Reflections on a "Career Move"

Who am I kidding, career move! Ha. Anyway, the honeymoon is definitely over as far as Big Sky is concerned. Having a great time with physics and physics 2, but every other day I've got the cream of the glop for freshman IESPS. What's odd is that it is getting worse. Can't talk to them, can't let them go to work on something. So new plan: put notes or video up on the screen (one thing they seem to be able to pay attentions to, no surprise), then quiz them on the content. The saddest thing is there are some good and engaged kids in those classes, but they are out-shined—no, there's not much shine—by some of these broken kids. Are we seeing the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse? I can see it now: a zombie class emerges from the wreckage of the American Middle Class, outcast, chemically dependent, ADHD times infinity, and not particularly bright. Where will the rest of the population be? In the Matrix, jacked in, connected times infinity, tuned out, without a care. Something's got to give eventually.

Does PBL have a chance with these kids. I don't think so. You need some basal level of sociability or reason-for-living. But I'd love to try it with the physics groups. An astronomy project 3rd or 4th quarter would be very cool, and I think they would engage. Lot's of opportunity for good content as well with the EM spectrum, Kepler's laws, relativity, exo-planets, nuclear physics, etc. Have to ruminate on some kind of authentic product. OK, enough. Happy Halloween, from Evil Spock.

Progress

I'm feeling pretty good at the end of the second week, after a slow start. Last year I was "observed" by my principal at the end of the second quarter, which at the time I thought was perfect because I could launch a PBL project without the associated worries of the evaluation process. This year he was later and did his observations during the first week of the quarter. PBL is so different from the usual rigid, sterile, line 'em up and spit 'em out teaching we do in this country that I figured (perhaps erroneously) that I better do something traditional to give my principal something to observe of my "teaching." So I had my students do Virtual Earthquake online after a discussion of earthquake distribution in the US. When we got back to project planning, I felt I had to move the discussion a bit more quickly toward the outcome idea I came up with (the app), without enough time for meaningful "need to know" discussions. What I'm trying to say is I think my students would have had more buy-in if we could have worked a little more organically in that first week, without the burden of a traditional teacher observation. I have the follow-up meeting on Monday, so I'll find out what he thought of it all.

But now at the end of the second week, things are flowing pretty smoothly. I'm amazed at the increase in internet access personally available to my students this year compared with last year. I actually get to use my own computer in a couple of the classes! I have one group of two super-students who are doing great research and google-docs work all with a single iPhone. I have had contact with UM Computer Club and will be meeting with them next week to see how we can work together on the app, and hopefully my resident programmer, Lucien, will come with me. We have a Katrina survivor (Shannon) and she will hopefully have some photos of her experience from her dad who works on oil rigs in the Gulf (she's our Ragin' Cajun!). Also found out yesterday that the Big Burn exhibit is still at the Fort for another couple of weeks, so I'll take the classes back for a visit week after next when we do a jigsaw read of Ingold's novel.

Today I'm calling groups up to present a few facts and hand in their teamwork rubrics so I can assess their research and how well they are working collaboratively. So far so good. Next week we'll do some presentations (basic fact sharing) and perhaps do a traditional lesson or two on air pressure and hurricanes.

Thoughts for 2012

It just occurred to me as I typed the title to this post that I should probably let them loose to discuss "2012" prophesy as a way to launch the project. Should we even watch the movie, or parts? I think I'd like to show "Firebird" from Fantasia 2000, which I haven't shown in a couple of years. I just love it. Anyway, I'm seriously considering teaching some traditional content in the area of earthquakes, plate tectonics, and weather in place of the "student lessons" I did last year. I just didn't feel they got much of anything out of it, because at this point in the year, and this point in the history of US education, my students aren't independent at all. Zero, nada, zilch. Sit and git, feed and regurgitate, game the system for grades. Makes me want to regurgitate. I could give them a choice as to the order we do it in, and each class could go at it a bit differently.

As far as the process and product this year, I think they will engage with it and do good research. I think I will have more access in my room because more students have touches, smartphones, tablets, etc. I'd like to try google docs again if possible because that seemed to work well for brainstorming.

I'm also thinking about the 21st C. targets and rubric. I plan on assessing progress in cooperation and communication, or even plain old participation. Last year's student assessments were not successful because they aren't accustomed to seriously evaluating each other. Should we brainstorm some goals for working together? Let them draft the rubric? I will do the assessing, but they come up with targets and rubrics.  I think that will work better.

wrapping up

Had Mayor Engen come in 3rd period today to listen to talks. Unfortunately, some of the posters, when projected, were less than readable. Couldn't get at some of the student directories due to the slowness of the network, otherwise we would have had at least one other powerpoint in place of a poster. The other unfortunate thing was how generally unprepared 3rd period is to present. I can see now that an authentic audience would require us to do lots of practice presenting. Also, I wonder how much editing I should be doing. Some points students make are just a bit misaligned or nearly inaccurate, and I just don't know how deeply I should make edits for them. Anyway, I can see that simplifying all the information for the purpose of public presentation is necessary. Maybe not one word per slide, but one bullet?

findings

It's all about the rhythm. Traditional science teaching is all lined up and quick-fire. Bang, bang, bang, churn out those objectives day after day. If nothing else, it makes the teacher feel productive. I wonder what the students get out of it. The pbl project, on the other hand, is much more free-form and less planned out. You have a starting point and a destination (the project goal), but the journey is so much different than the standard pedagogy. And just when I'm relaxing and getting into it, and the students seem to be ramping up a bit, it's going to be over for this year. I'm getting psyched for next quarter and planning which targets I'm going to cover, and I'm going to do the target-direct assessment I tried last year, so at least the system won't be an exact return to first semester.

synthesis

Moving into the synthesis phase today, although some groups have questions remaining. The disaster in Japan is just mind-blowing, and I think will forever etch this project into most of my students heads. It gives a sense of urgency to our efforts when you think that the same thing could happen in Seattle or Portland, minus the nukes. Visiting museum big burn exhibit tomorrow, and hope to have a speaker from MC emergency services office soon. Still not sure about a final audience, but I don't want to commit to a venue until I see how the presentations are shaping up. Maybe we should commit now, however, so they have to make it solid.

group lab concept

It's weird and difficult to let students teach my sacred cows. For instance, today groups attempted to teach faults and earthquake location, which I consider my "specialties." I just want to jump in and give my old lessons, but why? Just because I love it and have some knowledge doesn't mean they will love it, nor does it mean any of it will be absorbed or retained, or is even important. I think maybe this level is better because it lets everyone distill just the basic facts from these lessons, with the end goal not being to understand earthquakes, but to know how they might affect us here in Missoula. I guess a minimal understanding is important, but my old lesson plan was probably too deep.

How deep should we go? I just thought of creating some kind of big ven diagram poster at the beginning of each year that shows subsets of knowledge about some topic. For example: humanity, transportation, vehicles, bicycles, parts, wheels, rims, cast aluminum, metallurgy, mining. Then we would number the levels, with humanity being 1 and mining being 10. We could refer to this diagram throughout the year to describe how deeply we are delving into a particular topic, either before of after the fact. I'd say with earthquakes I would take them to level 10 several times during the unit. I think this is good for the brain, especially when math and logic and reasoning skills are involved.

It's becoming clear that a PBL unit is not about going deeply into any particular subject unless it's necessary for the outcome of the project. The outcome is paramount here, and the detailed knowledge is only a means to an end, not the end itself. Traditionally, that's backward. Knowledge is king in most high schools, and grade schools for that matter. What's king in PBL? If the outcome is a product, it can't be that important, can it? Are skills king? Skills gained by the process? What about outlook and attitude toward collaboration and learning? Citizenship.

progress

Group lab activity work went pretty well. The stream table and forest fire dynamics groups were understandably engaged. The Hawaii hotspot groups generally got through it quickly, depending on the skill level of the members (or one member). Fault model and eq location groups were pretty even in their progress, and the high/low hand twist and hurricane Juan plotting went smoothly for those groups. The plate boundary activity is less guided, however, and did require more thought, which made it slow for the less engaged groups. Not sure what I would replace that with for those groups, whose topic is preparing for disasters. The groups will teach their labs starting tomorrow. I plan on teaching one myself: the beachball lab.
What's left?
•round 2 research
•guest speakers
•jigsaw read of Big Burn
•field trip to museum at the fort
•Missoula refugee capacity investigation with Google Earth.
•final class presentation synthesis
•individual summary papers

progress

New topic came up yesterday in the Instructional Design working group (MCPS 21st Century Initiative). A woman who is a financial adviser has been discussing financial literacy, and she brought up our financial woes so it occurred to me that "financial disaster" would be a valid topic as another threat facing Missoula. Not an Earth force, per se, but a good topic for a guest speaker and good cross-curricular content.
Wrapped up all group sharing today. My impression is overall somewhat weak on facts relevant to Missoula, but this will allow good follow-up research. Also today we began group labs using various guided and structured inquiries from my files. The "preparedness" groups are doing a plate boundary activity.
Absenteeism is a definite issue for PBL. There are habitual offenders who need to be evaluated based on actual participation, and basketball players missing almost every Thursday 6th block period (which just pisses me off; what the hell are early outs supposed to cut down on???!!!). But hell, nobody cares about A's and B's, just F's. The "excused from task" in Zangle is so handy, ay? I should excuse all missing assignments from now on and see if anyone notices.

progress

A mix of computer labs and in-class computer/ipad/netbook/ipod touch use got us through the first round of research on the six topics we settled on. Today we started sharing facts, while evaluating each fact on a four point scale. Great discussions so far. It's great to see students teaching each other. Two new disasters came up today in a discussion about Yellowstone: nuclear war and asteroid impact. I would have liked to distribute the "disaster preparation" topic amongst the groups, but we could only come up with five likely disasters to hit the northwest, and we needed six topics. Perhaps next time "unlikely disasters" could be a topic, and include those two.