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.