The Mylan Collaboration Room

Students using the Mylan Collaboration Room for group projects:

Counselors in the Freshmen Classrooms

The counselors recently visited Kristin and April's classroom.

Collaboration: It's not that easy

I think some people believe that collaboration comes easy for Kristin and I when, in fact, it definitely has its challenges. Take this picture for example. This weekend we attended the NCSS Convention in Washington, D. C. where we stayed in a hotel together. This photograph represents us well. If you know us, you can automatically pick out which bed is mine and which is hers. We struggle with being complete opposites all the time.

My bed is on the left. No clutter, no mess. This may be a result of the self-diagnosed claustrophobia or maybe it's just how I am. Regardless, I am more structured. I like to have a plan.....for everything. If things don't go as planned, it's alright; however, I like to have a back-up. I like to consider myself an organized and tidy person, sometimes to the point of annoyance. Just today I was re-wrapping all of our laptop chargers....this is probably a twice a week occurrence.

Kristin is more laid back and unstructured. For her, having a general outline is comfortable for her. And because she is a great speaker to the kids, she is able to loop around information to make a great point without having the details of a lesson plan 100% laid out for her prior to her deliverance. You can imagine how this may strike up some anxiety when we teach together. Here is an example of the method of her madness....

This is her explanation of the term advocate using Cyrus the Great, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It was a beautiful mess. I was so amazed at her delivery of the message that I took this picture specifically for this blog. Our students were nodding their heads while she was talking and demonstrating the definition of one vocab term. I knew at this point that we could coincide with each other and I was able to let go of my structure a little.

So maybe opposites attract, but it sure is difficult when you have different teaching styles. Collaboration has a lot to do with compromise. We give and take everyday, but the most important thing is that we both have the same goal for our students - we want all of them to succeed. I believe it is our professionalism that gets us through the day.

Getting the hang of it

We started our PBL on Ancient Greece this Monday, and it seems to be off to a great start! For the first time, I feel like we have something that we'd want to use again. For the entry event, we opened with a 30 min clip of 300 and popcorn. We felt that we owed the kids a break from they typical fast pace of the classroom. They were appreciative and the day started off on a positive note. After watching the valiant sacrifice of the Spartans to preserve Greece in 300, we challenged them (via PPT) to "revive the legacy of Ancient Greece" for modern day. The houses are competing against each other in an EXPO on Dec. 20th that will showcase Ancient Greece. The prize to the winning house is bonus points, which appears to be quite the motivator!

For this PBL we grouped students according to their preferences on seven different Greek topics (wars, government, daily life, mythology, etc...). Each group will have their own display as part of the larger EXPO. Grouping students according to preference seems to be working very well. The best part of this strategy is that we don't have to convince them to be interested in the topic they're assigned which is sometimes an imposible task anyway.

We've given students packets consisting of research questions, research materials, a calendar of events and deadlines, a daily work log to gauge progress, and more.
The students are responding well to their challenge, topics, and workload so far, so maybe we (and our students) are starting to get the hang of this whole PBL thing.