Category Archives: Challenge

Every Time I Say I’m Never Going to Use This…

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Deeper Learning: Beyond 21st Century Skills (Leading Edge ...

…of course I end up needing it.  In this case, I’m talking about the stuff that I had to learn in my Preparing 21st Century Learners class for my credential. 

 The Jetsons Get Schooled: Robot Teachers in the 21st Century ...
21st (?) Century learners

    When I first opened up the book for this class, I was deeply skeptical. There was a lot of talk about school cultures, and that seemed way out of reach for someone who was just starting out as a brand new teacher.  There was a lot of talk of community buy-in, and revamping entire departments and schools, and that felt way out of my league.  Once I got deeper into the book, however, there were some great concepts that jumped out.  The first was the idea of group polishing of project-based learning plans, especially for new teachers. In the model that was presented, new teachers come on board for a week’s worth of PD that starts with veteran teachers modeling the group polishing method and ends with the new teachers presenting their projects for group polishing. I also was alternately intrigued and horrified by the idea of project-based learning as a whole.  Choice in what information they learned, and to what depth?? I struggle with the concept of not pushing all my students into learning all the things, so this isn’t natural for me at all.  But I love the idea of students pursuing knowledge out of interest instead of need to stay in lockstep with the class.
    With all of this in mind, I put together a crazy project-based learning thing that would end up launching RIGHT when shelter-in-place hit- through EdPuzzle, because we couldn’t be together in person.  The students had to choose a recipe and deconstruct the chemistry in a way that non-scientists could understand AND use to improve their cooking skills. Ultimately, releasing this during SIP was a blessing in disguise. The back-and-forth editing and discussion process I had with my students as they honed their recipes and explanations kept us in continuous contact in a constructive way.  Instead of a one-and-done grade for their explanation, they were allowed to keep revising until they got it GOOD – and then it went to an outside-the-school panel for a review. To me, that was one of the biggest scary logistical things about PBL: the outside dissemination of what the students have put together. I know the kids take criticism to heart, so exposing them to outside adult critiques was scary, but ultimately most of the students took the gentle critiques in the manner in which they were intended, making a great final cookbook product. Another great thing about having the cookbook project during SIP is that it gave the kids a reason to experiment around with cooking – they tried tweaking their own recipes, they tried each other’s recipes, and it helped keep up our sense of community.  On the last day of class, I had everyone cook someone ELSE’s food and bring it to the Zoom meeting while we debriefed the year.
  I highly recommend the group-polishing model to anyone who is about to do their first venture into the PBL world. When I was trying to put this together, I talked to not only my department chair and the other chemistry teachers (sorry guys), but I also reached out to the English team to see how we could incorporate some of the ELA concepts and/or teachers into the project. It was thanks to everyone’s questions that the final project took the shape that it did, and the deliverables and due dates got a lot more clear. 
DIY - Hand Polishing Rocks & Crystals (Sodalite) - YouTube
 I also found that releasing some control to the students actually worked well, and it allowed differentiation to a certain extent.  Some students stuck with very simple concepts, and needed extensive scaffolding and guidance to evaluate their recipes.  Other students needed guidance because they went to super advanced topics that wouldn’t be covered in the class at all, simply because they were interested in them! For each of the students, I tried to help them find resources to answer their questions. Some students really didn’t seem to be engaged in finding the answers, or even the questions (recipes) to engage themselves, which was frustrating. I’m not sure if they needed tighter guidelines/pre-selected recipes to help narrow things down, or if it was simply a mismatch between the question and their interests.
  For a first attempt, particularly in the weirdest year ever? I was pretty happy! Now comes the fine tuning for this school year…

Growing brains in Algebra Honors

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My Algebra Honors students had a test last Friday on systems of equations in 2 variables.  We had done a lot of work on this chapter and I knew that I didn’t want to assign them more of the same types of problems on our review day Wednesday.  Instead I had the class work in groups of 3 and I gave each group a sheet of paper with two word problems written out.  I told them that they had 50 minutes to solve these two problems using any strategy they wanted.  They just had to justify their answer with math.  I told the class that they are expected to explain their problem to the class toward the end of the period.

What I didn’t tell the class was that the problems involved 3 variables (an Algebra 2 concept) and that we hadn’t learned how to solve systems of equations in 3 variables.  Instead I told them that I believed in them and I knew they would be able to solve them. 
The students got to work solving the problems.  As I walked around the groups I loved seeing all of the different strategies the students used.  One group solved their problems on the white boards and every time they got stuck or realized they made a mistake they would start solving it again without erasing their work.  They labeled each try as a “take” and would refer back to what they did before to help them figure out where they made mistakes.  Finally “take 6” was successful and they were so proud of themselves for figuring it out.  
They labeled their final, correct work as “Holy Ground” and they were so proud of themselves.  
As this group worked I would hear them say things like “we’ve never solved equations with 3 variables before…I’m not sure how to set this up but I know Mrs. Schooler wouldn’t give us a problem we couldn’t solve.”  I also heard a lot of comments about how their brain was growing from the mistakes they made!  The groups for the most part worked without my help.  At times if a group was really stuck I asked them some questions to get them thinking about the problem in a different way 
and that was usually sufficient to get them working again.
As students presented their answers it was fascinating to see how almost every group solved both problems but even better was that not one group solved them the same exact way.  

The students listened to each group present and they would exclaim that they hadn’t thought of solving it that way or telling another group they were impressed at how they approached the problem.  


I surveyed the students after class asking them what they thought of the two problems and what approaches they used when they got stuck.  Here were some of their responses:


“When we got stuck we would look back to see where we went wrong and we listened to each other’s advice.” 
“Whenever we got stuck we would try a new strategy but left the old strategy on the board in case it helped us.”

I also asked the students how they felt after class.  Here’s what they said:


“I felt accomplished and proud of myself because I got to figure out a hard problem without the teacher’s help.  I also felt proud of my group because we worked really hard together to solve it.”
“I felt very challenged but in a good way.”
“I felt like I understood the problems a lot more after hearing how each group solved it.” 

I was so proud of my students.  They were given challenging problems to solve and were successful in solving them.  They made connections to what they knew about systems of equations in 2 variables and applied it to 3 variables.  This is a reminder to me that I need to always remember that my students are capable of so much and that if I am to prepare them to be strong mathematics students I need to give them more problems like this so I can help their brains grow.