It's What's on the Inside that Counts....

If you've been down the hall by room 222, I'm sure you've noticed the fantastic Twitter pages that English 9/World 1900 students created this past week. At first glance they're amazing! The students did an amazing job with their graphic designs and modern depictions of the characters from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Their task was to read an excerpt from the Epic of Gilgamesh, a story that is based on the first epic hero or the first superhero. This story took place in ancient Mesopotamia, which is one of the civilizations that the 9th grade students just finished studying. With the creative mind of Matt Anderson assisting, the idea was derived to have the students read the Prologue and Forest Journey and create a Twitter page as if they were Gilgamesh. So to restate their task, the students had to assume that Twitter existed when Gilgamesh went on his epic journey in the forest and create tweets that depicted their reading comprehension. As we checked the Twitter pages we realized that the students were making outstanding projects, however, they weren't enriched with the content knowledge that we were striving for. So, even though they looked nice on the outside, what was on the inside, the part that mattered, was lacking.  When we debriefed about this issue with Matt Anderson and Dr. Whitehouse today, I told them that I just didn't understand why the students were lacking the reading comprehension knowledge in their projects. I continued to tell them that I heard April tell the students that they had show reading comprehension in their Twitter pages.....Matt replied, "Stop right there"! He asked me again what I said and I told him that I heard April say that we wanted to see the reading comprehension evidence in the Twitter pages. He then clarified that just because I heard that information and retained it didn't mean that all of the students heard the information. So what does this mean exactly? It means that we needed to do a better job laying out the structure or foundation for the students when they were working on projects. This is certainly something that we are working on and as a matter of fact, April has spent hours tonight creating questions that will better secure the structure of the current project that the students are working on. What we've began to realize is that while we want the students to have "self discovery" we have to provide a foundation for them to stand on during this process. We must teach them how to self discover. Matt provided us with a great example to help us wrap our heads around this. When a five year old wants to pick out their own clothes for school, the parent lays out three outfits. The child still has choice and through that choice establishes ownership of their decisions however, the choices are guided by the expert so that they will not fail. As the child grows and becomes more aware of what it takes to match an outfit the parent provides less structure, eventually setting the child free to make the choice on their own. If we apply this method to our students in the Innovation Zone classes, it will ensure that the students are getting the solid foundation that they need to stand on in order to excel in these very rigorous classes!

PBL .... You're Not an Easy Mountain to Climb

Planning a PBL should be easy with two teachers working on it right? Wrong! Planning a PBL is painstakingly difficult! It takes hours upon hours! When it's finally complete and you're ready to roll it out in the classroom, the level of excitement is heightened to a place undefinable by words! April and I went through the many hours of planning to get our PBL that we launched today ready for the students! We were, as described above, incredibly excited to present the lesson to our students today! We had it right this time, we were sure! About midway into the actual presentation of our entry event, which is what begins each PBL, I think it's safe to say that we were treading water to stay afloat! Our presentation wasn't as smooth as we had hoped. While we had captivated the interest of the students, neither one of us were pleased with how things went! We didn't even need to verbalize the fact, it was obvious. We could tell by simply looking at each other that we had not met the level of our expectations. We tweaked some things for the second go at it and things went better. They continued to go better throughout the day and by our last class I think it's safe to say that we both were feeling pretty good about the presentation! The kids were interested and excited! Whew! We could take a deep breathe! We finally had gotten it right ...... or at least we thought! Enter Matt Anderson and his ten minutes of teaching in our class that reassured us that we were still missing something when we were doing our PBL's. Who's Matt Anderson and why was in he our classroom today? Matt was our 9-1-1 responder after our first attempt at using PBL with an integrated content.
 After the first PBL that we presented in our class we went back to the drawing board. We knew that we were way off track on our first PBL. We actually felt pretty much defeated, like there was this mountain placed in front of us and we had no idea how to climb it anymore! We were at a stalemate! So with our heads hung and emotions running high, we stepped away from everything for a couple hours. Once we had stepped back from the situation we realized that what we needed was some help! When we reached out for help, we found an amazing resource in a Professor at WVU. Matt Anderson, who is a seasoned teacher of PBL's, having taught with the method in the inner city of New York. Matt was a godsend for us in our strive to make learning more relevant for our students via PBL's. We contacted him and his response was immediate. The first thing he did was offer to travel to North Marion and simply observe us. We couldn't fix what we were doing wrong because we didn't know enough to pin point our mistakes. We just knew that we were making them. Matt watched us and gave us some amazing feedback! Instantly things began to make more sense to us. Hearing things from someone who had been there done that was priceless! Even though Matt was making things clear to us, we still didn't know how to get to where he was. So, Matt offered to help us plan. He graciously took time out of his schedule to meet us one day after school and plan our PBL that we launched today. So, this brings us back to our PBL that we initiated today.
We were pumped! He had help planning it and when we were going through all of this with Matt, everything was smooth and made sense. When we attempted it today ..... things weren't so hot. Matt came back today and he watched us various times. He was excited at what we were doing, which boosted our self confidence. Then, when we got done with our last session, and the students were researching, Matt asked us if we minded if he talked to the students for the last 10 mins. of class. Of course, we obliged, we were excited to see what Matt had to say. Needless to say, within about 2 mins of watching Matt work with our students, we knew were still weren't getting it! Matt had our student's undivided attention and his dictation was smooth. When he said things we couldn't believe we hadn't thought of it.
When the students left, Matt stayed to talk with us. He also brought another resource for us, Dr. Whitehouse, alumnus of Harvard and Professor at WVU. With clumps of our hair in our hands we pleaded to Matt and Dr.Whitehouse, asking them for help. We just didn't understand why things didn't go the same way for us that they did for Matt. First of all, they both reassured us that we are doing the right thing. The changes we are making are the right ones. Then they began to talk us through the process of teaching through PBL's. They helped us see our mistakes that we had made with this lesson and offered an amazing gesture to us .... they both want to continue working with us. They want to be our support system and help us make sure we are doing things right! We spent over and hour with them today, just talking and mostly listening to them. Their information was such an asset to us! Do we have everything down now that we spent time with Matt and Dr.Whitehouse? ABSOLUTELY NOT! But what we do have is the reassurance that as we try to climb this mountain, when we fall, we have people there to catch us! We have people to coach us! Lesson learned today ..... be opened to constructive criticism and let those who have the knowledge and experience offer guidance and help! Also most importantly, this change in education that we are making at North Marion High School, is the right thing and with the continued hard work of all those involved we will better our students beyond our wildest imaginations!

Should Teachers Talk Less?

Ariel Sacks asks this question on her blog, On the Shoulders of Giants.

NMHS Teachers are on the Cutting Edge in So Many Ways

Kristin and April, you have instinctively exhibited many of the 20 Tips for Developing Positive Relationships with Parents found in this blog post by Elena Aguila from Edutopia.  :-)  Thanks, Kristin and April, for all you do!