Voice, Choice, and Ownership in PBL

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Have you considered doing more project-based learning in your classroom but have concerns
about planning projects properly, using class time wisely, and teaching standards effectively?
With these concerns in mind, Michelle Koski and I attended a PBL Design Camp at High Tech High
in San Diego, and here are some highlights of what we learned:

  1. Planning projects can be time-consuming but is doable and worth it.
  2. Yes, you can have traditional standards-based teaching with PBL, and you should!
  3. There is no “right” way to begin or plan a project.
  4. Ask students for their feedback, not just after the project but before and during the project as well.
  5. Students are PROUD of their work (not their grade).
Voice, Choice and Ownership in PBL! So, how does that happen?
At High Tech High’s PBL Design Camp, middle and high school educators from all over the country came together, each with the spark of an idea for a project. By working with their school partners and hearing critique from other camp participants, they were able to develop a project that suited the needs of their students and their teachers. 
Michelle and I are two such participants who have benefitted from the PBL design process. The idea for our cross-curricular project came while discussing two independent projects we do for our students. My Dystopian Fiction students write dystopian scenes that focus on world building, character development and action sequences. Michelle’s Costume and Fashion Design students create costumes for plays based on fashion trends. For our project, we have decided to combine the two and have Michelle’s students design costumes for my students’ writing. My writer’s will pitch their story ideas to her designers who will choose a partner to work with. The partners will meet regularly during the design phase of the costumes to work on revisions of both the writing and the costumes. 
We plan to conduct this project during fourth quarter. Here is what we hope to gain in terms of learning outcomes:
  • Both classes will learn the process of critique and revision
  • As writers, Dystopian Fiction students will learn to clearly communicate their vision with sensory imagery and vivid language.
  • As designers, Costume and Fashion Design students will learn to collaborate and communicate with a “client” in order to create a product that reflects more than the artist’s vision.

Stay tuned for the results of our project…


Creative Processes

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The Frosh Creation course has a complex layering of goals. One that the TMS team has struggled with it to teach teaming.

At a recent TMS team meeting, we were discussing this struggle and I realized how each of us occupy distinctive roles in that team. I began to notice how differently we were each looking at the problem. During the conversation, I started to wonder (One aspect of my specific role is to drift off into possibilities mid-discussion. They all know that and accept me.) could Amy, Joan, Victoria and I be archetypes for a teaming model. I began to come up with descriptions for each of us. Another realization come at that time. We somewhat align with a sequence I use in class, The Evolution of Tasks. This sequence (conceptualize-actualize-realize-display) is a guideline for a creative process.

I merged my realizations together and developed these job descriptions. I will be proposing to my team that we create teams of four students and run four team challenges in the first semester.  The members rotate role in each project.  Each challenge will include a self-reflection survey to help clarify the various experiences.  

My hope that this job training helps students discover strengths and contributions, confirms their individuality and produces synergistic results for the challenges.   

  1. Administrator
         Primary function:                  To CONCEPTUALIZE



  • Studies the problem
  • Re-explains to crew
  • Helps assign tasks
  • Guides brainstorming
  • Confirms uploads
  • Supports other crew
  1. Facilitator
         Primary function:           
         To ACTUALIZE



  • Fine tunes the plan (balancing the dream and the possible)
  • Gathers supplies/leads clean-up
  • Establishes timetable/manages work -flow
  • Quality Control
  • Supports other crew
  1. Producer
         Primary function: 
         To REALIZE



  • Develops the how behind the what
  • Creates practical instructions
  • Lead maker
  • Supports other crew
  1. Documentarian
         Primary function:                      To DISPLAY



  • Photographer
  • Editor
  • Ensures upload/submission of docs
  • Reporter of tasks
  • Supports other crew

Moral Implications of Being a Football Fan in 2020

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I love football. I grew up a 49ers fan, my best friends played football throughout middle and high school, switched to the Packers as an adult (Go Pack Go!), and fell in love with the Hawkeyes while I attended college at the University of Iowa. When I became a teacher, I went to every football game, hosted pregame meals in my classroom, and talked about the game in the hallways to any and all students who would listen.

I knew about CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). The great Junior Seau had commited suicide while I was in college. In September of 2015, my favorite football player while I was a college student, one that I had bought the #9 jersey of, Tyler Sash, died at the age of 27. The cause of death? Mixture of drugs. But that didn’t sit well with any of us Hawkeye fans. Five months later it was revealed that he was in Stage 2 of CTE with comparable damage to that of Junior Seau who died at 43.

“Early symptoms of CTE usually appear in a patient’s late 20s or 30s, and affect a patient’s mood and behavior. Some common changes seen include impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and paranoia. As the disease progresses, some patients may experience problems with thinking and memory, including memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, and eventually progressive dementia. Cognitive symptoms tend to appear later than mood and behavioral symptoms, and generally first appear in a patient’s 40s or 50s. Patients may exhibit one or both symptom clusters. In some cases, symptoms worsen with time (even if the patient suffers no additional head impacts). In other cases, symptoms may be stable for years before worsening” (www.concussionfoundation.org).

In April of 2017, Aaron Hernandez, former Florida Gator and New England Patriot powerhouse, convicted of murder, was found dead in his jail cell. About five months later, it was revealed that he was in stage 3 of CTE with damage well beyond was could be expected for someone his age. The Netflix documentary “Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez” did a great job of highlighting his struggles including CTE.

This blog is not about defending Aaron Hernandez who committed crimes that are unimaginable. This is not a eulogy for a player that I thought was the King of Iowa. This is not a plea for football to be eradicated. This blog is about voicing and exploring the moral implications of being a lover of football and seeing grave consequences of the game. If repeated hits to the head do the damage then this is something that has to be talked about when we are educators of the youth that are receiving these hits. How do you talk to your own children about this? How do we talk to our students about this? Do we not talk about it? Is it too personal? These are the types of things that our students should be exploring for themselves in our religious studies curriculum and in their education as young adults.

A former student, now friend, is a current D1 football player who jokes about CTE that he will endure when older in order to cope with the reality that he, his teammates, and brothers might have a fate that is dark.

An acquaintance who currently plays for the Houston Texans told me, “I know all about CTE but I love football so I am willing to deal with the consequences.”

I love football. But a little piece of my heart breaks when I watch football because I know that there are consequences of the game that I can’t predict but that I know for a fact will be devastating.

Podcast Review: America’s Education Problem from The Daily

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I listened to the podcast from The Daily called America’s Education Problem. This episode interviewed Dana Goldstein and the host, Michael Barbaro, talked about standardized testing. I wasn’t very excited to listen to this podcast but Susan recommended it to me so I thought I would listen. This was SO interesting. Dana had some really interesting statistics and facts that actually blew my mind. One statistic that stood out to me was only 14 percent of American students could distinguish, reliably, between fact and opinion. This blew my mind, especially because I see it happening in my science classes. Dana brought up another good point after she shares that statistic and she says, ” And think about the implications of this in a world where there’s so much misinformation on social media, political advertisements that are trying to sway your opinion.” All I could think about was all the information they see every single day on Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat and how most of it is not accurate and how they might not be able to see that. Something that I have been trying to do better this year with my biology students is to always back up their opinion with statistics. I tell them that no one is going to believe them if they do not have reliable sources or have data that supports what they are saying. If they are drawing conclusions, I tell them to use the data they collected in their lab. If they are forming an opinion about a topic, I tell them they need to include their research in their final answer…I tell them that if they want anyone to believe them they HAVE to back up what they are saying. I am afraid that they are reading “information” on social media and listening to the news that could be spewing false information and they might not be able to distinguish if it’s the truth or a lie. 

So, on an assignment from last semester, I really tried to get my students to back up their opinion. They were given the following question, “Should Creatine Supplements Be Regulated?” We had talked about cellular respiration and now they had to take what they learned, do more research, and come to a conclusion about the above question. They had to find articles that had multiple viewpoints (because I think it’s important to always hear both sides) and then use the information and data they collected to write a paragraph. I stressed how important it was to support your argument with legitimate facts; not ones found on Instagram or “something my friend told me”. I was still slightly disappointment with their final paragraphs but there were some people who had convinced me that they should or shouldn’t based on the facts and data they included. I think going forward, that is something I will continue to stress.

Thinking about White Privilege

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It’s MLK Day and I’m thinking about his legacy. I’m thinking about the people in the civil rights movement and how the sheer force of their vision changed the trajectory of this country.  I’m thinking about the courage and sacrifice of regular people who chose to engage. I’m thinking what I can do these days … which makes me think about:

  • white privilege, our students, and what I can do to address systemic racism, economic injustice, and inequality  
  • how can I have more conversations that shift thinking so that my students understand these large social systems and desire to lead lives that change the systems?  
  • the way white privilege impacts the experience of our Black, Latina, Asian, Middle Eastern, and mixed race students?
  • am I/are we more aware of and sensitive to the needs/experiences/feelings of white students than I am/we are aware of and sensitive to the needs/experiences/feelings of our non-white students?
Angela Davis says “in a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be antiracist”.  What does that look like?  And why is the concept of white privilege so unpleasant and unpopular? Maybe- some white people 
  • don’t want to believe they live in a world where much of they’ve been told about fairness is wrong?
  • want to believe in the American dream – hard work pays off and good things happen to good people?
  • want to believe they alone have “earned” their privilege?
  • don’t think they have any privilege at all because they can’t see it (like a fish not seeing water)?
  • don’t want to think of themselves as ignorant about how the world works?
  • don’t want to think they have (knowingly or unkowingly) harmed or are harming people?
  • are not readily aware of the discrimination and unconscious and structural biases black and brown people face every day? 

What does white privilege even mean? To me, it means that a white person generally has a set of built in advantages that others do not. It isn’t “something I take and which I therefore have the option of not taking. It is something that society gives me, and unless I change the institutions which give it to me, they will continue to give it, and I will continue to have it, however noble and equalitarian my intentions.” (Harry Brod)  White privilege is “having greater access to power and resources than people of color [in the same situation] do”. (Teaching Tolerance)

It’s my experience that the hardest part about having conversations about white privilege, racial and economic injustice in the classroom is getting to a point where students 1) feel safe and that their opinions matter  2) try to use language that honors their own experience/ideas but doesn’t degrade anyone else’s 3) are empathetic  4) are willing to learn something new and not just cling to their original perspective.

For our white students, I am thinking about how to help them not be offended when someone asks them to “check their privilege”.  What is being asked is that the white person examine – stop and consider – how the advantages they’ve had in their life might be contributing to their position, opinions and actions.  And maybe to consider how the lack of disadvantage in certain areas is keeping them from fully understanding the struggles of others.  Acknowledging that systemic racism and economic injustice exist means challenging what we know about race, class, and wealth in this country – not easy – but if we don’t work to change the system, we might be contributing to the struggles of those who have suffered enough.

With my juniors in Symbols and Ethics we’re watching a movie called Paper City and will be using some of the lesson plans from the accompanying educational program.  Paper City is a film inspired by MLK’s last book: Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?  As we analyze the systems, social norms, and historical events that created a drug infested violent situation in Holyoke MA, maybe some shifts will take place and we all can see more clearly the disadvantages facing youths in Holyoke (and other communities) because of racial and economic disparities.

With this issue and others that are so contentious, my objective is that my students will be more inclined to listen deeply to others’ experiences and be equipped with some social analysis strategies, such as the “critical reflection cycle”, the “pastoral circle”, the “conflict resolution method”, or design think.  I’m also hoping my students can connect these issues to the principles of Catholic Social Teaching (i.e. human dignity, preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, solidarity), which is basically how the Church applies the Gospels to current events and social issues.

Talking about privilege makes a classroom of students squirm – some want to talk about it but most don’t; they don’t want to cause a fight or hurt anyone’s feelings.  It makes me nervous too, but I’m white and have benefited from the system so I don’t get to avoid the issue.  I’ve been told from black colleagues and learned from reading that part of white privilege is the ability to remain silent about race issues or in the face of racist activity.  If we understand systemic racism and economic injustice and do nothing about it, we’re in collusion with the system that set it up. What to do? What does being “antiracist” look like to you?  What kinds of things are you doing in your classroom that challenge the status quo and change the system?   Is there anything else we can do to explore ways that race, privilege, prejudice and structural inequality might be affecting our Black, Latina, Asian, Middle Eastern, and mixed race students?

 
Lastly, these are a few books (above) I’d like to read and am wondering if anyone else would like to read and discuss in a group?

Building Anti-Racist White (history) Educators.

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With Martin Luther King Day coming up this Monday and Black History Month coming up in February, I decided this is a good time to join an educator group that has the intriguing title “Building Anti-Racist White (history) Educators.” The group is sponsored by the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project. UCBHSSP director, Rachel B. Reinhard, Ph.D., is hosting monthly meetings on the UCB campus to discuss what it means to be an anti-racist educator, in the particular context of history classrooms.

Most educators claim they are not racist. Being anti-racist takes it a step further. Anti-racism cannot be passive. The mission of this group is to be actively involved in the fight against racism. This involvement begins with education. The first session began with a discussion about how most white educators do not even realize how racist our society is and has been for the past 400 years. From slavery to white privilege, racism is deeply engrained in our society, so much so that much racism has become invisible to many white people. Educators need to understand racism before they can teach about racism.

We also discussed how easy it is for white educators to fall into the trap of believing they know what is best for students of color and of how easy it is to focus on “helping” students of color rather than focusing on the manifestations of white racism. The focus must be on the white students and adults who need to be made aware of how white privilege affects people of color every day of their lives. Influencing the minds of whites creates a path that will lead to the end racism. How do we go about this? How do white educators learn to become productive allies in the work toward achieving racial justice in education and society? These are the questions this group will be addressing during the next several months.

When it comes to practicing anti-racism, I have come to realize that I have a long way to go. One thing I now know is the focus needs to be on white people and how so many knowingly and unknowingly perpetuate racism every day. I have witnessed racism since early childhood. I understand where it is coming from. Since I am white, I find many white people are open to me about their racism. Being white gives me enough credibility with white racists that they actually listen to me, at least for a while. Changing their minds is not so easy. It’s going to take a lot of white voices speaking out for anti-racism to make real progress. My greatest hope lies in our students who seen to really get it. Racism is not cool.

Further reading and listening:

Watson, Angela. “10 Things Every White Teacher Should Know When Talking about Race.” The Cornerstone For Teachers, Watson, Angela. “10 Things Every White Teacher Should Know When Talking about Race.” The Cornerstone For Teachers, thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/10-things-every-white-teacher-know-talking-race/.

Dillard, Coshandra. “Black Lives Matter Week of Action.” Teaching Tolerance, www.tolerance.org/magazine/black-lives-matter-week-of-action.

Fugate, Katherine. “White People Are Broken.” Medium, Medium, 1 Sept. 2018, medium.com/@katstory/white-people-are-broken-ab0fe873e5d3.

Diangelo, Robin. White Fragility Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Allen Lane, 2019. Amazon

Pie-Eating Pedagogy

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Image result for pie eating contest

It’s taken a while to process the vast quantity of things that I learned during the California Science Teachers Association conference in San Jose- the closest terrible metaphor I can come up with is digesting after a pie-eating contest.  As a brand new science teacher, I was excited to go to a conference with all these science teachers who had ALL THE ANSWERS on how to get students to learn! And think! And turn into amazing scientists! I was especially jazzed that the whole science department was going, so we could bounce ideas off each other and really maximize the takeaways from the conference

Now that it’s been a few months, I’ve been able to start actually using the strategies in my classroom.  I’m not really good at picking one thing to implement at once; I typically go for the AND approach, since I want my students to have the benefit of all the things right away.  With that in mind, here’s some of the interesting takeaways that I got:

Low floor, high ceiling
The California Academy of Sciences had a fantastic workshop that focused on making concepts accessible to all students, while still challenging the high achievers.  Their example? Assessing how much of the moon is lit by the sun when it is a crescent moon.  The ‘low floor’ is the moon, which is a universally experienced object, so it’s a low floor that everyone can come in on.  Students made predictions, then put their predictions on anonymous post-it notes that the teachers collected and put into makeshift bar charts.  I’ve since used this in my class, and it’s a fantastic way to take away the fear of wrong answers, because no one sees who put what!  
The teams then worked on modeling the moon’s lighting based on motion, then reassessed their answer, making a new set of bar graphs. When I used it in my class, it was an extraordinary way to visualize how much the students had learned from the less.

At the conference, the groups were then invited to explore one of a series of questions that were posted around the room that varied in difficulty. This is the ‘high ceiling’ concept; some groups only tackled one of the simpler questions, while other groups stubbornly attacked every single question.  I loved how it allowed freedom of approach while still providing challenge that wasn’t just extra work.  I’m starting to incorporate this in my classes with a ‘Go BEYOND’ question for students; these questions require students to really think about the concepts that we have discussed, but students who are at a more basic level of learning can choose to focus on the base information instead.I’m still struggling with the idea of accepting that some students won’t reach for the difficult questions, but perhaps I need to keep in mind what MUST be learned versus what they COULD learn…

Manipulatives
There was a great couple of workshops that used poker chips to model chemical reactions, and I immediately implemented it in my classroom to help with balancing equations!  Students have a tendency to jump to playing with numbers, but I hoped that slowing down with the chips would make them check in with what was actually happening with the balancing.  Interestingly, there was a divide in students that has replicated in Ian’s class- some students had it click when they used the chips, but others got lost as soon as the manipulatives were introduced! It’s nice to see a method for engaging the more visual and tactile learners, but I think in the future that I will give students the option to use them, based on whether or not they were helped previously.

There were a few other interesting ideas that I want to try to tackle, such as the concept of a storyline to tie all the units together, but that’s going to have to come during summer break when I have time to think.  I’m tossing around the idea of a molecular gastronomy final project though- something that ties together the thread of science communication with a variety of chemistry principles that we have talked about, which has the added benefit of making the girls make the connections to practical applications? If I play my cards right, maybe we’ll end up with a feast during finals week…

If anyone wants to see the various notes that I took in Notability, they are all here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1Ssr9qiRDTlkfwEM5QusIqHPNMuV41Cu2

The Value of Experimentation and Choice

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Katie:
In science, we love to experiment.  We especially love to test published things that surprise us, or make us skeptical. We also LOVE to learn new things, whether or not they are particularly relevant to anything at that particular moment.

As some of you may know, I was a practicing analytical chemist for about 11.5 years; before I was an analytical chemist, I was a student at UC Berkeley in the Chemistry department. When I switched to teaching, Carondelet was the amazing answer to a fervent but unhopeful prayer. Imagine my surprise when every single credential class told me that the classic method (the only method I remembered) of telling students things and expecting them to learn didn’t work.  Between my ESL and special education credential classes, one of the major emphases was CHOICE.  Choice in how to access the material and choice in how to convey their mastery of the material.  By allowing students choice, they theoretically can engage with the material in a way that excites them and maximizes their potential for creativity and success.  I decided to experiment a little bit with the idea of choice for my forensic science class’s final project.

Students were allowed to choose between doing a case study or a discipline survey; within each of these, they were allowed to pick what specifically they wanted to cover.  Then came the wild, crazy, freewheeling part that made me twitchy- they got to choose ANY method of getting that information to me, as long as it met certain requirements.  

I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical.  So skeptical that I had my students make their proposals back in September, with 3 check-in dates to make sure that they all were making appropriate progress.  I also threw in a peer-review day where each student had to review another student’s final draft and fill out a detailed peer review sheet- where the peer reviewer received a grade for how useful they were actually being. 

The end products were much better than I had hoped. One student wrote a song about a particular case (it missed a fair number of the required sections, but it’s catchy!), one did a news story, several did Powerpoint presentations, and quite a few did traditional essays.  While a couple fell short of what I had hoped for, it gave me ideas like this WebQuest that I had to make for my credential program.

Susan:
The Biotech class became something of an experiment this year too. With transitions to new teachers, we decided to reboot the curriculum and find more opportunities for student choice. We decided to have the students choose between a curated list of books that would give them an opportunity to dive deeper into one of the aspects of the course. After a round of votes, students were able to choose from titles focussing on GMO foods, Superbugs/Antibiotic resistance, Crispr/gene therapy and patients’ rights in medical research. Again fearful that the students wouldn’t make progress on the goal of reading the book for use in the final project, we scaffolded the semester with progress checks, proposals and peer reviews. 

Katie:
When Susan started discussing the final project for the book club, I loved the idea of having students decide how to present their mastery.  I also wanted them not to simply throw up an infographic that was a summary of the book that could have been made from detailed Wikipedia entries though.  In my ESL engagement class, we had just talked about using an INTO-THROUGH-BEYOND series of activities to help students grow, and this concept echoed in my head as we were trying to figure out what to do with this project.  Ideally, our classwork had provided the INTO, giving students a foothold into the basic topics.  The books and labs should have taken them THROUGH the concepts.  Now, they had to come up with the BEYOND.  
Susan & Katie:
These projects really highlighted the benefit of allowing choice.  The schemes the students came up with were wildly different, and well worth engaging with.  One trio successfully lobbied for a group podcast response to The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks; this highlighted the students’ creativity and the skills they learned in their podcasting class. Another made a fantastic set of interviews with students about GMOs and a thoughtful discussion of the topics discussed. Finally,the GMO topic elicited another creative video with a pair of students creating a newscast centering around basic facts with GMO foods. Of course we still got a few of the summary/infographics, but when presentation day came, all members of the class were inspired by each other’s work. There even was an impromptu round of applause for the most impressive projects, and hopefully inspiration for them to take to their next BEYOND project.
After seeing the amazing products that the students created and their depth of understanding, we are both encouraged to apply the creative BEYOND project in our classes moving forward!  

Mise en place – in the classroom

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Mise en place – in the classroom
I spent most of my break cooking and thinking about cooking.
Cooking has always been a hobby, but with the last weeks of the semester spent
working with my freshmen on their Little Big History Projects which consist
mainly of food topics I got to spend a lot of time thinking about the way that
cuisine intersects with history in really interesting ways. Amongst all of the
home cooking, I took two cooking classes learning to make French Macarons (I have been saying macaroooons my whole life oops) &
Pad Thai at Sur la Table. Most of my home cooking involves winging it and
fumbling around the kitchen, but these classes were spent with trained chefs
who brought a lot of insight into the cooking process. My biggest takeaway
concept: Mise en place.
Big News: My sister left the couch come with me make Macarons! All-expenses-paid-post-college-unemployment life must be rough 😭
Mise en place is a French phrase that basically means
“everything in its place” and is a concept that is taught in culinary 101 as a
way to help young cooks navigate a complicated recipe. It involves making
lists, prioritizing your work, gathering ingredients, measuring everything out
ahead of time and reading the recipe several times in order to know what is
happening when, and what if any special steps, tools, or time sensitives things
need to be accounted for in the recipe sequence.

I hope I don’t look this awkward all of the time….😅

Most of the time when cooking we are making things from rote
memory, or we are trying something new unsure of if it will work but enjoying
the process never the less. But that’s not always the case; for Christmas Day,
I made ravioli on my own on the day of for the first time in my life for my
whole family. On New Years Eve I made beef wellington with our good friends with
a cut of meat that cost nearly $60, yikes I am a budget shopper so this caused
me to literally lose sleep. The stakes/steaks, lol see what I did there, felt
incredibly high. I practiced making pasta for a week ahead of time which I’m
not sure I should be proud of or embarrassed by. One a side note – my family is
not shy to let you know if they don’t like something and my brother is
literally a trained chef –so no pressure. I could not have been successful if I
didn’t plan ahead.
So, how does this relate to teaching? Maybe for you not at
all, and if so I would invite you to stop reading here to save myself from any
further embarrassment of this not making sense. But the experience of cooking
during the holidays and the concept of Mise en Place has been milling around my
head especially as I think of ways to help my students as they begin to write
their Little Big History Project research papers.
Most of our students approach our assignments the way that
some of us might approach weeknight cooking; that is thrown together and half
assed. Most of us, like our students have the skills that we need to do
something, but not the bandwidth, resources, or ability to figure out how to
make it work with everything else we have going on. Many of our students, like
us, are gifted at BS-ing our way through a variety of complicated tasks. But
sometimes you just can’t do that, or you do so knowing that it was the best you
could do and that it was C work at best.
Think about the major assignments you gave last year, and
why some students were not as successful as they should have been. My guess is
that for many of them it was time management or not accounting for the
variables that they failed to think about ahead of time. I am specifically
thinking of a group that I did a podcast interview with in the 11th
hour of the due date.
The Little Big History Project is not 30-minute baked
chicken dish. It is a 3-hour Beef Wellington recipe. Last year I think we were
successful in giving our students the ingredients to succeed but this year I
want us to be more successful in helping them plan out this assignment and
assignments like it in the future. Given our student population, for the most
part the difference between students who excel and those who stay average is
more about planning/thoughtfulness than it is about academic skill level. As we
saw from the data of the PD day – for the most part our students are above
average.
They have great research and information thanks to Joan and
Michelle. They have the writing skills and historical thinking skills that they
have been taught throughout their years in school (albeit to varying degrees),
but most of them have not been taught to think out, plan, and break down, the
writing process. What to-do lists need to be made, what spaces need to be
created, what does it look like for something to be done, etc.
The conclusion of this is that I do not have the answers
yet, but do think that the idea of Mise en Place can be applied to some of our
bigger assignments. We spend a lot of time giving students the skills they need
to do an assignment but less time talking about how to actually approach an assignment
and I want to do that better for the sake of my students and for the sake of
myself who has to grade their work.

Final Exam Weekend Cram Session

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I offer a lot of math assistance for my students. I
basically make myself available before school, during lunch, during 7th
period and after school and many of my students benefit from this support. Even
with all this, as first semester finals approached, I felt the need for more. In
addition to the students who were desperately trying to improve their
performance in order to get a passing grade (C- or higher) for the semester, I
also had students who really wanted to perform well on their final exam. In the
spring, I had offered two AP Calculus “Boot Camp” sessions for my students on the
weekend before their AP exam. Because this had been successful, I decided to
offer some weekend study sessions for all of my math students on the weekend
before Final Exams. Just like last year I started out with a survey to gauge
interest and to determine what times would meet the needs of the most students.
The response was very positive and I decided to offer one 2-hour session on
Saturday and one 3-hour session on Sunday. Because there would be students attending from all 3 of the different courses that I teach, I could do no formal instruction. Instead, what came to pass was a giant study session where students were working collaboratively using the variety of resources that I had provided for them to prepare for their final exams. There was much use of the white boards and a lot of small group
discussion. While I periodically had to reteach concepts to some of the
students, I actually spent more time
Saturday end-of-day group selfie

serving as a sounding board for their
ideas and asking leading questions so they could make their own conclusions. Eleven
girls signed in on Saturday and fifteen on Sunday although more students were
actually there each day. There was really good energy in the room and the girls
seemed relaxed and productive. Many, many students thanked me before leaving
for Christmas break for giving them this extra support. I am glad that they
felt it was time well spent.

Sunday end-of-day group selfie