn’t truly PBL.
Our committee continued into a second year, and I worked a bit harder to understand what I was sharing with my colleagues; however, I still wasn’t fully implementing PBL in my classroom. My students still completed the amusement park project, and I’d flipped the learning a bit to put more of the process on their shoulders, but the project was still just that--a creative project that allowed them to visualize one of the adventures. Where was the real world application? Where was the opportunity to learn new skills, synthesize knowledge from numerous subject areas, collaborate with fellow classmates, present to stakeholders? It wasn’t PBL; it was a glorified project.
At the end of the second year, I tweaked an inquiry-based learning unit that required students to interview a family member about their experiences in 9th grade and then research that particular year. They wrote about the process of writing, interviewing, and researching, and then they synthesized that information into an essay. We bound that using our spiral binder here at school, and they were able to present that to their subject. Most of my CP students really enjoyed this, and the project was a relative success. However, even that didn’t fit the parameters of PBL to the fullest extent.
As my second year on the committee came to a close, my district offered a PBL endorsement program through a nearby university. Two of our science teachers had been part of the first cohort, and they were interested in more teachers becoming endorsed in the hopes of creating a PBL school-within-a-school using the four core classes and our CP students. I reluctantly jumped on board; reluctant because I still was trying to buy in to the whole PBL is the end-all-be-all mentality I was hearing. I began the class during the summer of 2017.
What follows are my blog posts from summer and fall sessions of the class and then my continuing journey with PBL. I definitely experienced numerous struggles along the way, and I was quite negative about PBL during the second session. It seemed to me that PBL was great on paper, but implementing it with all levels of students proved to be very difficult--my CP students weren’t completing the assignments in the time I’d allotted, I didn’t have time to implement projects in my English II class and accomplish what I felt necessary, forces outside my control were creating hiccups left and right. That first semester didn’t turn out as planned. I didn’t implement the unit I’d created over the summer, but I did create and implement three new units, including a Genius Hour unit.
This semester, I’m already in the midst of a unit with my CP students with two more piggy-backing on the skills they gleaned from this one. I have more ideas rattling around in my brains, but I haven’t fully fleshed them out just yet.
Ultimately, my goal is to teach my students to fish, as Matt Bertasso suggests in “The Secrets to Great Teaching.” I don’t want to continue giving them the fish and holding the rod for them. If my students are going to be successful, I want them to be fishers themselves. I want them to be seeking out the information themselves instead of going to the market to buy the fish. Reading Bertasso’s article led me to a crazy idea. What if my students created the unit? What if I just came along on the journey and assisted where needed? I'm going to try that with my English II class next week. I'm going to pose this (tentative) question to them: What was life like in Colonial America? and see where they go. I'll give them parameters (must use all primary sources, strict timeline, etc.) and stand back and watch. I'm going to be a supportive facilitator rather than a pedantic facilitator. I'm sure we'll all learn something along the way. Will you join me on this adventure?
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