Is PBL Supported by Research?

I often get asked if the Project Approach is supported by research.

Thankfully, The George Lucas Educational Foundation (Edutopia) has answered that question.

I just came across this page on their site:

Research Validates Project-Based Learning
A growing body of academic research supports the use of project-based learning in schools as a way to engage students, cut absenteeism, boost cooperative learning skills, and improve test scores.

Misperceptions about Internet Safety and Filtering

(Warning: possible rant to follow...)

Here's another article with information about filtering. Here's a quote:

The dangers from predators on social networking sites has been overblown, resulting in adult hysteria and Internet overblocking.

The article goes on to offer more data to support the notion that we've gone overboard.

And here's one on why filters will never be enough.

And here is another post about why one blogger doesn't like filters.

And an Edutopia article about blocking, filtering, and lockdowns.

And a tongue-in-cheek post on how we're really blocking engagement:

Tired of your students learning rather than paying attention to you, the teacher? Then get your school to install the Engagement Filter, guaranteed to take enough enjoyment out of online activities that students will no longer be tempted to use the school's computers or network.

And here's one on the Educational benefits of Social Networking.

And here are my bookmarks on "fear."

Censorship vs. Selection, and Fear vs. Care

I've always been impressed with the power of Digital Storytelling when working with students (especially when Digital Stories are the products of student learning)!

Recently, I saw this on Wes Fryer's blog:

I will note, however, that Alan Levine’s previously posted “50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story” project is just amazing. That’s right, 50 different web 2.0 tools for digital storytelling, and 50 different versions of the same story Alan has created using those tools. Hopefully at least some of these storytelling options are not blocked in your school district!

It had so many great resources, I sent the link to our Pedagogical Coach. She quickly wrote back:

Really cool - unfortunately, as I am browsing through, a lot of the tools are blocked!

This is the same district that is pretty good about unblocking sites we request, but when we wanted 3 specific videos on YouTube unblocked for our students, the response was, "We will not unblock any YouTube sites." Apparently, that includes the ones with educational value...

I understand the strategic importance of filtering in "encouraging" students toward appropriate use. But I don't understand when there are policies that prevent accessing sites vetted by and of value to teachers.

And I'm not sure that policy is working. Our students still manage to reach inappropriate sites by finding new proxy sites faster than we can block them. My favorite Dr. Phil quote is becoming, "How's that working for you?" Clearly the filter isn't working for us. Except in keeping us from great resources that might engage students. I don't understand the decision-maker's holding so firmly to such policies.

In Maine's laptop program, teachers are much more successful with a 3 pronged approach:

• light to moderate filtering to keep students from the most obvious inappropriate sites
• teaching students appropriate use with teacher supervision (even just walking around the room while teaching or having students work)
• designing lessons and activities that engage students (kids engaged in their work don't really find time to go to inappropriate sites)

Of all of those, engagement is the most important, yet we tend to find mechanical solutions to people problems...

In a recent keynote, Will Richardson makes the argument that for educational & economic reasons, we need these sites unblocked and for kids to use them vigorously! Our students need to learn expression, communication, innovation, collaboration, and creativity. Technology (and the Internet) is a critical tool to doing this work and can't be done as easily when great resources are blocked. Clearly teaching students about appropriate use is an important part of this. But clearly these are the tools to engage students, as well!

Why then do we block?

I think part of the answer is fear.

Doug Johnson at Blue Skunk Blog writes some good stuff about filtering and fear mongering in relation to misperceptions and overreactions to the internet:

• Fear Mongering
• Filtering

A colleague just connected me with a great article about the difference between censorship and selection.

The article points out

Selection seeks to protect the right of the reader to read; censorship seeks to protect—not the right—but the reader himself from the fancied effects of his reading. The selector has faith in the intelligence of the reader; the censor has faith only in his own.

I have friends in Texas who I think take a great approach. They start by blocking most things. But all it takes is a teacher saying they need access to a site and about 4 minutes and boom! they have access.

When will we focus on due diligence and not fear and censorship?

When will we understand that the new tools that are part of our students' culture will be powerful tools for teachers to teach academics?

When will we work to leverage them, instead of blocking them and both alienate students and set them up to break our rules?

When will be use more psychology and less logic?

Standards-Based Academic Progression - Chugach School District

Recently, I wrote about the our need to move away from a course credit based system toward one based on "hours logged" and "standards met." Part of that work is trying to find other schools that have similar policies. And you usually find those leads through other, unrelated conversations.

One of those instances led me to the Chugach School District. Their standards-based program has replaced grade levels and their report cards are now 3-ring binders showing how students are progressing with meeting standards.

This from their website:

The Chugach School District Office is based in Anchorage, Alaska. Chugach's 214 students are scattered throughout 22,000 square miles of mostly isolated and remote areas of South Central Alaska. With 30 faculty and staff, CSD is the smallest organization to ever win a Baldrige Award. CSD delivers instruction in education from preschool up to age 21 in a comprehensive, standards-based system. Education occurs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Instruction is delivered in the work place, in the community, in the home and in school. Half (50%) of the students in the Chugach School District are minorities (Alaska Natives).

There is a nice Edutopia article about the district's program.

But they are also great because they have lots of information and resources on their web site. This includes information about the following

• Their standards based system
• Sharing the model
• Resources
• Their teacher evaluation form
• and their stakeholder input form

Thanks to Joe Makley for the tip!

What are schools to kids? And what should they be?

Following yesterday’s school shooting in Cleveland (a school that isn’t a lot different than ours in Buffalo!), Gary Stager has written about his worries about children and schools. Below is an excerpt from that article:

Allow me to ask an unpleasant question. Why is it that kids are shooting up schools? They don’t seem to attack video arcades, bookstores or houses of worship. Perhaps they don’t feel as “connected” to school as we might like to believe. I in no way excuse such violent behavior, but do believe that urban schools need to be an oasis in a sea of poverty, deprivation, violence and depression. Schools have an obligation to be the best part of a young person’s day; a place so wondrous, beautiful and engaging that a child feels wanted, respected and part of something bigger than themselves.

Such an environment would be inviting, personal and filled with books, art, music, sports and most importantly, adults who know each child and can maintain a meaningful relationship with them. Urban educators know all too well that No Child Left Behind and the culture of name-calling that accompanies it have pushed schools past the tipping point from which they can no longer make schools hospitable to the intentions of children.

It speaks loud and clear to the importance of school climate and teachers connecting with students...

When will we learn that we need to use more psychology about our business and less logic?

When will we learn that kids are not our raw material to be pushed through our fabrication plant? They are people.

When will we learn?

The complete article is here.

An Alternative Policy of Academic Progression

When you've got students who haven't done well in a traditional school program, and you're trying to reengage them in learning through a nontraditional program, it's hard to give credits the usual way (seat time and course credits). So we're working on an alternative approach for awarding credits and for allowing students to progress from grade to grade.

We really need this alternative policy for academic progression for the following reasons:

• The majority of our students are over-age and have not been successful in a traditional school program;
• Our educational program is delivered through real world learning (including multidisciplinary, high interest, community-based projects, learning by doing, internships, and community partnerships), instead of through conventional courses
• We are committed to reviving hope in their students and providing an option that will result in higher graduation rates and more students continuing with advanced training or higher education; and
• We are committed to our students meeting the state learning standards and other state requirements;

Since the vision is for students at our school to be learning content primarily through working on real world projects and problems, the products of their work provide the evidence of their learning. But any given project might involve standards from several different disciplines, and even from within the same discipline, content might represent standards from several different courses. We also have an online learning system to support the learning of content. There are diagnostic tests that show what content students already know, and the system can be used when students take their laptops home, not just in school.

All these factors suggest that we need a flexible system for awarding credit and promoting students. But we're looking for “flexibility of when; not flexibility of what” (ie, students will meet state requirements, but perhaps not along traditional sequences or timelines).

We're working on a proposal for a policy of academic progression that would be based on awarding credit for “hours logged” and “standards met.” Students would earn Project Credits for a certain number of hours that they log (approved by their teachers). Using an assessment rubric, teachers may add or subtract hours based on the quality of the student work (great project, a little more credit; lax project, a little less credit).

Content area grades would be awarded based on the number and quality of Learning Targets (standards) mastered for that discipline during that grading period. Students would then need to accumulate a certain number of Project Credits and have mastered a certain number of Learning Targets in order to be promoted to the next grade level. Additionally, students would have to master all required Learning Targets in order to graduate.

This draft policy is based on the Policy for Academic Progress at the Minnesota New Country School, a very successful, and nationally recognized, project-based learning school.

Documentation will be the backbone of this proposal. Project Foundry, a web-based project and learning management tool, has already been implemented at the school. Project Foundry allows both teachers and students to design projects, including correlating the work to Learning Targets. Teachers then use the system to communicate with students; assign projects, reflective prompts, and assessments; review work; and rate the students’ level of proficiency in the relevant Learning Targets. Students can post their work (providing the evidence of learning), and log their hours worked.

As mentioned earlier, an online learning system provides support in the learning of content. Its time logged feature, diagnostic tools, online lessons, and assessments provide additional concrete documentation of student learning, even when students are working beyond typical school hours and/or at locations other than school.

This system can help students who have to retake classes because of course failures. By taking diagnostic tests, they can receive credit for course content (standards) they have already mastered, and then focus only on the content not yet mastered. This compares favorably with the conventional system of having to repeat the entire course, whether they know the material or not. (I'll never forget the poor girl I had in Algebra I years ago. She had already failed the course twice, but was very smart, and at this point was just too bored to sit through a third complete year of the course, just to learn the couple of pieces she hadn't mastered yet. Of course, it ended up as failing for the third time.)

By defining traditional courses by the standards they represent, transfer students can easily be awarded credit for meeting standards from courses they have already passed.

Life experiences, such as internships, are also easily integrated into this system. Students log their hours and supervisors or teachers rate their acquisition of knowledge and skill relative to the Learning Targets using rubrics that clearly identify quality of work.

Paradigm Shifting is Still Hard Work - But Maybe It's a Semantics Problem...

Last year I wrote about how paradigm shifting is hard work. We've made progress, but seeing some teachers still struggle has me thinking much more about this issue. Why are they having a hard time? What information or experiences could I share with them that would help them understand or to teach in ways more in keeping with the vision for our program? Why are we struggling and how can I help?

Could it be be that part of the struggle is that even though we use the same words, we have different pictures in our heads of what we mean by those words?

One of the things that really bothered me last year is that some of the teachers seemed to reduce our complex PBL units to a couple of activities.

Last year, our Theme Park Design unit had in-depth, scaffolded activities leading up to (hopefully) a deep understanding of marketing, business plans, and the story telling and engineering that goes into designing rides and attractions.

Some of the teachers threw out most of the scaffolding activities and jumped right to writing a business plan. Others, instead of doing the carefully crafted string of marketing activities, simply had students create a newspaper ad for their theme park.

As we're work on our first new project unit for the year, I worry that teachers will again dismiss activities they don't value, instead of at least asking why they are there. (ok - I wrote large parts of several of our PBL units and put every activity there for a reason - a really good reason... And maybe I'm a little bit of a control freak - or at least like the units I crafted... And maybe my feelings are a little hurt when they dismiss my activities...)

Of course, I don't mind if teachers modify the unit, skipping activities or adding their own - as long as it enhances the intent of the unit, or finds an alternate route to achieving the same goals.

But the other day, I was reading Start with the Pyramid: Real-World Problems Motivate Students, and it reminded me that an important part of our organizing the curriculum around PBL was promoting rigorous, in-depth inquiry.

Could it be that the teachers who dismissed the projects last year simply have a different mental model of projects than I do? What if part of why some of our teachers (especially the ones who so actively blocked our work last year) think of projects simply as fun activities? Making a print ad. Building a theme park model out of pipe cleaners. Writing a short paragraph describing a new ride.

Well, if that were the case, no wonder they thought conventional teaching was so much more effective, and believed blocking our program was the right thing to do for kids. I would, too!

But my vision includes rigorous, in-depth inquiry. I was frustrated with ads and pipe cleaner models because they lacked the depth and the rigor. But maybe the fault was mine for not better communicating what we meant by "projects."

This year, I'm trying to be more clear. Now, I'm including in each activity of the units I'm writing a section headed "desired outcomes." I'm including both process outcomes (like "Students are aware of what constitutes quality work within the context of PSAs," and "Students understand how their PSAs and their work on the PSAs will be evaluated") and product outcomes (like "the PSA Rubric" or "Health Topic Research Journal").

It might not help, but I'm hoping that it might add clarity to why an activity is included. I'm hoping, too, that when teachers drop activities, it will allow me to ask "Help me understand how, if you aren't doing these activities, you are going to achieve the following desired outcomes?" And it will allow me to ask, "Is the way you're doing the unit rigorous? Does it include in depth inquiry?"

Will it help? We'll see.

And I'll let you know.

It's Like Jogging Through Molasses

Looking at how school opened this year, it's clear we've made a lot of progress in the last year. Recall that we're trying to reengage overage underachievers with a curriculum based on high-interest, community based projects, a teaching style that is new to most of our teachers, and uncomfortable to some of them.

In the last year, our teachers successfully completed one unit on theme park design and organized a public exhibition of student products, including a private viewing for VIPs that included executives from two local theme parks. We've had some good press coverage. Some of the most reluctant teachers have moved on to other contexts and we've hired some new teachers that I think are going to be fantastic. And the opening week of school was pretty quiet.

But we still have teachers that are struggling with teaching through projects. A couple who have stayed on with us are still questioning if kids can learn through projects. And some of our teachers feel like they are slaves to two masters: the state requirements (organized by course credits and high stakes exams), and our educational program.

But they are working at it and giving it an honest try. Teachers are working to customize and teach project-based units we're supplying to them. And some of our teachers are working to design new units.

We're working hard on making this year Phase 2 with more tools and units and moving closer to the vision for our program. We've added a project & curriculum management system. There's software on the laptops to restore them to the original setup, helping to avoid inappropriate downloads. Our schedule has both project time and time for more conventional teaching. We're working to develop four new long term PBL units. And we're working to establish a policy of academic progression based on "hours logged" and "standards met" (with the state DOE's encouragement) instead of the traditional state approach.

It is incredibly slow going. Everything we do seems to take twice as long as anticipated. And there are always unexpected set backs or surprises that keep us from moving any faster.

Both our project management system and our restore software are having problems that we're trying to iron out. The administrators are still tweaking our schedule and have recently made significant changes to student placements on clusters and in homerooms, even though we've just been through most of a community building unit. Even though everyone likes the idea of the new policy for academic progression (including our contacts at the state DOE), they are reluctant to move away from traditional courses and their fears of the state high-stakes test until the new policy is approved by the state. I'm having a hard time getting in touch with one of the authors of one of our new PBL units to find out what progress her writing team is making. And when I check out classrooms to see how teachers are doing with our current project unit, it seems like some teachers are skipping activities and jumping over sections of the unit, or substituting their project time for their conventional teaching.

I used to get really frustrated by this slow progress. I used to worry that we would never move forward. But then I realized that we WERE making progress - it was slow and full of detours and surprises and delays, but it was progress.

But I've come to the conclusion that this kind of complex school reform work is a lot like jogging through molasses.

It might be slow, and progress might require a lot of energy, just like jogging through molasses, but I also realized that as long as we were moving forward, we were doing all right.

And since then, the set backs and surprises haven't seemed so bad, and don't frustrate me too much (ok - they still surprise me sometimes!). And I can keep working on making sure we're moving forward.

Evaluations from the Year 1

We've just finished our first month of our second year of school. It's a good time to reflect on where we've been and where we're going.

One source of that reflection should certainly be our end of year evaluations. We received two external evaluation reports: one from University of Buffalo and the other from the National Dropout Prevention Center/Network. Both were realistic about the challenges we've had and how much more work we have to do. But they were also both every optimistic. UB said, “Given the problems of suspension and delinquency apparent in the students admitted to the school, the ResulTech blended curriculum at Academy School@44 has been largely successful in the school’s first academic year, even though the blended curriculum has not yet been fully implemented."

One of the things some teachers kept saying over and over was that our projects and online curriculum were not aligned with NY State standards. (Now, I think some of that is concern about helping students meet state requirements, but I also think some of that is some teachers looking for excuses not to change...) But both studies came back saying that both our projects and our online curriculum are strongly aligned to standards. "The curriculum at the school has been carefully indexed with the NY State standards, and appears to meet the state requirements.” – University of Buffalo Evaluation

Additionally, we clearly made the needle move with our students:

Improved Grades: Large proportions of students had improved their grades in English (50.6%), math (48.4%), and science (45.9%). Nearly 50% of the students improved their overall average grade across all subjects, indicating largely positive results given the problems associated with these students in the previous school year, and given the fact that the curriculum was at an early stage of implementation.” – University of Buffalo Evaluation

Improved Attendance: “It was found that 68.5% of those who were involved with the Autoskills program decreased their number of absences, as compared to 31.5% of those who had not yet received the program: those who had received the Autoskills reading program were 2 times more likely to decrease their number of absence.” – University of Buffalo Evaluation

Improved Suspension Rate: Overall, out-of-school suspensions and re-suspensions were reduced by 80% – University of Buffalo Evaluation

Both studies made clear that teachers who more closely followed our program had students make more gains and do better. Further, The National Dropout Prevention Center/Network evaluates school district dropout prevention programs and specifically alternative education programs all over the country. The model on which Academy School is based was found to be among the strongest they had studied in the way it employs proven strategies for students at risk of not graduating. (see what the National Dropout Prevention Center/Network had to say about the ResulTech School Model.)

Researchers from both studies shared with us that the evidence pretty much indicates that it is time for everyone to support the continued implementation of the program, and with fidelity to the model. “The essence of the ResulTech model is the systemic integration of many proven strategies in the program. Because the strategies are fully integrated into the model, the model should be implemented as it was designed.” - National Dropout Prevention Network Evaluation

This is People Work

Our school has opened again this year. We're still working on getting the project-based curriculum in place, but it is still a challenge.

We have some new tools in place: TakingItGlobal.org helps us make global connections with our work, and Project Foundry is helping us manage projects, and we have several new project units, including one on community building and another on solving a health issue in our community.

But even with the new tools in place and hiring some new staff and some leaving who didn't believe in the program, we're having challenges (and why not!? It's only our second year):

• Some of our teachers aren't completely convinced that they should teach through projects, instead of traditional methods.
• And there is still the perception that we are serving two masters - the traditional course system (giving students the courses they need to graduate) and our program based on real world learning *** and of system of awarding credit based on "hours logged" and "standards met" (more on this later) - at least until we get State approval.
• And there seems to be conflicting views of how to run a nontraditional school for students who don't do well in traditional school programs: do we "keep our thumb" on them and "show them who's boss" or should we try to have teachers connect with students and engage them in learning...
• There were delays in deciding where (which clusters and homerooms) to place students meaning both that laptops were delayed being deployed to students and that three weeks into school, we're going to make some major shifts in student placement (long after we've done some community building activities...)

But we have deployed the laptops. And Monday, the last (?) changes in student placement will be made. And teachers have a schedule that supports both the new project-based units and more conventional teaching.

And I walked the building this morning, visiting classrooms, observing teaching, talking with students and teachers, listening to their concerns and thinking of solutions, telling everyone to work hard but also to have a nice weekend, and complementing them on their work. And I realized that this work isn't really about laptops, and units, and standards, and schedules, and class lists.

This work is about people: both the adults and the children. People who need to feel like they belong and are valued. People who don't want to be pulled in too many directions. People who want to know they are doing a good job. People who don't want to be told to do contradictory things. People who want clarity. People who want guidance and direction. People who want to do a good job (and will if you let them). People who want to be listened to and validated.

This is people work.

Systems Thinking: Logic vs Psychology

My step-son says that I don't have a simple answer for anything. I can never seem to give him a simple yes or no answer. The world doesn't seem that simple to me and there are always nuances, contexts, and situations to be considered...

I'm a big fan of Robert B. Parker (also a Colby grad!) and his Spenser novels, as well as his books about other characters, including Jesse Stone. In fact, I've been watching the Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck this weekend. Part of what I admire about Parker's characters is how grounded and centered they are. They see things with a clarity. And they can give simple answers.

Much as I admire that, I have decided that I don't have simple answers because I am a systems thinker. I see my world by the systems that operate within it, especially the complex systems. (and I guess I should say that I think the world needs both the folks who can cut through the complexities and see simple answers, as well as the ones to understand the complexities...)

Few systems are as complex as education.

I've been thinking a lot about education lately, especially as it relates to creating schools that work for all children. Over the last year, my work has focused on schools for hard to teach students and on 1to1 learning with laptop initiatives (the two usually overlap considerably when each is done well). And I especially wonder how it is that competent educators (good people) make decisions and policies that seem to not work very well.

From my perspective, a decision or policy works if it supports the working of the system. You can tell if it doesn't work if the system is still upset or in some level of tourmoil.

I'm not sure I can explain this like I want to, but I guess I should say here that when I say "system," I don't mean the "education system" or "school system" (the policies that govern a district, school, classroom or other jurisdiction), but rather the system of learning. If generally kids do their work, follow the rules, learn and are engaged then the system "works." If kids are breaking rules, not learning, refusing to do their work, then the system doesn't work. If a school has a high breakage rate on laptops or they go missing, the the system isn't working. When breakage and missing rates are negligible, then the system works.

So why do seemingly good policies not work?

I've come to the conclusion that problem lies with logic. Good people use logic to make decisions. But education is a complex system based on people, not things. Therefore, we need to use psychology, not logic. By definition, logic makes sense in systems that focus on things or stuff. But it is psychology that makes sense in people systems.

So, when I do Motivating Underachiever workshops, or Doing 1to1 Right workshops, here are some of the "Logic vs. Psychology" ideas I've been emphasizing lately:

Logic says 1to1 is a technology initiative. Psychology says it is a learning initiative.

Logic says students should learn (it is for their own good). Psychology says we must ask ourselves why students would want to learn.

Logic says do workshops on how to use the various software on the laptops. Psychology says do workshops on how the software can be used to help students learn academic content.

Logic says that a teacher must cover content. Psychology says that a teacher must connect with students personally.

Logic says schools should ban disruptive technology (cell phones, mp3 players, blogs, chat, social networks, etc.). Psychology says if a tool is part of the child's culture, then we should find academic uses for it.

Logic says filter the Internet heavily. Psychology says filter some, but mostly educate students.

Logic says use technology to do what teachers have always done, but more effectively. Psychology says use technology in new ways to engage students and help them learn.

Logic says supplying the tools is enough. Psychology says apply some positive pressure and support to get teachers to use the technology effectively for academic purposes.

Logic says breakage and theft is about the technology and the kids. Psychology says breakage and theft is about how the technology is being used for academics and the leadership around the technology initiative.

Logic says tech folks need to protect the stuff. Psychology says tech folks need to enable engagement and the learning.

Logic says a school is doing well if the easy to teach students are doing well. Psychology says that a school is doing well if the hard to teach students are doing well.

Logic says give students information. Psychology says help students make meaning of information.

Logic asks, did the teacher cover the material? Psychology asks, did the students learn it?

Logic says that technology is a separate line item. Psychology says that all the expenses related to technology are integrated throughout the budget (infrastructure, instruction, staff, etc.).

Logic asks, how smart are you? Psychology asks, how are you smart?

Logic says teachers should speak to students with authority. Psychology says teachers should speak to students as people.

Logic says a teacher can select which teaching styles they choose to employ. Psychology says that there are high-impact and low-impact pedagogies, and teachers should choose wisely.

Logic says pass out laptops to teachers as soon as the school gets them. Psychology says pass out the laptops at an inservice where school leaders can set the tone on how they will be used in the classroom.

Let's try to use a little less logic and a little more psychology.

Doing 1to1 Right Question - Effectiveness

At NECC07 this week, I did a workshop titled "Doing 1to1 Right!" When I got home, I had an email from a participant asking for any research I could share on the impact of 1to1 learning with laptop initiatives on student achievement and the relative impact of 1to1 vs. carts. I thought others might have similar questions and so am posting part of my response to him:

I have some resources here that might help. Some time ago, I did a web site focused on advocating for 1to1.

Some of the articles might help you:

• What is the evidence from across the country?
• Are mobile labs of laptops just as good as 1to1?

One of the issues with 1to1, when it is implemented well, is that it tends to effect higher order thinking skills much more than it effects the acquisition of facts. In other words, it might not effect standardized tests much. That is the major reason the lead researchers looking at Maine’s project have moved away from looking at testing for measuring the impact of the initiative.

Also, it isn’t the access to technology that impacts the learning, it is the quality of teaching that follows from the access to tools. That speaks to the quality (and importance) of professional development and leadership to an initiative.

Policy, Filtering, Blocking: Disruptive Technology and Student Culture

Cell phones, blogs, social networks, YouTube, IM, email. Lots of schools block them. They find student use of them distracting and disruptive.

But how successful are they in blocking them? Most educators from such schools I've talked with say they aren't very successful. That it is an ongoing battle to get kids to keep their technologies and gadgets out of school.

This doesn't surprise me. These tools are part of our students' culture and to try to keep students from using them simply reinforces the notion that schools have nothing to do with their world.

I've been saying in workshops for some time that if a tool is part of the students' culture, that we should find ways to use them for academic purposes. I learned that from Gary Brown some time ago. It was reinforced this week when I met with him again at NECC07 (see here). Gary says, "Blocking is paranoia," and about his school system, "We don't block - we educate."

Now Doug Johnson has captured the essence of this generation gap with is recent post about the Engagement Filter. "Tired of your students learning rather than paying attention to you, the teacher?" he writes, going on, "Then get your school to install the Engagement Filter, guaranteed to take enough enjoyment out of online activities that students will no longer be tempted to use the school's computers or network." He's got a screen shot of the interface, too!

These are simply the tools students use to communicate, discuss, think, and learn. Blocking them is a mistake.

Do we need to help keep students safe (and teach them do the same for themselves)? - You bet!

Do we need to reduce the level of inappropriate use of these tools? - you bet!

But we need to do it through a combination of figuring out how to use them for academic purposes and by educating our students.

On Blogging...

Wow! I love what I've been doing this year. I'm working with a group that does schools designed to motivate kids.

We're a diverse partnership with expertise on business, community & business partnerships, school leadership, school organization, PR & marketing, curriculum design, educational programs, instruction & pedagogy, project-based learning, and professional development.

I've never worked with such a group with such a diverse skill set, and it has me convinced that the success we're slowly seeing is because of this comprehensive approach - not just addressing one or two of these areas.

But it has been hard work! Work that I love, but work that starts early in the morning and gets me back to the hotel late in the evening, and home for a couple days at a time before returning to the airport.

It's great work that needs (and deserves) to be blogged (and I have a little bit here), but mostly I'm too tired to write by the end of the day. You can tell. I've averaged only about 2 or 3 posts a month for first half of the year. At least, I was glad to see, when I checked this morning, that I had made at least one post each month!

I admire the folks I read regularly, like Wes Fryer and Chris Lehmann (who runs a school with some similar features to our own) who somehow manage to post regularly - often several times a day.

Maybe part of the problem is that I'm an academic! :-)

I generally want to write long reflective and synthesizing posts. I think maybe I need to do shorter posts.

One post I've been dying to do is on how we ended the year on a strong note. But I haven't written it yet, because it is another one of those long posts. I think what I'll do, instead is write a series of shorter posts reflecting on those special events at the end of the year...

I don't know how successful I'll be - look at the length of this post...

Another Cool School

Just spent an hour with Gary Brown, formerly Professional Officer (Learning Technologies), Catholic Education Office Wollongong, Australia. We had dinner together about a year ago and had some interesting conversations that I wrote about here.

But we're now both at NECC in Atlanta and we had a chance to reconnect.

He's moving on to a new jurisdiction this year, but we were talking about an awesome school he has in his old district: Corpus Christi Catholic High School (learn more here or here).

Many of it's features remind me of what we're trying to accomplish with our Buffalo school project:

• They have learning circles and CLEA’s – their units – Connected Learning Exepriences
• Sessions on just learning to learn
• They don’t have teachers – they have "learning advisors" with learning circles and lots of reflection.
• Every Friday is a community open house – Learning showcase
• Strong on parent and community connections

One of the most interesting things Gary said was in relation to making use to Web 2.0 tools in our classrooms.

“We don’t block – we educate. These kids will be doing this outside of school, so we have to make them understand how to do it responsibly. Blocking is paranoia. Teach them self-protection rules. Have them be the regulators. They live in a global world and need to be able to do that effectively and safely."

The interesting thing is that have have effectively reduced their inappropriate use issues to zero with this approach!

Good News from Illinois

In light of hubbub around the recent NY Times article, it was terrific to get good news this morning about the continuation of the Illinois laptop project. Kathleen Barnhart, of the Illinois State Board of Education, sent an email this morning to a collection of folks involved in 1to1 initiatives, spreading the good news. With her permission, I publish the email here:

Good Morning,

Yesterday the Education committee of the Illinois Senate voted unanimously to continue the 1:1 initiative entitled, Technology Immersion Pilot Project. Now the hope is that the $10 million allocated will make it through the final FY 08 budget. On our side, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn is very instrumental and active in moving forward continued funding. Our fingers are crossed.

“What brought down the house” were the statements from seven 6th graders sitting in front of the Education committee giving classroom testimonies on interactive lessons, communicating with classmates using Gaggle, and taking their laptops home to finish their projects, because the hour of class time is not enough.

The only question that I was asked during the committee meeting was a sidebar on the cost of the devices. I explained that currently through negotiation with Gateway and Apple, these devices have bumper-to-bumper insurance, Absolute tracking software and 24/7 technical support for three years. After the three years, the district will be picking up the tab. However, some of the district technology coordinators are becoming certified for On-Site Repair Service through Gateway. This will keep the cost of repair down.

Kathy

Kathleen Barnhart
Principal Education Consultant
Curriculum and Instruction
Illinois State Board of Education
100 North First Street
Springfield, Illinois 62777-0001
217.557.7323
217.782-7937

NY Times Article Pounds 1to1

The NY Times published today "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops" by Winnie Hu. It outlines how school leaders at Liverpool HS (NY) are going to get rid of their laptop initiaitve because of misuse and mistreatment of the machines. This follows on the heels of a report that reviels the ineffectiveness of reading and math software.

It's not hard to start to think that schools pursuing laptop initiatives are barking up the wrong tree (or worse - wasting millions of dollars!).

But if laptops are such a failure, why are so many initiatives being successful? A friend who is the technology director for a district with a 1to1 program in their middle school and high school recently asked for the research on the success of 1to1 learning with laptop initiatives. He was attempting to get the DOE to allow him to use textbook funds for laptops. They replied "no," since there "was no quantitative evidence that laptops help learning." (As if there is the same evidence that textbooks do!!!)

Here are the resources that I sent him:

The One-to-One Information Resources page has tons of stuff, especially click on ResearchReports.

The Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation has a terrific list of research.

Research on Maine’s project his available here.

Wes Fryer has this list of research on 1to1.

InTASC has some of the best (experimental model) research on 1to1. Here’s one study.

The Penn State Center for One-to-One Computing in Education has more research on their site.

These successful initiatives focus on creating new learning experiences for students, not just automating presentations and text books. They provide engaging work for students that entices them to play with academic content, not inappropriate sites, and to see the laptops as invaluable personal tools, not a device to pound on.

This isn't necessarily easy work. It comes from strong leadership, courageous teachers, and lots of professional development and support. No easy fixes here. (Of course, where are there any?)

Wouldn't it be great if each of us who has had positive experiences within 1to1 learning with laptop initiatives would send a letter to the editor of the NY Times in response to this story! Letters can be addressed to letters@nytimes.com. You are limited to 150 words, but accepted letters will have the opportunity to be shortened. Be sure to include your name, address, and phone number (for confirmation purposes only, not for publication). You can also copy your response to the author: winnhu@nytimes.com.

If you send in a letter and it doesn't get published within a week, would you consider posting it here as a comment to this posting? (but wait until you know if they are going to publish it or not...)

Here's what I sent:

Dear Editor,

I’m writing to express my frustration with Winnie Hu’s article “Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops.” I can understand why the district might have chosen to do away with laptops. But I’ve been actively involved with Maine’s laptop project for 7 years and wonder “Was it the laptops or was it what they were doing with them?” We know from our experience that the laptops need to be used for creating new kinds of learning experiences (not simply supporting more memorization or test prep), and that there needs to be strong leadership both around how educators are expected to use the laptops with students and the policies and procedures around how students use them. We found when there is little focus on learning and few procedures and policies, there is lots of misuse and damage. Leadership and teacher practice are everything. Why not report on the successful initiatives?

Marketing and Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

Our teachers are working hard to teach reluctant learners. They're laboring to master teaching through projects and making real world connections. One of our teachers just dropped in to tell me a success story she had had.

We've provided teachers with a set of activities for a Theme Park Unit as one model of teaching thematically, using learning by doing, higher order thinking, and making real world connections. One of the early activities, once students have brainstormed a theme for their park and have started brainstorming attractions and rides, is to work on the first draft of the marketing plan.

One teacher was trying to think of a way to make the importance and power of marketing understandable to students. She settled on Arm & Hammer Baking Soda.

She started by telling stories about people during the 50s and 60s and doing most of their cooking at home, mostly from scratch - providing the natural market for baking soda. But through the 70s and 80s people cooked less and less at home, eating out more, or using more prepared foods.

What was Arm & Hammer going to do with their product? They could just let sales slip away. Or they could think about other uses for their product and develop other markets. Through their marketing strategy, Arm & Hammer could encourage people to buy or use their product in ways that people had not thought of before.

They started with direct uses for the product. Some of you will remember the marketing of baking soda as tooth paste: add a little water to make a paste, put it on the toothbrush and brush away. It tasted awful, but I remember doing it just to be independent! Most everyone remembers the commercials for using baking soda as a refrigerator deodorizer.

Later, they marked baking soda as an additive to other products - toothpaste (tastes better as an additive than the product!), detergent, etc. Go to their web site today, they hardly mention cooking at all, but rather "Solutions for My Home, My Family, and My Body."

But the great part of this story is that, for some of our hard to teach students, it made sense, made the learning real, and engaged them in drafting a marketing plan for their theme park a little more than a straight lesson on creating marking plans. The real world connections and the use of stories made the learning a little more meaningful and engaging.

Generating Curriculum with Students - The Soundings Visit

This is the next in a series of posts about my visit to Mark Springer's Soundings program, a middle grades program designed to engage and motivate students.

In the last post, about building community, I made the point that one of Mark's strategies to create a high energy learning environment was to involve students in both generating ideas and making decisions about those things that need to get done.

This strategy extends to designing most of the curriculum that the students study. Using a process of asking students their questions and concerns about themselves and about their world, then finding themes by looking for overlapping questions of self and world, students settle on several themes for the year. When I visited, the students were studying economics.

The unit itself is planned collaboratively between students and teachers. Teachers guide the unit design so that it is built around goals and questions that the students want to answer (in this case about economics). Teachers scaffold the work by asking students to think about what makes for an effective goal and for effective unit questions. Here are the lists that this year's students generated:

What Makes an Effective Goal?

• Must be yours: personalized
• Must be relevant and important
• must be positive
• must be a stretch but "reachable"
• must be specific and "measurable"
• Must be directed toward improving or accomplishing

Unit Questions

• Broad to cover many sub-questions - but not too general
• Prompts you to dig deeper into its roots
• Everyone finds somewhat interesting
• Doesn't have a simply, single answer (yes/no)
• Lots of information available
• Provokes thinking
• Lots of connections

Students then go on to generate the questions they want to answer. Here is their list for this unit:


Economics Questions

• how have past economies affected the present (future?)?
• how do budgets work?
• how do we reguate the stock market?
• how does the stock market affect the economy and vice versa?
• what gives money value?
• What is a stock and how does it work?
• How do companies change and how does that relate to stock?
• How do natural resources related ot the stock market?
• how does inflaction work and why does it happen?
• How does bakning work? Why is banking the richest industry?
• How does our local economy compare to other economies?
• How do wars affect t our economy?
• How do world events affect our economy?
• How does money circulate?
• What are some economic scandals?
• How did the great Depression occur and how did we reocver from it?
• How does our economy affect other economies?
• How does tread affect our economy?
• What is the World Trade Organization?
• How does an economy affect profit and nonprofit organizations?
• What are different kinds of stock marktes?
• How does the ceonomy relate to technology?
• What major events have shaped the economy?
• How does economy affect life styles and cultures?
• How does shopping patterns affect the stock market?
• How do meical costs affect the dconomy?
• Hod does the aconomy affect job choices?
• What are the most profitable industries and why?
• How was the Stocik Market created?
• How does the justice system affect economy?
• Who runs the stock market?
• Do other countries have stocik markets? which?
• What makes a company fail/succeed?
• Supplies and Demand?
• Are there relationships between demographics affect spending patterns?
• How does space technology affect economy?
• What is a Black Market? How does it corelatew with legitimate markets?
• How does theft affect an economy?
• How does advertising affect the economy?
• How does government spending affect our economy?
• What is capitolism?

In a future post, I'll describe some of the activities that students chose to do in order to learn about and answer these questions.

Building Community & the Door

I think Mark Springer and I have worked together for about 12 or 13 years. Based on what I saw of Watershed and Soundings and the level of student engagement (and ownership of their own learning!), I'm sorry it took me that long to finally get into his classroom.

I know Mark would say that one of the ways he and his colleagues achieve that level of learning is how they work very deliberately to build a strong community within each class, to build strong relationships both with and between students, and finding ways to get to know and connect with each student.

I was surprised by my own dissertation research (PDF - 640 KB) when my data showed that relationship and connecting with students was the single most important motivator for hard to teach students (and sure doesn't interfere with the learning of easy to teach students!).

It was evident of Watershed teachers, as well as Mark and his Soundings team teacher that each of these teachers genuinely likes middle school students and talks with them as people, not from the authority perspective of a teacher - or as a policeman! (I have referred to these as People Voice, Teacher Voice, and Disappointed Voice in an earlier post.)

But achieving the level of community - and of student sense of self responsibility and motivation - I witnessed in both programs takes more deliberate work than simply the tone of voice used when talking with students or how you work to build relationships and mutual respect through every day interactions.

Strategies these teachers used often involve asking students for their ideas and to think reflectively about good learning. Early in the year, Mark asks his students to think about what makes for a good student. This year's students came up with this list:

What Makes a good student?

• Willing to learn
• creative respect
• pays attention
• can work with others as well as alone
• open minded
• tenacious
• synergetic
• motivated
• organized
• does homework
• participates
• unique
• involved
• doesn't procrastinate
• sets goals
• attentive
• super!
• confident
• studies
• responsible
• optimistic
• has opinions
• doesn't cream
• never interrupts finishes on time
• cooperates
• caring
• inquisitive learns form mistakes works hard
• animated
• willing to try new things
• willing to try
• not bossy
• having a life outside school
• prepared
• teamwork

Mark and the other teachers then asked the students what makes for a good teacher. They came up with this list:

What makes a good teacher?

• Answers all questions
• privileges
• open-minded
• fun lessons
• humorous when appropriate
• doesn't give tons of homework
• positive
• patient
• calm
• skils
• organized
• articulate
• useful learning
• activities
• helpful
• lets student find an opinion
• friendly
• headstrong
• Sober (serious)
• Believes in student approaches
• know what you are teaching
• not crazy
• no temper
• attractive?
• confident
• creative
• no coffee on student work
• doesn't look down on students
• flexible
• good listener
• balanced
• considerate (aware)
• Respectful
• no favorites
• faith in oneself
• plans ahead

As their community building progressed, Mark also asked students how they could show that they were a community!

Using the nautical theme of "Soundings," the students decided to put a construction paper ship on the double doors that led into their room. On the ship, the students added small photographs of themselves, posed purposefully to look like they were part of the crew. What they ended up with was a design that both highlighted the students' individual personalities and the cohesiveness of the group.

That leads to another strategy Mark uses frequently: he presents the things that need to be done, then tasks the students with coming up with the ideas of what they will do and making the decisions about how they will do it. Mark structures and scaffolds those conversations so that they are productive and do achieve the necessary results, but the ideas and choices are the students'.

This extends to designing most of the curriculum that the students study (more on this in a future post).

For me, as a pedagog and learning theorist, I'm not just fascinated by these strategies and how powerful they are, but also by the notion that "connecting with kids" and "student voice & choice" seem to be inextricably linked when fully implemented! But it is also clear that high quality learning takes place, not just when high quality content is present, but when high quality relationships and high quality input and choice are present.

Watershed

(Recently I had the chance to visit Watershed, the integrated learning program created by Mark Springer. These are my notes and reflections on this visit.)

Wow! This room looks so different! There are 2 teachers and about 36 students in a large room on the ground floor of the school. In the center of the room, desks are pushed together in groups of 4 or 5 to create small groups. All around the room are computers and comfortable places to sit. Students are moving around the room, working independently or in small groups. Everywhere there are student created products - bird models, mini ecosystems, a model water mill. And about 20 large, poster-sized photos of the previous years' Watershed students.

In fact, when I came in the room, there was only one teacher, because the other had taken nine students to do a stream study (in this sunny, 45 degree, February weather!). The other teacher reported that he would take a different 9 to the stream later in the day.

It's hard to see if there are any off task or disengaged students. In fact, I'd say every kid was engaged. They were writing, looking things up on the computer, working on models and diagrams, reading.

Now, off task is a different matter. Jon reported that today was a catch up day. Students had planned one of their quarterly parent nights. One of the chalk boards had the agenda that the students had come up with. They were trying to finish up the work that would be shared with parents during the event. Jon pointed out one student who was was busily reading a book with interesting pictures of aquatic creatures. The student was certainly engaged. But it turns out that right under the book with pictures, was another book with biographical information about the poet the student was researching. That was the work he should be doing to get ready for the parent night.

But Jon was also quick to remind me that these kids were 7th graders with all the energy that that age group is known for. He also pointed out that when they let students do some of what they want (like reading the book about aquatic life), it wasn't too hard to get them back onto the teacher's task.

Jon said, too, that some of the kids seem to play a little more in Watershed than they do elsewhere, but that he believed that that was because they had built a community from the group and that students felt safe and accepted and more comfortable in Watershed than they do in a conventional classroom.

When I think about my model for Meaningful Engaged Learning, several components jump out at me:

• Connecting with kids - clearly the teachers have put significant time into building a real community here.
• Learning by doing - It seems that all the students' projects involve hands on work. And not just models in the classroom, but also going out to the nearby creek to study the ecosystem and to contextualize the learning they do.
• Voice & choice - Although teachers design the skeleton of the curriculum and work with the students to maintain academic integrity, students play a very active role in in putting the meat on that skeleton; deciding how they should meet the objectives and show what they have learned.
• Real audience - While I was there, students were preparing for a parent night where they would present their learnings
• Real world connection - They use the local watershed to help put all their learning into context.
• Higher order thinking - almost everything the students did involved applying knowledge, making decisions, analyzing and evaluating information, and creating various products and models.

If you want to know more about how they do this, check out this book or this one, both written by Mark Springer, Watershed's founder.

I Had to Throw Out My Observation Form - a Visit to Soundings

On my visit to Soundings (I briefly describe Soundings here), I actually had to throw out my class observation form! It was unbelievable!

I'm on sabbatical this semester exploring how to motivate students and to see how engaging teachers implement the 9 components of my Meaningful Engaged Learning Model. Part of that is visiting teachers' classrooms, and I've developed a classroom observation form to help me. One of those visits was to Mark Springer and his Soundings program.

But I walked through the door and pretty much had to throw out the observation form.

The observation form is designed to help me capture what teachers do to help motivate students. It looks for strategies like learning by doing, focusing on higher order thinking, teachers connecting with students, soliciting student voice & choice, attention to different learning styles, real world connections for learning, etc. There are places for me to record what the teacher is doing and what the students are doing, and how those different engaging components are implemented.

What I saw was 36 students working independently and in groups. The teachers were there to help, but the students didn't ask them for any. Everyone seemed to be engaged in working productively on something (although knowing if they were on task is a little harder discern!). But there was productive chatter. There was some moving around the room. But it was just 36 students working at their clusters of desks.

As an observer you couldn't tell for sure if there was learning by doing, or higher order thinking, or what learning styles were being used. I could see a few laptops being used... In fact, about all you could see were groups of students hunched over their desks, discussing something in a huddle with their peers.

But there was a buzz that said students were being productive.

So if observing wasn't going to work, I turned to the table near where I was sitting, excused myself and asked the students what they were doing.

They went on to articulately tell me all about the economy unit they were working on, the (simulated) businesses that they had taken on, the projects and activities they needed to complete, where they were in the process of completing each, the objectives for the unit and how they had been involved in deciding what those objectives, projects, and activities would be. They told me about their business and what they had learned about the economy so far. They showed me what they were working on and about what they were thinking about.

Rarely, had I worked with students who were so articulate, involved with their learning, and so clear about what they were learning! It was amazing.

But what was really amazing is that it didn't look anything like direct instruction (in fact, while talking with the students, I had lost complete track of what the teachers were doing...).

I'm going to devote several future posts to how I think Mark and his teaching partner made this happen. But if you want to read more about how Mark does Soundings, check out his book.

Using Data to Help Shift Paradigms

I've written recently about the hard work of changing
paradigms. Shifting paradigms takes clear communication and expectations, good models and modeling, supportive coaching, and the good use of data. It takes positive pressure and support.

We've been working on creating tools to help us with this work.


We started by trying to define what our model was. What was the vision of the school we were working to create? What were our critical pieces? Our model has 9 components: 4 Teacher Practice components and 5 School Program components. Many of the elements of the Teacher Practice components come from my (McMEL's) motivating underachiever work and work with learning with laptop initiatives. Many of the elements of the School Program components come from ResulTech's roots with CART, the progressive high school in Fresno, CA.

The Teacher Practice components include Environment & Culture, Meaningful Learning, Technology Integration, and Engaged Learning. The School Program components include Facilities & Infrastructure, an Engaging Program, Data Driven Decision Making, Professional Development, and Leadership. A PDF of the model is available here.


Part of Data Driven Decision Making (and positive pressure and support) is knowing where your teachers are in terms of implementing the teacher practices. We figured that if we had a teacher observation form we could use it to collect objective data on to what degree teachers were implementing the desired practices. Having a collection of observations from throughout the school over the course of a day or so would give a snap shot of where the school was. Having a series of observations for single teacher over time will help track a teacher's strengths and challenges.

But we never intended the observation form to be used for evaluation purposes. We are using it to help us know how we need to support teachers, and to track our progress as we strive to fully implement the school model.

The observation form has three sections. The first allows the observer to record the teacher's name and the date, etc. It also has a space to script a brief overview of the lesson or activities observed.

The second section is a timed observation checklist. It is structured so that the observer merely needs to mark off observables every five minutes. These include class organization; teacher role; level of student engagement; learning by doing; level of Blooms Taxonomy; learning styles used; and level of technology integration.

The third section are items that are better suited to be rated once at the end of the observation. These include the quality of the teacher's interactions; the level of real world application used; the level of student choice and voice; and the level of orderliness.

A PDF of the classroom observation form is available here.

Who'd'a Thought Content Would Interfere with Teaching?!

(Ok, this is probably part 2 of my Trying to Change Paradigms is Hard Work post)

A couple of our students wrote to me recently and asked me what the goal of doing this Theme Park Unit was. Our model unit involves students designing their own Theme Park. They'll have to create a layout to scale, do a business plan, a marketing plan, and models of some of their attractions. Many of our materials come from real attraction and theme park designers and design companies, the small business administration, and other real world sources. This is really our first project-based unit and teachers are just getting started.

I wrote back to the students that the goal of our school is to engage and motivate students to learn skills and knowledge through a project-based curriculum that will help them get jobs and/or attend college; that we were working to create a curriculum that will teach traditional knowledge and skills through high-interest, real-world based activities and this was our first unit. (Keep in mind that our students come to our school because they haven't done well in the conventional setting. They are bright, but they are hard to teach kids. Frankly many of them don't care about the traditional curriculum or what other people say they should learn.)

I went on to write to the students that we wanted the students to learn about running creative businesses, about an important part of the entertainment industry, about attaining funding through business plans, attracting customers through marketing, planning and design work, how local government impacts business and vice versa, becoming a clear communicator, working collaboratively, creative problem solving, how to search out and analyze needed information, etc.

Doesn't this sound like a great way to learn? Don't you wish that you could go to a school like this? Or that one of your kids could? Certainly the people I tell about my work with this school get all excited! And certainly all the teachers chose to teach in this school, to be part of a project based curriculum.

But who would have thought that the traditional curriculum would be one of our biggest road blocks to really getting good at doing projects!

Well, the reality of this school is that haven't had as much time for training as it would seem. We didn't get the go ahead until mid to late August, just a few short weeks before we were to open our doors. While we were hiring, we were able to do a series of half day informational workshops and we hit the road running. It became clear that our teachers weren't ready to just jump into project-based learning (and why should they without proper training and support?). It took us until January to get back and do some modeling with the teachers. They still weren't ready to take on project planning (because they needed more modeling and support - how much training can you do in a couple of afternoon planning periods!?).

So here we are starting to get our Theme Park activities out to the teachers. And we're still running into challenges...

Who would have thought that the curriculum would get in the way of teaching?

One teacher politely informed us that she wouldn't have time to do the project because of the social studies unit she was working on. It turned out that her supervisor had stopped in recently and asked her where she was in the pacing guide. With that kind of pressure, who could blame her baulking.

(In all fairness, when the supervisor learned more about our program, he sat down with a different teacher, asked lots of great questions about the Theme Park unit, and together they brainstormed ways the social studies curriculum integrated with the unit.)

Who'd'a thought that the curriculum would get in the way of teaching?

One of teams was introducing the Business Plan portion of the project, and contacted us for any ideas on incorporating science in this portion, aside from Earth Science (soil samples for example) and Biology (ecology)... I wrote back that I wanted to share an idea.

Keep in mind that Project-based learning is a different way to organize the curriculum.

It organizes learning around the project and its components, not around the disciplines of knowledge (even though you can’t do projects without rich content from the disciplines of knowledge). So the question we want to eventually get good at asking isn’t “how does science (or some other subject) contribute to the business plan (or some other project component)?” but rather, “What skills and knowledge do my students need in order to successfully complete the business plan?” Secondary to that is tracking the standards based content students are learning and over time helping to guide students to fill in the gaps (left from the projects) in their education.

In other words, the content flows from the project. We don’t force fit content to the project. (Remember that our overarching goal is to reengage disenfranchised learners who already believe that school is contrived and irrelevant to their lives!) The project is the curriculum.

Science teachers (certainly teachers of any subject area) then are not so much responsible to “the science curriculum” as they are to the education of the students. They teach what needs to be taught, not necessarily just science. But they are then also the science expert on the team and responsible for both evaluating students’ progress toward learning scientific concepts and for being the steward of scientific knowledge within the projects. The question we want teachers to start asking (related to their content specialty) isn’t so much “where’s the science in the business plan?” but rather, as the projects develop and those requisite skills and knowledge are identified, “Where are the opportunities within that list of skills and knowledge to bring in high quality scientific concepts? Where can I turn a kernel of a scientific idea into a rich scientific lesson?”

Ok – so it’s a game of semantics. It’s a subtle difference. But it is an important difference.

I'm thinking that maybe we should tell all the teachers they aren't Math teachers and English teachers any more. They are all project teachers with content expertise in one of the disciplines.

The funny thing is that during one of the inservices we looked at the idea of the theme park layout. When we asked the question, "How does math (or science, or English, or social studies) contribute to the layout?" we ended up with a pretty shallow list of content. But when instead we asked the question, “What knowledge and skills do we need in order to successfully do the layout?” we ended up with a (almost overwhelmingly) rich list of concepts and content. It wasn't hard to look at this list and see how the disciplines of knowledge would contribute to this aspect of the project.

But even so, our conventional content organization still gets in the way...

But that's why we're doing this unit. That's why we're giving the teachers activities that will make a rich learning experience for our students.

When I wrote to the students about the goal of the project, I didn't just write about the goal for the students, but also for the teachers. I wrote that the teachers will learn how to teach knowledge and skills through project-based learning, how to connect traditional curriculum to project-based units, how to contextualize learning by connecting it to the real world, how to scaffold learning (building a sequence of activities to make new ideas more understandable), how to generate interest and engagement in learning, how projects reflect real world problems and issues.

Boy, changing paradigms is hard work! And who'd'a thought that content would get in the way of teaching!

Connecting with Students, Especially Challenging Students

I recently did a series of teacher observations in one of the schools I'm working with. We're working hard to implement an engaging, project-based curriculum with hard-to-teach students.

These weren't evaluation observations, but observations to help us track the level of implementation of our programmatic elements (especially the teacher practice elements), to aid us in knowing how to support the teachers, and to collect information about strategies which seem to be working.

As expected, we were at a low level of implementation on most of our factors. This isn't the teachers' fault, but rather simply an indication of how little time we've had for training. We collected this simply as baseline data. We expect that everyone will be excited when we see those measures start to move and improve!

One area that we did expect to learn something was in the area of connecting with students. As with many hard-to-teach students, our students can be challenging. We know that relationship is everything when it comes to reaching these students and many won't learn unless they feel that the teacher respects, if not likes, them.

Some of the teachers find our students quite challenging and others seem to have little problem with them. What could we learn about how different ways of interacting with students impacts student behavior?

It was interesting to see (and perhaps no surprise) that the teachers who seemed to have the best rapport with students talked with them as people - they used the "people voice" (as if they were just talking with another person - I think some teacher educators call it the adult voice). There was no positional authority in their voice. The teachers who used the people voice still drew the line with behavior, set expectations, and intervened when students weren't doing what they were supposed to. In other words, even though their authority didn't come through in their voice in general, these teachers still used their authority when appropriate and necessary.

Students reacted to teachers who used the people voice better than to the teachers who had positive interactions with the students, but had a bit of a "teacher voice" (you know, that voice that says I'm the teacher and you're the student).

Further, teachers who used the "disappointed voice" (the tone indicated that the teacher was disappointed, upset, or angry with the student) had the most difficulty with students. The disappointed voice did not necessarily happen only when students were off task or misbehaving. Ironically, teachers were not aware that they were using the disappointed voice, and in at least one case, it had more to do with the teacher's natural tone of voice than it did with how the teacher was feeling.

(Ironically, in the past, I was a middle school teacher and had really good luck connecting with my students. But later I was moved to the high school and had a really horrible year before moving to the university to work with preservice teachers. I realize now that I had used the people voice with my middle school students and the teacher voice with my high school students. I can't help but wonder if that had something to do with the quality of my year...)

Clearly our challenging students are very sensitive to the teacher's tone of voice and teachers should avoid both the disappointed voice and the teacher voice in favor of the people voice.

Teachers who had better luck with the students also made extensive use of behavioral expectations. They made comments about what individuals, groups, or the class would be working on and what was expected of them during that time (in their people voice) and constantly updated students about what the teacher would be doing and what the students should be doing at that time. Further, when students were off task, the teacher didn't shift to an authoritarian or angry voice, but rather remained in people voice, but used a strategy I call "broken record," simply repeating the expected behavior until the student follows through.

When students needed to be redirected or corrected, students became confrontational or ignored shifts to the authoritarian voice and were certainly confrontational to a shift to the disappointed voice. Both approaches were non productive or counter productive.

Threats of punishment, removal from the room, or extra work only exasperated student behavior and had the opposite effect from the one desired. Using humor or broken record to get the desired behavior was much more effective, especially when it came to having students put away cell phones, mp3 players, or other objects teachers needed to have put away. (It was also observed that grabbing the object or getting into a tug-o-war are counter-productive strategies.)

Certainly, many hard-to-teach students are not particularly interested in learning what we have to teach. Motivating the students to learn can be challenging.

But teachers who attempted to use grades (tests or quizzes), the future (the next grade or course, or the next school, whether it be high school, or college, etc.) or the high stakes test to motivate students, only succeeded in agitating the students or exasperating undesirable behavior.

Teachers who were more successful motivating the students used strategies such as making the material interesting, using real world examples, or leveraging their positive relationship with the students.

Interestingly, feeling angry (and perhaps showing it in your voice) when students act rudely or are persistently off task or disruptive is human nature. Wanting to subtly assert your authority is perfectly understandable. Grabbing an object a student won't put away seems a normal reaction. It is the teacher's job to help students be successful in the next grade, course or school, or to do well on accountability measures.

These differences in teacher behavior can even be explained as stylistic differences. For example, some teachers relate more informally with students while others are more formal, and some teachers are more straight forward about their content, while other teachers work to make it more fun.

But although various behaviors, approaches, or reactions are natural, logical, understandable, or one's personal style, they can be non productive or counter productive.

This is about teachers being strategic and intentional in using productive behaviors, approaches, and reactions.

It would appear that using the people voice, broken record, and humor are much more effective ways of dealing with challenging students, and that making learning interesting or meaningful are more effective motivators for learning.

Three Student-Centered Educational Programs

Today and tomorrow, I'm visiting Mark Springer at Radnor Middle School (PA). Mark is best known for his Watershed project (see here and here and here) which is now in its 20th year.

Watershed is an integrated 7th grade curriculum. Students are involved with learning the usual middle school content, but all within the context of studying the watershed surrounding the school. Students are involved in canoe trips, stream studies, model building, etc. Students have an enormous amount of input into how they learn. And the program has generated lots of interest among students, receiving many more applications each year than the number of students they can take (about 36 students a year, selected randomly from all the students who apply).

Gordon Vars would call this "structured core" (see here) Learning is organized thematically. Although rich in the content from the disciplines of knowledge, learning is not separated into the separate subjects. This is "structured" core because the choice of themes and the major units, projects, and activities were designed by the teachers.

But there are still strong elements of what Vars calls "unstructured core," in that students have a lot of choice and input into how the class masters the unit, designs the projects, and completes the activities. (Personally, I find the term "unstructured" horribly misleading - and it certainly has negative implications - since planning curriculum with students requires a much more sophisticated set of structures than when teachers design the learning by themselves.) If you were to look at a bar graph of the planning, you might see that about half of all the planning is done by the teachers and about half is done by the students (facilitated and structured by the teachers).

But Watershed isn't Radnor MS's only student-centered program. For the last nine years, Mark has turned over the Watershed program to other teachers and developed and run an 8th grade program called Soundings. This is a highly democratic program with students involved actively in planning and designing most aspects of the educational program, Vars' unstructured core.

Mark, and his teaching partner, Mary, are using what is often affectionately known as "The Beane Model" of planning curriculum with students. Jim Beane wrote about a democratic, student-centered curriculum in The Middle School Curriculum: From Rhetoric to Reality, but his wife, Barbara Brodhagen, worked with him put his ideas into action in her classroom. Together they developed a process of asking students for their questions and concerns about themselves and their questions and concerns about the world (what could be more appropriate, developmentally, for middle grades students?!!!), and then find themes from the intersection of these concerns of self and concerns of world. Jim and Barbara readily recognize that there are many ways to create an integrative, democratic curriculum (not just the one that they used) and that many educators have contributed to the development of strategies to plan curriculum with students - they blanch when teachers call it "The Beane Approach."

So Soundings curriculum is designed, negotiated really, between the students and the teachers, but grows from their questions and concerns about themselves and the world. If you were to look at a bar graph of who designed the educational program, 10-20% would be designed by the teachers, and 80-90% is designed by the students (with teacher guidance, of course!).

Now, Radnor MS has a third student-centered program. Crossroads is the relatively new (3 years old) 6th grade student-centered program. Instruction is still thematic and students learn by working on projects, but although students are often give choices, it is the teachers who design most of the learning experiences. On the proverbial bar chart, it is 80-90% teacher designed and 10-20% student directed. But throughout the year, the teachers give students more and more voice and choice, helping them learn how to make decisions and be more involved in their own learning.

Although the thought of a progressively more student-centered program is intriguing, Crossroads students aren't required to become Watershed students, although many apply to do so. Likewise many Watershed students apply to be Soundings students. Mark reports that this year about a quarter of the Soundings students are former Watershed students.

Radnor Middle School has approximately 850 students in grades 6 through 8. Each year approximately 200-450 students apply, but only 105-120 can participate in their three student-centered programs annually.