Category Archives: Change

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Africa’s plastic bag ban seems to be working, and a STEM challenge idea

My wife and I were fortunate to travel to Africa this past summer. Our itinerary included Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. We were notified by most of the listed countries when we applied for tourist visas that we were not to bring plastic bags into the country under penalty of heavy fines. This sparked my interest since during the past year I had helped develop a 5th grade STEM engineering lesson on reducing plastic pollution in the ocean.

I photographed this leopard with a Canon pocket camera with a 40x zoom lens in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania in July 2019.

We spent most of our time on safari in Tanzania, and I asked our guide about the reason for the new law. He explained that the small towns (and other areas) we would occasionally pass through had become heavily polluted with plastic trash. Towns were severely blighted with bags and other plastics stuck in trees, bushes, power lines and blowing drifts of trash on the ground. As we were passing through I was impressed by the cleanliness of these towns now. There was an initial national program that collected the plastic and now the goal is to keep them clean by banning plastic bags and other types of plastic trash.

You can imagine this scene with plastic bags stuck in the trees and grasses and how that would effect the wildlife and beauty in so many ways.

Other issues with plastic pollution is that bags collect water when it rains and then become perfect breeding ponds for malaria carrying mosquitoes. Plastics wash into the drainage and sewer systems where they clog and back-up the sewers and eventually dump their load into other waterways and the ocean.

Of course one of the driving forces behind the ban was to keep plastics out of their beloved national parks. Parks that are vital to their economy. Our experience bore this out. The scenery was beyond spectacular. In the parks you are immersed in animals – they are everywhere. And in nine days in the Serengeti I saw no plastic trash, except where it was supposed to be … in the trash.

Plastic pollution is a great STEM challenge for our students of all ages. It is a difficult problem to address, but it effects all of us. It involves not just removing the plastic and micro-plastics from our water and land, but also cutting off the flow of plastics that enter the environment every day. You’ve seen the photos of animals with plastics wrapped around and stuck in their bodies. Those photos of animals and plastic infested waters are also great motivators to our students to get involved with and persevere in finding solutions.

Baby Giraffe. Still had some of its umbilical cord attached.

Students can design machines and other methods to remove plastics that can involve computer programming to operate and stress re-design, and collaboration. Students can also mount marketing and public awareness campaigns using social media in powerful, “real life” contexts where they really make a difference. Think social media and photos, videos and other sharing media used in ethical, meaningful ways to promote keeping plastics out of the environment.

Sunrise over the Serengeti. Wildebeests.

This is “messy” learning for sure. It takes time to do well and so it mostly doesn’t happen in our schools even though we know it is the very kind of learning experience we should be providing. It is the work and powerful learning that is so lacking today. It promotes awareness of the world around us, the wonder and issues the world provides AND the motivation to do real work. Work that cries out for collaboration, problem solving, creativity and perseverance.

STEM and inquiry learning should not only be jumping from one cool project or experiment to the next. We leave too much of the potential learning behind when that happens. At least a few times each year the take a project to a refined ending, including integrating (writing, speaking, social studies, math, PE … really anything) analyzing the data, collaborating (globally if possible), continuing the engineering design cycle through multiple iterations and even taking the time to “polish” the end product. That polishing is where the connection to art often flourishes. Shape, color, textures and more of the finished product are difficult and provide new challenge and problem solving that connects to more students.

Consider the learning projects solving issues like plastic pollution provide for students and jump in!

Learning is messy!

(More photos can be found here and here)

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Helping Nevada’s Homeless – A 4th grade NGSS STEM Engineering Lesson – an introduction

Last year I was part of a team funded by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology to provide the first Engineering Fellows Program for 5th grade teachers. The model learning sequence we started the program with was about the issue of plastic pollution, specifically how it effects the ocean. 5th grade students were challenged to design and engineer a way to remove plastic from the ocean.

This year the program is focused on 4th grade teachers and their students. The model NGSS aligned engineering lesson we’ll start them with is about helping the homeless by engineering a way for them to charge devices when they have little to no access to electricity. The teachers (and their students) will learn how homeless people face the issue of being contacted after they’ve interviewed for a job (or a doctor’s appointment and other issues). So being able to recharge a phone or other devices could aid them in solving their homeless situation.

I plan to post the whole lesson sequence later, but wanted to share the basic concept since I was working on it a bit today assembling this simple alternator.

Students, in small groups, will assemble the alternator, including wrapping the wire, which is no easy feat. Next, after researching the issues that the homeless deal with, students will design a way to spin their alternator to generate electricity. We will NOT share any ideas for this with students, but I would assume some might design a handle or perhaps some kind of wind turbine or who knows? That’s the messy learning part I love. I put one together today and had some issues getting the wire to wind without kinking. Teachers will do this themselves during our first meeting so that they gain worthwhile experience that helps facilitate their students later in class.

My alternator worked fine lighting the LED. You spin the green axle to generate electricity.

The grant pays for materials for the teacher sessions and the materials they’ll need for their students. In addition at the end of the program teachers will get a grant for $1,000 to purchase the materials required to teach lessons they and their colleagues develop during the program. I’ll share our progress along the way.

Learning is messy!

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High Hopes Project HAB Launch 6/1/18

Group photo just before launch

I’m going to try and catch up on some long past due posts about the High Hopes Project. Last June we launched from Virginia City High School in Nevada. I posted about the preparation for the launch which will give you good background on the payloads students designed. The launch went flawlessly – perfect weather, not a puff of wind.

 

 

 

Besides the student payloads and GoPro cameras, we launched our Flir infrared camera as well which gave us some interesting perspectives. Note the shadows in this shot:

Note the long shadows from the early morning sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then note what appear to be shadows in this screenshot taken from the video shot by our infrared camera soon after launch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What appear to be shadows are not. They are cooler areas on the ground caused by the shadows of the balloon and students. Note the balloon has already been launched and is 200 feet in the air (or more), how could its shadow be where it was before it launched?

Here is video of the launch in infrared:

And here is the launch taken from the ground:

One of the student payloads was an interesting sound experiment. The question they were trying to answer was: “At high altitude above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere, would the air be so thin that sound would not travel through the thin air to be picked up by a microphone?” The students designed a Tie-Fighter from Star Wars (just for fun) and had the Star Wars theme playing on a loop. You can see the ball shaped speaker in the center of the video. They insulated the base so sound would not travel through the payload and be picked up by the microphone. It started out great, but unfortunately at about 42,000 feet it just got too cold (probably around -10F) and the batteries, which had lasted for 3 hours when they did a test in a school freezer at 15F, just quit. We edited together video from launch and then spliced in at about 8,000 feet and then just before the batteries died:

Another student payload took on the engineering task of releasing the “High Hopes” of the world. Students and others from around the world had submitted their high hopes for their school, community and the world through a Google Form or Twitter (about 1100 were submitted). The “Hopes” were printed out and cut out individually and placed in a payload students had designed to open about an hour into the mission. Again the batteries they had tested, and lasted for 5 hours at 15F, that ran the motor that would open up the payload to release the high hopes failed. Fortunately they had designed in a back-up system. When the balloon burst and the payloads fell to Earth at over 200 miles per hour (until the parachute slowed them down at lower altitude) a fin on the side of their payload caught the wind and pulled open a side of the payload and released the high hopes.

High Hopes release at about 95,000 feet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is video of the burst and high hopes release in slow motion:

After a flight we like to note what happens to the balloon on the way up. Note in the photo at the top of this post the 2000 gram balloon is probably about 6 – 8 feet across (we over-filled it a bit so it would go up fast and come down before it got too far up in the mountains and private property). When it burst it was just a bit bigger:

At launch the payloads almost cover up the balloon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But just before burst at 95,000 feet … note any difference in balloon size? If so, why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some more photos taken up high:

Burst

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lake Tahoe on the left, Pyramid Lake on the right at 92,000 feet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yerington, Nevada, from 90,000 feet. A wide angle setting on this camera and the movement from falling exaggerates the Earth’s curve in the photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many more photos on this Flickr album.

We came very close to “catching” this one on the way down, but were thwarted when we lost cell service (so GPS as well) at a key point in the descent and missed it by about 2 minutes.

Learning is messy!!

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What Happened to the Potential of Social Media in Education?

A post that happens when Twitter isn't enough

Dean Shareski posted this to Twitter (SM = Social Media):

Read the thread of comments (it’s worth a minute or 2) by following the link.

I’ve written a bit about this before, and ironically that post from 8 years ago also involved Dean (Who’da Thunk?).

Dean is right, when this social media thing was new and all, some of us saw a powerful potential for it’s use in the classroom and beyond as a thoughtful, motivating and powerful way to connect our students with each other, and experts, and locations, and learning that hadn’t been very accessible before. Now they were available, and they were available on a global scale. Time zones were pretty much the major obstacle (and fear for some, really many I guess). I co-wrote a book about what we had learned along the way because we found it was pretty much as awesome as we thought it would be.

Many of us sang the praises of blogging and Twitter and Flickr and Skype and Facebook (except it was usually blocked even more often than the others). We’d encourage and almost demand that those attending presentations we were giving sign up for Twitter … RIGHT NOW! …. and provide the screenshots to follow and time to sign up. This was such an powerful tool we had to evangelize to the world about it.

So what happened? Plenty of good things happened. Many teachers made those connections and shared learning experiences that were leveraged by the use of online tools. Blogging was my favorite because a blog can be writing, but also photos, video clips, podcasts, and more … and the photos could be of student artwork field trips, math …. any subject. My class connected with Dean a few times when he was working with teachers in Canada … but we danced with students in New Zealand, performed experiments with classrooms around the world, shared guest speakers and much, much more.

So what didn’t happen? Plenty. Among the things that didn’t happen was what usually happens in education – a lack of professional development, especially for those that needed more support and experience to see the value. Just doing “technology” isn’t where the value is, but that is where schools/education in general tended to go … the message too many get is that just by doing school on a computer will bring the change we are looking for … so not true.

Fear was and is big – will the boogey-man get me or my students and will I get in trouble? Access – to the internet, to technology (well the lack of access really) is and was a roadblock. Time, in reality, but also the perception of lack of time for all this stuff stops many from gaining the experience necessary. A very demanding, narrowed and scripted curriculum that does not lend itself to integration, going deep and being thoughtful … that happened big time.

I think the potential is still there. It just needs a re-birth of sorts. At least more of us know the nuts and bolts of getting online and setting up accounts and some safety concerns. Perhaps now the focus needs to shift to the powerful collaboration, connecting, editing, sharing between our students about important things (not mostly bopping around via video-conferencing to figure out where someone’s school is) that these tools provide us. Share science data, stories, poetry, how to do things, art projects, robot designs and so much more … and take the time to do them well and even the time to re-edit and re-present. Then have conversations about them in the comments … and teach students how to have the positive, supportive discourse that makes it powerful and the world a better place.

There’s lots more to say about this, its a very important discussion that should be ongoing … maybe we can have some of that discussion in the comments here (or on Twitter or elsewhere). I’m out of time for now. I hope this continued Dean’s Tweet conversation in a meaningful way.

Learning is messy!

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – A 5th Grade Learning Sequence

Plastic pollution in an ocean gyre. Some floats on the surface, but more floats beneath the surface.

I am part of a team that is facilitating the “Nevada Engineering Fellows Program” for 5th grade teachers in Nevada. The funding for the program came from the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science Innovation & Technology. A major goal of the program is for teachers to learn how to design and build NGSS aligned STEM units with an emphasis on engineering, and to be able to evaluate the quality of units they find elsewhere.

The plastic pollution problem in our oceans has become catastrophic. Plastic never goes away it, just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces (micro plastics) that are ingested by sea life (and then us).

Chris Jordan http://www.parley.tv/updates/2016/3/17/chris-jordan-midway-message-from-gyre

We started by having the participating teachers experience a model unit we designed on removing plastic from the ocean. They spent all day on a Saturday in October learning the unit. Then we provided all the materials required for the teachers to take the unit back to their classrooms to do with their students. We visited every classroom to observe how things were going and to consult. The phenomena that kicked off the unit is the video below (there are many others to choose from BTW if you search the web). Teachers and students reported to us during our classroom visits how compelling watching and re-watching the video and making/sharing observations of what they saw and heard … really motivated them to want to take on this engineering challenge.

Here is a link to the unit plan.  Kris Carroll did most of the heavy lifting on the unit design with plenty of  help from Stacy Cohen, Tracey Gaffney and myself.

The graphic organizers referenced in the unit plan and some support materials:

Engineering INB Phase A_3_5_ElementarySchool 

Engineering INB Phase B_3_5_ElementarySchool

Engineering INB Phase C_3_5_ElementarySchool

Engineering In NGSS Handout

Engineering Design_Grades_3_5

Here is the materials list for making a plastic gyre for each group (although we substituted somewhat and some teachers added to it): Materials for gyre

Here is a link to a Flickr set from teacher trainings in- Southern Nevada, Northern Nevada

Here are photos from 10 classrooms in Northern Nevada.

BELOW: These are the plastic plant trays we provided:
IMG_4705

But some teachers substituted with larger containers: IMG_4718

The trays of water were somewhat problematic in that they were small (so they could be utilized more easily in moving to and from student tables) and students struggled with scale. One big suggestion based on our experience, after the initial trial of their design, have a complete debrief that includes a discussion of size of both the plastic debris (which should be cut much smaller than you see here) but also that the devices students build need to be smaller than you see here as well. In addition discuss how the trays represent a tiny, tiny part of the ocean (students really struggled with understanding the size of oceans). Also we suggest after the initial experience have students brainstorm materials that they believe should be included in the materials they have available to build their plastic removal/gathering device – then gather them from the school and have students find things at home to bring in to provide themselves more options.

We had an all day class for the teachers after most of them had completed most of the unit. They all reported that they and their students were highly motivated by the experience (and we noted the same during our classroom visits). Next teachers are designing their own units to match up with their curriculum using this experience as a model. I really feel I’m sharing only a sliver of the potential for this lesson and how it went here, so feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Learning is messy!

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NSTA Position Paper on Elementary School Science

The National Science Teachers Association makes the case for more science learning

From the NSTA Position Paper on Elementary Science:

“High-quality elementary science education is essential for establishing a sound foundation of learning in later grades, instilling a wonder of and enthusiasm for science that lasts a lifetime, and in addressing the critical need for a well-informed citizenry and society.”

No Child Left Behind and other well meaning, but very misguided (at best) education reform legislation narrowed out science (as well as a long list of other invaluable subjects) from the curriculum, especially from “at risk” schools. The thinking (wishing? assumption?) was that students that were behind in language and math would “catch-up” more quickly if schools and teachers just focused on those subjects. In addition the “research-based” programs that were promoted and funded tended to rely heavily on direct instruction and very little on making sense by doing. The assumption was made, promoted and implemented (with rigor and fidelity) that students would catch-up on the science, social studies, art, PE and more once they got to 7th grade. (Mostly … they aren’t catching-up)

In my own 30+ year experience teaching elementary students, mostly “at risk” students, I found over and over that science and making experiences motivated students to read and write and use oral language skills to explain their thinking. I shared some of those experiences during a TEDx talk I gave in Denver years ago. I’ve also shared numerous blog posts here about the learning my students have done because we did hands-on “doing” pieces that lead to lots of language arts and math … in fact I believe more powerful language arts and math than just following a program.

I’m not saying there isn’t a place for direct instruction, just that direct instruction and practice is way too sterile and uninspiring to slog through day after day. It tends to be a desirable approach for “other peoples” kids to be subjected to.

The curiosity and wonder that evolve from science and STEM inquiry (as well as art, social studies, and more) should be consistently promoted by daily science instruction and experiences. AND language arts and math time should be devoted when applicable to science. I note that the NSTA Position Paper on Elementary Science espouses:

  • There must be adequate time in every school day to engage elementary students in high-quality science instruction that actively involves them in the processes of science.

and that:

  • NSTA recommends that science be given equal priority as other core subjects, so schools should strive for at least 60 minutes of science instruction a day, including significant science investigations.

How many students have become disengaged and bored by a curriculum that focuses on skills and has narrowed out the subjects and activities that many students connect with? A focus on language arts and math are interesting to students that connect well, are successful with and motivated by those subjects, but too many struggle and are frustrated by that focus. Use the subjects and activity that they connect with to give them reason and curiosity to engage more with learning. Understanding how things work and feel and smell and sound brings meaning to reading that another worksheet or skill lecture can’t develop.

The NSTA Position Paper on Elementary Science goes much deeper into the many reasons science  learning time and quality experiences should be expanded and nurtured in our schools. It is well worth reading.

Learning is messy!

 

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Science Task Prescreen

Help with thinking through STEM / Science learning

In my work with teachers on assessing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) I find one of the toughest shifts for them to make is to develop tasks that are meaningful and really worth diving into. The NGSS are performance based standards that are very different from science standards many (maybe most) teachers are used to implementing.

The NGSS standards are not about explaining and showing students (the “sage on the stage” approach) and having them read about it and answer some questions. Every NGSS standard begins with the words, “Students who demonstrate understanding can:” Example from 5th grade –  “Students who demonstrate understanding can: Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.” To meet this standard students have to be able to do this, perform this on their own, not watch the teacher or Bill Nye do it and explain it and then answer questions. This standard will take time and multiple experiences to master.

To help educators design lessons and tasks for their students Achieve has provided this “Science Task Prescreen.”

“The purpose of the Science Task Prescreen is to conduct a quick review of assessment tasks to determine whether they might be designed for standards based on the Framework for K-12 Science Education, like the Next Generation ScienceStandards (NGSS). The Prescreen is intended to reveal whether tasks include “red flags”—i.e., challenges commonly found in science assessment tasks.”

I’ve used this with teachers and find it really helps them begin the shift from old style science instruction that was more about answering questions and less about doing and understanding. Check it out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning is messy!

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Nevada – 5th Annual Statewide Recycled Art Contest

Make a Difference. Make a Masterpiece

Chris Jordan http://www.parley.tv/updates/2016/3/17/chris-jordan-midway-message-from-gyre

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a 5th Grade Engineering Fellows Program I am co-facilitating here in Nevada. We are kicking off the program soon with a lesson on plastic waste in the ocean (follow the link above to see a video and more that explains the issue). We’ll share some video and other background, and then to make a long story short, we’ll challenge the teachers (and then they’ll go back to their classrooms and challenge their students) to engineer solutions to gathering the waste (although some experts contend that instead of focusing on collection, the main effort should be on not adding additional plastics to the oceans). I’m hoping to add the entire plastics lesson we are building in a future post.

Then in a very timely fashion I was made aware of the contest I pasted the press release about below. More info about the contest can be found here NevadaRecycles.nv.gov. We will share this with our “fellows” as a way to add an art connection to their engineering piece. For those Nevada teachers / residents that are interested here is the press release:

From: Recycling and Water [mailto:ENVIRONEWS@LISTSERV.STATE.NV.US] On Behalf Of Patricia Moen
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2018 9:02 AM
To: ENVIRONEWS@LISTSERV.STATE.NV.US
Subject: 2018 Recycled Art Contest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Southern Nevada: Rachel Lewison, rlewison@ndep.nv.gov, 702-486-2850, ext. 268

                 Northern Nevada: Patty Moen, pmoen@ndep.nv.gov, 775-687-9466

5th Annual Statewide Recycled Art Contest
Make a Difference. Make a Masterpiece

CARSON CITY, NV – The Nevada Recycles program has partnered with The Venetian Resort Las Vegas to support a statewide recycled art contest to increase Nevadans’ awareness and interest in recycling. In support of Earth Day’s 2018 campaign to End Plastic Pollution, this year’s projects must be made with used or found plastic materials. Fastening materials may include tape, glue and/or string, and other materials as needed for structure or support. Submission of an entry form and photos of artwork are due by October 24, 2018.

In addition to a $250 prize to the first place class project, The Venetian will provide first, second and third prizes ($200, $100 and $50 respectively) in five categories: Kindergarten-Grade 5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult, and Professional Artist.

In 2017, Nevada’s recycling rate was 21%.  Based on residential and commercial sector data, Nevadans (including the influence of the tourist population) throw away about 5.8 pounds of trash, per person, per day.  That is approximately four million tons of trash that enters a landfill each year.

“Recycling is the easiest thing we can do to save energy, conserve natural resources and create green jobs,” said Pranav Jampani, Director of Sustainability for The Venetian, The Palazzo and Sands Expo.

Winners will be announced on America Recycles Day, which is Thursday, November 15.  More information about the contest, along with submission guidelines, is available at NevadaRecycles.nv.gov.

Patty Moen

Northern Nevada Recycling Coordinator
Solid Waste & Recycling Branch
Bureau of Sustainable Materials Management

901 S. Stewart Street

Carson City, NV 89701
pmoen@ndep.nv.gov

Learning is messy!!

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Class dynamics and culture are really time consuming AND really worth every minute!

When you visit awesome schools, it always the culture you notice and talk about

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about assuming students have collaboration skills and building class culture. These vital learning pieces were greatly deemphasized and cut (even ridiculed as a waste of time) during the last 15 years or so of school “reform.” I meant to include a paragraph or so about how time consuming building class culture and group dynamics is (what tends to be called “Social Emotional Learning” today) … which is one of the reasons they were vilified, since making sure every piece of every “researched based” ELA, math, intervention and writing program must be implemented with absolute fidelity, and that took up the whole day … no time for anything else (even apparently  science, art, social studies, PE …..).

I was fortunate to be part of a staff long ago that was told in no uncertain terms before school started, that we should take 4 to 8 weeks to focus on building a supportive, collaborative culture in our classrooms. The principal was looking for that happening from the first day of school and the staff worked together on lessons and activities and literacy pieces and projects all designed to foster and build that culture. I remember my first year at that school wondering how that would take 4 to 8 weeks (with follow ups throughout the year). BTW it wasn’t like we didn’t teach reading and math and science and everything else … its just that we took some of the time for those subjects, especially early on to teach whole lessons and discussions and talk about what we were reading (Crow Boy, Maniac Magee, and others were favorites) that centered on respect, collaboration skills and more.

My students even produced some award winning video projects that sprang up around our work in these areas: Don’t Laugh At Me and Being Different come to mind as student initiated projects. And these took a lot of class time for students to produce. But the language and discussion and writing and creativity they spawned were incredible. And if we had problems come up later in the year it wasn’t unusual that we would watch and discuss these videos and revisit discussions about books and activities we’d experienced. IT TOOK TIME! Valuable time, but valuable time well spent (and note the arts and hands-on technology use … and when I run into these students from time to time (now past college graduate age whether they went to college or not) these projects and others are what they want to talk about.

So my message here is it shouldn’t just be that you have a Social Emotional Learning program at your school with siloed lessons …. we should be spending the time to make this kind of learning and work part of the culture at school and in our communities. I think we are currently experiencing the results first hand of cutting these experiences because ELA and math were more important.

Learning is messy!

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Never assume your students know how to work together on a project

Early in the year do some mini projects to scaffold them

I remember back in the day (or do people still do these?) when teachers in 4th or 5th grade tended to assign “the state” or “the country” report. Way too often the assumption was made that the students pretty much knew how to do these. The teacher would pass out the “packet” that explained the project, showed an example of a bibliography and often included templates for specific information that was to be included (state name, population, area in square miles, draw a map labeled with specific information and so on). Photos, usually from cut up National Geographic Magazines or brochures from travel agents were required. Typically the report was due in a month or six weeks. Each week they would have students check in with their progress and to allow students to ask questions about anything they didn’t understand about the report.

Like science fair projects it often appeared like someone a bit older (and maybe with a college degree?) might have “helped” somewhat …  or they were incomplete or were of poor quality. Some did well, but how much learning actually occurred was questionable. This was the way this had always been done, it was “challenging” and, like the infamous science fair project, expected.

One of my main concerns about these projects was the assumption that students knew how to do all the work that went into the report and this was just a chance for them to put together a big project integrating all those skills. AND, after all, they were allowed to ask questions about what they didn’t understand (like they would even know exactly what they didn’t understand or know how to do). Since these were really long term homework projects the teacher didn’t see the work being done which made facilitating difficult.

Early in my career I had the same experience when facilitating projects in my classroom. I knew doing projects was supposed to be “good stuff,” so it was important to do them.  Things would often hum right along as students worked on a project and I would allow myself to get sucked into observing from across the room, just to keep an eye on things, and would even do a quick task like lunch count or attendance or a quick email. Questions would pop up or a student or 2 would need some redirection, but often it was great to just let students work – or so I told myself.

Too often though after a “way too short” a period of time, some students would start claiming they were “done” or “done with that part”. Their work was almost always poor or incomplete or was off subject or all the above. This led to frustration on my part and a decreasing interest in the project by students (which was more frustrating since this is an awesome project dammit!!!).

Another observation I noted was that students were often very poor at working in a group. Even though I’d make groups have a meeting before they could get to work to go over what needed to be done that day and split up the work … which everyone in the group had to agree on so the group couldn’t just dump certain tasks on certain individuals. There would still be individual students off task, wandering around and too often causing issues. When the group would complain the student would often claim the work was dumb or boring … the group would respond that they agreed to do that part and weren’t getting anything done.

It took me awhile to understand that what was really going on (at least most of the time) was that this off track student didn’t really understand what to do, or how to do it, or even what the reason for it was. Anger, name calling and frustration was often the result (and more frustration for me … “the students were so excited about this project!!!”)

What I learned from these experiences and various classes, PD sessions and conversations with peers was that I was assuming students knew how to do these things … and mostly even the “on-task” students didn’t have a good grasp of them.

 I learned to do some relatively simple individual and group projects, early in the year especially. I’d do some without much work on group dynamics and let problems arise so we could talk about the real feelings they were having and then give them some skills to constructively deal with them.

One they loved was role playing the very issues they had just experienced. I would usually take a seat in a group and demonstrate how calling each other names was probably NOT going to lead to cooperation. Instead I would teach them to ask questions like, “Toni do you understand how to do that?” – Often that was the crux of the problem … the group mate just didn’t know exactly what to do but didn’t want to admit that and look dumb. Another important skill was just noting that maybe 2 students in the group should work on that part together … which led to students experiencing really being included.

We would brainstorm how to talk to each other respectfully. Next we would role play different “off task” situations and have every group talk through the issue to a positive conclusion (how to deal with a student in their group wandering around or throwing things or just sitting there). These were a hoot, lots of laughter, especially when a student that had a reputation of being a “model student” took on the “off task” student role. It was so obvious the more we did these lessons that one of the issues was that students just didn’t have the words or skills to deal with conflicts that arise.

I also had a rule that I would not come to answer a question unless everyone in the group had the same question and had their hands up. This promoted using your group members as resources and saved lots of time. You don’t end up or bouncing around the room or with the line of students waiting  to ask you a question they could have had answered quickly by the group. It also fostered a “working together” culture.

We’d talk about how fast the time goes by when you are truly cooperating and looking out for each other. And they saw this play out.

In addition I started walking around the room and sticking my head into each group to listen and watch –  all the time … I’d take notes about lessons or “mini-lessons” I should consider when I’d note anything from paragraphing, a science concept, how to use a technology piece or tool, how to add white glue to paint so it doesn’t crack when you paint landscapes and other cooperative group dynamics issues and more.

I stopped making these projects homework, unless a student or students asked if they could work on it after school or at home. It was way too valuable to do assessment through their doing. Observing and facilitating student work gets to individual and class strengths and weaknesses and students see that this is something they didn’t know how to do, but has value in their learning and doing.  What I made homework was resource gathering – materials, but also experts in their lives – someone’s family member that had a certain skill or knowledge to share. Some even found experts online and we had numerous video-conferences with experts contacted by students. 

When I work with teachers in my current job and bring up these ideas the number one obstacle for them is not believing they have the time or “permission” to spend on building a culture of learning.

This blog is entitled, “Learning Is Messy,” and building a supportive classroom culture is as messy as it gets. But in my experience it is what this testing, accountability and assessment culture has gotten us away from.

So as you start this year off, think of doing some simple projects to build a learning culture on.

Learning is messy!