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As I read this post, I was in total agreement until I came to the sentence I bolded. I think what you describe has been the direction of education for at least the past 20 years. You didn't say what grades or subject you taught, but my children were in junior high to high school from 1997 to 2009. We suffered through numerous school projects over these years. My wife made many trips to Staples to buy supplies for these projects. My son who graduated as class salutatorian hated these projects and did the bare minimum to get buy. My one daughter would spend hours on art work but learned very little from the projects. We often wondered how students in single parent households with limited financial resources handled these projects.
Since then I have subbed in over 10 school districts and I think the emphasis on projects has only increased. As a long term sub, I had to grade poster presentations where I thought little learning took place. I've seen considerable class time allocated to these projects and it usually just becomes a social time for the students.
I'm not sure what you mean by themes and how a theme could weave the core curricular objectives into interesting and developmentally-appropriate activities.
I'm surprised you feel that this type of teaching is considered inferior and is unacceptable today because I sub in schools where this type of teaching is pushed. I know of one principal who requires prospective teachers to teach a class using these methods as part of the interview process. Some teachers will prepared a special lesson that is hands-on and participative on days they are being observed.
There are projects...and then there are projects.
When I was the principal of a middle school (before retirement), we had a business partner that was what is referred to as a "Beltway bandit" -- a large consulting company in the D.C. area that consults for the federal government and other nations, corporations, etc. Each August, when teachers came back to work, our first day would be at the headquarters of our business partner. They'd feed us breakfast and lunch and we could use their auditorium and meeting rooms, and we could take tours of their facility. It was something special designed to get teachers revved up and doing something beyond just putting up bulletin boards. One year they provided a one-hour question and answer session with their human resources personnel. One of our teachers asked, "How well does ----- County Public Schools prepare students for the work world?" The presenter said he was glad that question was asked. He basically said that our students were full of knowledge that they can't do anything with. He went on to explain that like many large, modern corporations (and yes, I know not all are like this), their personnel worked in "work groups" because what they usually found was that some of their employees shined at creativity, while others could bring the creativity down to earth for a useful purpose. Others excelled at organizational skills. Others at presenting. And so forth. "An employee sitting over at a desk in a corner working alone is not useful to our company". In other words, they were looking for people who could work on a project.
And I look back to my own high school years and remember the difference between Mr. Prittie (American history) and Mrs. Southern (senior English). Prittie was fascinated with battles. To him, there was nothing more important than troop movements during battles. We suffered through Revolutionary, 1812, Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Korean War battles. But none of us could have told you why those wars occurred or what the long-term result of the wars were. They were all lectures and looking at battle maps. On the other hand, Mrs. Southern gave us a "senior project". I don't even remember what mine was, but I learned to organize facts and how to present them. And that skill -- though solitary in the case of the senior project -- served me well throughout college and the work world, because I learned to take knowledge and do something with it.
As a science teacher the thing I dreaded most each year was the science fair. What agony. "Will plants grow better with or without water" or "Will plants grow better with or without light", or the ever-popular exploding volcano. And, when I went into administration there was always some other principal who would say, "Hey, didn't you used to be a science teacher? Could you come over and help judge our science fair?"
It was agony. I would say that less than 10% of all the thousands of science fair projects I ever saw had any real value in terms of "science".
But my best learning experience in college was with Professor Schmidt who taught geomorphology and glaciation. He took our geomorphology (landforms) class out to a gravel pit and presented his project requirement -- landforms in miniature -- where we had to find miniature landforms in the erosional features of the gravel pit and come up with some hypothesis and then prove or disprove it. I said, "Just give me a problem to solve". "No. You start being a scientist". Well, I spent days in the gravel pit and finally noticed that there seemed to be a relationship between the general slope of the land and how narrow stream junction angles were. And I proved it. This was before the internet, so then, back in the college library I spent days looking for similar research...and finally found it. It was that learning experience -- that project -- that changed me from being an "in the box" thinker to being an "out of the box" thinker. And later, when we traveled down to central Pennsylvania to study the Schooley Peneplain, and I asked him at one stop whether or not the glacier got down this far, Professor Schmidt said, "What the hell are you asking me for? You have the knowledge to figure it out yourself". I was pissed. But ten minutes later I went back and explained to him why I thought the glaciers had gotten that far south and he said, "See. You're thinking like a scientist now".
The problem is that learning facts is not creative. Doing something with facts is creative. And projects can help students learn to do project-type work. However, like lame-ass science fairs, projects can be good or bad, depending on how they are organized.
(P.S. -- I have seen well-done science fairs...just not usually. And I have seen an occasional wonderful science fair project even in lousy science fairs).
The person who does all of the talking is doing all of the learning. Something I was told a while back and it has stuck with me.
If as a teacher you find yourself lecturing for days on end, your students are hardly being educated, in my opinion. On the flip side, I'll agree that giving them worksheets and having them tackle the daily work doesn't do much either, more so than sitting and listening to lectures, but it's not for the best. What I've made a conscious effort to do is a mix, kind of like the "guiding" that the OP mentions. I'll present information, but then I call on the students to read the information, this gets them involved in the lessons. So much of what I see across many levels is a teacher who is on one extreme or the other; middle school through high school. For some it's PowerPoints 4 days during the week where the teacher is the sole person reading while students are taking notes. Others have the PPs printed up and given to the students so they can read it and take notes, other days it's worksheets with little interaction. I think most of it depends on the students. So many classes at the middle school level, they're not mature enough to given much freedom to work on their own. Half of them will attempt the work, the other half see this as time to talk with friends and goof around. This alone lends me to believe MS teachers have it the worst, they have to be hands every minute of the period or the kids will take over, babysitting is a good word that comes to mind. High school students meanwhile (mostly) have the ability to work independently or in small groups with the expectation of getting the work completed. More so than MS students anyhow.
As I read this post, I was in total agreement until I came to the sentence I bolded. I think what you describe has been the direction of education for at least the past 20 years. You didn't say what grades or subject you taught, but my children were in junior high to high school from 1997 to 2009. We suffered through numerous school projects over these years. My wife made many trips to Staples to buy supplies for these projects. My son who graduated as class salutatorian hated these projects and did the bare minimum to get buy. My one daughter would spend hours on art work but learned very little from the projects. We often wondered how students in single parent households with limited financial resources handled these projects.
Since then I have subbed in over 10 school districts and I think the emphasis on projects has only increased. As a long term sub, I had to grade poster presentations where I thought little learning took place. I've seen considerable class time allocated to these projects and it usually just becomes a social time for the students.
I'm not sure what you mean by themes and how a theme could weave the core curricular objectives into interesting and developmentally-appropriate activities.
I'm surprised you feel that this type of teaching is considered inferior and is unacceptable today because I sub in schools where this type of teaching is pushed. I know of one principal who requires prospective teachers to teach a class using these methods as part of the interview process. Some teachers will prepared a special lesson that is hands-on and participative on days they are being observed.
The bolded part is important. In my department, there are two of us who teach US History. One who does a lot of projects like Posters and Presentations, and myself, someone who values the information more and who sees the exact thing I bolded above during project work time.
What happens in group projects is one person does all the work and puts everyone's name on it. The others all chat, laugh and fool around all class. They learn nothing about the subject at hand, other than maybe a few shallow items. For the individual projects, the quality is in a direct proportion to the parental support and financial situation. These kids are juniors and have never even heard of Richard Nixon. They don't know what Communism is and what the Cold War was about. By the time I get them as juniors, they are pretty much a completed project...very little can change them too dramatically and the knowledge they failed to pick up will be forever foreign to them. It's elementary education which is the true failure these days. They learn nothing and by the time they reach Middle School, they're ignorant and wild because no discipline or learning happens in the elementary schools these days.
When I was the principal of a middle school (before retirement), we had a business partner that was what is referred to as a "Beltway bandit" -- a large consulting company in the D.C. area that consults for the federal government and other nations, corporations, etc. Each August, when teachers came back to work, our first day would be at the headquarters of our business partner. They'd feed us breakfast and lunch and we could use their auditorium and meeting rooms, and we could take tours of their facility. It was something special designed to get teachers revved up and doing something beyond just putting up bulletin boards. One year they provided a one-hour question and answer session with their human resources personnel. One of our teachers asked, "How well does ----- County Public Schools prepare students for the work world?" The presenter said he was glad that question was asked. He basically said that our students were full of knowledge that they can't do anything with. He went on to explain that like many large, modern corporations (and yes, I know not all are like this), their personnel worked in "work groups" because what they usually found was that some of their employees shined at creativity, while others could bring the creativity down to earth for a useful purpose. Others excelled at organizational skills. Others at presenting. And so forth. "An employee sitting over at a desk in a corner working alone is not useful to our company". In other words, they were looking for people who could work on a project.
...
As a science teacher the thing I dreaded most each year was the science fair. What agony. "Will plants grow better with or without water" or "Will plants grow better with or without light", or the ever-popular exploding volcano. ...
It was agony. I would say that less than 10% of all the thousands of science fair projects I ever saw had any real value in terms of "science".
But my best learning experience in college was with Professor Schmidt who taught geomorphology and glaciation. He took our geomorphology (landforms) class out to a gravel pit and presented his project requirement -- landforms in miniature -- where we had to find miniature landforms in the erosional features of the gravel pit and come up with some hypothesis and then prove or disprove it. I said, "Just give me a problem to solve". "No. You start being a scientist". Well, I spent days in the gravel pit and finally noticed that there seemed to be a relationship between the general slope of the land and how narrow stream junction angles were. And I proved it. This was before the internet, so then, back in the college library I spent days looking for similar research...and finally found it. It was that learning experience -- that project -- that changed me from being an "in the box" thinker to being an "out of the box" thinker. And later, when we traveled down to central Pennsylvania to study the Schooley Peneplain, and I asked him at one stop whether or not the glacier got down this far, Professor Schmidt said, "What the hell are you asking me for? You have the knowledge to figure it out yourself". I was pissed. But ten minutes later I went back and explained to him why I thought the glaciers had gotten that far south and he said, "See. You're thinking like a scientist now".
The problem is that learning facts is not creative. Doing something with facts is creative. And projects can help students learn to do project-type work. However, like lame-ass science fairs, projects can be good or bad, depending on how they are organized.
(P.S. -- I have seen well-done science fairs...just not usually. And I have seen an occasional wonderful science fair project even in lousy science fairs).
I agree. Regarding projects, I see the same thing when hiring, and I'm talking college students who don't know how to work on project teams. Though I believe a large part of that comes from two things. First, most schools don't know how projects are done, nor how to teach project work. Second, too often, a couple do 90% of the work and the others just coast on the team. I've often said after a round of interviews that I'd like to teach a project class the way projects are really done. The project teams need skin in the game -- one team will "win" the A and the others won't. And, each team member evaluates all the other team members (360 degree eval) so that even being on the winning team won't save a coaster from a poor grade.
I also agree about science. But the question is, why do the students no know how to do science? Someone has to teach them how to "do science" -- how to see something that spikes their interest; how to ask a question; how to formulate that into a hypothesis; and how to design an experiment to test that hypothesis. In today's world that kind of thinking won't answer whatever standardized test they are getting this year. The only thing that matters is parroting back the canned solution. If the teachers don't know science, then how can they teach the students?
The bolded part is important. In my department, there are two of us who teach US History. One who does a lot of projects like Posters and Presentations, and myself, someone who values the information more and who sees the exact thing I bolded above during project work time.
What happens in group projects is one person does all the work and puts everyone's name on it. The others all chat, laugh and fool around all class. They learn nothing about the subject at hand, other than maybe a few shallow items. For the individual projects, the quality is in a direct proportion to the parental support and financial situation. These kids are juniors and have never even heard of Richard Nixon. They don't know what Communism is and what the Cold War was about. By the time I get them as juniors, they are pretty much a completed project...very little can change them too dramatically and the knowledge they failed to pick up will be forever foreign to them. It's elementary education which is the true failure these days. They learn nothing and by the time they reach Middle School, they're ignorant and wild because no discipline or learning happens in the elementary schools these days.
If the bolded is how a teacher supervises project work, then that teacher is not doing thier job.
If the bolded is how a teacher supervises project work, then that teacher is not doing thier job.
In a class of 25 students with 1 teacher, it's pretty much a guarantee...it's like whack-a-mole. Hence why I don't do group projects very often. When lecturing or doing individual assignments, it's far easier to maintain discipline. Maintaining discipline in a public high school school these days is very difficult because kids have been coddled all their lives and have been allowed to get away with murder due to the changes in the way we treat kids. Teachers are given the blame, as you showed above, for poor discipline...shouldn't the students be to blame? Shouldn't their parents take some responsibility for their child's behavior? THIS is the problem. Every child is a perfect little snowflake and has unlimited potential...except by HS that's simply not the case. As long as we continue to blame the teacher, underpay them and cut their funding (I teach history without a textbook or any materials provided by the school, everything comes from the internet, including worksheets), we will continue to see good teachers leave the profession and incompetent students funneled through the system. The students and their parents need to take responsibility and actually try to learn and grow. Teachers aren't magicians.
As I read this post, I was in total agreement until I came to the sentence I bolded. I think what you describe has been the direction of education for at least the past 20 years. You didn't say what grades or subject you taught, but my children were in junior high to high school from 1997 to 2009. We suffered through numerous school projects over these years. My wife made many trips to Staples to buy supplies for these projects. My son who graduated as class salutatorian hated these projects and did the bare minimum to get buy. My one daughter would spend hours on art work but learned very little from the projects. We often wondered how students in single parent households with limited financial resources handled these projects.
Since then I have subbed in over 10 school districts and I think the emphasis on projects has only increased. As a long term sub, I had to grade poster presentations where I thought little learning took place. I've seen considerable class time allocated to these projects and it usually just becomes a social time for the students.
I'm not sure what you mean by themes and how a theme could weave the core curricular objectives into interesting and developmentally-appropriate activities.
I'm surprised you feel that this type of teaching is considered inferior and is unacceptable today because I sub in schools where this type of teaching is pushed. I know of one principal who requires prospective teachers to teach a class using these methods as part of the interview process. Some teachers will prepared a special lesson that is hands-on and participative on days they are being observed.
Themes refer to the framework in which you teach all the other core classes. Many schools have a STEM theme; biotechnology, engineering, health sciences, marine sciences, communications, etc. other schools pick a particular theme for each different grade. There are lots of ways to apply theme.
When you do for example, a STEM theme, the courses in the STEM departments obviously reflect that but so do the other classes were possible. For example 11th grade english persuasive essays become about the ethics of bioengineering in a biotech school; in sophomore english instead of learning to write a resume, the kids learn to write CVs, and so on.
As for projects, when you have a theme, projects inherent have more meaning. One of my entire classes is a project. We do not make arts and crafts. The problem is without a unifying theme, projects are sort of adrift. The theme can unify those projects and take them far beyond what you describe.
As a science teacher the thing I dreaded most each year was the science fair. What agony. "Will plants grow better with or without water" or "Will plants grow better with or without light", or the ever-popular exploding volcano. And, when I went into administration there was always some other principal who would say, "Hey, didn't you used to be a science teacher? Could you come over and help judge our science fair?"
It was agony. I would say that less than 10% of all the thousands of science fair projects I ever saw had any real value in terms of "science".
Science fairs are the highlight of mine and my students year. One of mine missed ISEF by an inch this year, oh well. Meanwhile our in house science fair is tomorrow. All the seniors present their capstones to the mentors, parents and school. It is the last time anyone will pretend to be interested in their projects that took up so much of the last year or two, so they tend to enjoy it.
Though to be honest I do get the judging thing. I usually get sucked into judging one of the categories at our regional fair, and this year it was microbiology. At least half of all the projects were some version of "essential oils kill bacteria".
In a class of 25 students with 1 teacher, it's pretty much a guarantee...it's like whack-a-mole. Hence why I don't do group projects very often. When lecturing or doing individual assignments, it's far easier to maintain discipline. Maintaining discipline in a public high school school these days is very difficult because kids have been coddled all their lives and have been allowed to get away with murder due to the changes in the way we treat kids. Teachers are given the blame, as you showed above, for poor discipline...shouldn't the students be to blame? Shouldn't their parents take some responsibility for their child's behavior? THIS is the problem. Every child is a perfect little snowflake and has unlimited potential...except by HS that's simply not the case. As long as we continue to blame the teacher, underpay them and cut their funding (I teach history without a textbook or any materials provided by the school, everything comes from the internet, including worksheets), we will continue to see good teachers leave the profession and incompetent students funneled through the system. The students and their parents need to take responsibility and actually try to learn and grow. Teachers aren't magicians.
When I was the principal of a middle school (before retirement), we had a business partner that was what is referred to as a "Beltway bandit" -- a large consulting company in the D.C. area that consults for the federal government and other nations, corporations, etc. Each August, when teachers came back to work, our first day would be at the headquarters of our business partner. They'd feed us breakfast and lunch and we could use their auditorium and meeting rooms, and we could take tours of their facility. It was something special designed to get teachers revved up and doing something beyond just putting up bulletin boards. One year they provided a one-hour question and answer session with their human resources personnel. One of our teachers asked, "How well does ----- County Public Schools prepare students for the work world?" The presenter said he was glad that question was asked. He basically said that our students were full of knowledge that they can't do anything with. He went on to explain that like many large, modern corporations (and yes, I know not all are like this), their personnel worked in "work groups" because what they usually found was that some of their employees shined at creativity, while others could bring the creativity down to earth for a useful purpose. Others excelled at organizational skills. Others at presenting. And so forth. "An employee sitting over at a desk in a corner working alone is not useful to our company". In other words, they were looking for people who could work on a project.
And I look back to my own high school years and remember the difference between Mr. Prittie (American history) and Mrs. Southern (senior English). Prittie was fascinated with battles. To him, there was nothing more important than troop movements during battles. We suffered through Revolutionary, 1812, Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Korean War battles. But none of us could have told you why those wars occurred or what the long-term result of the wars were. They were all lectures and looking at battle maps. On the other hand, Mrs. Southern gave us a "senior project". I don't even remember what mine was, but I learned to organize facts and how to present them. And that skill -- though solitary in the case of the senior project -- served me well throughout college and the work world, because I learned to take knowledge and do something with it.
As a science teacher the thing I dreaded most each year was the science fair. What agony. "Will plants grow better with or without water" or "Will plants grow better with or without light", or the ever-popular exploding volcano. And, when I went into administration there was always some other principal who would say, "Hey, didn't you used to be a science teacher? Could you come over and help judge our science fair?"
It was agony. I would say that less than 10% of all the thousands of science fair projects I ever saw had any real value in terms of "science".
But my best learning experience in college was with Professor Schmidt who taught geomorphology and glaciation. He took our geomorphology (landforms) class out to a gravel pit and presented his project requirement -- landforms in miniature -- where we had to find miniature landforms in the erosional features of the gravel pit and come up with some hypothesis and then prove or disprove it. I said, "Just give me a problem to solve". "No. You start being a scientist". Well, I spent days in the gravel pit and finally noticed that there seemed to be a relationship between the general slope of the land and how narrow stream junction angles were. And I proved it. This was before the internet, so then, back in the college library I spent days looking for similar research...and finally found it. It was that learning experience -- that project -- that changed me from being an "in the box" thinker to being an "out of the box" thinker. And later, when we traveled down to central Pennsylvania to study the Schooley Peneplain, and I asked him at one stop whether or not the glacier got down this far, Professor Schmidt said, "What the hell are you asking me for? You have the knowledge to figure it out yourself". I was pissed. But ten minutes later I went back and explained to him why I thought the glaciers had gotten that far south and he said, "See. You're thinking like a scientist now".
The problem is that learning facts is not creative. Doing something with facts is creative. And projects can help students learn to do project-type work. However, like lame-ass science fairs, projects can be good or bad, depending on how they are organized.
(P.S. -- I have seen well-done science fairs...just not usually. And I have seen an occasional wonderful science fair project even in lousy science fairs).
This.
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