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.